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Introductions and a little background

Hello all, I hope to post at least an entry a day during my time on here... ive always thought this guest blog section was a great idea and myself try to read as much as possible from it. Its always nice to hear from and about so many people all over.....

A little more about me...

I turned 25 back in May, and have lived in North Carolina all my life. Art and technology have always been great passions of mine and ultimately led to a degree in visual communication focusing on 3D animation and interactive design. And while in college, I first got involved unexpectedly in developing corporate eLearning, which I would take on projects here and there, but after graduating I actually founded an animation studio with 3 classmates, which had a "healthy" east coast run of roughly 1 year or so....

Nonetheless, learned some great lessons and move on to starting a small company which would actually focus on eLearning, which was back in 2006, so its been a relative success and an interesting run. Looking back, I think being introduced to eLearning and training sparked an interest eventually leading me to complexity theory, then Snowden and Cognitive Edge.

I have also been through a program up at the University of Manitoba for Emerging Technologies for Learning, which of course is a Connectivism based program involving George Siemens... which was certainly an eye opener as well.

All I can remember is that for years I struggled with the ideas of Freedom vs. Security, and the weird notion that for some reason everyone seems to be so obsessed with Security in real life, but always dreaming of Freedom. I always had a problem with organized schooling and college systems, so independent research has always been a major focus of mine.... and even though I still do, I have found my way back now pursuing a degree in Anthropology and Cognitive Science.

Over the next two weeks, I hope to present some of my thoughts and findings which ultimately led to Complexity Theory, in compliments with Complexity Theory, as well as what I believe to be transcending Complexity Theory... tying them back to as many "practical" areas as possible.

Comments (3)

Steve Holt:

I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the Security vs. Freedom conflict. It immediately reminded me of a conflict diagram created by Dr. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag on what she says is the core conflict behind human happiness.

Basically we humans have a need to be satisfied, which we achieve by willingly embracing challenges. When we succeed at them we feel justifiably self-confident. This is the Freedom side of your conflict.

At the same time, we have a need for Security, which we achieve by resisting change, being careful, never going too far from what's we're doing today.

Having both freedom (satisfaction) and security are necessary for happiness. They are not in conflict in and of themselves. However, their prerequisites or the actions they lead to can be in conflict. Freedom leads us to embrace change and Security leads us to resist change, for example.

To see how this looks drawn out, see Bill Dettmer's paper here: http://www.goalsys.com/systemsthinking/documents/Part-12-LogicandEmotioninChangingMinds.pdf

Great that you're guest blogging, Mark. I'm always interested to read about your thoughts and ideas in general, partly because it's not often you find people our age involved in this field.

It also seems we both have a problem with organised schooling and college systems, something you might have picked up from my guest blog stint. ;-)

I look forward to reading more of your posts. Ganbatte!

Michael:

Welcome to the guest blog Mark! Looking forward to reflecting on your posts.