Reframing Things: Flow Affordances
Flow is how you know.
- How would we know?
- Flow. Flow is how we know.
Flow = Structure x Process
The process in this here post is all about tracing paths, until transition pathways, until generative sequences, enacting structure-preserving transformation. Generative magic, taking place in meetings.
Any which sufficiently advanced meeting is indistinguishable from social cognition turned small group genius magic.
CMCM: Conversations that Mind, Cultivate and Matter
The organizing metaphor of the CMCM is not “post”,
it’s “DKR”, Dynamic Knowledge Repository and “CMCM search query”.
Posts, Comments, Responses (and their associated content) bring value, and/or co-create value to the extent that they are conducive to flow.
Zombie Horde Peer Pressure
While dopamine hit shiny content consumption and like button clicking, is a distraction at best and zombie horde peer pressure at worst. It’s flow alright, but it’s useless, AND, it erodes our social cognition that we otherwise could have extended online.
flow = structure x process
CMCM = DKR x search query
inquiry = gathering x complex responsive processes
The structure in this here post, is a gathering, around a generative question, a gathering of small group genius, a gathering of all the necessary evolutionary and zeitgeist forces and sufficient building blocks, that both card sessions and other knowledge flow labs and knowledge mapping design artifacts can help emerge, unfold and evolve: participatory inquiry structures, scaffolding any and all confluences and complex responsive processes conducive to flow.
flow = structure x process
knowledge flow = social social media and machine structures x online conversations that mind, cultivate and matter
The same equation, applied to online knowledge flows.
Here’s How
read, think, find, converse, learn, annotate and play
not necessarily in that order. Rather, a nature of order, around centers, where each participant selects a card and adds a move, bringing a select part of themselves in order to add vitality to the whole thing, the whole gathering, until generative closure.
Applied
thinks, things and gatherings
The Shu Ha Ri of Project Management
1. Shu: School of Hard Knocks
Doing things. Surveys and Gantt Charts as blunt instruments. Managing as taking hostages in order to getting things done.
2. Ha: Projects as if by Design
Doing gatherings. Although Jorge Luis Borges applies*, more often than most of us think. Managing as systems governance.
3. Ri: The Art of the Possible
Doing thinks. The Pursuit of the Adjacent Possible Possibility Space. Managing as understanding preferable outcomes.
*Intermission: Jorge Luis Borges
Zen and the Art of Meaning-making Maintenance
Art as a Superset of Experience Affordance
“… and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret
and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but
which no man has looked upon — the unimaginable universe.
I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
Art as a Generative Superset of Tasks
“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening
to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music,
into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty.
If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has
the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols.
These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet,
the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry.
The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours.You are continuously receiving things from the external world.
These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed.
This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always
working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer,
is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by,
if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at
the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never
get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
flow
1. If you are experiencing boredom, you are doing it a bit wrong.
3. If you are experiencing overwhelm (common to 103% of
all western minds) you are overdoing it. Hustle is not a panacea.
Breathing can be a good thing. Breathing together with the rest
of the community and the bioregion. Breathing new life into
signs and things, in service to seven generations.
2. In a network, in between boredom and overwhelm,
there’s flow. Obey flow. It is ordained. It is so.
Card: Generative Review
…generative review:
— How would I know?
— Flow. Flow is how you know.
Once you experience flow, it’s easier to
have a go at intelligence turned ability.
Vaster than the English Language — full of Empire yet more life.
A Deeper How
patterns of relationship, interaction, play and play^n
Patterns of Relationship:
Nature of Order
Patterns of Interaction:
Small Group Genius in a context of perspectives on new work and new workflow, exploring evolving concepts, theories and maps supporting meaning-making, knowledge creating and value co-creating practices
Patterns of Play:
Considering Cards in light of Questions,
A gameful way of helping you reframe things,
Playing Moves to a Card Session Board
Patterns of Play^n:
Flow …
Patterns of Play, Interaction and Generative Sequences
The generative sequence is simple, complicated, complex and emerging:
- read
- think
- find
- converse
- learn
- annotate
- play
As with all generative sequences, this is part art, part code.
Art is all about tracing novelty in ways that can be shared
with others, both expanding our understanding and
awareness, as well as making a lasting difference.
Code is tracing continuity, all about designing running programs.
In between art and code: networks.
In a network, we play^n to win^n.
What would be the invaluable benefits with these
cards, games and play? How would it work?
Card Sessions
Cards considered in light of questions, a gameful way
to help you reframe and make sense of things.
Use cards to explore new perspectives and
gain insight around a chosen question.
Reframing Things
Reframing Things: Flow Affordances
Complex systems can be seen and understood as stream and flow affordance.
Notice eg how wind is one way to indirectly understand a complex system at a planetwide, ecosystemic level.
Notice how other streams, interactions, conversations, multi-order cybernetics and transactions, are ways to directly and/or indirectly see, experience and understand complex systems.
The part of the vector of agency in alignment with the unfolding wholeness of systems, is intelligence.
Our sense of self turned character, our character turned individuation, our individuation turned evolutionary purpose, is our intelligence turned ability.
“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability,
which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
One of the books by Alfred North Whitehead is called Process and Reality.
Structure, Process and Reality
The obvious qualities of all systems, are all situated somewhere between structure, process and reality.
Reasoning in service to human evolution, includes the analysis, synthesis and becoming of service of the obvious, as it performs unfolding wholeness, between structures, processes and reality.
All systems are map and mapping, pattern and patterning, model and modeling.
“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference
between how nature works and the way people think.”
— Gregory Bateson
Differences can be seen and understood as requisite variety affordance.
Holding Space for Preferable Outcomes
Our ways of holding space for individual, small group genius, conversational, contextual, social, circles, social social media, systems ecosystem, planetary and evolutionary intelligence, is how we hold space for possibility spaces, between situational awareness and preferable outcomes.
Interface: Human Becoming
Card: UI & UX
Language is UI. Conversation is UX.
Technology is the anticipatory, active
and abductive human interface with
the world and with worlds beyond.
Design is the transmutation of
convivial insight into beautiful
forms of lasting value.
Instigate, Invite and Cultivate
Our ways of holding generative space for intelligence turned ability, is all in how we instigate, invite to and cultivate, behavior turned agency, agency turned social agency and social agency turned networked agency.
The Only Core Challenge:
behavior -> agency
Networked agency is how we coordinate any and all necessary and sufficient resources, in our virtuous movement between situational awareness and preferable outcomes.
Homesteading our here and now
Relative to both our existing places, eg houses and our placemaking, eg homes — attention is our handshake protocol between past and present and situational awareness is how we homestead our here and now.
Placemaking is how we weave between homesteading and cultivating structures, processes and flows.
Placemaking homesteading, is the task of all ordinary humans, humans who have chosen to remain collectively defined as one humanity, one planetary stewarding plenitude.
Card: Three Dimensions
sudden, gradual
and smooth
discovery
Three dimensions — sudden, gradual and smooth discovery
Sudden discovery: Evolutionary Novelty
This is so important to God, the Universe and All That Is — that she helped Horace Walpole coin a new word, serendipity, formed out of a story, The Three Princes of Serendip.
Gradual discovery: The Quest
See Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Joseph Campbell and Dane Rudhyar for the comprehensive road map cues and bread crumbs available for our every gradual discovery.
Smooth discovery: Synkinaesthesia
To be precise, our smooth discovery is a boundary turned living, dynamic, evolving boundary, in the intersect of enkinaesthesia (map, landscape, territory) and synkinaesthesia (legend, path, chreod).
The generative review of landscape and situational awareness, situational awareness and paths through our landscapes, is co-extensive, co-extending and co-evolving with anticipatory systems intelligence.
Anticipatory Systems Intelligence
Humanity is the anticipatory system. Adjust, adapt and evolve your systems understanding, accordingly.
Boundary management, is the task of all edglings, heretics, visionaries, pioneers, entrepreneurs, humans who have chosen to trace novelty between systems and ecosystems, between how people think and how nature works, in a context of patterns of play, interaction and relationship, in service to seven generations, in service to human evolution.
Card: Copy
“Everyone our age
has got a battered,
quarter-read copy
of Infinite Jest.”
— Matty Healy
Intersects and interfaces between humans and humans
The intersects, handshake protocols and interfaces between ordinary humans and visionaries, is where we learn how to play really well with other people, people different than ourselves.
— What are we interfacing with?
— What are we opting in to?
This interface is also how we can see, understand, manage and steward, our anticipatory systems.
This interface is made up of two things: UI and UX.
UI: Language
With three important subsets: math, patterns and code.
UX: Conversations
With a whole smorgasbord of local, tribal, institutional, market and network(ing) subsets.
Our boundary management can be reframed, towards becoming in service to preferable outcomes management.
Corner of Culture and Cyber
Each and every human culture, holds keys how to both reframe
(virtue, community) and rethink (path, stewardship).
The main purpose of the web, is data, distributed information, information processing, knowledge and practical wisdom, in a context of stewardship. Stewardship in service to community.
Circles
The how to the why of stewardship, is circles.
Circles of concern, influence, confluence, consilience and considered, considerate conversations that mind, cultivate and matter.
Turn, turn, turn
Situating our circles, in networks and our networks in webs and webs of value, is how we turn attention to situational awareness, will to flow, intelligence to ability and behavior to agency.
Each and every instance of our becoming part of this turn, regardless of scale, is invaluable.
In A Network
In a network, always and already in a context of ecosystems, system is flow affordance.
Two main flow trimtabs: structures and processes.
Flow = Structure x Process
— How would we know?
— Flow. Flow is how we know.
flow = structure x process
knowledge flow = language x play^n
“x” = patterning in general and shared understanding in particular
As a generative sequence, how we level up from game to game^n and how we instigate play^n and engage in game^n in order to achieve win^n:
Game^n
- Proprietary platform (fb)
- Platform (twitter)
- Place (substack, clubhouse)
- Playground (yet to be built, virtuereal networks of practice)
- Wise Playground (epistemic commoning)
Playground
A movement from platform to structure.
Wise Playground
A movement from structure to flow.
Flow = Structure x Process
Problem Space: Process, process and then some process
Platforms are way too much process centric: click that like button! Well, did you? Well, click it again! And again! And again… way too many humans are gluttons for process. Keeping busy, keeping themselves from reflect, reframe, rethink …
flow = structure x process
“x” = patterning (relationship, interaction, play, play^n)
My personal main work relates to the “x” in the equation and other, related equations.
Flows = Structures x(patterns of relationship, interaction, play and play^n)x Processes
Patterning, Playing, Play turned play^n
Engaging in and weaving between finite and infinite games. Extending win-lose generator functions, to win^n, in a context of life and signs, at scope, small group genius, sense making, social social media, societal innovation and social machine computing scale.
Scale
At human, ecosystemic scale. Scale is beautiful. Our experience of beauty, is our understanding of scale as it becomes part of our human evolution, our coming to our senses and our sense of proportion.
Conversational and Contextual Intelligence
Designing different social machines, augmenting possibility spaces(game^n), between situational awareness and preferable outcomes. Preferable outcomes in a context of unfolding wholeness.
And, in the end …
How are we to understand unfolding wholeness?
Beauty. Beauty is how we understand unfolding wholeness.
You were always beautiful beyond belief. You just forgot for a brief spell.
How we spell ourselves beautiful is 103% about language in general
and magic, magick and biosemiosis in particular. You picking the cards
you’re dealt, adding your thoughts, learning into aliveness. Flow.
