Props to my homey

Larry Lessig, my Penn Class of 1983 classmate, says most of what I have been thinking, much more succintly and with better production values.

Being meta-reflective

I was thinking about my own thinking the other morning, and I was thinking about what it takes to self-generate my own meta-reflection. It's really the praxis I've been pursuing. It's this creation of self-aware thinking, and self-aware thinking based in design -- based in what I call solution as human agency -- that's been the focus of my capital T Thinking about design (again capital D) for the past 15 years.
There's a lot floating around in my head in terms of how to best present these ideas -- really how to transfer them. It's all so ripe right now, and my focus is pulled in 50 directions at once, so it seems. It's almost as if I could self-diagnose myself with AD/HD. But it's really a question of dicisplining myself andd training my environment to support development.

Election Day

I cast my vote in the Presidential primary in new Jersey today. I went into the booth -- I still need to adjust to the fact that the curtain doesn't swing back as it did with the old mechanical machines. The machine is now electronic; I notice my trepidation at casting a vote that registers only in electronic form. I have to push my anti-Diebold paranoia back and at the end of the day I need to empower the system.

The Technical Imagination

I have crossed a kind of threshold; last night, at a party, I told someone that I was "leaving IT." That's significant--working in IT or IS or MIS or whatever you want to call it has been part of my identity for half my life. But the past year has made it clear to me that those days are over. The market no longer supports what I want to do from a "align yourself with the available job offerings and plug yourself into that system" perspective. Interestingly, I'm beginning to see that maybe it never did.
So now I'm in the Systems Design and Innovation business. Perhaps I always have been.
I've been noodling with his ideas of developing an integrated curriculum called "The Technical Imagination." I think it's really what I called "The Shift" over 20 years ago; it amazes me that the relevance or my own (perhaps deluded) sense of its market-worthiness hasn't waned. I don't know of or see anybody incorporating all the notions I put together over 20 years ago and offering it in a way that fits the way people learn today. I see it as a great opportunity.
There are people operating on this same wavelength -- the people in the knowledge management sphere such as Dave Snowden are perhaps the closest to it. But they are driving a process-based approach, whereas I'm envisioning this as technology mediated inquiry. A process for agent design. And that's the definable outcome -- a mindset for agent design.

Notching it up

Today I made Principal at design Anticipation my job on LinkedIn. It's a big step, and I don't know if it's permanent. In fact, I find myself conflicted -- it seems like it can't be permanent, I have to get a job and work for some company to make enough money. Wow, I really am in prison, aren't I?
I guess the way to get out of prison is to recognize that you're in it, and that I am the one who put myself here.
At any rate, there was substantial movement in the design anticipation world starting last Thursday. I am getting and grant and an SBIR consultant. I may have found a playmate -- the resource I've needed to connect with to really get a prototype built. It is progress.
Now I'm establishing the desiganticipation.com website. After all these years, it's still a learning experience; one I approach with trepidation.