Harrison: Thanks for sharing your new paper and for asking for comments. I will make one general (and maybe provocative?) comment, and some more specific observations that you may want to use to make complements or if later you decide to enlarge this paper to make a full book...
I will quote the text when needed, but I recall that the full paper is at the URL you provided: http://www.openspaceworld.com/Opening%20Space%20for%20The%20Question.htm General Comment ------------------------- 1. If we skip the Introduction, the rest of the paper is a new explanation of OST, how it works and why it facilitates learning. There are many other such explanations, from HO and from others, but I like this one very much and the paper and link will, from now on, be part of my courses' bibliography and this will be the first paper I will give to people (and customers) that I want to introduce to OST. The reason for this being mostly the following: you have been able to create a very comprehensive explanation of OST, mentioning all the important procedures and fundamentals and you were able to do that WITHOUT mentioning the "principles" at all. As you know, I now think that the "principles" are not needed to explain OST - so this is the best paper for my personnel use ;-) Other small observations ----------------------------------- 1. The importance of the unknowing and the Question I agree with almost everything, but it seems that you assume that all knowledge comes from a previous unknowing phase. If this is so, there is IMHO a limitation, as the main problem in what concerns learning is not what (we know that) we ignore, but what we think that we know, indeed what we knew for sure in the past, but is no longer right - or never was. I would like to see some clear reference to the importance of unlearning as an important component of almost every learning process. I know nothing about Nichtwissen or Nescience, but it seems to me that it could mean not only ignorance but also "wrong knowledge". By "wrong knowledge" I am referring to something that was (and/or was generally accepted) as Knowledge - until one day... The point is that humans don't like to change from their previous assumptions (knowledge) to contradictory "new knowledge" - they have difficulties with unlearning. 2. High Learning and Genuine Community The previous point can be related with two different points in your text: - you refer to Khun on "High Learning" (High Science), loosing a good opportunity to also mention that "High Learning" always imply some "paradigm shift" and to "learn" a new paradigm one has to unlearn a previous one - if one is able to do that; - when you refer to "Genuine Community" as a characteristic of OS and one that mostly facilitates high learning you could elaborate a little more, explaining how "genuine community" helps one to "really listen" and "accept diversity", hence enhancing learnig/unlearning. A reference to Alberoni's metanoia could be interesting in this point as well as to Argyris' Model 1/2. - but, on the other hand, "genuine community" can also mean a community that is "closed" around some rules and principles, making difficult some kinds of changes that challenges the accepted culture of the community Appropriate Control and Structure. It is important to remember as you did that OST is self-organizing but is not necessarily anarchy, because a structure emerges. But I would like two things to be added. One, that without letting go from hierarchic control the new control structure does not emerges (or emerges with much more difficultty); and that in OST, some rules (OST rules) are defined from the outset and guide that emergence of order. Communication Your references to communication (in pages 8 and 11) relates more to transmission of information that to the "human communication" and its difficulties and how OST (through genuine community") helps to bypass those difficulties. It is true that the reference to "collective consciousness" (or is it "collective unconsciousness"?) refers to the human aspects of communication but could be more clearly related to the topic of community (that was mentioned 7 pages before). And a reference to Watzlavicw would be interesting. This are some humble comments that you can agree or not, use or not - the paper is great either way. I have decided to make the comments public, allowing for others to discuss them if they so wish. Regards Artur --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
