Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Barbara Berry -
Number of replies: 1

Hi Roy, 

I love the image of the "oil droplet", it fits for me. I can now imagine the movement and this brings me to the idea of "situativity" and what I believe is essentially "relational" in terms of social structures and how we fit and move within a social structural context(s).

To unpack and get a handle on "emergent learning" (I seem more confused than ever the more I read) I am finding myself going back to concepts you work with in the "Emergent Learning and Learning Ecologies in Web 2.0" paper for instance complexity theory, ecology and interactivity through the web. These are big ideas and perhaps I am having to go back and do some foundational reading in complexity and ecologies to ger a better handle on "emergence", "learning" and then "emergent learning". So far, I am getting a sense that emergence is "dynamic" in a natural sort of way which means it might be paradoxical to try to "manage" "emergence"? I am sure you 3 have spent hours discussing the tension of managing and letting it go. 

The other piece of this I am trying to make sense of is the time dimension.

I look forward to more : )

cheers,

Barb 

In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Barb, the oil droplet has only occured to me in this forum for the first time ...  

Its elasticity and flow appeals to me, and I like 'situativity' - a 'fluid kind of fit', no?  Also strikes me that you only get to see your footprint in detail once you have stepped onwards (in time and space) - you cant see it immediately, and you have to proceed (on trust/ at risk) in order to see how you 'fitted' into the situation (or not) retrospectively. Rich stuff indeed.

Emergence is taken from ecology (physical and biological), which is in turn based on complexity theory (or more specifically complex adaptive systems theory CAST), which emphasise the mutual adaptation of agency and situtation/context.

In ecology (and evolution / de-volution), mutation (chance variation, in the form of serendipitous mistakes - and they are not always positive) are a key aspect of what drives change and adaptation/ extinction.  So evolution is based on risk; you cant evolve if you make no mistakes, literally, at the level of miosis. 

That implies an entanglement between risk and emergence, and emergence and learning. And that means that if learning is about accepting change, adaptation and risk, you have to trust something - your instincts, you intuitions, your community, your peers, mentors, or all of the above.

Its foolish to dance on the edge of chaos on your own (and its much more fun to do it with a friend or two). 

And, yes, if emergence is based on mistakes, variation, risk and trust, quite a lot of it will be unpredictable, so what you design for is the possibility of emergence, you cant manage it, or specify it in a set of required 'outcomes' - that's beyond paradox, its just a contradiction.

In affordances terms, you design for affordances to be as open as possible - and social media provide the communication and interactivity means and modes to produce open affordances.  Affordances?  (See here ... if you want to read more - start with the two diagrams if you want a short cut).