Powerful change

Changes in the middle east following Yassar Arafat's death. Is this a new chance for peace in the middle east? Everyone who has a say, says so.
Changes on the major TV networks following on actual and annouced retirements of Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw. Is this a chance for a different sort of new reporting, less governed by one person? We're still out on that one.
Walmart may be seeing the first signs that it cannot grow like kudzu forever. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Those guys one or two generations above me are letting go of the strings leaving us inklings of hope. Perhaps opportunity to do things a bit better. More in tune. More generously.

It's the changing of the old guard. What do we want instead, besides world peace?

Corporate communication

We live in an era when non-organic, non-sentient entities are learning to communicate.

Take our species for a moment. A baby is born being predisposed to acquire a human language. She has the native ability to learn enough from what she hears at her mother's knee to pick up her mother's language. [Chomsky, circa 1965] The elements in play are: the pre-disposition to learn language; a pre-disposition to learn; a surrounding language environment.

So who are these "non-organic, non-sentient" entities? No, this is not yet another discussion about (the yet to exist) artificial intelligence. Non-organic, non-sentient, and yes legal, entities already exist. We call them corporations.

And corporations share many rights, privileges, obligations, and responsibilities with us humans.

We can suppose then that they will share similar skills too. Companies regularly employ marketing and communications experts, spokespersons, and PR firms. Companies may not yet speak like individual people in all situations, but they do in many. And in other situtations, they still communicate though in new and different manners.

Pretend for a minute that the companies you know of and communicate with are simple black boxes. Assume you know as little about their inner workings as you do about the inner workings of your own body. Assume also that although it's apparent that some communications come from certain parts of a company (law suits, product releases, pricing tables, burps, etc.), that these parts work synergistically somehow, but may not be aware of each other. So there's some sort of emergent set of communicative activities from each company. For the moment, ignore we'd also be safe in assuming the same of governments, non-profits, and associations. Companies need to communicate with each other and with humans.

A few facts about languages. They grow and prosper in language communities. Otherwise they become dead languages. A language's sophistication generally mirrors the resources-capacity available to each individual in the community. In other words, language used by sentient and self-aware beings is generative. Language used by carnivorous pack animals need not be generative. Languages are learnable by all members of the community.

So what are the language parameters required by future companies for a full and living community to prosper (predicative) and one which we find great to interact with (normative)? What sort of language structure and capacity will be sufficient for modern businesses to become fully responsible legal and communicative agents? Or can they ever?

Do companies have the same three elements that a baby does: the pre-disposition to learn language; a pre-disposition to learn; a surrounding language environment. Certainly there seems to be a need, and hence a pre-disposition, to learn language. And if companies don't inherently wish to learn always, we have activists and governments assisting them in their growth. We're left with whether there is a sufficiently rich language environment. At this point in time, this is in an emergent stage. The evolution of language-bearing species is more precisely co-evolution of the species and language. Intertwined. So how do we foster corporate language?

Dcntxtlzng

So I took all the vowels out of the word Decontextualizing, which I had intended to be the original title of this post. Consonants without the context of vowels has to be a metaphor for something.

That's the problem with blogs. You don't know me, and you probably never will. If I post a lot here, you may decide that that you can infer something about me (arrogant and pretentious are often words that come up for some reason). But without the context of knowing me in the flesh, or at least interactively you will not not me at all.

It's been said that that art has to stand on its own, and be it's own statement. I think that that robs art of its richness, making it a room without furniture. For example, pop culture works because we share the context of transient culture and experience. "Great Art" works because the context is the human condition. But when you know the artist, or the blogger, that knowledge opens up many more lanes of communication, monolog and dialog, perception and assumptions. I happen to know a couple of artists, and my appreciation of their art is much richer, if not necessarily any more favourable as a result.

......thought break.....

If I say that a company , "....helps organizations to build effective networks..." What would you think? Wire networks? Sales networks? Internal communications?

What about, "...we mix vision and practical experience to tap into the power of collaboration -- connecting, supporting and amplifying the work of network-based projects."?

Sounds like major marketing babble, but these and other gems can be found on a site for, among other things, social entrepreneurship and social technology. Context at work again.

[... the site is http://www.commonsgroup.com/]

Have a thoughtful day.

writers

I realized this morning, sipping coffee, sunlight splashed over tops of clouds covering my view in a foggy grey rain, something.

A writer is that person who looks into the life of another, observing in every detail the daily grind, the explanations, friendships, habits and twitches, noting each wart and wrinkle, demanding of explication on everything.

Though a writer may never put pen to paper, she remains, to her end, exquisitely nosey.

ideas stand on their own

quasimodal said, "Sheesh.. mea culp-ability. I thought the original post was Carolyn's. Now that puts a different spin on things."

quasim - I must beg to disagree.

Ideas stand independently of their authors. Whether great art causes suffering for instance, or who asks if it does, couldn't really change the answers and impact of the question.

Perhaps each of us brings wholly different metaphysical frameworks and assumptions to the question whether in asking or answering. But the question, once put to paper, and absent of reams of scholarship, floats free. An idea encounters each of us naked and begs fostering as an orphan.

regrets & mistakes

We often hear from sociologists & anthropologists on the differences between shame & guilt cultures. And as many children of so-called mixed marriages, I was raised by a parent from either side of that rather curious divide. Do I obsessively stew and mull over shortcomings, or rather seek out a scolding from another tight-assed convention enforcer? How about both! Perhaps there is a more carefree approach.

This then is a sort of paradigm, through which we can view other human stuff.

Viewing on a more individual level then. Life can be lived fully, with verve and laziness and laughter. And shit and pain. And all that human stuff. You can live with regrets or you can live with mistakes. Yes? Sort of like false positives vs. false negatives in testing.

Some would hold that their few regrets are almost entirely for things they didn't do.

Some choose to live with mistakes, and no regrets ever.

For the definition-conscious amongst us, a distinction. Regrets result in wishing one had taken an action. A mistake is the result of an action taken.

Or perhaps a regret is wishing that on had or had not taken an action. "Like if I got whacked on PCP and ate my friend's face off, I would probably regret that action." Umm, yeah. So yes, some mistakes may be regrettable.

Do you live with regrets or mistakes? Which path creates the life most lived?

[snippets inspired from a conversation]

Great art

Many years ago it occurred to me that "all great art comes from suffering". Of the artist, that is.

I sometimes wonder whether it's true.

Last December I happened to see a TV special featuring a young singer-songwriter named Allison Crowe, of Nanaimo, B.C., here in Canada, whom I was completely blown away by and consequently looked into. (She played in Toronto recently and I ended up driving her and her bf and her manager to the venue, and following soundcheck going for dinner with them - sometimes it pays to be a fan.) As I write this I'm listening to a riveting song of hers entitled "Disease". Well, how can someone so seemingly normal and happy write such a dark song? On this particular live recording she even giggles like a little girl after she finishes playing it (she was probably around 20 at the time).

Maybe there's a tortured layer underneath. I detect a quality in her that I call "steel" - something like determination, but without any connotation of effort - and perhaps it takes some adversity to form that.

I'd be interested to hear readers' comments. Does all great art come from suffering?

Multi-tasking

I am intimidated by the number of tasks in front of me. Literally: the Microsoft Windows task bar stares me in the face with so many of them that, even though I've doubled its on-screen space, it has to collapse all the email tasks into one before everything will fit. And that's only since the last crash - there were more before that.

How does this happen? I don't have any client work at the moment, so surely I have time to stay on top of everything. Surely.

Before the Information Age, I think people only expected to do only one thing at a time. They had to; they had no computers to hold the state of each task. OK, ok, so they had paper, and multiple burners on the stove. But a stove only has so many burners, and how many novels or memos do people have on the go at once when each one takes setup time to get the paper in front of you and start writing, or feed the paper into the typewriter?

Nowadays, task-switching just takes a mouse click. I don't have to click the mouse; I can just keep working on my current task until it's done. But it doesn't take much of a stray thought before I'm off to something else.

Barbara Sher writes in one of her books that "clutter is the hallmark of the creative person" (or something like that). Each thing left out represents a creative project in some stage: perhaps a piece of styrofoam that looks like it could be turned into some interesting art, or a screenplay in progress. Paper can be put in a filing cabinet or on a shelf - but we all know what "on the shelf" means. Anything put away is in grave danger of not getting done. No wonder the room I'm in is a mass of paper, never mind the computer. At least the magazines to be read, and the tasks on the computer, are still to-dos in my mind; not so all the emails I haven't replied to, because there are so many of them that older ones fade into obscurity.

I guess I need to get a grip on which tasks I'm actually going to do. But it's so much easier to just play Solitaire - which Microsoft has thoughtfully included in every copy of Windows.

Choice

I have a choice in life now. It is fundamental, vast, important now only to me. And it will make a difference.

I can choose to become a leader, and create visions and paths for a future many would love and others despise.

I can also choose the opposite, to retire quietly into a life of retreat, contemplation, and pleasure.

I know I am capable of the first, and that the second is the default, easier, complacency.

Lend your advice, or your coin.

clb

Creating future

We choose to lead or follow. Leading is not the act of finding followers, so much as creating a clear and attractive vision of a future others will join in creating.

When you're copied or followed, by the rest of the world, you blaze a trail for others. You create the future paths that others can and may walk upon. Perhaps there's another way of putting this...

If you live in the present or in past reflection, a reality-based existing community, then you're imposing on the future projections of the status quo at best. Step away from what is currently true, imagine a new and different place, and map the transition. Create the plan of action, a plan for your journey. A blueprint of this future world.

This becomes living in a future vision, working to create it. And this future vision may vary vastly from the current social truth. It may appear visionary or insane, solipsistic or utopian. However, realistically you're leading towards that vision, and if others follow, you are in fact creating the future.

This is not an illusion.

PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING', said Death. -- Terry Pratchett