CCK08: Week 6 The C Words and the D Words

It has been a different tempo week for me this week. After I posted the Not an Island post I discovered at first hand the power of networks.

The spike in visits to this blog reflects Stephen’s mention of the post in The Daily. The tempo reflects too that I have been getting the garden ready for our daughter’s wedding on Saturday.
Early in the week I read Jenny’s post on slow blogging and took my lead from the ideas she discussed. I noticed too Chris Lott’s comments on Jenny’s post. I wonder if there is a ‘smouldering’ category in connectedness that lies between ‘rapid-fire and off’?
Stephen’s post about Adrian Hill’s posts was another impetus to slow blogging this week.
Robin Heyden’s post on the qualities of connected people and Pierfranco Ravotto’s posting of his grandmother’s photograph and his subsequent post about Complexity, Chaos and Research provided a very gentle read and reaffirmed for me the importance of transparency in writing.
I was further distracted by the ABC’s Not Quite Art program Culture Shock broadcast on 14 October. The program includes an interview with Ben Croshaw. The creator of the Arthur Yahtzee character has some 4 million visits to his website for his reviews of adventure games. Here are some of his YouTube links.The Not Quite Art program has a MPEG4 and WMV downloads of the program here.

Not Quite Art traces how our culture is shifting from the hierarchical, local and parochial structures to a global and networked world where Australian artists have audiences around the world, yet often remain relatively unknown in their local community.

After CCK08 tag-surfing on WordPress and following up most of the Google CCK08 alerts I read this week’s sources including George’s recent post on Complexity, Chaos and Emergence and the additional paper by Cynthia Kurz and David Snowden on  sense-making in a complex and complicated world. I have been following up on course members’ reviews of these articles.
I was struck by the C words in the sources (complexity, chaos, Cynefin) and the D words in Stephen’s SlideShare presentation.

I have been thinking about Chaos for some time. Back in 1996 the New Scientist published this article about some work I was doing in football (soccer). I had come to think about chaotic behaviour after the publicity given to James Gleick‘s book and to thinking about some of the ideas in figurational sociology identified in one of the earliest readers in the Sociology of Sport (1971). I had read a little about Rene Thom’s catastrophe theory too. The Rules of Disorder had encouraged me to think about apparently random behaviour.
This week’s readings in CCK08 have reawakened those early musings. I have to be very honest though… I do not have the mathematical capabilities to address the ‘phase space‘ characteristics of chaotic behaviour nor do I have any clear understanding of the mechanisms of strange attraction (other than being attracted intuitively to the concept). As a result of Gleick’s work I am interested in perturbation and equilibrium and was interested to see Seth Bullock’s slides in this regard.
I joined the second Elluminate session on Thursday morning (Australian time). Alec Couros’ presentation provided an excellent addition to the discussion about course design and gave me an opportunity to re-read Renata Phelps’ paper Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning.
I noted that George has posted a mid-course review. This week has seemed like a catching of breath for me. I have not visited Moodle for some time but am keen to join Second Life given Fleep Tuque’s work. I am finding that the richness of the blogs, the stimulus of The Daily and the emerging themes of the course are enabling me to link biography and the practice of connecting. I enjoyed Kenkat’s return this week as another part of ordering the complexity of a connected commitment to learning.
Now it is off to the wedding with some First Life connecting to do!