The logo of Wikipedia presents a common image of knowledge: ![[Wikipedia logo.png|300x300]] It is a perfectly interlocking jigsaw puzzle, where the pieces dovetail neatly into each other. That missing jigsaw piece represents the elusive goal we seek. We think there is one objective reality, and everything will make sense if only we can find that missing piece of information. But that’s not really what I think should be our image of knowledge. I don’t think there is an objective reality. And I think there are more possibilities of how to think than we admit. I’d like to propose an alternate image: ![[Desert dunes.png]] Knowledge is like sand dunes. It seems to be a solid and immoveable landscape. But look closely and we will see that it consists of particles of sand. Taken collectively, it is monolithic. But taken individually, each particle of sand could as well be anywhere else. It has been my lifelong passion to explore each individual sand, and see if it can’t be shifted or nudged elsewhere. The winds that blow the particles are ephemeral. They are accidents of history, self, family, culture, and curiosity. And yet if enough particles of sand are moved, we get an entirely different landscape, a completely different dune – what one might call the [[The adjacent possible is a shadow future]]. This is a concept I have been obsessed with for some time. There are beliefs and concepts that we think are impossible from our current position. But it is possible to extend our current beliefs step by step, until we form a bridge to something previously thought impossible. This is the adjacent possible. As Steven Johnson notes: > The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.