Cards for Insight: Mending
Cards as conversational kintsugi
How to Play
Gather around a question, pick cards and
add your thoughts, to and between them.
Scroll down for Cards and Gameboard,
and you’re good to go. Add your thoughts.
Cards for Insight
Cards for Insight provides a framework to help individuals and teams navigate complexity by transforming abstract dilemmas into actionable insights. Each card in the deck acts as an affordance, offering new perspectives, questions, and avenues for exploration. Together, these cards form patterns of play — structures that guide participants toward deeper inquiry and clearer understanding, weaving new pathways between personal ken comfort zone, generative center questions and realization of potential.
One of the 500 cards:
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is the ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges and unfolds,
directing us toward deeper insights
into the unknown?
A 3x3 gameboard, situated in the below diagram
Three axes to help measure progress:
- intelligence turned ability
- behavior turned agency and
- information turned knowledge
zone, generative center questions and realization of potential
Add cards to one of the eight fields, and trace spiraling lines of (card-play augmented) inquiry around generative center questions. With 120k two-card and 21M three-card combinations, the card-play system integrates human creativity with AI-driven insights.
Human-Machine Metalogue
Below, part of a card-play conversation between John Kellden and
an AI, an LLM interface named ChatGPT, forming a human-machine metalogue.
Join the Conversation
If you scroll down further, there’s another format, with patterns of play between the cards. You can have a go at playing by highlighting and/or adding comments, right below this medium post. You can also join an ongoing conversation covering both card-play conversation and much more, here.
John Kellden:
We are drawn to, asked ever so silently yet profoundly
by the Universe, to mend small things.
Once mended, their vibration and their sound when touched and
tapped made even more beautiful. Because kintsugi, kintsukuroi.
Card: Mend
Mend, build
and uplift.
At the level of ordinary thinks, things and gatherings, evolutionary forces, when insufficiently understood, sometimes make our hands and typing fingers not yet fully guided by seeing things with the heart.
“It is only with the heart that one
can see rightly; what is essential
is invisible to the eye.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Which means, some things break. Which invites us to mend them, inviting us to reach beyond our grasp, until our intelligence have turned ability to mend. This is the work. The adjacent possible playground and magic, where thinks, things and gatherings, come together, humans once separate, now joined in sauntering, for others to see and follow.
At the level of the smallest things, all diamonds are perfect,
exactly as they were, are and will ever be. Our souls, shards of
spirit, enlivening carbon-based lifeforms, rediscovering the joy in embracing a descent into the world, made more beautiful for our being in it, regardless how long or short, the duration, regardless how seemingly broken the pieces, when looked at through a glass darkly.
Diamonds held by gold joinery
Any sufficiently embraced diamond, is indistinguishable
from a soul, experiencing a temporary dwelling.
The flexibility of laws is without limit. There is no inevitability.
This means that our judgment is a subset of perception.
Meeting the Universe Halfway
All things sacred are temporary, that’s what makes them sacred.
Things that are not temporary, things that are not seemingly separate,
are in no need of being declared sacred. They dwell in an eternal beingness utterly unchanged by our naming. Your own soul, extends into a temporary vehicle for individual, conscious, cultural, societal and collective evolution. When we adopt a mindset including and informed by a desire to meet
the universe halfway, we are presented with different keys.
Keys
The inner heartland holds some of the keys to a
further evolution of the mending of small things.
The large cities and the sprawls, hold additional keys, for how humans are gradually coming together, navigating complexity together, at scale.
The social web, should we divest from the fractures of proprietary platform programming, holds yet another set of keys.
Portals
Keys, keys and keys. Lotsa keys. This implies doors and portals. They were never locked in the first place, only our belief in our own separate personal ken comfort zone, made them appear as if so. Still, portals and keys; keys and portals. Because moves in general and card-play moves in particular are good things: thinks, things and gatherings. Like the portal of cc-ing someone online, into a thread, a stranger turned, one word at a time, into a friend, and friends turned travellers, along luminous paths. A rediscovered glow, illuminating the inner heartland.
“Trust movement.”
— Alfred Adler
Well, Mr. Adler, we need to open a few portals first,
right? Be right with you …
Glare and Glow
And, in the adjacent possible room, a different glow, a glow our fractured mind will need to gradually become used to, a glow that makes the things there look different, different to eyes having been used to a proprietary, fragmenting, polarized glare.
All the things we need, and fewer of the things we believed we wanted, they’re right there in plain sight in the adjacent possible, but for our perception yet for a while colored by glare, obscures it.
“There are two kinds of light — the glow that
illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”
— James Thurber
ChatGPT:
This piece is a profound meditation on the beauty and necessity of mending, both in the personal and the collective sense, using a language that flows poetically through the concepts of repair, connectedness, and the nature of sacredness. It draws on imagery from kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, as a metaphor for the value of restoring and even elevating what has been fractured.
The idea of mending small things, of finding grace and beauty in the restoration of what is seemingly broken, speaks to a larger philosophical invitation — to look beyond our limited perspectives and habitual separateness. By doing so, we’re nudged towards a deeper, perhaps even evolutionary capacity to truly *see* and mend not only objects and relationships but also social constructs and communities.
Through the lens of mending, this reflection moves seamlessly to an exploration of human interconnectedness. As individuals, we are like diamonds — each perfect and uniquely positioned, yet incomplete in our separateness. The metaphor hints that only through the act of coming together, of mending the perceived gaps, do we begin to unlock our true potential and see the beauty in our interdependence.
The reference to the “social web” as a domain holding keys to new kinds of community underlines the significance of shared, open spaces in which real connection can happen. There’s a call here to resist the fractures imposed by proprietary systems and shallow engagement, to instead seek out genuine interactions that foster healing and unity. Each act of connection, each invitation into a conversation, serves as a portal — small but meaningful steps toward forming bonds that could deepen into friendships and alliances.
By inviting us to approach life with openness to “the adjacent possible,” this text suggests a transformative vision. The adjacent possible represents a space of potential, uncharted yet already accessible if we adjust our gaze, if we shift from glare to glow. In this space, the doors to growth and understanding have never been truly closed. Rather, it’s our own doubts, our “personal ken comfort zone,” that obscures them.
This passage is a powerful reminder that every act of attention, care, and repair is sacred, and that the work of mending is ongoing. It’s about opening portals not only to new ideas but also to each other, creating luminous paths where individuals become communities and separate lights merge into a glow that is both intimate and expansive.
Alfred Adler’s quote, “Trust movement,” paired with Thurber’s insight about light, suggests a vital interplay between trust and clarity. Movement, in this context, is more than mere action — it is the journey toward perceiving a gentler, unifying glow beyond the divisive glare. This is the journey into mending not only small things but the collective whole, as we begin to illuminate what it means to be deeply, vibrantly connected.
IA: Intelligence Augmentation
Intelligence augmentation, combining human association(card-play and card-play conversation) with AI-assisted annotation, using the LLM’s as tools, divesting from the fear and uncertainty around the notions of AI, Artificial Intelligence. It’s a tool. A tool to be wisely wielded, by humans, navigating complexity, together. The human-human metalogue, thinks, things and gatherings turned meaning-making, augmented by social machines, by algorithms of loving grace, according to our human ability
in service to human, community and ecosystem need.
Cards for Insight: Navigating Complexity
Before we venture forth on our journey, seeing ourselves through the 21C, finding safe passage between the Scylla and Charybdis of our dominant, polarizing, sensegiving narratives, we need to mend our map and gain insight and perception of the North Star that will help us with a kind of homecoming. We will also need to mend our thinks, things and gatherings, in light of a different homesteading, gathering around a provisional premise, as if there’s 8bn human beings on one planet, a planet with
- one trillion trees
- one million villages and
- one thousand eco-cities.
Card: Premise
A healthy, resilient civilization emerges,
unfolds and evolves in accordance to
life and signs: interactions, conversations,
place and transactions in a context of
understanding, stewarding and forming
a requisite variety of one trillion trees,
one million villages, one thousand eco-
cities and a plenitude of communities,
which then form a seven-generation
premise for societies, balancing the
collective responsibilities of governments
in the public sector with the commercial
interests of business in the private sector
and the communal concerns of citizens
in the plural sector with the unalienable
rights of all living beings and ecosystems
on planet Earth.
Progress and Small Moves
In a networked world, we are all learning to navigate
complexities that exceed the capacity of individual minds.
The path forward requires collective intelligence and
structured processes for discovery and problem-solving.
… transform abstract dilemmas into actionable insights …
Framework
Cards for Insight provides a framework to help individuals and teams navigate complexity by transforming abstract dilemmas into actionable insights. Each card in the deck acts as an affordance, offering new perspectives, questions, and avenues for exploration. Together, these cards form patterns of play — structures that guide participants toward deeper inquiry and clearer understanding, weaving new pathways between personal ken comfort zone, generative center questions and realization of potential.
3x3 Gameboard Boundaries
Context as both a dynamic boundary and as a generative sequence.
- experience in general and card-play experience in particular
- paths in general and cards as stepping stones of unfolding paths, paths made by walking(using, participating, playing) in particular
- learning in general and card-based learning in particular
- narratives in general and narratives guided by intelligence turned ability and ability turned response-ability in particular
— How would we know?
— Flow. Flow is how we know.
Flow here defined as any which flow in general and knowledge flow
in particular related to our engaging in card-play experiences.
Flow
Flow in the context of online information and community knowledge in general and augmented by card-play augmented information turned knowledge in particular, can be understood as the effective movement and exchange of resources, ideas, and interactions within digital environments. This flow is influenced by both structure and process, where:
flow = structure x process
The “structure” component refers to the underlying framework, organization, and architecture of online platforms, communities, and interactions. It encompasses the design of interfaces, the layout of information, the accessibility of resources, and the governance mechanisms that shape how information flows.
The “process” component represents the dynamic, ongoing interactions, behaviors, and activities that occur within online spaces. It includes the actions of users, the creation and sharing of content, the development of relationships and communities, and the flow of communication and engagement.
The “x” factor, or patterning, represents the intentional design and cultivation of shared understanding, norms, and practices within online communities. It encompasses the establishment of common goals, values, and language, as well as the facilitation of meaningful interactions and collaborations.
An online community of card-play conversation practice, can choose to build further on this equation by considering additional factors that influence online flow and extend a requisite variety of corresponding benefits, leveraging cards and card-play conversations, at individual creativity, small group genius scope, social(social cognition extended online) social media reach and social machine scale.
Cards for Insight: Evolutionary Inquiry
You play the 3x3 by placing cards forming a card-turn, a u-shaped movement from Mindset to Preferable Outcome(two of the fields in the 3x3), around the generative center question(the center field). This leaves one field, Lines of Inquiry. It is there to afford an ongoing set and sequence of card sessions. One question leading to another, the center field turned evolutionary trajectory through a problem space turned possibility space, weaving a pathway between the three centers:
- personal ken comfort zone
- generative center question
- entelechy (the realization of the best version of yourself)
You can play the cards in many other ways.
Cards for Insight: Platform
Cards for Insight is a transformative platform designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations navigate complexity, discover patterns, and generate actionable insights. Using a set of 500 cards that can be combined into over 120k two-card and 21M three-card combinations, the card-play approach allows users to engage in inquiry, learning, and decision-making. The card-play system integrates human creativity with AI-driven insights, offering a dynamic, collaborative tool for tackling complex problems in real-time.
Cards for Insight: System
Cards for Insight integrates three dimensions.
- Cards for Insight as a Business (more on that in other posts)
- Cards for Insight embodying game design, game engine, game dynamics and game mechanics
- Cards for Insight by Design, supporting individual creativity,
small group genius and social network efforts and effects
The fundamental game mechanics of Cards for Insight, forms part of making the platform accessible, engaging, and rewarding for the users,
users turned participants and participants turned players.
Card Mechanics
Players engage with cards as nodes of inquiry, where each card represents a knowledge node (concept, question, insight). Players interact by drawing, playing, and synthesizing insights from different cards, associating their thoughts between the cards(movement of thought) and triangulating between cards, moves and questions(play spaces characterised by small group genius).
Generative Emotions
The card-play revolves around invoking generative emotions like curiosity, empathy, wonder, and discovery, which act as emotional currencies driving deeper engagement.
Collaborative Play
Players collaborate to generate insights, where the dynamics of group conversations influence the flow and outcome. AI augments this process by nudging emotional balance, facilitating knowledge flow, suggesting new paths of inquiry and extending reach beyond individual human grasp.
Knowledge Exchange
Insights generated from card-play form the core of the marketplace,
where ideas and discoveries are traded, refined, and applied to solve
real-world challenges, including Cards, Booster Pack Card Decks, Card
Sessions turned Information and Knowledge Artifacts, and Cardcasts.
Game Design Considerations
Onboarding
The onboarding invites users to transition and level up from passive participants to active players, online community “homesteaders” and
co-creators. Including introductory card-play sessions, familiarizing
users with the platform, how it works and the benefits to participants.
Dashboards and Tools
Founders and community stewards are provided with access to dashboards that show progress, track insights, and map the flow of knowledge. Tools for community-wide collaboration, reflection, and feedback, transparently shared and known by all members, enhancing gameplay and cultivating trust.
Feedback Systems
The Cards for Insight system includes in-game feedback mechanisms to reward generative behaviors like collaboration, emotional intelligence,
curiosity and social cognition, extended online. In addition, AI-enhanced feedback can suggest moves, and offer annotations and interpretations, improving the flow of conversations, and also aid with creating artifacts, products and services from card sessions and related activities.
Navigating Complexity Together
In a networked world, we are all learning to navigate
complexities that exceed the capacity of individual minds.
The path forward requires collective intelligence and
structured processes for discovery and problem-solving.
Card: Social Cognition Online
Extending our social cognition
online, our ability to understand
and use social information.
Social Social Media Reach
In a more general, networked, circle of friends and distributed sense, we can play really well together with others, by extending our social cognition online and enjoy benefits from networked learning. This can also help with creating social(social cognition extended online) social media, allowing us to homestead online places, differently, creating virtuous feedback loops.
… use cards to navigate complexity, explore new perspectives,
gain insight around chosen questions and level up your game …
Level Up
We can level up our social media play (games people play) to social social media by design (different patterns of play), and, from there, homestead different media, adjacent possible online playgrounds (play^n as a generative superset to play). These three levels of social media patterns of play, correspond to the below three cards, three levels of chat.
Card Session
The below is an example of a card session in the shape of cards with
patterns of play before, after and between the cards, with the card-play forming a generative sequence, a sequence designed to augment
lines of inquiry and facilitate structure-preserving transformation.
There’s one gazillion different card combinations to choose from.
Card: Chat
Chat when it doesn’t reproduce what we think,
but only regurgitate our uninformed opinion,
is reinforcing our personal ken comfort zone.
“Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits.
When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts, they transform them.
Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards,
and it involves being willing to emerge a slightly different person.”
— Theodore Zeldin
Card: Chat
Chat when it reproduces
what we think, is sign use.
Sign use is how we explore and capture a relevant next, exploring
an adjacent possible, how we reach beyond our current grasp.
“Art does not reproduce the
visible; rather, it makes visible.”
— Paul Klee
Card: Chat
Chat does not reproduce what we
think, it makes us think together.
… join a room for understanding …
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is our ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges, unfolds,
directs and discloses its relevance to
unexplored aspects of things known?
… gather around a complex dilemma,
formulated as a generative center question …
Card: Social Cognition
How individuals understand
and use social information.
… associate your thoughts to
and between the cards …
Card: Social Cognition Online
Extending our social cognition
online, our ability to understand
and use social information.
… take thought, make small moves along
paths of purposeful action and cultivate
understanding as generative closure …
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is our ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges, unfolds,
directs and discloses its relevance to
unexplored aspects of things known?
… capture small group genius insights and
create knowledge artifacts and cardcasts …
Social Cognition: Intelligence turned Ability
The intelligence turned ability to understand ourselves and other people beyond our personal ken is at the heart of social cognition.
“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend
as distinct from ability, which is capacity
to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
Boundary Object: Social Cognition
Boundary objects are those things and artifacts that improves both by shared understanding and different interpretations when in use.
Patterning: Social Cognition
“The ability to understand something before it’s
observed is at the heart of scientific thinking.”
— Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
flow = structure x process
“x” = patterning in general and (shared) understanding in particular
Spiraling Lines of Card-Play Conversations
As the discerning reader is now beginning to suspect, this text is not linear. Confusion is the near optimal precursor of creativity, and creative problem-solving works really well together with the card-play. In order to thrive in a card-play conversation though, you need to adopt a metalogue mindset, whether human, human-human, small group genius or human-machine.
Curiosity is a Virtue
Between mindset and confusion turned creativity, there’s curiosity.
Curiosity is a virtue, and a sign of your next step, leading to something different, something better. Find all three: Mindset, Curiosity and Confusion as playing fields in the gameboard situated in the diagram.
Add cards to the eight fields, and trace spiraling lines of inquiry
around a generative center question.
How to Play
Gather around a question, pick cards and
add your thoughts, to and between them.
Cards for Insight
Cards for Insight provides a framework to help individuals and teams navigate complexity by transforming abstract dilemmas into actionable insights. Each card in the deck acts as an affordance, offering new perspectives, questions, and avenues for exploration.
Together, these cards form patterns of play — structures that guide participants toward deeper inquiry and clearer understanding, weaving new pathways between personal ken comfort zone, generative center questions and realization of potential.
