The Power of Movement with Online Communities
In the world of critical thinking and argument, if you wish to present a new idea you must have thought it totally through. You need to have considered feasibility. You need to have anticipated objections. If you have a mistake in your presentation or have missed an important factor then your presentation will be shredded and possibly tossed in the bin.
When you are online, as with this society, such a system of treatment of ideas must inevitably act as a fierce throttle on the presentation of ideas, requiring idea generation and development to be a lone affair and rejecting at least 80% of those few ideas that are presented.
However, amongst a community of trained thinkers who have taken the idea of movement on board, you should be able to present even a vague idea seed or interesting concept and have a community work on moving forward with it. There is a sense of joy that attaches to such behaviour.
Of course this is EBNE (Excellent but not enough).
Lateral thinking and movement should be the "first port of call". Then the idea should be treated, shaping to the needs, enhancing strengths, dealing with weaknesses and tailoring to resources. Yet even at this stage there is the power of movement in coming up with the ideas to satisfy these constraints or to expand the idea beyond them or bypass them.
Then at some point there is the action of implementation, with all the usual skills to bring to bare such as project control, budgeting, negotiating, revising and managing, acquiring resources and so on. Many would consider at this stage that thinking should not be allowed to "rock the boat", yet movement and lateral thinking come into play in bringing actions about in better ways, identifying and grabbing opportunities and avoiding unnecessary waste and other things in the action space that can be done better with quick applications of thinking skill.
Examine your own reactions to ideas presented in the forum areas and groups on this web site, and ask yourself "Have I applied thinking skill to produce movement or did I bring critical thinking into play?" Consider at what stage thinking has got to and work out which is appropriate at that point in the online conversation. On many other websites that I "inhabit" it is blanket critical thinking, and the tone is tense and sombre and a little off-putting. Here it can be vibrant, full of play and movement with the appropriate level of strength and skilled interplay of thinking techniques.
Enjoy your thinking!
When you are online, as with this society, such a system of treatment of ideas must inevitably act as a fierce throttle on the presentation of ideas, requiring idea generation and development to be a lone affair and rejecting at least 80% of those few ideas that are presented.
However, amongst a community of trained thinkers who have taken the idea of movement on board, you should be able to present even a vague idea seed or interesting concept and have a community work on moving forward with it. There is a sense of joy that attaches to such behaviour.
Of course this is EBNE (Excellent but not enough).
Lateral thinking and movement should be the "first port of call". Then the idea should be treated, shaping to the needs, enhancing strengths, dealing with weaknesses and tailoring to resources. Yet even at this stage there is the power of movement in coming up with the ideas to satisfy these constraints or to expand the idea beyond them or bypass them.
Then at some point there is the action of implementation, with all the usual skills to bring to bare such as project control, budgeting, negotiating, revising and managing, acquiring resources and so on. Many would consider at this stage that thinking should not be allowed to "rock the boat", yet movement and lateral thinking come into play in bringing actions about in better ways, identifying and grabbing opportunities and avoiding unnecessary waste and other things in the action space that can be done better with quick applications of thinking skill.
Examine your own reactions to ideas presented in the forum areas and groups on this web site, and ask yourself "Have I applied thinking skill to produce movement or did I bring critical thinking into play?" Consider at what stage thinking has got to and work out which is appropriate at that point in the online conversation. On many other websites that I "inhabit" it is blanket critical thinking, and the tone is tense and sombre and a little off-putting. Here it can be vibrant, full of play and movement with the appropriate level of strength and skilled interplay of thinking techniques.
Enjoy your thinking!
Add a Comment
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Comment by Danny Stevens on October 12, 2010 at 0:36 -
I think one point is that NING is really bad software for interaction (sorry NING folks).
Consider, this comment area shows comments newest first. That is making the assumption that every comment is referring to the blog itself, and not to previous comments. In order to follow the flow of this conversation we have to go to the end and work our way back to the beginning. That is tiring and slightly disorienting. It certainly makes it harder to converse 'lightly'.
The places where hierarchical replies are allowed are even worse. In order to follow the conversation you have to go back to the beginning and scan for new comments all the way through the document!
Also, there is no central page to go to to quickly take you to conversations you are having with new replies, except for the fifty odd emails I get every day pointing to individual replies which is tedious in the extreme.
These features alone seem to restrict most 'conversations' to a maximum of 5 pages. On phpBB forums I am regularly engaged in conversations over 40 pages long.
Expression is also missing. Some people don't like smiley icons, but in every vibrant online conversation I participate in they are everywhere and usually over twenty commonly used expressions. These things replace body language and intonation. :-)
One thing that is missing from all the software I have used is the ability to branch a discussion to a new thread, leaving a "we went over here with the title xxxx" link. Moderators usually have to do that.
How else could our software help? Well, Adonis mentioned elsewhere the need to facilitate.
It would be possible for:
- discussions to be assigned facilitators
- to have the group respond to facilitating "scripts"
- to have special purpose comment tags for harvesting such as "go forward idea", "beginning of an idea", "concept".
- to have comments you have not displayed before highlight in a different colour.
- to attach meaningful icons to your avatar giving some meaningful "at a glance" information about you that you choose to display. (look at boardgamegeek.com for an example where you have "microbadges" for having made contributions to the site, for specific areas of interest,and for winning competitions and so on).
- Show how many people have looked at a comment.
- list the contributors to a thread
That's not an exhaustive list. Anyway, I think the supporting software is a major obstacle or opportunity for a society like this.
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Comment by Asa Jomard on October 7, 2010 at 12:49 -
Hi Avril,
Here I was thinking that it is nicer than the real world! I can simply log in and out when I want to.
Hi Dobilas,
Skål!
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Comment by Paolo Toigo on October 7, 2010 at 10:38 -
Hi all ,
I discovered this website a few days ago, my name is paolo and I have red many books written by Mr. De Bono.
One of the most fashinating things I red about creative thought is the idea of Provocation and Movement as described by De Bono.
I would like to keep practicing Movement exercises , and possibly I would like to ask you how to address my search.
Do you know where I can get informations and samples about Provocation and Movement except the samples I have found in books ?
Thank you,
Paolo
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Comment by Free Willy on October 7, 2010 at 9:12 -
Kim has his logic.
If everyone is a leader, who will be the followers?
If everyone is an artist, what will the price of art be?
If everyone start to write, we all have info overload. Eventually, we have to pick and choose (filter the info that reflect what is on our mind) and miss out the most important lesson in life.
I felt it's OK to be a listener so long as you gain useful info to upgrade your mind. Voice out if you are not clear or want to know more.
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Comment by Franis on October 7, 2010 at 2:14 -
Perhaps a poll? Pretty much everyone who has joined has activated a polling service. Let's get them to use it!
How about the question of:
What would enhance your participation on this site?
or
What is the purpose of this site for you?
or
What motivated you to join this site?
...otherwise, we can conjecture, but doing that until we're blue in the face doesn't add up to much more than...chatting. Which is what we've been doing so far. Well, I've been learning a few more thinking skills because I've been participating. But then again, I like to write...and think...and I have the time...etc. etc.
Do you think it would be interesting to know in a poll how much time people spend here who are the participants?
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Comment by Franis on September 26, 2010 at 9:01
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Even in my creative writing, critical thinking still rules. In any article I write, there is still the expectation of examples, hypothesis, proof and conclusion. It is strange how, in the best writing - everything completed - the point is to "have the last word." Whereas here, in social interaction, the point is to converse and to go new places that you wouldn't have gone under your own steam.
There have been many people who have tried to encourage a new way of discussing beyond the debate model - all without much success. Certain people have been able to learn to talk with others using a different model that transcends the argument model, such World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry, David Bohm Dialogue & de Bono's parallel thinking - and dozens of other models put forward by less well-known people.
The best use of de Bono tools has been, for me, to explain my motives in a group situation with a call for parallel thinking. In a divisive group, this has been the easiest strategy to use.
As far as what goes on here at this site - it's probably mostly a matter of having a din of the competition of other places taking up people's attention. Those of us who who can write easily forget that, for most people, it is work to write.
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