• Curriculum design
• Budgeting and spreadsheet design
• Articulation of values, principles and ethics
• Knowledge organization
• Information visualization on computers
• Building and settlement design
• Media programming
• Personal relationships
• Scheduling and planning

Reframing the paradgim cage: the underlying challenge
Structure of this document: part of the problem
References

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 So much of what we do in work or play is based on some form of 'programme' or 'set of rules'. The nested list, or tabular/grid structure, of these conceptual devices tends to reinforce very strongly the kinds of thinking which are not working in the interests of society as a whole. It is through such devices that:

• values are articulated (lists of principles),
• that people are educated (curricula),
• that strategies are formulated (action plans), implemented (programmes), publicized (media programmes), and financially controlled (budgets) -- usually in buildings designed within the same box-like logic and disposed in urban areas laid out in a manner consistent with it.

The economic system as a whole is made meaningful through input/output charts of analogous form. People use dietary, self-development, training or educational programmes. Their choices are guided by radio, TV and cinema programmes and by transportation schedules. The documents associated with all this activity are accessed or filed through classification systems based on the same logic. Software packages facilitate all these activities with programmes based on pull-down tabular menus – often furnishing results in tabular form. These results can usually only be communicated successfully over e-mail if they avoid any other structural layout.

That this conceptual device is not working well in the process of governance is endlessly articulated in evidence of unemployment, social marginalization, family breakdown, cultural conflicts and the impact of humanity on the environment. It is only too obvious in the pathetic articulation of proposals for peace in intractable situations such as Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the like. There are repeated calls for 'new thinking' articulated within the same simplistic framework – with the expectation that the creative response will be forthcoming within that framework. Many are in despair at the response of the best and the brightest – or even of those hailed as spiritual leaders. There is little to offer the young that they value.

If we are caught in some kind of vice-like trap, there is merit in exploring the nature of a 'de-vice' which might enable us to free ourselves and get out of its grip. Deviser in French is the process of unscrewing. In this sense, the conceptual process of 'de-vising' may be usefully thought of as 'unscrewing' ourselves from the trap. This cannot be a purely objective exercise. The trapi is of our own making. As policy scientist Geoffrey Vickers once noted: 'A trap is a function of the nature of the trapped'.

The concern here is to explore how we might go about 'devising a device' that would enable any of us, individually or collectively, to shift out of this mode when it proves dysfunctional. It would be presumptuous to aim to specify the device here. The intent is rather to explore how it might be useful to think about the nature of such a device and the insights that need to influence its design. Premature closure is necessarily to be avoided.

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