Configuration Formation: Facilitative Technology

Development beyond Science to Wisdom (Part #9)

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There now exists a new communication technique which has many features which could prove valuable in facilitating processes which lead to the emergence of 'collective wisdom' . One label by which it is known is 'computer conferencing' (17, 18, 19). To its users it appears rather like a combination of: a conference telephone call, telex, word processing, data storage/retrieval, and a number of related applications. As such it is believed that it will have a dramatic impact within the ongoing revolution in the information/communication industry and the spread of (home) computer terminals and widespread access to data networks.

Although this technique is currently used mainly to facilitate complex patterns of message exchange amongst 5 to 50 people (possibilly at distant locations), its use in this way is highlighting previously disguised communication problems which the technique itself can be developed to solve to some extent. This particularly applies to some of the problems identified above.

Some of the advantages include:

• Possibility of 'registering' precise substantive contributions in statements which are a fraction of those normally required for an academic paper (1 5)
• Possibility of 'indexing' each such contribution so that they may be interrelated in complex patterns (20)
• Communication in written mode in such a way that participants can either contribute simultaneously or with whatever delays they consider appropriate, and at whatever speed they consider comfortable (possibly with intermediate translation, such that each receives communications in preferred languages)
• Possibility of using the same technique simultaneously, to clarify meta-problems, inter-personal obstacles to communication (style, etc), tentative insights, etc.
• Possibility of indicating relationships of 'sympathy' and 'antipathy' (i.e. opposition, support, contradictions, etc) between contributions (8)
• Possibility of experimenting with alternative patterns of re-ordering the substantive insights in search of more meaningful or comprehensible patterns.

Clearly these possibilities constitute a new kind of environment within which concept configuration can emerge.