Design a Big Space - Start with a Big Sky!
Principles of Design
Minds grow, learn and create best when they have lots and lots of space.
That's how we settled on the name "Big Sky." We want a big big sky and lots and lots of space underneath that sky.
Below is a kind of just-for-fun description of what we mean by space and how that idea relates to learning and thinking and some topics like cognition, memory, art and culture. Then we talk about the principles we are playing with to try to design that space: Design principles to create spaces for thinking on our own and together.
Let's start! Imagine suddenly finding yourself outside in a new place - a really really big new place ...
Picture a wide horizon stretching out in front of you in all directions. The sky is deep and blue and cloudless and open. It stretches out and away, seemingly forever. The scene cannot be taken in all at once so you start looking around. To your left you find a few wispy white clouds moving off in the distance - they give your eyes something to rest on and get some bearing. Below the big sky the lands stretch away to meet the horizon. Some of the lands have bigness as their only feature, while others have lots of detail. Vast open stretches, prairies, mountains, lakes. In many places, maybe most, networks of rivers and streams travel around, though and into, well, everything. In the far far distance, there is what appears to be the opening to an ocean, with shimmering humidity and towering vaguely-blue clouds with pulses of white.
In a few areas in the distance, if you look hard, you can see moving things, sometimes in vast herds, sometimes in small groups, pairs, or alone. Mostly animals and maybe here and there what might be teams of explorers. Yet the space is so vast that you have to focus hard to even be aware of them. As finally you look behind you it turns out that you are near the foot of one of the mountain ranges - a few kilometers away. And right at one of the entry points is a little building that looks like it might be a cool little café with people sitting around on the decks, reading or talking, and coming and going. Some are going from their into the mountains.
That's the kind of space Big Sky wants to work with! That's the kind of mind-space, learning space, thinking space we think works best for the kinds of things we want to consider and explore.
What’s this have to do with our things like cognition, memory and culture?
Our entry point to this space starts from the vantage point of human cognition and looks out into the vast areas of the cognitive sciences: Psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, philosophy, anthropology and linguistics. In the very near horizon are topics like memory, personality formation, attention, creativity and learning. Streams and thin rain clouds of ideas, information and insights flow and drift out from mountain ranges with names like Physics, Biology and Mathematics. They flow out over parts of the landscape and sometimes into vast networks of patched fields called things like This Culture, That Language, This Art, That Place, This Practice and That Experience. Some flow to and from several massive lakes or small oceans which have names like Experience, History, Religion, Consciousness, Technology, Design and The Universe of Things. It is hard to tell for sure but it appears that the rivers and clouds travel on to some kind of vast ocean ....
Design principles to create spaces for thinking on our own and together.
Grow Ideas:
A rich environment of interesting, fresh and simulating ideas is key to learning, creativity and optimal mental health. Cognitive science and it’s related fields is a powerful generator of ideas, insights and perspectives. Not only is it a great source of ideas, but we use it to develop the art and science of stimulating, exploring, capturing and creating with these ideas.
Abundance:
There is an infinite number of interesting things to learn and think about.
There is an infinite number of interesting ways to think about them.
There is an infinite number of ways to combine them, create with them and build with them.
An awareness of this abundance is a contributor to mental health, wonder, curiosity and happiness.
Play:
Mental life, learning, thinking and creating are part of an infinite game.
The game never repeats. The content and context of the knowledge changes. Our relationship to that knowledge changes. The underlying brain structures supporting that knowledge is changing and dynamic. These factors create combine together to create new game moments at every instance of play.
Creative Inaccuracy:
The most interesting ideas, perspectives and materials found under The Big Sky are not "right." They are not accurate or complete. They are not proven. While it is possible that any number of them might be right, accurate or proven, this has as much to do with chance as anything else. Some of them will more or less tend toward being "right" as a function of analysis and approximation, as the spaces are shaped and as their objects are tweaked, filled out and animated. In this way spaces will become more like what they are thought to represent.
Uniqueness:
Human brains and human minds are unique and their interactions with an abundantly rich universe are necessarily unique.
Teams:
There is an infinite number of ways to combine minds and their products.
Many (but not all) aspects of learning benefit from a social component.
Unity of Knowledge:
Mining the connections between knowledge and ideas, wherever useful or creative, no matter where they come.
Active skills of integration, association, connection and depth of processing.
Tend toward the connections between fundamental units of knowledge.
Tend toward exploring fields on knowledge in order to find metaphors or structures that may help to elucidate or expand knowledge in other fields.
Point the way and facilitate future exploration by ourselves and others:
Take time to create paths, maps and pointers to areas of thought, insights one has discovered or rediscovered. Tend toward directing others to those spaces rather than attempting to provide them with the spaces of themselves.
Provide brains-storming interfaces and systems of thought questions
Emphasis on Fundamental ideas, structures, objects
Tend to spend more time on atomic or fundamental thoughts over more elaborated structures that might build from them.
Tend toward making fundamentals available so that we have things to think about, discuss and build with, without requiring surrounding theory and context.
Tend toward making more an more units of insight available to be used as building blocks, components, and participants in new thinking, combinations and thought experiments.
Some questions that push the envelope of this space
How do cognitive processes create potential? How do they create space for unique growth, development, creativity, wonder and happiness?