pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

Allright folks.

Here's the vision, as promised.

*Please* take the time to read it and respond - this is a discussion that 
must be had early on.  We ought to establish our vision and high-level 
goals, and I present the following as a part of this discussion.

.l.a...v.i.s.i.o.n.

I understand Permaculture as a systems science, seeking to weave 
meaningful relationships between system components in order to create 
self-regulating and regenerative systems.  System components may be 
plants – woven together to create guilds, people/organizations – woven 
together to create communities, or otherwise.  Basically, Permaculture to 
me is a form of ‘Biomimicry,’ applying the principles of inherently-
sustainable ecosystems (waste-as-resource, stacking functions, etc.) to 
potentially all realms of human activity (although it has thus far been 
primarily focused on those which satisfy basic human needs). 

In order to practice Permaculture and embed its essentially ecological 
principles in our thinking and creative processes, the medium – both for 
teaching and learning – must match the message.  We must employ systemic 
learning materials, in the form of games, exercises, software tools, 
etc., in order to think systemically.  You know where this is going…we 
must apply Permaculture principles to the manner in which we teach and 
learn Permaculture.  (To get an idea of what this might look like, please 
check out Christopher Peck’s ‘Developing the Art of Teaching’ at 
www.holistic-solutions.net/ Articles/DevelopArtofTeaching.pdf, and my 
recent article in the Biomimicry Newsletter titled ‘Bio-Education at 
http://www.thinkcycle.org/tc-filesystem/file?file_id=50371.)  

For a while now, I’ve dreamt of a concept-mapping authoring tool.  I 
thought that this would be the ideal systems thinking tool, allowing 
users to weave and understand the relationships between phenomena, and 
therefore think in and design systems.  (And actually, I discussed the 
necessity for this tool with Fritjof Capra a few years back.)  Such a 
tool could be used both academically and personally, and would be 
relevant to all systems-oriented subject matter.  I could expand on the 
potential uses of such a tool if you are interested, but for purposes of 
brevity, I will continue.  Of course, I made the connection between my 
dream tool and guild design – imagining the ability to both learn about 
and create guilds through such a tool, and have users embed information 
into the strands between the nodes.

So you can understand why I was overjoyed to discover Thinkmap – the 
closest thing I had ever seen to this dream tool.  And although it was 
simply representational and not an authoring tool, I thought it did a 
beautiful job of educating users about language – presenting it as a web 
of interrelated meanings between words, versus the linear and static list 
you get from most thesauri (wow, I’ve never written thesauri plural, what 
a fantastic word!).  Anyways.  Here’s a snip from my initial ramblings 
for a grant proposal, written about a year ago.  Ideas may have changed, 
and you may disagree with some things, but please bear with me:

“…To shift gears and describe how I am going to achieve this end, I must 
describe the software tool I will be using, which is called Thinkmap.  
Due to its non-linear and web-like visual interface, it is an ideal tool 
for representing complex and relationship-based knowledge.  Also, because 
of its interactivity and organic architecture, it is easily customized to 
a high degree of specification.  Viewing the Visual Thesaurus designed 
with Thinkmap will beautifully illustrate what I mean.  Conventional 
thesauruses [guess I missed the opportunity to write thesauri here] 
display synonyms in a linear fashion, merely listing them alongside the 
original word chosen.  The Visual Thesaurus, however, displays synonyms 
orbiting the original word, with their proximity and boldness determined 
by their relationship to each other and the original word.  All synonyms 
are not treated the same, as would be the case in a linear 
representation, but are placed relatively.  If an orbiting synonym is 
clicked upon, it too becomes surrounded by its own synonyms, some of 
which may likely be synonyms of the original word, and therefore are 
linked to both the first and second words chosen.  (For a better 
description and actual experience of the Visual Thesaurus, please visit 
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html and use the online 
edition.)  In this manner, words are situated in the context of their 
meaning, and language is rightly portrayed as a relational web, abundant 
with interconnections.  Understanding of these interconnections is 
enriched by this thesaurus, while it is absent from conventional ones.  
Parallel to the manner in which Permaculture learns how to design its 
subject from its subject, Thinkmap is an elegant tool for teaching and 
learning non-linear information in a non-linear manner. 

“Central to Permaculture is the concept of guilds.  Guilds may be 
understood as the basic unit of Permaculture, the designed plant 
communities from which natural ecosystems evolve.  Guild design usually 
starts with a tree, and branches outward to include related vegetation in 
concentric rings, until a vegetative ecosystem is established. Guild 
design is highly specific to its local environment, and must account for 
both the intricate relationships between native vegetation, and between 
native and non-native vegetation.  Because of such complexity, they are 
quite difficult to design, requiring expertise regarding plant 
relationships and the results of time-tested experiments...However, 
because Permaculture in North America remains a young field, mature 
guilds are only now being created and discovered, and their development 
would certainly benefit from a shared database of successful guilds.   

“The proposed project seeks to gather information from Permaculture 
experts nationwide, and incorporate findings into an online shared 
resource in Thinkmap form.  Such information would focus primarily on 
guild design, but would inevitably extend into the realms of 
phenomenology, symbiosis, soil systems, and other such related issues.  
Basically, guilds would be a central concept from which to, literally and 
metaphorically, branch out into the orbiting topics of Permaculture.  
[This refers to Lawrence’s dream of a Permaculture Knowledgebase!]…

“… This resource would be distantly similar to GardenWeb (http://
www.gardenweb.com/), and other themed forums which allow people to 
exchange advice and ideas regarding specific topics.  Although such 
forums can be very resourceful, they merely collect postings and sort 
them in separate categories, failing to account for the interconnections 
between them or to build a coherent web of information which can be 
easily navigated through.  Thinkmap’s non-linear agility and 
interactivity lends itself perfectly to the building of guilds, and its 
related topics.  

“[And here’s the key part of this.]  Similar to the manner in which 
Visual Thesaurus commences with a core word, guilds commence with a core 
element, the tree, as mentioned above.  Users could, for example, choose 
a tree native to their local environment.  The tree would suddenly become 
orbited by companion plants—native or non-native plants which ‘get along 
with’ that particular tree, so to speak.  The user could click on 
whichever plant she wishes to add to the guild, and suddenly that plant 
would be orbited by further companion plants, and so on.  There are a 
multitude of possibilities with this application: users could start with 
guilds already established for their local region and edit from there; 
users could enter emphases or restrictions—such as the desire for food 
production, the existence of strong winds coming from a particular 
direction, or the existence of deer; users could attach virtual notes to 
specific combinations, alerting other users that a collection of flora 
are a fine combination; analogous to the manner in which Thinkmap 
portrays antonyms by their almost translucent appearance, a guild-builder 
could portray antagonistic relationships between vegetation; the 
application could be designed to include minerals or soil-additives, 
bacteria, insects, fungi, birds, and other animals, adding expanded 
dimensions to the process of guild design.  Evidently, possibilities 
abound, and will continue to do so…”  

Going beyond Thinkmap, and as I’ve mentioned before, the majority of the 
information in this resource will lie in the strands between the nodes.  
Considering the user experience described above, users would be able to 
click on the line (relationship) between two components (in this case, 
plants) and learn about it.  Strands could contain photos, case studies, 
contacts, references, etc. – all sorts of information regarding the 
relationship between 2 or more systems components.  And it could be used 
as both a learning tool, to learn about plant relationships, and an 
authoring tool, to design them.

Now, of course we have moved on from Thinkmap!  And potentially from 
GUIs.  And honestly, I don’t care what format we use – as long as the 
medium matches the message, as long as the user interface matches the 
user experience.  I've done a lot of thinking in this regard, and made 
pretty elaborate scripts of the user experience I'd like to see (which I 
will elaborate on soon enough).  

I want us to really contemplate the kind of thinking (relationship-
oriented) we are attempting to cultivate, and design the user experience 
accordingly.  I want what we create to be revolutionary in terms of 
systemic education.  And I think it has the potential to be.


 



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Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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