Noodling with an #analogy between #infrastructure change and #learning
In infrastructure, change needs to reckon w/ the inertia of the "installed base" (existing standards, technical facilities, norms, practices, social structures). Sometimes the best path is to choose a different installed base.
In learning, conceptual change needs to reckon w/ prior knowledge: not necessarily wholesale replacement, but some sort of integration.
Now curious how this relates to #systemsthinking
cc @christina
Two things come to mind:
1) Systems thinking uncovers mental models, and, if collaborative, can reframe the options for action you have, which can change your mental models.
Architecture also determines available options.
2) Underlying mental models is our worldview, which I think of as something of an Overton Window defining which mental models are available to us.
Changing architecture is akin to building up a new worldview. Hard, but opens up new possibilities.
@joelchan86
Also, to state the obvious, the underlying architecture is itself determined in part by the worldview and associated mental models of the people creating it in the first place
@christina Love this, Christina, thank you! Analogy to Overton Window is vivid and helpful.
Another connection is to conceptual spaces from Margaret Boden's theory of creativity: https://philpapers.org/rec/BODPOT - conceptual spaces constrain what sorts of thoughts we can think, and the most transformative creativity requires/involves the transformation of the space itself, beyond exploration/recombination within that space.
Joel Chan
christina b