Symbolic System Head Epiphany
Systemic. There is a word for it. Here it is in a sentence:
"To the new generation of super-symbolic leaders, conditioned to think systemically rather than in terms of isolated steps, it will seem natural."
Alvin Toffler is talking about the shift from the Smokestack Industry to the Knowledge Industry in his 1990 classic Powershift. Old as I am, I am that new generation of super-symbolic leaders. Well, "leader" may be a stretch, since I'm more of a follower with an obsession.
Who am I?
Now the chicken and egg question: am I a knowledge worker because of a natural affinity for systemic thinking or am I a systemic thinker because I'm a knowledge worker? Given that only one college in the country (not mine) offered a computer degree when I walked into my first programming job, I suspect the former. Flowcharts and symbols and even logic were my favorite things -- algebra, Spanish, maps, architecture, music, the UNM library's Dewey Decimal System. I decided at one point to be a theoretical physicist when I saw one on TV writing a lot of symbols on a blackboard.
My love of symbols and systems kept me a heads-down programmer for many years. When I gave up travel to live in Vermont full time, I started looking at pictures a lot, helping out at a local art gallery. Then I got into web sites where coding and pictures come together and now I'm trying to learn a whole shelf full of computer languages for the web. They all look familiar and they all look dull.
Epiphany
This month's epiphany is called Dreamweaver. In spite of the tedious repetition and cloning in my work, I've steered away from code generators. I got stung early on by FrontPage Express. It seemed to work on the surface but it rewrote the underlying code so much that it would get lost and break my page. Dreamweaver CS4 is a long way from that primitive attempt.
The nice thing about Dreamweaver is that you can start with the design and tack on all the parts when you're ready for them. With a content management framework like Drupal and Joomla or any shopping cart package, you have to be a programmer to change the look of it. For the die-hard programmer in me, Dreamweaver lets you see all the code all the time, if you want.
So I'm going to try liberating my artistic sense and taking a larger view of the web presence system. Appearance matters on the web and functionality is a social issue. I'm trying to let go of control and let things happen by themselves. They will anyway.
"To the new generation of super-symbolic leaders, conditioned to think systemically rather than in terms of isolated steps, it will seem natural."
Alvin Toffler is talking about the shift from the Smokestack Industry to the Knowledge Industry in his 1990 classic Powershift. Old as I am, I am that new generation of super-symbolic leaders. Well, "leader" may be a stretch, since I'm more of a follower with an obsession.
Who am I?
Now the chicken and egg question: am I a knowledge worker because of a natural affinity for systemic thinking or am I a systemic thinker because I'm a knowledge worker? Given that only one college in the country (not mine) offered a computer degree when I walked into my first programming job, I suspect the former. Flowcharts and symbols and even logic were my favorite things -- algebra, Spanish, maps, architecture, music, the UNM library's Dewey Decimal System. I decided at one point to be a theoretical physicist when I saw one on TV writing a lot of symbols on a blackboard.
My love of symbols and systems kept me a heads-down programmer for many years. When I gave up travel to live in Vermont full time, I started looking at pictures a lot, helping out at a local art gallery. Then I got into web sites where coding and pictures come together and now I'm trying to learn a whole shelf full of computer languages for the web. They all look familiar and they all look dull.
Epiphany
This month's epiphany is called Dreamweaver. In spite of the tedious repetition and cloning in my work, I've steered away from code generators. I got stung early on by FrontPage Express. It seemed to work on the surface but it rewrote the underlying code so much that it would get lost and break my page. Dreamweaver CS4 is a long way from that primitive attempt.
The nice thing about Dreamweaver is that you can start with the design and tack on all the parts when you're ready for them. With a content management framework like Drupal and Joomla or any shopping cart package, you have to be a programmer to change the look of it. For the die-hard programmer in me, Dreamweaver lets you see all the code all the time, if you want.
So I'm going to try liberating my artistic sense and taking a larger view of the web presence system. Appearance matters on the web and functionality is a social issue. I'm trying to let go of control and let things happen by themselves. They will anyway.
posted by wonderbunny at
7:56 AM
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