Is It A Platform Or A System That We Are Trying To Change?

	Critical Questions

Luigi Bertuzzi - unique CA disrupting and questioning support force

Today I have received a very interesting post from Luigi Bertuzzi, who rightly engages us on a question about terminology and significance of our desire to bring about effective change?

In his reasoning he brings about some interesting questions and conceots making his effort and direction much clearer to understand.

Here is his post and Sepp's comments to it:

Dear Robin,

Re: off-line comments received about
http://robingood.typepad.com/ commagents_blog/2003/09/ how_to_change_a.html#c179130

I have no problem replacing the word *platform* with the word *system*,
if the previous one doesn't make readers feel *actioned*.

A post about *change*, if I may say so, should make its readers feel *actioned*. I, for one, felt actioned by the above referenced post of yours and entered a comment which *wishes to contribute to the
prospective making of an action plan*.

The off-line comments I've read tell me I've failed my objective. Good. We learn by mistake. I'll do a quick revision of my choice of word *platform*, if that causes a bigger problem than the one it tries to address, and then I'll get rid of it.

I'm *questioning* (have I seen this word used in Zoe's Weblog?) the nature and the use of some of the weblogs I'm looking at. Among these there is Robin Good's Communication Agents' Blog (CAB).

One of the issues I've seen in a CAB's post, and made a comment about, addresses nothing less than *the system we live in* and the approach to be taken for making it obsolete, when it leaves too much to be desired, i.e.: the (to be defined) action of *walking away from it* until it becomes obsolete.

Now, walking away from a system we don't like is easier to say than to do.

When it comes to sharing views about the need to contribute *changing* anything *system-wise*, inevitably, prospective parties of a *change action plan* chicken out when it comes to talking *differently from how we eat* because they *must pay the rent (or *tengono famiglia*, in Italian).

I have always been pinned down on my attempt to use the word *platform* as a shortcut for *system*, because it sounds aimless. Note: if I use the word *system* I get pinned down because it sounds too complex. Yet, explaining *platform* is a lot easier than it is to explain *system*.

As a matter of fact, *the system* we live in looks to me like a *merry-go-round*, which is nothing else than *a platform*, spinning around a platform keeper (not necessarily an individual).

In such platform/system example what goes on is very simple to describe.

There are a number of roles a child might wish to take up: bus driver, horse rider, plane pilot .... Once a role is selected, that's it. There is no communication among roles. It's the perfect anticipation of the
*closed compartment life style* a child is going to experience in life, as an employed grown up person. Once *in a role* one can only wait for a change when boarding for the next merry-go-round ride begins ... or go looking for another merry go round with a different choice of roles.

With this *platform perspective*, if it is not a load of rubbish instead of a down sized system description, I can sense that *Weblogs are platforms as well*. Just replace *roles* with *topics* and there you are. You a have a beautiful display of *communication-wise frozen-stiff topics* spinning around a (difficult to say who or what) platform keeper. Each post may have no or many comments. The comments are just like the children who take turns at selecting the role for their ride of the moment. Action wise, they produce no change at all.

How do we walk away from a place, and how do we know we are heading towards a better one, if we don't own and share a description of the place we want to walk away from?

Why my clumsy attempt, to describe what I want to walk away from, may easily get rated as *epistemology*, (i.e. something I would not even know how to explain), just because I have tried to use the word *platform*, which does not seem difficult at all to explain?

Am I questioning something that I should NOT question, *for fear* of finding myself falling in absolute emptiness? Does the word *platform* evoke *epistemology*, or does it evoke *fear*? The fear we sense when our feet are not firmly planted on solid ground, for instance.

What else could one *imagine*, that might contribute creating a *base camp for web destinations* instead of *yet another platform*? A *base camp* concept should not mean its structural properties: one should
rather see it as *the get together* of like minded people who may share the curiosity and the willingness to *walk towards* some attractive (web based) achievement.

In practical terms, how might the post that I have tried to comment translate into the collaborative editorial activity required by the drafting of an action plan that can be shared by a few *initiators*, and shown around to invite others to join in ... ?

I guess one should do better and cancel all imagination flights ... if their take off ground is still covered by fog, so thick that a choice of word may prevent the reading of all the intentions behind it.

I am now ready to stay put, until I have identified a role I can take up without questioning its meaning. With all due respect, if anything I'm trying to say trods inadvertently on anybody's feet, and kindest regards ..

Luigi

And here is Sepp Hasslberger email comments after I had forwarded Luigi's reply to him:

Dear Robin,

as far as I can divine from Luigi's writing, he is concerned with the whole direction of a change effort such as ours. He says the present situation is a "system" and the situation we envisage is a different "system", and that change happens by "drifting" from one to another.

He is correct to say that one should have a good idea of both systems, and a way to measure progress going from one system to another. This is a very general view of our work and is not something which at this stage would be vital, but in any case, it is never bad to have some kind of reality check to gauge your progress. Is it going in the right direction? Are we moving at all?

Sepp

The question and issues raised are important to us and I don't know if I share Luigi's view on paralelling our communication efforts to static role that have no power to bring about any change.

We are here to expose what is the present system and to draft and suggest the new skyline to paint on the horizonline. How can we not be effective change agents?

It would be great to read other opinions on this as well.

In any case, as we approach the official and public launch of the new Communication Agents site we do like to question how effective is the change model at hand and how can we refine and improve our precision ballistic system to make it ever more effective.

Thomas Khun holds in my opinion one of the better keys to explain and understand how we can ever accomplish such ambitious goal and it is no surprise that references and lins to his majestic work his gloriously absent. In his theory of Scientific Revolutions he clearly explains how several factors simultaneously at work can and have in the past human history caused paradigmatic changes similar to the one we are trying to facilitate through our Communication Agents Initiative efforts.