Organization as Whole Living Structure
I first encountered Christopher Alexander and Pattern Language while surfing around to understand wiki. It was so new and idea and the conversations I found were so advanced, that I left those pages about PatternLanguage not even sure anymore that I even knew what the word “pattern” meant. I could feel that somewhere in my brain, something very old and simple and deep had been loosened from it moorings.
I let it go at the time, as I was really wanting to understand “wiki” just then, but now I’ve come back to Pattern. My experience today upon re-entering the topic, is one of being in a submarine, face buried in periscope, scanning, scanning, scanning… there is sky and birds and water and then… NOTHING BUT DARK PAINTED STEEL! …or alternatively, ONE BIG EYE! In other words, there is something BIG up there, out there. My first thought is that it’s this massive warship… and then it occurs to me that it must be quite a bit more alive and whole and helpful than that. But either way, it’s BIG!
Here is the first draft paper I wrote today to pull together my nascent understanding of Pattern Languages, the Nature of Order, the Generation of a Living World — and the connections I see to OpenSpaceTech and other developments I’m noticing in the World.