The course runs about 12 weeks and each week has selected readings, live and taped discussions, and a ton of activity on the collaborative course sites shown on the map above. In keeping with the spirit, I’m tagging this blog post to #CCK08, which means it should show up on the collective everything-that-points-to-CCK08 pageflake page. I’ve also joined an Ontario discussion group on CCK08.

I’ve read all the prescribed material, and scanned some of the daily highlights and other materials above, but have not yet participated (connectively) in the course conversations, nor did I stick with the tedious multimedia discussions. But I did give the subject considerable thought, and came up with the following Week One Propositions About Knowledge and Learning, a mixture of what the course leaders espouse, what other course participants have proffered that I found interesting or provocative, and how I am making sense of it all. Since Week One is titled “What is Connectivism” these Propositions are, not surprisingly, mostly about definitions.

1. Knowledge = patterns of connections, of three types:
1. neural = know-what, 
2. conceptual = know-how, and
3. social = know-who); Networks = loci of knowledge.
2. Learning = making new connections (of the above types).
3. Understanding / coherence / sensemaking = forms of pattern recognition.
4. Community = those with shared knowledge and shared learning interests; we invite individuals to join communities, when what individuals really want is for the community to come to them (for reassurance and recognition and appreciation that their understanding is valid).
5. Workarounds = the mechanism by which individuals make sense of and apply their own learning, regardless of mandated knowledge (instruction) or accepted knowledge (‘conventional’ wisdom).
6. Accepted knowledge (wisdom) = what evolves as power shifts, people die and the make-up of communities changes; wisdom is inherently ‘conventional’ and tyrannical.
7. The ‘wisdom of crowds’ is not ‘wisdom’ at all, but rather collective knowledge = the aggregation and appreciation of patterns of knowledge of large numbers of independent people, shared; this is much better than wisdom!
8. Not sure yet what intelligence is in the connectivist context, since its meaning is ambiguous in common usage, so I’m going to avoid using the term if possible, except perhaps ironically.
9. All of this is interesting and informative, but so far not evidently of much practical use.

This may seem a bit academic, and perhaps unintuitive, but a lot of it resonates with me for how it reflects knowledge and learning processes I’ve observed in wild animals, and how, according to what I’ve read, aboriginal and ‘unschooled’ people learn. As our problems become more complex, pattern recognition becomes more difficult, and collective knowledge (‘the wisdom of crowds’) becomes more valuable than individual knowledge.

I confess that while I think some of this will prove to be useful, I’m not sure how, and I doubt it will centre around whether or not connectivism is “a legitimate learning theory”, which some of this week’s discussion has been about. It will be valuable to the extent it helps refine our intuitive knowledge of how people learn, and why they (usually) never do. Stay tuned.

“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. It rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is its opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiarizedwith the idea from the beginning.” (Max Planck)

There are a small group of people I have known in my life who I would say have presence. They bring a certain charm and grace to everything they do, and they generally do it well, even if its accomplishment, in the grand scheme of things, is not very important. I greatly admire such people, and recently I have started to study them, to learn from them.

In my recent post on what I learned from Patti Digh’s book Life is a Verb I described both the things that I now do, intentionally:

 and (somewhat less intentionally and much less elegantly and consistently) how I do those things, my approach to action:

Intentionally, I have increased the number of hours per day I spend doing the nine things I do (above) from 5.5 hours per day to 8.5 hours per day, with an eventual target of 11.5 hours per day. And I try to do them, whenever I am self-aware, using the 7-step ‘personal presencing’ process listed above. This is very much a passion-to-action ‘U’ process: sensing, learning, asking, opening, letting go and letting come, and then realizing, with others.

I am, alas, not self-aware often enough, although I have taken to wearing a bracelet as a constant reminder not to get sidetracked from the nine things I am meant to do, to do the less fruitful and ultimately unimportant things that we are so relentlessly expected to do; as a constant reminder to follow my 7-step approach to action; and as a constant reminder to practice whatever specific exercises I have committed to do to improve my capacities.

As I apply the above, I reflect with some awe on the fact that my intentional behaviour is now guided substantially from what I have learned from people in my gravitational community: The three charts above are my personal adaptations of models developed by Chris Corrigan, Patti Digh and Cyndy Roy respectively — three people I have never met in person.

So it was with great anticipation that I read the highly-recommended (by four people in my gravitational community) book Improv Wisdom, by Patricia Ryan Madson. I hoped that, through practicing improvisation, I could refine and make easier my 7-step process.

Madson’s book is delightful slim (148 small pages) and readable. It has some wonderful insights in it. It is based around a set of ‘maxims’ which, paraphrased, combined and oversimplified a bit, are as follows:

1. Say “Yes, and…”: Adapt yourself. Accept instead of trying to control the situation. Don’t presuppose that you have a better idea, don’t change or steer the subject, don’t correct others, don’t disengage. Listen and go with the conversation. Pay attention and go with the situation.
2. Be resilient instead of preparing: Don’t anticipate or lock yourself in. Learn to be ready for whatever may happen. Breathe and be present in the moment. Learn to hold balance, to yield, to open and hold open.
3. Just begin: Show up. Start with what’s important or what’s obvious. Step onto the stage. Be on time and value your time. Move. Act to discover what comes next.
4. Make sense: Be clear, even obvious, rather than trying to be clever. Clarify. Explain. Articulate.
5. Pay attention to details: Stand still and look until you really see, listen until you really hear. Use all your senses. Learn to remember people’s names and other details. (This is especially hard for me because I find a lot of what I pay attention to uninteresting, which is a terrible reflection on my inability to concentrate.)
6. Be utterly truthful: Face the facts, and understand them and why they are so. Stop wishing that things (or you) were different. See procrastination, blaming, self-criticism and self-sabotage for what they really are, and then do something about them.
7. Be aware of your purpose: As you achieve it find your next purpose. Ask what would not be achieved if you were not here. Do things intentionally.
8. Share your gifts: Be a steward not a master. Know and share your gifts and discover new ones. Appreciate others’ gifts. Mention what you appreciate. Be supportive and accept support. Share control. Make others look good. Be kind.
9. Make mistakes: Mistakes are how we learn, growth, stretch (the word intention means ‘stretching towards’, and intending is a risky and error-prone practice). It’s also how life evolves, makes quantum leaps, gets better.
10. Play: Have fun. Be boisterous. Smile.

Madson notes that there are some activities that do not lend themselves to improvisation, that need to be done in a planned, precise, intentional way, but these activities are rare, and most of what we do is better done without a script. Improvisation takes some courage, self-confidence, and faith in others, which are also qualities best learned through practice. Madson asks us to ask ourselves: What would you do if you knew you would not fail?

These ten qualities of excellent improvisation are imbued with generosity, humility and grace. To some extent you need to bring them to the practice of improvisation, and to some extent they are what you acquire and learn through improvisation, in a virtuous cycle.

I’ve tried to figure out how these ten qualities of improvisation fit with my seven step approach to action. I’ve concluded, I think, that they are guidelines and hints on how to be better at sensing, self-control, understanding, questioning, imagining, offering, and collaborating. Andhow to cope when you run into trouble with any of the seven steps.

I’m still learning. Once I’ve practiced a bit more I’ll let you know.

Swan photo from Kevin at Bastish.

• Agents do things for you, in return for money. Examples: investment brokers, real estate brokers, insurance brokers, travel agents, talent agents, lawyers, advertising agents, politicians, general contractors, the mainstream media (once called ‘news agents’).
• Intermediaries are go-betweens, who pass stuff along to you that it is hard for you to get yourself, and sometimes add some value along the way. Examples: researchers, analysts, retailers, bankers, offshorers, and the music, film and TV production oligopolies (which don’t actually produce anything, just brand and market).
• Collaborators do things with you, for mutual benefit. Examples: work teams, peer production, facilitators, coaches, Natural Enterprises, cooperatives, Natural (Intentional) Communities.

The dreaded consultants of the world can, of course, do any of these three things; their middle name is “I-can-do-that.”

There seems to be a growing consensus that:

• Agents are largely a waste of money. As long as they go on doing things for you, you never learn how to do them yourself. And since the money they earn is usually a percentage of the total cost of what they broker, they are, as James Surowiecki points out, in an inherent conflict of interest. They are motivated to broker more, and more expensive transactions for you, whether or not that is in your best interest. So what is emerging are services that eliminate the need for agents entirely, and allow you to deal directly with the supplier (or, in the case of lawyers, with your adversary, through alternative conflict resolution). Suppliers tend to balk at this, because it means they have to deal with a much larger number of customers directly, but with ‘self-serve’ software it is manageable. 
• Intermediaries need to add value if they are to serve any useful purpose. There has been a recent trend to disintermediation, getting rid of the middle-man, in those cases where the middle-man just holds the stuff for awhile and charges you for the cost of holding it (which is of no value to you), displaying it, and ‘serving’ you. But there has also been a counter-trend called reintermediation, in those cases where the middle-man (or woman) really does add something of value. Many librarians, for example, no longer maintain collections of materials and do searches for their employers; now they do research, produce reports and analyses, and represent their employers as subject matter specialists. But this is tough to do if you don’t really know what your (internal or external) customer does, and most intermediaries are, alas, specialists in intermediation, not in their employer’s or customer’s business.
• Collaborators, if they’re good, are pure gold. But that’s a big ‘if’. Most of us are not very good, or practiced, at collaboration. With practice, and with good facilitators and coaches (also hard to find) we can get much better. And ultimately as we move to peer production, we will be working with our customers and suppliers so closely that we can no longer differentiate them. We will be able to operate collaborative enterprises with no middle-men whatsoever. These enterprises will be true partnerships, with no overpaid ‘executives’.

I have argued that the industrial growth-for-growth’s sake economy is unsustainable, and that what is needed is a post-industrial gift economy or generosity economy, a steady-state economy striving not for individual wealth but for collective well-being. Such a Natural Economy is inherently collaborative, rather than competitive.

Shoshana Zuboff has written about something called the Support Economy, which is in essence about large-scale reintermediation. It is very individual-focused (Zuboff is, after all, an American professor). It suggests that the market will inevitably reward new intermediaries who fill and bridge gaps in individuals’ needs. It’s not particularly collaborative, and requires a faith in the efficient workings of the market that I don’t have. But an intermediated economy is a step forward from an agency economy.

A recent medical journal article (brought to my attention by William Tozier) describes a new phenomenon called apomediation. This is essentially about helping you, supplementing and complementing you as you work in this increasingly disintermediated world. The article argues that publishers, librarians and doctors (at least those with informed patients) are now apomediaries. This is a state, I think, somewhere between (re-)intermediation and collaboration. When your librarian becomes your group’s info-facilitator, and your doctor becomes your health coach, as true partners rather than either subordinates or unchallenged gods, we’re making progress.

How about governments? Aren’t they, after all, mainly agents for the collective will? Is the universal antipathy for government, at every point along the political spectrum, a reaction against agency? Is there a non-agency model that works for health care, policing, education, roads and utilities?

I think you know my answer to this. It’s a community-based model where the members of a community take collective responsibility for their members’ health and well-being, learning and infrastructure. In areas and cases where community self-sufficiency is not practical, networks of communities can work together to share and pool resources. There is no need for agents. Wirearchy just works better than centralized bureaucracy, privatized oligopoly (just another form of agency, except with a shareholder profit margin added to the cost) or hierarchy.

What can we do to move this along?

The great paradox, and the reason so much of our economy is consumed by agents and intermediaries who add absolutely no value to the economy, is that we don’t have enough time to learn to do things that agents do, competently, ourselves. So we pay these agents, and we have to work even harder and longer to afford to do this, which constrains our learning and self-sufficiency even more.

To break that vicious cycle, the best thing we can do is simply refuse to use agents. That means not suing people, but using facilitated alternative disputes processes instead. It means thinking seriously about the wisdom of buying insurance and investments and houses and advertising and stuff that’s advertised and airplane trips at all, and if we feel we must, at least managing the purchase directly ourselves. It means learning to do our own research and analysis, like reading Consumer Reports instead of sale fliers before we buy things. It means not borrowing money (or if we have to, borrowing short-term, from a credit union) and investing money in local community enterprises, not banks and stock markets. It means learning to grow and make things for ourselves instead of buying them through retailers, or at least buying them direct from the local farmer, artist or craftsperson.

And it means learning and practicing collaboration skills, including facilitation and coaching skills.

Agents, and some intermediaries, are among the highest-paid and lowest-value members of our society. Let’s wean ourselves off our dependence on them, and force them to get real jobs, actually producing something. And redistribute what they were paid, in our communities, to those who need it and deserve it.