The first view from the surface of another planet’s moon.
The European Space Agency probe Huygens has arrived on Titan. This journey of human seeing began in 1655 whenChristiaan Huygens discovered the moon with a telescope. Since then, human beings have wondered more and more about Saturn’s biggest moon. It’s not that hard to see for yourself with a small telescope. In fact, the Saturn system is almost exactly at opposition right now, 750 million miles away from us and that’s as close as it will get this time around. Find someone with a telescope and go have a look for the tiny point of light near the ringed planet.
Edward T. Hall and Marshall McLuhan wrote about how technology extends the human faculties over time and space. The Huygens probe was aptly named. Today it shrank the distance of Christiaan Huygens’ viewing from millions of miles to zero. Humans have eyes on Titan. It’s remarkable to think about.
UPDATE: Now we can LISTEN to Titan too!
Over at Wirearchy Jon is putting together a manifesto of his thinking on what interconnected technology means for the way we are with each other in organizations. Could this be the skelton on which the full fledged book on Wirearchy will hang?
*hint hint*
Quality posts, head and shoulders above alot of his blogging seniors. Dan Oestreich gets my vote as the new blogger most likely to get me thinking with EVERY SINGLE POST. I’m tempted to advise him not to burn himself out so quickly, but then I wouldn’t have all this great stuff to read!
G’wan…get over there and chew on the food he has laid out for us.
Lifting this right from Adam Kahane’s book Solving Tough Problems:
We get stuck by holding on tightly to our opinions and plans and identities and truths. But when we relax and are present and open up our minds and hearts and wills, we get unstuck and we unstick the world around us. I have learned that the more open I am – the more authentic I am to the way things are and could be, around me and inside me; the less attached I am to way things ought to be – the more effective I am in helping to bring forth new realities. And the more I work in this way, the more present and alive I feel. As I have learned to lower my defenses and open myself up, I have become increasingly able to help better futures be born.”
Before I picked up this book, I had been feeling the same way. Sitting with mates in the Art of Hosting learning last month attuned my senses to my facilitation practice such that I was thinking exactly the same things. And some serendipitous connections that have emerged since then with Adam Kahane have strengthened that commitment to openness and receptivity. At some I think, every facilitator hits this realization. It has taken me close to 15 years to really sink into this new reality.
And the journey continues…
If you are a facilitator and you haven’t seen this, take note that a new book is forthcoming from the international Association of Facilitators on facilitation practices. It is edited by Sandy Schumann and features Sam Kaner, Roger Schwarz, Lisa Kimball, Chris Hogan, Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, Reinhard Kuchenmueller, among many many others. It’s out in February at $75 US which is a hefty price, but this might well be the first and last facilitation book you ever buy.