Verbatim » noteworthy

relationships are all there is

Shanta Rohse — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 02:51:33 +0000

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone.

Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, 2002, p. 19.

proprioception in the digital age

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:39:48 +0000

Proprioception, the perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli inside the body, is a medical concept. Although the name for it is not well known, the phenomemon is familiar to all of us. Our proprioceptors incessantly inform us that we are standing up, inclining our head, squinting our eyes, or clenching our fists. Proprioceptors work as sensory systems not for outside information about others or the environment but inside the body. Nerves attached to muscles fire when they detect motion such as change in positioning of the body. These self-monitoring nerves tell us whether we are standing on our feet or our head or are on the bus at a standstill or jogging along at thirty-five miles an hour. The Earth has enjoyed a proprioceptive system for millennia, since long before humans evolved. Small mammals communicate the comming earthquake or cloudburst. Trees release “volatiles,” substances that warn their neighbors that gypsy moth larvae are attacking their leaves. Proprioception, the sensing of self, probably is as old as self itself. I like to think that we people augment and continue to accelerate Gaia’s newfangled proprioceptor capability. A fire in the Borneo forest and a crash of a U.S. helicopter in the Italian Alps are broadcast on televised news in New York City. Yet extinct packs of wolves and flocks of dinosaurs enjoyed their own proprioceptive social communication; the global nervous system certainly did not begin with the origin of people. Gaia, the physiologically regulated Earth, enjoyed proprioceptive global communication long before people evolved. The air circulated gas emissions and soluble chemical from tropical trees, mating-ready insects, and life-threatened bacteria. Love compounds have wafted in spring breezes since the Archean age. But the speed of proprioception has greatly increased with the electronic age.

Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, 1998, pp. 113-4.

the map is not the territory

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:17:49 +0000

These antiquated terms – “blue-green algae,” “protozoa,” “higher animals,” “lower plants,” and many others – remain in use despite their penchant to propagate biological malaise and ignorance. The use of these insults to the living benefits those people whose budgets, class notes, and social organization depend on their continuity. I suggest that one reason Wallin’s good ideas [Juan Wallin, who originally proposed in the 1920s that various cell components originate as symbiotic bacteria] were opposed or ignored was that he was thoroughly misunderstood by the many biologists and teachers who reinforce the misconception of fixed classification. Bacteria, seen only as causes of disease, were then and are now nearly alway branded as “enemy agents.” Note how they are “waiting to be conquered” by the “weapons” of modern medicine. It is ridiculous, of course, to describe them primarily in military, adversarial terms: most bacteria are no more harmful than air, nor can they, like air, ever be removed from our bodies and our environment. But many still erroneously believe that any bacteria, if present, should be eradicated. Bacteria now and even more in Wallin’s day must be vanquished. How could they “inhabit” healthy tissue? Wallin’s colleagues confused the map with the territory.

Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, 1998, pp. 55.

interpreting the universe

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:45:23 +0000

Each age interprets its universe in terms of what is currently important to it. Ancient animistic people wanting to make sense of the starry sky saw it as a zoo of people and animals—the Hunter, the Swan, the Lion, the Dog. The mechanical age of the eighteenth century bred a mechanistic philosophy; in the clockwork universe, God was the watchmaker who set the wheels spinning and then stood back to watch his creation turn; the newly discovered constellations of the southern hemisphere included the Octant, the Triangle, and the Microscope. Our present Computer Age sees the universe as an ever-changing flow of information, and if we were to discover the stars today our first instinct would be to try to decode their message.

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, Collapse of chaos: Discovering simplicity in a complex world, 1995, p. 288

when learning metaphors become literal

Shanta Rohse — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 13:44:16 +0000

For centuries, a common habit among learning theorists has been to characterize cognitive processes in terms of prevailing technologies. Among the tools and machines that have been used to describe thinking are catapults, hydraulics, telegraphs, telephone switchboards, and, most recently, computers.

The further one goes back into history, the more inappropriate such comparisons seem. And, conversely, the more recent the metaphor, the easier it is to take it as a literal truth. Most of us would find the image of a catapult almost useless as a figurative device to understand learning, whereas we tend to slip uncritically into characterizing the brain as a computer. Consider, for example, commonplace references to learning as acquiring and inputting data, to learning difficulties as problems in brain wiring, to communication as transmission and interfacing, to thinking as processing and compiling information, to memorizing as storing, and to remembering as retrieving and outputting. Despite their seeming reasonableness, one might expect such notions to be a source of amusement to future generations in much the same way that references to other, now eclipsed technologies seem amusing today.

Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara, and Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Engaging minds: Learning and Teaching in a complex world, 2000, pp. 52-3

learning cannot be designed

Shanta Rohse — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 11:43:21 +0000

Learning cannot be designed. Ultimately, it belongs to the realm of experience and practice. It follows the negotiation of meaning; it moves on its own terms. It slips through the cracks; it creates its own cracks. Learning happens, design or no design. And yet there are few more urgent tasks than to design social infrastructures that foster learning…Those who can understand the informal yet structured, experiential yet social, character of learning and can translate their insight into designs in the service of learning will be the architects of our tomorrow.

Etienne Wenger, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, 1998, p. 225

how change really happens

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 17:51:52 +0000

Some part of the system (…an organization, a community, a team, a nation) notices something. It might be in a memo, a chance comment, a news report. It chooses to be disturbed by this. Chooses is the operative word here–the freedom to be disturbed belongs to the system. No one ever tells a living system what should disturb it (even though we try all the time.) If it chooses to be disturbed, it takes in the information and circulates it rapidly through its networks. As the disturbance circulates, others take it and amplify it. The information grows, changes, becomes distorted from the original, but all the time it is accumulating more and more meaning. Finally, the information beomces so important that the system can’t deal with it. Then and only then will the system begin to change. It is forced, by the sheer meaningfulness of the information, to let go of its present beliefs, structures, patterns, values. It cannot use its past to make sense of this new information. The system must truly let go, plunging itself into a state of confusion and uncertainty that feels like chaos, a state that always feels terrible.

Having fallen apart, having let go of who it has been, the system now and only now open to change. It will reorganize using new interpretations, new understandings of what’s real and what’s important. It becomes different because it understands the world differently. It becomes new because it was forced to let go of the old. And, paradoxically, as is true with all living systems, it changed because it was the only way to preserve itself.

Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time, 2005, viewing change within organizations that are seen as living systems rather than machines

memorizing the past for the future

Shanta Rohse — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:40:33 +0000

We often think of memory in a nostalgic or trivial way – such as knowing the capital of the United States or being able to find our car keys – and as somethng relating simply to the past. Yet the reason our brains have remarkabley powerful capacities for memories is that memory is actually for the future. It’s the way we learn about the world so that we’re more competent, more skilled, and more effective the next time we encounter a task. And so while memeory is of the past, it is a tools for the future.

John Gabrieli, Educating the Brain: Lessons from Brain Imaging, 2005, explaining how new neuroimaging techniques offer insights into how the brain learns and remembers.

soft power

Shanta Rohse — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:07:55 +0000

The democratization of technology has made NGOs more powerful and terrorism more lethal. The United States must adjust its mental framework to this new landscape. Our post-9/11 focus has been on the use of hard power – the top board – when the problems we face stem from transnational issues on the bottom board. One metric to assess progress in the current sruggle against terrorism is whether the number of terrorists being killed with hard power is greater than the number Osama bin laden is recruiting with his soft power. From this point of view, things do not look good.

Joseph Nye, Soft Power and Higher Education, 2005, explaining the rising influence of soft power due to globalisation and the communication revolution – the term he uses to describe the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion.