James Gleick, the author of the classic book “Chaos: Making a New Science” has written a terrific review of Jill Lepore’s new book “If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.”The book covers the origin of data science as applied to democracy, and comes as conversations about social media, algorithms, and electoral manipulation are in full swing due to the US election and the release of The Social Dilemma. Gleick’s review is worth a read. He covers some basic complexity theory when working with data. He provides a good history of the discovery of how the principles of “work …
A couple of days I ago I shared a link on twitter from Rob Hopkins about a community meeting held in Totnes in the UK which brought together the community to discuss what to do now that the town had declared a climate emergency. The design of the meeting was highly participatory and I’m grateful that the organizers took time to document and share the results. The design had all the hallmarks of an effective participatory gathering, including having a well thought through harvest strategy so that the gathering was in service of the work and that it left people …
Part four of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece 4. Harvest Back in 2008, SIlias Lucius, Monica Nissen and I gathered at Phil Cass’s house in Columbus, Ohio and talked about the Art of Harvesting. Monica developed this practice because she found herself often as the “secretary” in participatory processes, typing up notes, clustering ideas, graphically recording landscapes, and generally making sense of the conversation. This was great for her, but she realized that the group was deprived …
My friends over at the Social Labs Revolution website have been fielding questions about the prototyping phase of labwork and today published a nice compilation of prototyping resources. It’s worth a visit. It got me thinking this morning about some of the tools I use for planning these days.
Spent an hour in conversation with a friend in the US last night discussing the role of dialogue in connecting communities together. My friend has extensive experience working with immigrant, refugee communities and in working with inner city agencies. He’s been personally affected by Trump’s travel edict as his family members are directly targetted by the current travel ban. He’s a man I respect very much. We were talking about ways to connect and understand the “other side.” After our conversation I stumbled over this podcast on the “deep story” of what is motivating Trump supporters, and probably both Brexit …