RE: Fw: Starting Ch4 (resent)

From: Phillip Capper (phillip.capper@webresearch.co.nz)
Date: Tue May 08 2001 - 18:09:54 PDT


Bill writes:

"I wonder if it is the nature of reciprocal relationship, here seen between
collective and individual development, that makes explanation seem
circular, as in the cause-and-effect feedback cycles that one encounters in
cybernetics.

Nevertheless, the point about activity theory accounting for *surprises*,
not necessarily how they are taken up, or ignored and buried as
contradictions, but how the surprises and accidents emerge in the first
place, is a good question. Where in a tension are the seeds for innovation?
 What were the trajectories of people and things that lead to a
particularly creative moment?"

I think that the feedback loops themselves provide the basis for an answer
to Bill's questions.

In any activity there are always 'surprises' which are latent 'creative
moments'. The 'seeds for innovation' are, for me, part of what defines a
tension in an activity system. Their chances of germinating depend on the
cultural/historical context which predisposes those who experience the
tensions to act in ways which liberate their creative potential.

If I - coming from an environment where surprises and contradictions are
suppressed - enter your system where surprises are habitually seen as
creative opportunities, then when I first encounter a surprise I will be
inclined to react with anxiety (in the sense of the word as used by
Cziksentmihalyi). In my old world anxiety was a signal to close down and
eliminate the discomfort. In my new world it is a springboard for creative
thinking - and expansive learning.

Once I have internalised my new cultural context, my habitual response
begins to change. Instead of treating situations which my experience has
shown me are more likely to be surpriseful as being situations to be
avoided, I begin to seek them out and even to deliberately create them. I am
mainly able to do that because it is what you do. Thus it seems to me that a
cultural predisposition to embrace tensions, also has the effect of creating
a greater number of latently creative moments. It also increases the
proportion of such moments in which the creative potential is liberated.

In respect of innovation and creativity I have greater difficulty in
understanding the social processes by which a Galileo or a Vygotsky becomes
hugely innovative and creative by battling within cultural contexts which
seek to eliminate expansive learning. The existence of a 'tension' is self
evident. But what is it that causes the 'seeds of innovation' to germinate
against all the odds?

Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand

Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@mail.lesley.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2001 11:24
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu; xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Fw: Starting Ch4 (resent)

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