Hello,
I was lurking for a while and among the threads I find most fascinating is
Rick's MATURANA contribution and following discussion as well as the ones
adressing "inner" challenges with respect to change and to technology.
Although in essence a minor detail, I would share an answer to LO13017 as
LO13034 does not provide this (Hi, Ben, good luck to the "connection
company").
>Arthur writes:
>
>> Stafford Beer was employed by the Allende government to establish a
>> comms network linking all public and private institutions [including
>> public/community access I presume in the early 70s [I think]- this is
>> documented in one of his books. The tale I've heard has him and his
>> team fleeing from the military takeover, some of the team either
>> established Novell, or went to work there.
Well, I know, that one of Allende's ministers, Fernando Flores, went to
California to work his Ph.D. and in 1983 started a software company called
Action Technologies (actiontech.com), Ca., getting quite known by
developing a standard format for electronic messages. This product has
been bought by Novell in the late 80's if I remember right and their main
software "The Co-ordinator" by another company.
Flores also wrote a "milestone" book together with AI-expert Terry
Winograd, "Computers and Cognition", published 1986, A.Wesley, I think.
So, "in software" it really was; the company went on and got quite
successful in developing software for the popular "workflow paradigm",
based on the dissertations "Speech-Act-Theory" and later experience.
BTW, in my and from my view, both mentioned software lends itself to
bigger companies and was criticised as being rather "dogmatic" -
especially in Northern Europe it found only little acceptance, because
Self-belief is that people here are rather individualistic towards
anarchistic. (Here are several underlying asumptions and each would lead
to interesting discussions, so I close this.)
Well, stories and relationships glue the world together; I got already in
1983 the information of the upstart of Flores' company by another Chilene
scientist, Francisco Varela, co-developer of the Autopietic Theory, whom,
as well as Humberto Maturana, I met several times in the beginning of the
80's.
And it comes as no surprise that there is some "Autopoietic style" about
the abovementioned software, in a loose sense. Other scientist adapted the
theory much more, as the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and the French
socio-anthropologist B. Latour ("Actor-Network-Theory"). *---*hints* ;)
This makes me think of my due "INTRO" which I hope I will write during
Easter. *smiles*
Best wishes to all of you.
Make yourself a nice day.
Michael Rumpf
Systems and Organisations Consultant, Facilitator, Trainer, NLP therapist.
Metamodels, Metalearning, Metaunderstanding, and more
For info: <metamore@ddf.dk> or vox/fax: +45 44 99 55 55
--metamore@ddf.dk (Michael Rumpf)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>