The Ourhouse Weblog: Making sense of a complex and complicated world
John blogs Lilia Efimova who recently had the opportunity to listen to David Snowden. I've seen David speak on many occasions, always enthralling, often amusing and its always fun to engage in mutual mud slinging with the Welsh (I think the Rugby world cup is bringing out the jingoist in me and I'll be singing 'Land of Hope and Glory' before long).
The engagement with his thinking on complexity and especially ideas of community, knowledge mangement and context really kicked off my intelectual muscles after being fairly dormant for about five years...
John picks out from the Sense Making paper the key conception of boundaries:
Also there's an elegant section on boundaries which is a topic that fascinates me. Snowden distinguishes between the "shallow river" (you know when you cross it and it's easy to cross); the "deep chasm" (crossable but only at bridges which can - for good or ill - limit access) and the "high plateau":
the boundary with the most potential danger, because you may not be aware that
you have crossed the boundary until it is too late and you drop off the other side.
The article is packed with ideas and I can't quite do it justice here!
David often illustrates such boundaries through storytelling (or narrative) such as only being accepted within a group by passing the entry / intiaition 'test' e.g. being sent for a left handed screwdriver or the tartan paint, or being sent into the dirty water at the sewerage plant.
There is also some worthy points concerning master and apprenticeship i.e. you only pass when the master is satisfied not by some objective level.
The reason I find these of interest is the need of humans to belong and the associated need of exclusion to establish communities.
Posted by Paul Goodison at November 18, 2003 11:55 PM | TrackBack