[iDC] 136 Detours

[Doug Schuler]

136 Detours

For the past eight years I've been working with 85+ people on a  
project to identify "patterns" that will help promote positive social  
change. Each pattern integrates social analysis and critique with  
practical recommendations and, although each pattern is intended to be  
used with other patterns, they also stand alone.

Each of the 136 patterns presents a conceptual detour. Each suggests a  
multitude of possible routes that don't follow the ruts that today's  
dominant forces (including inertia) are pushing on us.  The entire set  
is a pattern language, a provisional, bottom-up critical theory of  
social change.

The following two paragraphs are from the first chapter of "Liberating  
Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution" (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11601 
) which was just published by MIT Press.

"This book is devoted to the demolition of the official version of  
information and communication systems at the dawn of the twenty-first  
century and to the construction of alternative visions. Without  
denying the positive impacts that elite people can and do make, this  
book is dedicated to a radical orientation in which ordinary people  
assert their rights, and their responsibilities, as citizens of the  
world. It is my contention that the collective intelligence of the  
world’s citizens, built on values, creativity, and courage, is also  
desperately needed now. In part this is necessary to curb the excesses  
of the world’s elites, many of whom have drunk too deeply and too  
eagerly of their own self-congratulatory rhetoric and ideology and, as  
a result, sacrificed the common good, knowingly as well as  
unknowingly, to enhance their own privilege and power.

This book concentrates on communication as a crucial arena in the  
battle for equality and justice. Communication is key to any  
collective enterprise, and it is for that reason that we invite you to  
the communication revolution that is already yours to win. Our only  
request is that you acknowledge and take seriously your role as an  
active participant. This is a diffuse and distributed movement. It  
needs leaders and followers, and people in this work frequently shift  
in and out of both roles. Everybody is needed in this struggle as we  
work to liberate the voices, and the thoughts and actions, of people  
around the world as humankind lurches warily and ill prepared into the  
uncertainties of the century that has just begun."

--  From Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication  
Revolution (MIT Press, 2008)


Over the next few months we hope to learn how the patterns are being  
used and how to improve the process of using the patterns, via online  
and offline, facilitated and non-facilitated approaches. We also plan  
to improve the web site to allow people and groups to develop their  
own pattern languages using existing as well as new patterns and to be  
able to supplement the patterns with examples and experiences.

We welcome your participation. We'd especially like to see the  
addition of new patterns that reflect your insights with respect to  
distributed creativity.

Please let me know if you'd like to see the announcement for the  
book.  I'd appreciate any and all assistance spreading the word.

Doug Schuler


The Public Sphere Project
      http://www.publicsphereproject.org/

The Liberating Voices pattern language project
      http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/

Online portal to the patterns in the book
     http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/pattern-table-of-contents.php

Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution can  
be ordered online at:
      http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11601