Subject: Holoplanning

From: Antar Sangit <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 15:50:06 -0300

Thanks to everybody that are interested on Holoplanning. 

Here goes the abstract of the paper, which is originally written in 
Portuguese. 

HOLOPLANNING - THE CONTINUUM OF RESOLUTION

ABSTRACT: This is a position paper presenting the concept of 
holoplanning as a holistic approach to planning. It is  a 
discussion using concepts and ideas presented on theoretical 
perspectives such as chaos, dissipative structures, autopoiesis, 
implicit order, holomovement  and other systemic approach ideas  and 
concepts to deal with cognitive aspects of knowledge acquisition, 
representation and consequent set of decisions and actions presented 
in a planning process. For the purposes of this paper, planning is 
considered as a set of conversations and consequent actions to 
fulfill a social or group necessity to overcome a situation 
perceived as a problem towards another situation foreseen as a 
solution to the previous problem. The experimental hypothesis 
considered is that within a social group, inserted in a specifical 
social-cultural context,  there is a potential and latent synergic 
state of affairs which can be unfolded or manifested through a 
facilitation process. Using  Prigogine's proposition that order can 
emerge out of chaos and David Bhom's idea of chaos as a state of 
implicit order, sincronicity can be seen as part of the process of 
order unfoldment from chaos or radomic interaction of events under 
an observer perspective or phocus. This observer's role, which can be 
played by an individual or a social group,  is to select through an  
estochastic process among random events those convergent 
situations that matches with the observer purpose or 
desired reality under construction through the process of planning. 
Order, beauty and complexity arrising from chaos is exactely the 
process used  by nature to generate form, as decribed by Gregory 
Bateson's work on the book Mind and Nature in the chapter about the 
Great Estochastic Process.  To plan under such a point of view, is to 
make decisions about which actions should be 
performed in order to cope with nature's evolutionary process, only 
under a human observer  scale of time. This perspective could be 
potentially accomplished  through the use of a coordination model 
monitoring the interection of two networks: social (people)  and 
informational (computers, data, information and knowledge banks and 
networks). This process can be seen as a sort of real time planning 
through an individual or  communitary (ethnic, local etc) point of 
view, and at the same time under a whole, (gestalt, national, global 
etc) point of view, constituting a holistic perspective. Under such 
perspective the part and the whole are considered as equally 
important aspects of reality. "Project" or linear reasoning from 
original to desired condition, as well as "bricolage" or objective 
coincidences or non-linear cross-fertilization approach to events 
where the goal or purpose is not a-priori present but emerge  
through it's own process, both can be used in a convergent 
or complementary way of planning and acting.  The metaphor of 
holomovement, or a holographic interaction of events in the 
space-time continuun is adequate to describe the context into which 
the planning process is performed. The intention is to promote 
adequate conditions in such a way that self-organization can emerge 
within an ordinary group of people, which includes individuals as 
skilled autonomous cognitive agents, interacting in a cooperative 
effort with the support of computers, using  CSCW (Computer Supported 
Cooperative Work) technologies, in an attempt to solve a problematic 
complex situation.   

Sangit
Insitututo de Permacultura de Brasilia
Brazil