Notes On Participation

Participation: Familiar word, increasingly familiar practice.            

-Have had some wonderful on and offline notes on the recent CorePsychBlog page revisions. They look so clean, so professional, so smart, so unmoldy.

But hey, that's not me bragging, those remarks are simply participation appreciation. I have an attitude of profound gratitude. Yes, poking around I did find a site that I just wanted to copy. I tried my best to clean up my previously busy page look by modeling a real web artist, Steve Borsch at Connecting the Dots. But in the process of connecting, Steve did more than model, he gave me some very specific help, – and Steve, thanks so much.

Yes, Steve does a great job of connecting the dots over there in so many ways. His copy is interesting even to those who are not web developers, like me and you. Consider his interesting piece on the Rise of the Participation Culture right there on page one of his blog.

And there's more:

Using this internet tool we collectively share a completely new set of maps, a different opportunity for informed teamwork. We can all read each comment. We can comment on the comments.

This shift in internet use from passive to active is at the heart of their digital behavior and can be summed up in one word: participation.
Steve Borsch, The Rise of the Participation Culture

Steve, on a deeper level, gets it. He gets the meaning of connectedness – the action of participation. He knows how to teach others, as in his podcast, on the Participation Culture. He suggests how we are moving from arrested adjective to transitive verb – from labels to action.

Sound familiar? Said another way:

For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. —
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

Emerson is, without doubt one of my favorites, but… Ralph, could we change that to “all useful language?”

OK I won't mention Korzybski again… except to say that we also agree on this precept:

The map is not the territory –
Alfred Korzybski, Physicist

I knew I liked Steve as soon as I started reading, because Steve's work is our collective work. Each of us reaches out through our machines to the edges of awareness, information, and new action. Steve helps all of us stride confidently away from feudal domains and vertical management to real team play.

Strongly suggest you take a look at his visually coalescent site. It's a mind freshener.
Thanks again Steve – I look forward to our work together, whatever the format.