In 2006 the Dutch Huis voor de Democratie (House for Democracy) was founded. I have been a programme director from the beginning. My colleague Roel in ‘t Veld, former State Secretary and current professor, stated in his latest inaugural speech that representative democracy may have served us well in the past, but has become obsolete. The mission of our Huis voor de Democratie is to demonstrate that democracy is more than the occasional run to the ballot and to reinvent democracy as we know it. Scales have become too big (global) and too small (local) in a networked society to let the opportunities for participation go by. Representation seems to fit an inbetween size that doen not apply anymore.

This week I read an article about people in their thirties and how they don’t like to think for themselves ( here in Dutch). They prefer to receive cut and dried concepts and ideas. In Cynefin terms: they function well in the known-domain, where rules and unambiguousness are effective. The explanation offered was that this thirty-something generation, the first to be confronted with choice, hasn’t learned to cope and deal with the myriad of choices and possibilities a) the previous generation didn’t have, so the thirty-plus generation didn’t have that problem; and b) the next generation, that has indeed learned to deal with this myriad. Although I haven’t seen the questionnaire, my guess is it was a list of items and alternatives. Gives to think: present closed options and then find the respondents don’t like to think for themselves. Isn’t that inherent in all questionnaires, where people are invited to respond instead of cocreate?

Floor Basten

Feeling my way through the material from the April CE London course, my main concern at the moment is  ‘how’. Working in a world of simplifications, averages and fear of emergence (see Floor’s Thirtysomething blog) contrasts with a strong post-workshop awareness of patterns amidst colourful diversity, the need to cater for weak signals amidst over-standardised information systems, and the potential of tagged narratives. But how to translate this into practice?

Last month I spent 3 days with a diverse and interesting group of participants in the Cognitive Edge Accreditation Course led by Dave Snowden and Michael Cheveldave. I felt a bit out of place because most of the participants were consultants or practitioners, but quickly focused on the research applications of what I was learning.

I’m not sure what my guest blogs are going to look like – it’s hard for an academic to let the thoughts flow, so to speak, without thinking about what the reviewers will say…

As I said earlier, I’m excited about using the Cognitive Edge techniques in my research. As a first crack at it, we’re going to look at the very large database in the Aviation Safety Reporting System. If you don’t know what this is, check out http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ . Anyone involved in aviation - pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, maintenance personnel – can file a report of an unsafe incident. The incentive for pilots is protection from penalties associated with their own actions (e.g., if they ‘bust’ an altitude, or do not follow an ATC directive). The incidents are de-identified and catalogued, and are searchable by keywords, dates, type of aircraft, etc. The reporter tells what happened in his/her own words. Seems like an idea story database to mine – but the authors are not available to answer any new questions on their reports. Any tips on indexing/signifying someone else’s stories after the fact are greatly appreciated.

I’m awaiting the arrival of friends from Paris – I was there during a terrible August heat wave several years ago, and will be happy to welcome them to our Oakland summer temperature of about 70 deg! I’m sure they won’t miss the Parisian heat.
I’ve gotten some good suggestions for making sense of the ASRS reports. Right now, we’re just reading the batch. My students say they will be hesitant to fly again after reading all these incident reports – but the good news is that none of these incidents resulted in an accident. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of titles will be given to these reports – and to see what people say about the frequency of different types of conflict between pilots and ATC.
On a happy personal note, I was elected President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. I’ll spend a year as President-Elect before starting my year as President. The Naturalistic Decision Making community started a technical group within HFES – the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group. HFES publishes a journal – the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making – and you can join the TG without being a member of HFES. Check the hfes.org website.