I think Complexity Theory is great and is certainly a more relevant approach than how people have been treating human and dynamic systems, but I also think there is a confusion somewhere. The confusion I think exists is that complexity is in the system, where I would say complexity is in the mind.

I think some people may learn about complexity and then say, “oh ok, so human systems are complex, so therefore we should think, believe, and act in a different way in regards to them”, while on the other side which I am on might say, “oh ok, so because humans think, believe, and act from the inside out, and no human can think, believe, or act for another, complexity emerges from an inherently uncertain and impermanent space”.

In my view when two or more people share a state of accepted uncertainty and contemplation of impermanence, chaos and complexity can emerge, almost appearing as if it is something intrinsic and innate in what they are experiencing, rather than their shared state of mind. And the similar thing happens in regards to complication and order arising from a shared state of assumed certainties and contemplated permanences, leading people to say things like “the laws of nature..” thinking that the laws exist in nature, rather than in their heads. Its more than just choice of language, it is a way of thought.

The reason I think is a valid inquiry and position is because things which everyone agreed were ordered 100 years ago somehow are now treated as being complex, while all along nothing actually changed in the system… only in our states of mind.

To play off a post Snowden had recently, I would almost say that “Complexity is the surface manifestation of uncertainty at work.” and would probably add to that “and impermanence at work.” But this is only relevant to an interpretant view, not an objective view… which is fine with me because I take a more solipsistic approach anyways.

In many ways I would argue that it is actually being insane, irrational, and illogical that actually allows us to get through the day… being able to cope with nature as well as communication.

There is no logical and rational reason why we shouldn’t check a sidewalk to make sure we aren’t going to fall through it when we step onto it… only something based on enpatternation and assumption and permanence and such from past experience. And in regards to language, many of us use words in the present assume certainty of meaning based on the past and then contemplating its permanence into the present and future as we pass on to others.

I think science, math, and logic, and even language places too much emphasis on trying to solidify the past too much into maintaining and exploiting it in the present in regards to a specific future state.

While artists live in the same world and do practically the same thing, they have a different appreciation or honor and respect without expectation almost… this is what allows painting, or poetry, or jazz improv, or things like that to be so dynamic but yet manageable, but yet not as in they are “managing” it in any way.

It is dangerous to assume and contemplate that your company, your job, your client, your contract, your relationships, your country, your money persists from day to day, as well as assuming and contemplating that all those things do not actually exist in the present until you bring them forth, at which they immediately become the past once more. But yet, this is what allows us to still think, believe, and act as though they do… giving us the illusion of security… even the illusion of chaos, complexity, complication, and order as if disordered isn’t the only true thing that exists in the present.

Every human can only communicate to another human using signs (language, body language, visuals, sounds, touch, etc…), so I would seriously challenge everyone to focus on and be aware of that if anything you do involves communication, because only tomorrow will tell us what the language we used today meant, even if the language we choose to use today was chosen because of yesterday, or in regards to a specific future.

Ive been an artist and designer all my life dabbling in drawing, paint, sculpture, animation, interaction, music, etc.., more recently turning to more traditional opposites of art, but have always found it interesting that I haven’t run into many other artists or designers who are really well read or care too much about complexity science or anything of the sort… normally the space tends to be filled with “scientists” and “engineers” of many sorts.

I think the idea of what art is, and what it means to be an artist may have something to do with this, so I found some good pages on Wikipedia covering some of these. I think it may come down to a simple notion that an artist (painter, sculptor, musician, actor, storyteller etc…) must become chaos and complexity while at the same time respecting and honoring complication and order, while scientists and engineers and managers I don’t think I have ever really heard them use language that they feel they must become the change, in order to no longer experience change… but moreso focus on employing principles from complexity or even art at a distance to achieve, to accomplish, to get somewhere, etc… But I may be a little too biased and over exaggerating or generalizing.

“Art”:

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions, and/or intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

Point being that art comes from an individuals mind, and of an individuals mind, in an attempt to externalize some expression using sign patterns hoping to affect another individuals mind in a grand attempt to “bring them to movement”. While all along, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder…” (self-signification).

A “Work of Art”:

A little more subjective, but focused on what makes a “fine” art piece, which I may collapse down to simply whether it brought someone to movement, whether it moves people… even the artist himself.

The “Elements of Art”:

Texture, form, line, shape, value, color, etc… are what makes up a work of art. It is how they are patterned by an artist that create a piece which may bring others to movement upon viewing it and experiencing it.

The “Principles of Art”:

Unity, variety, balance, contrast, proportion, pattern, rhythm, etc… are the methods employed by the artist while arranging the elements in a particular fashion. These I believe would be most relevant to similar notions found in complexity science, particularly self-signification and pattern and rhythm.

So found throughout the ideas of art, there is an appreciation for the past and the future, as reflected in the work of art produced by any said artist, but there is a focus on bringing people to movement upon experience and reflection… a focus on instilling a desire, a passion, from the inside out… so that what may have previously seemed so chaotic or complex due to unshared states of mind, may now be reconciled and rallied into organization… like sending an electric current through the individuals, an energy, which works to align them… but not from the outside in but from the unknowable inside out.

“Sense-making” becomes less about trying to make sense of the outside world in any objective manner, and moreso about instilling a state of mind so that particular outside worlds can emerge in certian ways as perceived by yourself and others. Group sense-making becomes more about shared states of mind, rather than shared knowledge of a system… because when there is a shared state of mind, the necessary and relevant elements of a system will emerge allowing the group to move in unison… not because of external initiatives being employed, but because of an intrinsic shared state of signification.

How does this relate to companies, or data models, or countries, or simple friendships and other relationships?

We have spent so much time trying to externalize what the company is in the form of rules and policies and contracts and communication packages and roles and titles and such, that there isn’t much left inside of the individuals… under the assumption that this leads to greater security and such… but there needs to be a reclamation on the part of the individuals… looking to startup companies, and cultures that do not have a written language and cannot read or write may aid us in this process.

Constructs should work like art. They should bring us to movement… and then we should accept its demise down the top 40 charts as we have moved on, and so has it.

The minute you feel something needs to be clarified or written down or agreed upon, you should already be aware you are entering dangerous waters… where more energy will be spent on maintenance and support of structure, thinking that it is the structure that gives you significance rather than your providing the structure with significance.

We need to be creating works of art, movements.

So I was just at Bojangles… which by the way is an AWESOME Cajun/Southern fast food restaurant here in the Carolinas… and overheard some guy on the phone talking about money (which also reminded me of Snowden’s blog on that issue)… he was talking about someone who owed him a large amount of money and that the guy just didnt understand that this is “real money” and that “this isn’t monopoly!”.

Well if you have read any of my previous posts… this is a very interesting conversation. Notice how the guy on my side of the phone feels some reason to inform the other guy that money is “real”, and that it isn’t “monopoly” referring to a game, as in not “real”. This is what I think is self-signification at work… a point which I think many people don’t realize that you have to get back to this level of explanation in your language… fallacy arises when one person, especially the researcher starts dictating what is “real”, or heaven forbid “objective”… I won’t even go into the sickening quantitative vs. qualitative discussions.

You see, per my understanding, the real person speaking, through the man on my side of the phone, was in fact the “emergent interpretant” allowing the man to confuse subjective with objective, affording him the concept of “real” to the point where he feels self-righteous enough to inform the other man what “real” really is.

Now don’t get me wrong, because I can imagine that statement might make people think I am skeptical of contractual agreements and such… well yes I am, but they exist in passion, not in reality, and it takes an admission of passion to get past this… but may leave others accusing of nihilism or solipsism… implying to me they still don’t get it.

But furthermore to my point, I am interested in the idea that arises as “this is real” and “this is not real”… in regards to some important things such as money, law and order, reaction to cops, play time and pretending, the reaction to getting fired, etc… which all FEEL so “real”!

So what makes monopoly money fake, but USD bills real? I would say nothing to do with the “things” themselves, but everything to do with what’s in our skulls, in our brains, our minds. And then how someone can NOT even entertain the idea that this is “brainwashed” into our every-day life is beyond me…

What is stopping you and your friends or business stakeholders from using monopoly money in a “real” way?

That question is even so weird and messed up… because I would say it is what we do with things and how we think about things, that this “real”ness emerges out of, because of.

Does anyone else get spooked whenever they see a cop right behind them on the highway, going only 5 miles over the speed limit (or kilometers for the rest of the world)? WHY? It feels so real! Should we try and overcome it, or is this tyranny a good thing… something which keeps people in “check”, keeps things moving “orderly”?

I remember reading a great book called “Train your mind, change you brain” which was by Daniel something, and cant remember right now, but it had a foreword by the Dalai Lama, as well as commentary throughout… specifically it was a book challenging the western notion that our brains can’t react to experience and change it’s physical configuration, and vice versa. The Dalai thought it was common sense, but the neuro scientist was skeptical… but nonetheless it is shown that it isis quite natural, and has profound implications, just like the language we use, on how we think about things.

We love pattern… it gives us security… so BREAK FREE… do something different… it will be incorporated into your makeup!

Now I am an entrepreneur so I struggle with this next idea as well… but what if we started deconstructing all these companies and creating peer-to-peer networks in their place…?! What if we forced people to be free, would they want to be secure more than ever? A lot of times, the more you push people away, the closer they seem to want to get… an interesting idea at the least!

I heard this hinted on a few times before, but never a really good argument or reflection… How many people actually realize that science is only about and relevant to the past? The specific value of “empirical” or “evidence-based” science or theory should be enough to illustrate this key point.

Is it possible for any empirical science or evidence based theory to include the future? Therefore, wouldn’t the use of any true science or theory in the present in regards to being truthfully and justifiably confident about the future be a “pseudo-science”?

More or less for me, I could care less what people think about a science or pseudo science, they need to simply get down to what they are willingly able to admit to themselves and others about permanence and certainty, and your willingness to accept their shifts over time… your “philosophy” and “science” will emerge from there…

The reason why this would be valuable is because for some reason, the more science we do ourselves or read about from others (2nd and 3rd hand science), it only seems to give us more security in the present in regards to the future… because we think the more things remain consistent over time, the more likely they are to in the present and into the future.

Now this does present the opportunity for taking advantage of the confidence in an efficient manner, but it also presents a risk of catastrophic failure. The more you invest, the harder it will be will the bubble bursts… and it WILL burst at some point…

So this presents an interesting metaphor of every theory being more like a “ponzi scheme”, where the first person in who can convince others gets the most benefit, but the last person is pretty much screwed.

Also, you cant form a logical and rational statement to say that any science is valid in the present in regards to the future… because there is no way you can account for conditions in the present respective of possible futures.

Yet for some reason our minds can build up confidence and allow us to act as thought things really are stable enough, but I think this comes at the price of confusing it with valid and justifiable truth or proof or evidence of the past in the present in regards to a future.

The idea of the “emergent possibilities of the present” has been thrown around a lot which I think is good, but I think should be coupled with the implications it has on what we think is science or evidence based theory in the present. Is it possible to negate science in the present… meaning is there some part of a theory which we can do something in the present to cause an inconsistency moving forward? I believe there is universally one, and GODEL tried to show some of this in the Incompleteness Theorem, implying that no formal axiomatic system can be both complete and consistent (I see far too many people not break things down far enough… all too complacent not challenging). This to me means that if you believe something currently, or think things are “coherent to the facts” then you simply haven’t pushed things enough to illuminate the contemplated permanences and assumed certainties of the theory.

So at the same time it allows us to have confidence in the present (security) but also the capacity to break free of that security and move on. Currently I think there is renewed interest in breaking free, which I am excited about.

I think that a lot of what people perceive as problems stem from a few simple notions regarding the confusion of ontology and phenomenology, especially concerning expectations, assumptions, and the believed approach to and value of epistemology.

Take note of the field called “knowledge management”, whose major problems I believe could be reconciled if they simply switch to “understandings management”. The word knowledge comes with baggage that implies externality, objectivity, absoluteness, truth, proof, “in and of itself”, absence of bias, etc… which I guess people just can’t accept that those are the complete opposite of what it is to be human, and what it is for multiple humans to exist together and interact.

Point being that “knowledge management” focuses on the nature of what is “out there” and the assumption that we can come to a “knowledge” of what it is that is “out there” in regards to it in and of itself.

It is precisely from this view point that the problems people face emerge from, precisely that we become obsessed with ideas such as “atoms have electrons”, “a tree is a plant”, “human systems are complex”. By using language such as this, we start to externalize and negate the fact that it is our relationship and inter-activities with the world and each other that allowed phenomena to emerge which demanded our prescription. So we fall into the belief that what it is that is labeled in our minds, which was derived from figure-ground contemplations and permanences, actually truly exists “out there” in any specific way, “in and of itself”, and that we have the capacity to justifiably reconcile said states of being and nature.

So ontology, in my view, needs to switch from being about what is truly “out there” and more about simply classifying and describing the nature of what is “in your mind”… And because of this epistemology becomes more about understandings in and of your mind, rather knowledge of nature of things in and of themselves.

Another language problem reflecting a thought problem is the idea that any object is actually the color it appears, rather than contemplating that it is how light both interacts with the object, our eyes, and our brain interprets that the color emerges from. So “the ball is red” is simply not logical.

Take another related idea that if I say to you “I am mad”… and then ask you a question “Am I mad?”… well we would all probably say “yes” and grade accordingly as well… but under further reflection, you could never come to that conclusion no matter what I told you, all you could say is that you perceived that I told you I was mad. So in that reflected conclusion it starts with the nature of mind (“you perceived that…”).

This is why I would start to steer people away from ideas that systems can be described as ordered, complicated, complex, or chaotic, resulting in us responding accordingly, and switch to the idea that what is actually ordered, complicated, complex, or chaotic is the nature of our minds in accordance to what we perceive and conclude about an external system… but certainly not the system itself.

So it becomes an acceptance of universal phenomenology from each person’s individual perspective, but subjective ontology from each person’s individual perspective… rather than trying to use epistemology as a means to discover and prove one “correct” ontology.

As people read this who are familiar with many philosophies might start to accuse me of solipsism or nihilism, which couldn’t be more false… because those actually negate the possibility or assertion that things actually do exist, but when it comes to defining and concluding “what” exists, then that part only lives in our minds… because true nature is nameless and formless… it is through our interactions, and our perceptive capacities that form emerges, demanding us to call it by a name.

A mental check for me would be to say that whenever I think, believe, and act as though something were really true, it is more a reflection of my own spirit and passion than it is a reflection of true nature… and “fighting for what we believe” is more about hoping others adopt the same spirit and passion confused as truth, rather than a convincing of others of truth and knowledge. A person who has “proof” or “evidence” mistakenly believes it is evidence of empirical nature, rather than being able to see it is evidence of the person’s true self.

Case in point, humans tend to spend more time manipulating symbols, rather than changing their thoughts regarding those symbols, to achieve the same thing.

“Linguistic relativity” is a very interesting concept exploring how language and thought reflect each other.

Meaning, value, purpose, knowledge, etc… are not “out there” to be discovered and proved, they are “in you” to be manifested and propagated.

When a person asks “what does this mean?” or “what is my purpose?” or similar questions… it is evidence to me of an emergent interpretant who is actually in charge of the person.

Many problems stem from not being able to see every new experience as novel phenomena, and treating it as such. It is a passionate pursuit to live each day like its your last, but it is a whole other pursuit to live each day like its your first.

Deconstruct the emergent interpretant… deconstruct the dominant social constructs… bring people to a shared state of discombobulation, and watch what emerges… I am confident that what emerges from that will be more contextually relevant to their true selves… but the trick is watching out to make sure the emergent interpretant doesnt grow too big once again.

http://c5corp.com/research/ontology.shtml

I would recommend reading any research done by this group, but this article especially regarding “autopoesis” and “ontogeny”…

Good quote:

“A reliable way to get the attention of others is to produce information that meets the input conditions of their domain-specific competencies.”

-Dan Sperber and Lawrence Hirschfeld

Also, I think one of the most interesting challenges out there might be, how many different subjects can you write only one paper about, with the least amount of words as possible, while it still remaining relevant and valuable to each subject individually?

Symbolic Interactionism (Herbert Blumer):

1. “Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.”
2. “The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society.”
3. “These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters.”

Semiotics (saussure, peirce, locke):

* Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata
* Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
* Pragmatics: Relation between signs and their effects on those (people) who use them

Trivium (medieval education):

Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known,
Grammar is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-symbolized, and
Rhetoric is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-communicated.

Ok, now you couple the three above subjects with maybe “mind control / brainwash” and “hypnosis” and add some “pattern recognition” and “figure ground” art studies, and you may a pretty complete body of phenomenological humanistic understanding (yea I would advise saying understanding rather than knowledge)… but of course everyone might get turned off the minute I said brainwash or hypnosis. This is precisely because I think they think what is actually “passionate” is mistakenly believed to be a pursuit or belief in what is “true”. Science would love you to believe that atoms truly and really exist as if the human did not invent the concept of an atom through some permanence of figure ground pattern recog.

Its a simple conflict / confusion of ontology and phenomenlogy I think… resulting in epistemology being mistaken for concerning the acquisition of “knowledge” of an objective reality.

That link is to a diagram I have created to try and encapsulate my understandings and reflections on all the above subjects, while also attempting to include my idea of an “emergent interpretant” which manifests itself at the epicentre of interpretive, subjective, objective…

As you can see in the diagram, things almost always get to the point where people delusionally think/expect a word to actually have a meaning in the present, which was created inthe past, and then contemplated to be permanent into the present… and as if they act accordingly, it will continue into the future a certain way. Just reflect back on all the arguments you have had with people regarding the “correct” definition of a word… Sure it makes practical sense… but not logical sense… but who cares about logic, thats a flawed system as well (look to Godel’s theorem of incompleteness, and then think twice about using a formal axiomatic system)… the point being that we should reflect on the presence of passion in regards to what drives us… rather than trying to escape it through the prism of science… at least in the idea that science can provide any objective “answers”.

Funny how we continue to look for reassurance outside of ourselves, rather than accept that we cannot ever escape ourselves.

Ok, so what are some examples of an “emergent interpretant”, which what I mean by that, is that it hijacks the individuals capacity to interpret, because the individual comes to believes that something actually has intrinsic value in the present…

Examples are marriages, countries, monetary systems, companies, laws, as well as very simple everyday things like walking on a sidewalk.

You can find evidence of the emergent interpretants in language such as , “the rule of law and order”, or “I shouldn’t be doing this, I am married”, or “fiat money has no intrinsic value, but gold does”…

The reason I say this is because of temporal concerns…

Ok so, lets say I want to buy some apples… so I go to the store and I see a sign that says “$1 per apple”, well does that actually mean that the price of an apple is $1, or does that set an exchange rate in stone? If you believe it does, then that is actually the emergent interpretant in control… because nothing can actually be worth anything specifically until it is exchanged as such… but at which point after the transaction it moves to the past… so in order for anything to equal anything in the present, it requires a contemplation of permanence of the past into the present.

Your country, your marriage, your company, your relationships to anything, do not exist in the present… it is how you think, believe, and act in the present in correspondence to other interactants, that the relationships will be maintained or persisted or constructed or deconstructed as such…

Dont take them for granted, as actually existing in the present… we must “bring them forth”… and not let them “bring us forth”…

Any relationship I think will fail when the people involved let the construct become greater than they are… you must always work to keep the construct in check, and keep it as an emergent construct of your independent selfs…

This has value I think in well practically anything regarding two or more individuals…

Ill try and explain better later, as well as provide some additional diagrams.

Oh and this is the diagram for freedom vs. security (all of them are constantly under revision)…

“figure it out”… a sort of tag line… it includes both figuring things out as in you are the constructor and it is up to you to build and maintain your reality, while also figure it out as in you have to answer a question (the more passionately “prescribed” side of things)…

Steve Holt provided some good momentum in the direction of “Freedom vs. Security”, which I would agree is a HUGE deal regarding human sense-making, decision-making, and action-making…. so Ill explore my thoughts on it further.

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=3440

The above is a link to a great article I read in the magazine Shambhala Sun not too long ago… Obviously, it’s Buddhist (take it for philosophical value, not religious, or however you like)… but also, I would love to hear what other people may think about it in regards to Complexity Theory (which many in the western science community seem to think is a new way of thinking).

Note the similarity where freedom vs. security in conflict theory is a core conflict of happiness… and where the article notes that humans suffer (lack of happiness) chiefly because of a contemplation of permanence… which I would say is because they desire security (permanence, certainty, pattern, proof, answers, truth, reassurance, etc…)… although something like Maslow’s hierarchy make me cringe like crazy.

Years ago, I came across the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of books, which I think is where I first started to inquire about “freedom vs. security” because of one quote regarding formal education… which you could also take in light of Mark Twain’s quote, “don’t let your schooling interfere with your education”, oh and another, “once you find yourself on the side of the majority, you know it is time to reform”… but back to the book’s quote, which was, “some people study for security, and others study for freedom”.

Now take a second and reflect on that, and hopefully the marketing realities of current formal education, corporate certification and association, and such will flash like wildfires in your brain…. Oh they promote studying for Freedom… yea right…. more like Security, and mostly in the form of “getting a job” or “making more money”… but more philosophically/psychologically it simply “satisfies” our selves.

Personally, I think it would be great if people could study for freedom, but I dont know if anyone can escape the lure of studying for security… but we also have to realize that the security IS NOT real… It emerges from our contemplation of permanence and assumption of certainty in regards to temporal concerns. Only creating more of a self-fulfilling ponzi scheme prophecy of something of the sort.

In some of my next posts, I will present some personal diagrams I have created to help me navigate the ideas more visually, but hopefully might make some sense to everyone else.

To sum up some of where I will explore is in response to a GREAT recent blog post of Dave Snowden (which I would reverse to switch emphasis)… he said “Uncertainty is the surface manifestation of complexity at work”… which is certainly consistent with complexity theory, because this statement obviously focuses on the system not the interpretant… but got me thinking (because I focus more on the interpretant)… I cannot get around the fact that humans created complexity theory, which means I cant get around the idea that complexity doesn’t exist in the system itself, but in our minds (referring to a figure-ground pattern emergence type problem here)… so I would respond to his statement with “Complexity is the surface manifestation of uncertainty at work”… even if a system was truly complex, how and why could we ever recognize that being absent of our own minds? When you transplant the idea back into the starting article, chaos and complexity emerge from OUR contemplations of impermanence and acceptance of uncertainties, while complication and order emerge from OUR contemplations of permanence and assumptions of certainties OF THE SYSTEM but not IN THE SYSTEM… which we then project back onto the system and then fool ourselves and teach our kids and society that it is actually the systems that maintain those qualities intrinsically, and it is up to us to “find it out”… Look to how people use language to illustrate this.

Specifically to address what I think about freedom vs. security, I think I would say this… we contemplate a permanence of the past, allowing a meditation of security in the present, allowing assumed certainty of the future. To escape this passionate egotistical self-fulfilling achievement driven goal setter view, would be to contemplate the impermanence of the past, allowing a meditation of freedom (thought, belief, action) in the present, allowing you to accept uncertainty of the future. It’s got a Buddhist slant definitely, but I find it quite consistent with current consciousness research, quantum physics, complexity and chaos theory, semiotics and symbolic interactionism etc…

Oh and there is nothing wrong with focusing on security… I only have a problem with people thinking the source of the security is outside of themselves, rather than a reflection of themselves… which is why I also have a problem with thinking a construct in the present is greater than those interpretants who the construct emerged from (gold having “intrinsic value” as example). The “United States” only exists in the past, we decide today through thought, belief, and action, whether it exists in the present, which tomorrow will tell us the order we lived in today.

Inquire at will, but I dont think should forget that that which emerges and is observed by you is but a reflection of the agitation you introduced (be it a question, your 5 senses, a probe, etc…)… while at the same time your mind will more than likely solidify it as actually “existing” out there rather than seeing it as a manifestation of mind. I believe I saw Mary Douglas has a good quote pertaining to this, but can’t think of it right now.

My next post will concern my idea of an “emergent interpretant”… which is the thing which I think allows the illusion of a social construct to exist in the present with us, and pull us along as if it is in control.

Hello all, I hope to post at least an entry a day during my time on here… ive always thought this guest blog section was a great idea and myself try to read as much as possible from it. Its always nice to hear from and about so many people all over…..

A little more about me…

I turned 25 back in May, and have lived in North Carolina all my life. Art and technology have always been great passions of mine and ultimately led to a degree in visual communication focusing on 3D animation and interactive design. And while in college, I first got involved unexpectedly in developing corporate eLearning, which I would take on projects here and there, but after graduating I actually founded an animation studio with 3 classmates, which had a “healthy” east coast run of roughly 1 year or so….

Nonetheless, learned some great lessons and move on to starting a small company which would actually focus on eLearning, which was back in 2006, so its been a relative success and an interesting run. Looking back, I think being introduced to eLearning and training sparked an interest eventually leading me to complexity theory, then Snowden and Cognitive Edge.

I have also been through a program up at the University of Manitoba for Emerging Technologies for Learning, which of course is a Connectivism based program involving George Siemens… which was certainly an eye opener as well.

All I can remember is that for years I struggled with the ideas of Freedom vs. Security, and the weird notion that for some reason everyone seems to be so obsessed with Security in real life, but always dreaming of Freedom. I always had a problem with organized schooling and college systems, so independent research has always been a major focus of mine…. and even though I still do, I have found my way back now pursuing a degree in Anthropology and Cognitive Science.

Over the next two weeks, I hope to present some of my thoughts and findings which ultimately led to Complexity Theory, in compliments with Complexity Theory, as well as what I believe to be transcending Complexity Theory… tying them back to as many “practical” areas as possible.