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  • From: Antar Sangit <sangit@sede.ibama.gov.br>
  • To: Permaculture WA <perma@eepo.com.au>
  • Subject: Holoplanning
  • Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 15:50:06 -0300

Thanks to everybody that are interested on Holoplanning.

Here goes the abstract of the paper, which is originally written in
Portuguese.

HOLOPLANNING - THE CONTINUUM OF RESOLUTION

ABSTRACT: This is a position paper presenting the concept of
holoplanning as a holistic approach to planning. It is a
discussion using concepts and ideas presented on theoretical
perspectives such as chaos, dissipative structures, autopoiesis,
implicit order, holomovement and other systemic approach ideas and
concepts to deal with cognitive aspects of knowledge acquisition,
representation and consequent set of decisions and actions presented
in a planning process. For the purposes of this paper, planning is
considered as a set of conversations and consequent actions to
fulfill a social or group necessity to overcome a situation
perceived as a problem towards another situation foreseen as a
solution to the previous problem. The experimental hypothesis
considered is that within a social group, inserted in a specifical
social-cultural context, there is a potential and latent synergic
state of affairs which can be unfolded or manifested through a
facilitation process. Using Prigogine's proposition that order can
emerge out of chaos and David Bhom's idea of chaos as a state of
implicit order, sincronicity can be seen as part of the process of
order unfoldment from chaos or radomic interaction of events under
an observer perspective or phocus. This observer's role, which can be
played by an individual or a social group, is to select through an
estochastic process among random events those convergent
situations that matches with the observer purpose or
desired reality under construction through the process of planning.
Order, beauty and complexity arrising from chaos is exactely the
process used by nature to generate form, as decribed by Gregory
Bateson's work on the book Mind and Nature in the chapter about the
Great Estochastic Process. To plan under such a point of view, is to
make decisions about which actions should be
performed in order to cope with nature's evolutionary process, only
under a human observer scale of time. This perspective could be
potentially accomplished through the use of a coordination model
monitoring the interection of two networks: social (people) and
informational (computers, data, information and knowledge banks and
networks). This process can be seen as a sort of real time planning
through an individual or communitary (ethnic, local etc) point of
view, and at the same time under a whole, (gestalt, national, global
etc) point of view, constituting a holistic perspective. Under such
perspective the part and the whole are considered as equally
important aspects of reality. "Project" or linear reasoning from
original to desired condition, as well as "bricolage" or objective
coincidences or non-linear cross-fertilization approach to events
where the goal or purpose is not a-priori present but emerge
through it's own process, both can be used in a convergent
or complementary way of planning and acting. The metaphor of
holomovement, or a holographic interaction of events in the
space-time continuun is adequate to describe the context into which
the planning process is performed. The intention is to promote
adequate conditions in such a way that self-organization can emerge
within an ordinary group of people, which includes individuals as
skilled autonomous cognitive agents, interacting in a cooperative
effort with the support of computers, using CSCW (Computer Supported
Cooperative Work) technologies, in an attempt to solve a problematic
complex situation.


Sangit
Insitututo de Permacultura de Brasilia
Brazil



  • Holoplanning, Antar Sangit, 10/08/1997

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