Re: a new word. The fact that you had to name 4 words to describe
similar things indicates that we are dealing with an abstract class...
perhaps moving the discourse to a pattern language would be easier. In
this language would define a pattern which would have examples of
"organizations", "organizational systems", "communities", "groupware",
families, relationships, nations, immune systems, species, evolutionary
flow of species, etc. As far as I know, we have no word to speak of such
things across scale and across time. Yet there is a notion of boundary
and identity across these words... we can speak of the identity of a
nation as well as the identity of an immune system or a species. I
suppose it is analogous to trying to elevate our thinking from
arithmetic to algebraic, letting symbols stand for other symbols rather
than numbers. In the same way that the concept of zero was required to
elevate our thought from arithmetic to algebra, I think that there is
another "missing nothing" in our current language which is forcing us to
enumerate endless instances of things rather than a more general concept
embracing them all in a shorter token. Two of these "missing nothings"
in our current language is the notion of all the stuff which clumps
around a self-organizing entity (the Org idea), and the notion of seeing
things flowing over time (what linguists call the diachronic perspective
of language, as opposed to the snapshot-in-time synchronic approach).
This is a huge subject which I know resonates with some of the group
from private side conversations, but I am not sure whether it is
appropriate for the whole list.... I'll heed guidance from the group
whether this is off-topic. (01)
With regard to specific "people" steps, I would suggest rethinking the
user interface to allow a denser message format, in which conversation
threads are one flat file that the user can simply scroll up and down,
and hiding/unhiding components according to a navigation button. The
display would also show the recipients of the message and how far they
have read in the message. Multiple replies to the message would appear
as multiple lines in the message, not as multiple messages... I've done
some thinking on how to do this with DHTML and a new frontend to
MailMan, for example, if anyone is interested in specific ideas... (02)
Re: anthropologist, I have a friend who may be interested in the
community/language/abstraction issues, but not the technical ones... (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Eric Kim [mailto:eekim@blueoxen.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 8:57 AM
To: yak@collab.blueoxen.net
Subject: [yak@collab] Re: Dangling Threads 2003-03-17 (04)
On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 03:15:52PM -0800, Tom Munnecke wrote: (05)
> Sorry about the neologism, but I'd like to introduce the term
"orgware"
> discuss this. Orgware is a collection of tools, people, their shared
> knowledge, and the culture which emerges. This would include
knowledge
> management, virtual communities, learning organizations, networked
> improvement communities, chaords, IT applications, operating systems,
> "community operating systems," listserves, and a host of other things.
> For lack of a better name, I'll call the things pulled together by
> common orgware "orgs." Orgs need to have a sense of identity, but the
> boundaries caused by this identity also cause "stovepiping." (06)
Why do we need a new term to describe this sort of thing? What's
wrong with "organizations", "organizational systems", "communities",
"groupware", etc.? (07)
Do you have an answer to my question: What should be the first
"people" steps we should take to improve this community? (08)
> Perhaps having an anthropologist on the team is reasonable. (09)
If you know one who wants to participate, let me know. (010)
-Eugene (011)
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