*Jean Russell, Herman Wagter* # Progressive Summary # Definitions Flow: 1) connected stream of movement 2) psychological state of engagement Boundary: a limit, like a membrane that allows some things to pass through and others to be contained or repelled Ecosystem: the flows of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system Complicated: having many parts with fairly clear causal relationships Complex: having many parts with unknown or even unknowable relationships Symmathesy: what Nora Bateson calls living and learning systems. The distinction between mechanical systems with engineering metaphors and living systems with their learning processes needs clearer language, or we will apply the restrictions of mechanical systems to our understanding of living and learning ones Emergent, Networked, Event-Driven (ENE): efforts that come into being through networked connections between entities, and stimulated by a triggering event Process Hierarchy: when agreements and processes enable swarm intelligence rather than requiring a functional hierarchy to command and direct activity Hacker: someone who enjoys overcoming obstacles with interesting solutions Social Technology: the agreements, forms, relationships, behaviors, laws, and concepts we have Safety is about defense: preventing external and internal attacks that threaten the existence of the group, maintaining an active immune system that adapts, learns, and acts. Security is about resources and resilience. A group of people must be able to shift burdens when needed, to lend support, resources, and strength to each other, so their network is stronger than the sum of its parts. Care is about allowing each other to take chances, about resolving conflict and dilemmas, about collective and individual learning from mistakes, helping each other up when we fall down. # Chapter Notes ## Chapter 5 - Forms for Social Flows > A group must be able to create safety, security, and care for each other, otherwise it is not felt to be a functional group. People who do not act co-responsible are ejected, if only informally. People who act co-responsible but are not part of the formal structure for a group are nonetheless incorporated. If formal memberships and legal structures do not align with this need, or even conflict with it, the natural social flow is disrupted. This creates stress and anxiety. > Forms do not follow the laws of gravity. Forms aren’t made of wood, glass, or silicon. They are constructed by relationships and agreements between people, people who share energy, attention, resources, and wisdom and who are working toward a common purpose. Having a clear aspiration, a purpose, a “why” in the shared rich narrative often unites a collective more than agreement on “how.” People who share the narrative tend to be aspirational, passionate, and resourceful about it. They will find and invent solutions where necessary and they only need enough form to allow them to follow their passion. > Every time the size of a group or a process grows by 200% or more, it is like entering a new landscape: a form that works at a smaller scale may fail spectacularly when the size passes a new threshold. As people join in and become participants, the need arises to create forms to enable the network to flow. Knowledge, decisions, and actions need to continue to flow as we scale up or out. There is a dance between keeping it highly customized to the individuals present and the standardization that provides consistency across the effort, so we appear as a unified whole. ## Chapter 6 - Flows and Coherence # Quotes # References