(2021-09-18) Brander Notes Are Conversations Across Time

Gordon Brander: Notes are conversations across time.

Notes are conversations across time. I think this is more than just a poetic analogy. It is a shift in perspective that can be grounded in cybernetics theory, particularly Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory, and it yields a number of surprising design insights.

Conversation Theory takes another view. It sees knowledge as conversational. Knowledge exists subjectively in our minds, and is constructed through conversation with others.

As we converse, each of us constructs our own subjective model

This conversational process has a circular shape. It’s a cybernetic feedback loop.

Conversation is a method for converging on eventually consistent states among distributed peers.

Conversation can be about diverging too. Instead of trying to converge on a shared understanding, a conversation can be about getting lost in the land of ideas.

Riffing. No one knows where the conversation will end up.

Conversations don’t just happen between people. They can happen between all kinds of systems.

A conversation can happen between yourself and your memory of another. Or between yourself and a model of a system

A conversation can happen between yourself and yourself, across time, through the notes your past self took for your future self.

Tools for Thought—and software in general—are often evaluated in terms of features and screens... Cybernetics shifts our focus away from objects, and toward the flow of information between objects. Design through the lens of Conversation Theory is not about features and screens. Design is the making and breaking of cybernetic feedback loops.