> them 30:1). In the end, the other managers felt I should back off and not
> push the issue. It was causing too many people stress to change the way
> they worked. I think what they're really saying is, "A machine can't
> think." I'd agree. But we're not a machine. Which brings me right back to
> the point I made in the beginning. The biggest hurdle I have to jump is
> getting people to think of us as a complex, intelligent, adaptive system.
> . .not a machine.
Ben
Thank you very much for sharing with us such a wonderful case study. I
feel sad to have snipped so much of what is very true. I cry because you
were able to use the public schools as a metaphor of rote learning. My
wish it that it will not be true much longer.
In your last sentence you have hit it right on the head: creative
complexity. Every creation takes time, the more complex, the more the
creation time. This time can be dillated, but not be reduced to shorter
than an intrinsical value. To have that creation in a shorter time, it has
to be imported (boots and all), but it can never be created as such.
However, by importing it, one is not sure anymore if it is what one is
needing.
But to me your last paragraph has also an omnious warning: Our present era
runs on the paradigm of the 'engineer and his machine'. In the not too
distant future we will be forced by our luxurious use of energy resources
with high structural entropy to shift our paradigm to something else. The
following phrase may decribe it: 'the warden and his wildlife'. If we do
not shift our paradigm timely and spontaneously, think of how much stress
people will experience when finding themselevs in a world running
according to the new paradigm.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>