- Creative Empowerment
- Current Projects
- Online Design
- Academic
- Work Experience
- R.R.C.
- A World View
- Links
Conceptual Design: "Evolving new perspectives on the functionality of situated objective form".
Research & Theory Blog : Exploring the relation beween Constructivism and Emergence
I am writing an open source guide & Ebook on accessing creative space.
Bsc (Hons) Information Systems (Dissertation: Concept Packages & Lateral Thinking): Sheffield Hallam University
Studying Research Methods (p/t) University of Lincoln
The projects below are in various stages of completion:
Games Poeisis, Relief (Iphone/Ipad)
Social Games : Random Explorers (Iphone)
Focus & Flow Websites:
RandomSongSpace, RandomDanceSpace, RandomArtSpace
Educational Ebook: "Present Ground- Secrets of Creativity"
Aesthetic Artefact: Spiral Hugs
I design websites around popular Blogging/CMS software (Wordpress & Joomla) so my customers can update their own sites and are not trapped into being dependent/tied in.
Website Design eg BreatheInsurance
Content Management Systems
Search Engine Optimisation
Google Analytics
IT/Web: I have over 15 years experience of IT and over 3 years experience in SEO.
BSc(Hons) Information Systems.
10% of profits are donated to Water Aid
I also currently offer these services on a discount/pro bono basis to local community groups based in the Sheffield area (UK).
Mres blog: Researching 'Concepts of Creativity'
Exploring the the academic and public media's discourse on accessing emergent quality...
Bsc (Hons) Information Systems (Dissertation: Concept Packages & Lateral Thinking): Sheffield Hallam University
Currently Researching for MRes(part time)(University of Lincoln):
"Our system of investments, hyperconsumption, and flexible labor are coming to an end, whether we like it or not. ... There are Limits to Growth, as has been known at least in academic circles for 35 years, and we are pushing those limits right now. Each year that we ignore our ecological debt to the planet is another year we will have to pay it back, and sooner rather than later.
So does the system really need a patch? Or do we need a new system? What can we do to live within our planet so that the future can also? This idea of ecological debt goes beyond environmental sustainability and ties deeply into cultural and spiritual issues. Different cultures have different frameworks for life, such as the Andean cosmology of living in balance with the Earth. Most importantly, each culture presents us with a (possibly) distinct metaphor for viewing ourselves, and that is what we are in need of. The world’s planners and architects can throw their patches into the rising seas, we need a new paradigm."
Web Design / E-Commerce / S.E.O : Self Employed, Lincolnshire.
Information Systems Support: Linden Print, Lincolnshire
Information Officer : 'Friends of the Earth': Sheffield
Analyst /Programmer : 'Wayzgoose Printers Ltd', Sleaford; 'Linden Print ', Lincolnshire
Manager/Marketing : 'The Ecology Company' :Sheffield
The Systems Movement distinguishes its 'problems to solve" in accordance with the traditions of science and rational thought. It's initial premise must inevitably be, therefore, that the world can be perceived to contain problems which can be rationally defined.
With this the advocates of prescriptive systems thinking are obliged to agree but must also incorporte a systems amendment to give the prescriptive axiom that
'The world can be perceived to contain problems which can be rationally defined and solved in systems terms"
This would seem to encapture the prescriptive inducement on offer to adopt a systems approach to problem solving, and when that inducement is linked, as it so often is, to the potent technologies of our times, it is quite evidently difficult to resist. One consequence of such a perspective is that the problem solving process can be argued to suffer an inversion. The ready made solution embodied in the technological means of achieving desired ends initiates and dominates the problem solving process so that only those problems which are consistent with (or taken to be consistent with) the prescribed solution are engaged. Solutions thus become self fulfilling prophecies and all that remains is to ensure the process is performed well. To this end a particular set of systems methodologies has evolved which simply prescribe the match ensuring process to be adopted . In renderlng both solution and problem harmonlously explicit.
As Banathy ( 2 ) notes
'We borrowed from the systems engineer and devised ten, twenty five, or fifty steps of systems approaches'
Hence we find methodologies, excellent of their kind, which specify such activities as creating data flow diagrams, producing specifications for normalised data stores and data dictionaries, and legitimising the whole systems exercise by conducting some kind of cost/benefit argument in support of the always intended information system solution. Though this illustration is based on one particular manifestation of technology, namely computers, similar scenarios can be painted for the many other techriologies of our times, be it the technology of mass production, of mass communication, or even of mass destruction. Each can adapt systems as a directing mechanism to a problem set capable of presentation in a manner consistent with the technologically built in and readily available solution set.
However, it cannot be denied that the prescriptive systems approach is not only popular and pursuasive but is also supported by some of the most powerful intellectual and
technological products of human endeavour. Therefore, it is little wonder that in a real sense its position in systems is dominant and, indeed for many, is the only interpretation of any consequence. Given such public status it would ill become the systems movement to deny prescriptive legitimacy or to reject association with this dimension of systems activity. However, the systems movement should not rest easily with the solution/problem inversion which so often occurs in this particular expression of systems thinking, and it is this issue which is perhaps amongst the most pressingly problematic for systems as a discipline.
To some extent the alternative perception of an interpretative systems approach can be seen as an attempt to avoid this inversion. That it does so by suggesting a different, and excluding, set of problems (ill-structured) does little to address the inverted well-structured situation. Indeed it often seeks to emphasise its detachment from such situations .
In axiomatic terms this approach might be stated in contrast to the prescriptive axiom as
"The world can be perceived to contain issues which are open to alternative configurations according to beliefs and ethical values, and which might be understandable and addressable in systems terms"
In this, interpretation replaces prescription, there is no guarantee of solution, and no constraining limitation on the kind of issue which might be engaged.
The contrast on all major aspects of comparison is complete, and if, as argued previously, the prescriptive axiom is dominant what then for interpretation?
Constantine. D. Tsatos (3) presents a forceful argument in favour of the interpretative paradigm when writing
"We should not forget that whatever is accomplished by human beings in human communities has infinite facets. If the value of those accomplishments is to be judged with any degree of accuracy, the main ones of those facets must be conscious for the person involved" *
...
As with its prescriptive relation methodologies have evolved in keeping with this basic perspective. Most elegant amongst them 'and most closely argued is perhaps the Checkland (Soft Systems) Methodology (4) developed at the University of Lancaster
It rests firmly on the interpretative paradigm and proposes as an outcome, not prescriptions for systems to adopt, but informed discussion and debate based on the perspectives engaged and the concepts proposed within conceptually relevant systems.
In terms of both starting and end points the activity area proposed for this methodology differs significantly from the prescriptive alternatives. Its purpose in a broad sense is to encourage that debate which most illluminates the issue of attention of with, hopefully, some emergent agreement on possible future action. This might be seen as an attempt to transform a situation initially perceived as ill-structured into one with improved or well-structured appreciation
Two propositions emerge from this thesis:
1. That only with regard to well-structured problems is it possible (sensible) to take solution oriented actions which can be defended.
2. That in reality all problems can be better understood and a wider set of relevarnt facets engaged before adopting actlons for solution. This implies that only one set of problems exists, and it is simply a matter of initial assumption that makes possible the prescriptive approach.
One major problem for the systems movement would, on the basis of these premises be to make the interpretative paradigm as acceptable, and lndeed as necessary, as the prescrlptlve paradigm. Thus it is essential to marshall those arguraents and evidences that support interpretation before prescription, and to communicate those messages with pursuasion.
Even within the rather tidy world of the technology related systems perspective such a revision of approach is long overdue given its lengthy history of admitted failures, but in the context of the truly horrendous national and international issues of our time its claim is essential rather than simply overdue.
The systems movement can, through its interpretative perspective and methodologies, offer support to those who are engaged, willing to be engaged, or need to be engaged, in the major issues affecting the human condition.
B.G.D'arcy
* we now have the technological infrastructure to enable that transparency...(Heylighen 2011)
Re Animism, which Heylighen mentions, the assumption of a collective consciousness in all living things, perhaps an (occasional?) effective experience of that to the situated individual, due to emergent affect of the individually 'random' movements around the subject, appears to be dismissed... but a more permanent presense could perhaps be being "constructed out ", both ideologically and physically by the prescriptive limb, the understanding of and sensitivity to animals, nature etc as representive limbs of one global consciousness maybe was related to an ancient synchronistic form of natural symbolic communication, that enables such a metasystem transition (Turchin) ... perhaps it is from the synthesis of these two views that the inclusive progress will come...
PoeisisGame