Now I am enjoying some papers guided by CCK09 week 6 Complex adaptive systems. I found the wonderful sites of SantaFe Institute, really easy and motivating to use. They will be my favourite sites…
Another source worth of reading in my opinion is Francis Heylighen, Free University of Brussels. He deals with complexity and information overload in society: why increasing efficiency leads to decreasing control. It is possible to predict causal effects but not human behavior. The amount of information in society and the speed followed by open publications increase and we get data smog that covers real knowledge. We have tools to organise flows of informations but here is again the overload, the overload of opportunities. I don’t know how to find any valuable from my Google Reader or iGoogle or Twitter, but I find a lot of data smog all the time.
It is a paradox that the only way to use complex and open systems is to make them more simple and restricted. So I build a system of ‘people I can trust’ in my mind and choose what and whom to follow. But if I have never time to read or think I can follow many wrong prophets. One of the problems is that those who now only technology have a strong voice in social media and others can follow them quite blindly. This is a bubble of social media that is good to see, I opened my eyes while participating in a discussion in Finnish last week. Young guyes take the power with poor understanding of substance things, they have done it some years because it seems normal to other participants. This means losing control and unpredictable influences. There is no friction in tweets, nuisance is open to everybody so let’s use it to be postmodern up-to-date people 
To understand developmental dialectics is needed again: every property and opportunity turns to its opposite and you should be careful and open all the time ,which is impossible. Thanks to F. Heylighen who deepened my thinking and gave me devices to see what’s happening. And thanks to open CCK09 which seem to be an excellent orienting course (source?) to knowledge and connections needed to .. what? to live and learn and participate today.
Last week I was not so much interested in themes given (groups and networks), I feel that I have nothing to learn from our course, the situation there is all the same than a year ago. So I had time to reflect the situation in the course, what is happening. I prefer my blog and clarify the mess in my brain here, not disturb others with sharing it. They, who are interesting in my thought follow this and I appreciate them greatly.
My intention was to tell about an important help I got last week. Google Alert gave me Tom Haskins question about CCK09 connection problems. That’s what I have lived through, I fail to find or recieve the ‘great new idea’ offered to us. There are many ways to interpret this as Tom says. I don’t know yet what my answer will be. I do not believe that neuroscience is a solution of learning sciences’ open questions. It is only part of it.
Pondering on the far out idea also resonates my thinking. It is true that nobody can see the new learning theory needed to intepret new learning possibilities around us. Is it a theory what is needed or a new frame or ..? I saw West Side Story in TV (in Finland) yesterday and I had no problems in enjoying it. After the movie there was a programme of Bernstein and Kiri Te Kanava and Jose Carreras and the orchestra and I admired their great expertice. Fifty years ago and now: people are still people. – Is it worth a new theory if we nowadays listen only 5 minutes videos and follow fragments .. develop excellent vehicles for rapid streams of whatever (nonsense).
Kuhn’s The Structure of scientific revolutions is in my mind, too. Do we really need a revolution of learning theories? And how to do it? I am interested in testing new ways to learn and I appreciate CCK courses because practice is the needed prove, a natural experiment. Continuous follow-up about our reflections is necessary. Or is connectivism a movement for better open world and we can find each other in CCK courses. So every new network connection is result and we don’t need any else evidences.
Dilemma is an interesting psychological concept, Tom wrote about it already and there is a comment of cognitive therapy. And then forward to different process connections… now I have found a blog to follow - thanks to CCK09 tag.
