Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Gurteen quicklinks

Catching up, David Gurteen's latest newsletter has some good points in it.

First, don't "solve" problems - respond to them. A good linguistic catch, "solutions" often imply that - BOOM - the job is done, when in actual fact all that's happened is a particular context has been responded to.

Context is everything.

Second, David links to Chris Brogan's article Pursue the Goal, not the Method - another solid bit of advice that is a) generally obvious to those that know, and b) ignored or forgotten by those who don't. As with Buddha's teachings, one should drop the raft once the river has been crossed. One shouldn't confuse the destination with the mode of travel, or even with the journey itself.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

The Singularity is Omni-directional

Crisis is a Simulation, a transformation of the world into a"WHAT IF?". We are living in a possible scenario, but it is not necessarily the one in which we exist.

Crisis is a fast-forwarding; an amplification of the cracks appearing in our systems; an equating of what has happened once with what has happened everywhere. Following Baudrillard, the links we so feverishly enforce - trade, communications, sex - are the same links we fear our crises traveling through. The molehill is a mountain. The one-off is everywhere.

Everyone carries knives. All memes are instantaneously contagious. Paedophiles are viral. Terrorists are so horrendous because they look Just Like Normal People.

The singularity is uni-directional.

How do we plan for change when change itself can come and go before we even notice? Better to react to what has happened, and call it planning for the future.

Or are we able to take two steps back? To see not just past the theatre of crisis and paranoia, but also into the depths of change itself; the change we have instigated to overcome deficit. The unbundling of inefficiency. The escape to the imagination.

Can we replace virtual "solutions" with real problem-solving?