online: 16 august 2012 modified: 15 august 2012 15 august 2012 after a conference call
via skype and of metadesign
... my first thought is how easy it was... my first experience of telephoning two people simultaneously... a conference call with Helena Kjellgren who has experienced many conference calls... and with John Wood who is new to conference calling... though all three of us have experienced Skype calls to one other person...
...(the purpose of the call was to share thoughts about metadesign)...
...yes i was surprised by how easily a conversation between three people flowed ... i'd expected in the absence of a chairperson and in the presence of unfamiliar technology there'd be hesitations or 'technical difficulties'... but no... we were able to use this new kind of phoning software after what i used to call 'zero learning' (and which others have called 'user-friendliness'... or 'intuitive interfaces')... to me this ease is a sign that new technologies can be pre-adapted to people in a way that mechanical technology never could... and if supported by the right use of digital technology people can enact new roles (such as i guess metadesign requires) without specialised training... when we are free to act on the whole (and are not in a mechanical sub-role as a repetitive labourer... or a specialist paid to think narrowly... imprisoned in what we call 'work')...
... these thoughts lead me away from describing or defining metadesign and attempting to be it or to enact it... for in a modest way this conference call using digital technology is already an example of metadesign as i imagine it to be in practice...
in the cityforest:
...having returned to the cityforest to write more of this text i pause to attend to my surroundings before continuing these thoughts... (thoughts of whatever happens or comes to mind while i'm writing)...
...just now i'm sitting by a pond (one of the Seven Sisters as they are called) and looking at a small area of water surface that is not yet covered over with leaves... perhaps water-lilies... the whole scene is composed of many thousands of leaves with only a small bit of sky visible above and water grasses and brown and pink wild flowers as tall as a tall person along the opposite bank... on the face of it this little wilderness seems to have nothing to do with what we are calling metadesigning and conference calling... i begin to think of all these things as a natural environment with artificial things within it... one of these things being my presence here with a handheld computer on which i am writing all this... and when i get home i will put it on line and thus make it present in any place where there is access to my public writing place on the internet...
...so in this sense at least the forest and the conference call and metadesign and even my presence and these words and someone else reading it... are all parts of a unity...(which is not so much natural environment surrounding unnatural objects as an astonishingly connective reality without boundaries)...
...but, as i write that, several mosquitos start to devour some of the blood of my face and neck... and one of them disappears up my sleeve but it does not seem to be biting... which tells me that connectivity can be both pleasant and unpleasant!...
....it's beginning to get dark so i decide to move on to a point on the heath that i selected by chance before leaving...
...but on my way to that point i realised i'd left my backpack perhaps on the seat where i was writing... so i'd have to walk back into the forest... hoping to find the missing backpack before it got too dark to see the way or to see the missing article (if it was still there)... luckily it was there... on the seat by a pond... and when i found it... there was still light enough to see my way over rough ground with occasional tree roots or fallen branches...
...and now (as i edit this writing before putting it on line) i'm beginning to think that metadesign is not a thing... nor a way of creating new things... but a more connective way of perceiving what exists and of doing what is possible... or we might think of it as removing obstacles to a desirable unity...
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