Linky Thinking

I think even in adulthood picking up a new language makes grasping new gestalts easier. I know it works that way for kids.

I remember reading some research recently that suggested that bilingual (or more) people tended to stay mentally vital longer, in old age. I have a great role model … my Dad started learning Spanish (in a language school in Cuba) at 80 or 81 years of age, and is now functionally bilingual. He looks younger and younger all the time … tho’ that’s probably because of his Cuban girlfriend … she happens to have been his first Spanish tutor in Cuba, and is also the head of Cuba’s Institute of Linguistics. Lucky old dog … I admire his zest for life, a lot.

What fascinates me about linkania (as a brazilian friend of mine calls it) is that we’re all gonna be swimming about in this new electronic lincquarium … we already are … and it really does feel like learning an new language.

Have you noticed a rise in the number of dot connecting bloggers who don’t fall into tinfoil hat territory? I find myself coming acrosss more and more people who can paint with broad strokes that are able to withstand careful scrutiny. This came about, funny enough, after I started reading Wirearchy.

I’m unsure whether it represents a new paradigm. Perhaps I’ve simply become attuned to something already there.

Oh, by the way, the embedded image in this post doesn’t show up. I tried to fiddle with the URL, but didn’t get anywhere.

To which embedded image are you referring ?

re: your points regarding:

1. broad strokes and careful scrutiny … harry, I’m going to assume that i fall into that category, and take it as signal of complicit appreciation and friendship .. why not ? I often wish i had the discipline to write in a structured and sequential way all of the “stuff” I have learned, thought and perceived, since I often (seem to) run across ideas, theories and proscriptions that resemble closely threads of my own thoughts that i have carried with me, sometimes for years. I know I am not unique in this, just more lazy than most.

2. re: a new paradigm … I suppose it depends upon just how paradigmatic paradigms are. In the conversations about ‘emergence”, etc. on WB and elsewhere, I always wantto refer people to two sources that have inspired me … the first being the last four paragraphs of Chapter 3 of a book titled “Future Perfect” by Stan Davis. Davis was one of, if not the, first to identify, name and describe both disintermediation and mass customization. Here’s the last graf … Networks will not replace or supplement hierarchies; rather, the two will be encompassed within a broader conception that embraces both. we are still a long way from figuring out the appropriate and encompassing organization models for the economy we are now in. At the very least, it is clear that we will have to reconceptualize space, transforming it by technology from an impediment to an asset.

Then there was an article written in the atlantic Monthly several years ago (1999 ?) by Peter Drucker (he of “knowledge worker” fame) titled “Beyond The Information Revolution”. What stuck out for me was again the last four or five grafs, in which dDucker made the point that knowledge workers are beginning to realize that they own the means of production. this IMO butts right up against WB … if we weren’t all so deeply involved in the social construction (and resultant dependency) of the concepts known as jobs abnd salaries, the changes to a new “paradigm” would probably be happening faster. i think it’s just a matter of time, unless the corpogov’ts actively and assertively control via digital rights management and Patriot Act “X” … in which case it will still be wirearchy and transparent, it’s just that the majority will have had to acquiesce to fascism by choosing complacence over dissent … as in “too hard, just guarantee me some income, some tv, some beer and a car.” IMO, we’re close to that now, which is why I view unfettered blogging as so very critical and the best way I can think of to spend much of my time.

RE: 1) That’s a safe assumption, Jon. I read a lot of the in betweens in your lines of writing and have often suspected you’d run a hell of a seminar.

I’m going to have to come back to the rest of what you wrote. The last graf is too disturbing right now.

harry, re: paradigms here’s an interesting post from my friend Flemming.

re: seminars … an interesting little story, if you can overlook my puffery at a wee bit of “success”.

About a year and a half ago, I was engaged to create and lead an executive MBA seminar/course for the Athabasca University online MBA program, with a lot of help from a dear friend of mine who is a professor there. She had topush a lot because I don’t have a Master’s degree. She and I met 20 years ago as junior consultants for our (then) common employer, a large global HR/organizational effectiveness consultancy, and we have now been in a 20 year conversation about the nature of work, democratic workplaces, spirit at work, etc., etc.

The course was (is … because we have been re-engaged to deliver it several times) titled “From Hierarchy to Wirearchy”. It runs over four days, with about 70 people, and we do lots and lots of interactive, dialogue-based work with hte group, and sub-groups. Interestingly, each time it runs, it starts out with lots of skeptical people, and each time it ends up getting the highest evaluations/ratings of any course, bar none, offered in the MBA program.

As a result, the professor who runs the university’s Center for Innovatibve management has hired me to do a course review for the amalgamation of the MBA program’s course on Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management (mostly pretty dry stuff, but hey I need the money). I just completed the review about two weeks ago, and made many suggestions as to how to deepen, broaden and make (much) more fun the learning process. The review was enthusiastically accepted. What I found most interesting was how little the Center’s director knows about the quickly-becoming-apparent effects of interconnectedness on the nature of work and organizational structures/dynamics … an academic whose PhD is on the nature of work. This points out to me the often very limited and constricting nature of the peculiar type(s) of hierarchy and “work rules in the organizational structure known as academe, and the arrogance of many academics (I wouldn’t call her arrogant, it’s just that she can’t think critically about the possibility that many other people can study and “know” in ways that are just as, or more, effective than academe. Tho’ to give credit where credit is due, she did hire me with just a lowly BA rather than some other academic or adjunct. It’s that trust thing, I guess, plus the funkiness (her admission) of the word “wirearchy”. She’s decided I know some of that which I proselytize about.

I have some PPT slides of a short form of the course which I’d be glad to share with you, if you would like.

The slides will be much appreciated. Email?

http://blog.wirearchy.com/blog/_archives/2004/10/8/157208.html

http://blog.wirearchy.com/_photos/IMG_0135.thumb.JPG?1097263430

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I highlighted the image I mentioned up-thread

Per your email, the code I highlighted gets a 404 error (not found). In this post, it’s located between the following two paragraphs:

This accelerated when I began going out with a French woman in Montreal, and then accelerated again when I moved to London (UK) and began living with Veronique la supersonique, a Bretonne whom I had met in Paris a year or so earlier.

http://blog.wirearchy.com/_photos/IMG_0135.thumb.JPG?1097263430

I’ve begun to notice the same sort of thing with respect to interconnectedness and interlinking, or interlinkedness and interconnecting … learning the language and dynamics of blogging is taking me along a very similar path.

If you just go in and edit the post to remove that, the little question mark icon will go away.

Jon, thanks for the link here in my comments. Even with RSS, I find there is too much to really focus on every day. And if I miss a day or two, forget it!