Cards for Insight: Q&U
Can we use our own cards?
… use the cards to
address problems …
… use the cards to explore, address
and resolve wicked problems …
… use the cards to explore, address
and resolve wicked problems and
worthwhile dilemmas formulated
as generative center questions …
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?
- John, can we use our own cards?
- Not right away no. The reason is similar to the TED/TEDx conundrum. The long and short of it: scaling the cards can’t happen at the expense of how they work. The way to address this is to have other cards, card decks and card-play approaches go through a vetting/certification process, in an online community of card-play conversation practice.
- John, can we use our own wicked problems and our own generative center questions?
- Yes.
- John, can we use our own patterns of play, situated before, after, around and between the cards?
- Yes.
- John, can we use our own boards, whether 2x2’s, 3x3’s and other grids, structures and (knowledge) graphs?
- Typically, yes, as long they allow for, facilitate, augment and leverage spiraling lines of inquiry through cards, card-play and card-play conversations.
Card-Play Session: Navigating Complex Changes
This is an example card-play session, with cards tracing spiraling
lines of inquiry through the below 3x3 board used as a play space.
Generative Center Question:
How can we navigate complex changes
in our personal and professional lives?
Experience:
Reflect on past changes and how they were managed.
Path:
Explore different strategies for navigating future changes.
Learning:
Share insights and lessons learned from past experiences.
Narrative:
Develop a shared story about overcoming
challenges and achieving goals.
Cards for Insight: Boards and Play Spaces
Boards in general and 3x3 card-play spaces situated in 3D diagrams in particular can be used to leverage card-play and measure progress.
Diagram legend:
- x: intelligence turned ability (collective dimension)
- y: behavior turned agency (individual dimension)
- z: information turned knowledge (me/we and we/me — multi-order design cybernetics dimension)
Situating the 3x3 and by implication, the card-play and card-play conversation inside a 3D diagram, allows for intelligent measuring of progress. As for your own boards, your own diagrams, as long as they can be combined with the Cards for Insight cards, then, yes.
- John, can we use our own card-play conversation heuristics?
- Yes, as long as they are more or less aligned with small group genius metalogue and online community generative conversation.
At the core of the above Q&A and the underlying Q&U card-play and
card-play conversation strategies lies an understanding of scaling vs
small group genius card-play.
Q&U: Questions and Understanding
Understanding in general and shared understanding through card-play conversation taken as stopping rule and generative closure in particular.
Process: Card-Play
Structure: Card-Play Designs, Structured and Affordances
flow = structure x process (general equation)
knowledge mapping and flow = gameplay structures x play as process
(the particular equation used for the Cards for Insight approach)
“x” = patterning in general and (card-play conversation) understanding
in particular, related to and evolving with the particular generative
center question chosen and the cards picked for exploring the
underlying (wicked) problem
Card: How To Play Really Well Together With Others Online
Social cognition, extended online, refers to the ways in which
individuals understand, interpret and wield social interactions
and behaviors within the context of social media, influenced
by the existing and the adjacent possible dynamics of online communication, conversation, interaction and meaning-making.
Needless to say, how to play really well together with others online is
a wicked problem and (should we so choose) a worthwhile dilemma.
A worthwhile dilemma that can be formulated as a generative center question.
What To Do With The Solipsist Bastids?
In almost all online interaction, there’s the factor of quite a few online individuals, by training or innate character, preferring NOT to play well together with others. This needs to be addressed, eg by offering single-player options, yet emphasising and rewarding card-play in light of small group genius, collaborative, online community, community of practice and networked, shareable formats.
What To Do With The Passive Audience?
Also, there’s the conundrum of the “online audience” disposition, how to accomodate an online community of card-play conversation practice, with the near unshakeable fact that around 90% of all people online simply won’t participate in any way, shape or form, other than passive content consumption and non-committal like button clicking and ersatz interaction by way of adding emojis. This can be addressed by different social machine designs and affordances.
What To Do With The Proprietary Platforms?
Related to this and as an ongoing example, fb (and many other proprietary platforms) turned to sh-t by being overrun by content catering to the lowest common denominator — scaling at the near total expense of online sense-making and meaning-making.
This will turn increasingly bad by a flooding of AI-content.
Corner of Narratives and Algorithms of Loving Grace
Combining mass-market marketing narratives with algorithms,
is something we are yet to understand how to convivally wield.
This is of course also a wicked problem, one we might consider formulating as a generative center question.
Design To The Rescue? What Design?
Though a large proportion of the above can be addressed by design,
the wicked problem remains: what design?
Card: Design
The intentional creation
of meaningful elements
for specific purposes.
What is the meaning we want
to convey and how can design
facilitate and scaffold this?
How can we design for preferable
outcomes characterised by insight,
function, generativity and beauty?
Card: Entelechy
The potential within something
that guides its development and
ultimate character and form.
What Design? What Purpose? What Entelechy?
Design thinking? Abductive sensemaking? Design synthesis? Design systems? Design research? Game design? Token design? Token designs by way of LLM and AI design? Platform design? Social machine design? User Interface Design? User Experience Design? Design Cybernetics? Cybernetics? Multi-order cybernetics? All of the above?
Sensemaking or Bust
From where I sit, all the above design approaches can be seen,
understood and utilised as frames. Frames can then form
part of a sensemaking system:
decision quality; online practice; muddling through
(often referred to as “copes” (more properly: heuristics
and strategies)); envisioning (worry and anticipatory
systems intelligence); understanding (process, structure,
flow and reality); narratives; and frames (reframing)
Decision Quality as Generative Review
When used for deep learning and unlearning purposes, the above sensemaking system can be used in the reverse, starting with existing frames and understanding your own decision quality as an ongoing generative review. If your decision-making almost always lead to more of the same, you are not reframing things, which means your cognition is probably stuck inside an existing, unyielding and obsolete frame.
In the intersect of insight and decision quality, actionable insight.
Card: Actionable Insight
Use cards to generate insight
and take action together with
the other participants.
The Shu Ha Ri of Content, Design and Mastery
In short, the above design conundrums can be understood
as a kind of Shu Ha Ri:
Shu: Content Consumption
Catgifs, selfies, mostly uninformed personal
ken opinion and content marketing
Ha: Design
The wicked problem here is your insistence that YOUR opinion is obviously superior and YOUR personal ken comfort zone is a zone you can’t leave, which means, you can’t reach beyond your own grasp, you can’t play.
Ri: Mastery
The below nine qualities map to the nine fields of a
Cards for Insight 3x3 card-play board.
Mastery by way of:
- mindset
- curiosity
- confusion(as a perfect precursor of trust)
- card-play(as an adjacent possible to opinion)
- collaborative meaning-making(as an adjacent possible to Games People Play)
- umwelt(online identity, evolving through social cognition and sign use)
- preferable outcomes(as an adjacent possible to default desired outcomes, eg win^n)
- lines of inquiry(as an adjacent possible to rigid frames)
- centers(as an adjacent possible to existing social constructs and rigid belief systems)
The Elusive Charm of Doing Our Own Thing
- John, can we use our own cards?
- The Cards for Insight source deck of 500 cards offers 120k two-card and 21M three-card combinations, with four-, five- and six-card combinations mapping to the training sets and tokens in LLM’s.
In short, if you can express and clothe your thoughts using the english language, with the average english speaking person using around 800–1000 unique words per day and with 170k words in common collective usage, you will find card combinations serving all your needs.
- John, can we use our own cards?
- You can use your own wicked problems, generative center questions, patterns of play, your own reason for playing, your own card-play conversation heuristics and other means at your disposal for taking thought and small steps, arriving at your own preferable outcomes.
- John, can we use our own cards?
- To each and every card, 120k two-card and 21M three-card combinations, you can add your own associations, augmented by AI-assisted annotations.
- John, can we use our own cards?
- I can be reasoned with. If you present your use case and what cards and card-decks in general and what “Booster Packs”(working subsets of the source deck of 500 cards) in particular can be configured and re-configured, then let’s discuss.
Use the cards to address wicked problems and worthwhile
dilemmas, formulated as generative center questions.
Gather around a worthwhile dilemma, pick cards, explore
perspectives and engage in collaborative sensemaking.
Cards for Insight: Core Functions
- facilitate collaborative sensemaking
- improve and augment experiences
- provide building blocks for actionable insight
- turn cards into stepping stones, unfolding paths
- enhance learning conducive to realization of potential
- bridge human association and AI annotation
- cultivate emotional and cognitive engagement
- enable networked learning and impact
Play? Sign up here:
Adjacent Possible Playground
https://adjacentpossible.social/#card
Cards for Insight: Source Decks and LLM’s
Cards, patterns of play and card-play conversations combine,
facilitating exploring paths between worthwhile dilemmas,
generative center questions and preferable outcomes.
There’s around 500 cards in the source deck, each card designed
to yield 120k two-card and 21M three-card combinations.
With four-, five- and six-card combinations mapping to LLM’s,
Large Language Models, all the combinations facilitating human associations (card-play) combined with AI-assisted annotations
(prompts and responses).
