TALE: A new network of possible themes (August 24, 2023)

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TALE500

9 min readAug 24, 2023

Curating Mind with Thematic Cards

I often curate my mind by diagramming with pictures, text, and signs. In the past several months, I developed a new visual style of diagrams in order to connect Themes, Thematic Spaces, and Knowledge Models.

I used the following rules for this special type of diagramming:

Using Thematic Cards (Pictures) to represent Possible Themes
Red dots refer to Thematic Spaces
A Knowledge Model is used as a context for the diagramming
Making Personal Tacit Knowledge Visible
Loose connections between mental elements

You can find some related links about my practice of this type of diagramming:

TALE: A new network of possible themes (April 21, 2203)
TALE: Possible Themes v.s. Possible Books (July 14, 2023)
TALE: Possible Configurations of A Theme Network

In the past several months, I used the following diagram to guide my mental focus.

The diagram represents a network of recent projects. The diagram was made with four thematic spaces, four themes, and one framework. The framework is the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach which features the following concepts:

Container / Containee
Event
Offers / Acts
Attach / Detach

The “Attach — Event — Detach” schema echoes a time structure: Before — Event — After. It connects to the following thematic spaces:

Attach: Early Discovery (ED)
Detach: Slow Cognition (SC)
Offers: Ecological Formism (EF)
Acts: Fast Ignition (FI)

We can also find four projects in these thematic spaces:

The “Frame for Work” project > Offers
The “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project > Attach
The “Creative Life Curation” project > Detach
The “Mental Moves” project > Acts

In Nov 2022, I finished a book (draft) titled Creative Life Curation: Turning Life Experiences into Meaningful Achievements.

In Jan 2023, the “Frame for Work” theme was born (1, 2).

In Feb 2023, my mental focus was “Developing Knowledge Frameworks” (1, 2) which led to the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project. In June 2023, I edited a book (draft) titled Thematic Exploration: The Early Discovery of Knowledge Engagement (book, v1).

In March 2023, I started working on the “Mental Moves” knowledge project (1, 2). In July 2023, I closed the project with a new possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition.

This was my journey of knowledge engagement in the past several months.

What’s next?

Yesterday I made the diagram below to represent my newest mental focus.

The same visual style of diagramming but new Thematic Cards (pictures), new Thematic Spaces, and new Knowledge Model.

New Thematic Cards

From April 2023 to June 2023, I also worked on two projects. One is a Strategic Design Research project about a Web3 platform. The other one is a Creative Life Study project about Ping-keung Lui’s theoretical sociology.

While the first project is about technological innovation, the second project is about theoretical innovation. From the perspective of Activity Theory, these two projects refer to different types of concert actions and operations. However, I adopt the Platform Ecology approach to understand their similarity.

Both projects aim to develop an innovative platform to support others’ activities, I use the following frameworks of Platform Ecology for my research.

During the process of working on these two projects, I started developing some new ideas and reorganized my mind about these ideas. For example, I made two new possible themes that are related to the Concept-fit framework.

TALE: A Possible Theme called “Concept Choices” — May 22, 2023
TALE: A Possible Theme called “Spontaneous Concept System” — May 27, 2023

The new diagram highlights some possible themes for further exploration with some possible books:

Social Moves (theme) — To Do
Ecological Strategic Cognition (theme) — To Do
Frame for Work (theme) — To Do
Value Circle (project) — Doing
Thematic Exploration (book) — Done
The Territory of Concept (theme) — To Do
Platform Ecology (project) — Doing
Platform for Development (book) — Done

I didn’t publish an independent post about the theme of “Social Moves”. You can find similar ideas in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Social Pieces”.

These themes are curated around the following four Thematic Spaces:

ST: Social Territory
KE: Knowledge Engagement
CC: Concept Choice
PE: Platform Ecology

The theme “Ecological Strategic Cognition” is about an individual startup founder’s strategic mind while the theme “Social Moves” is about individuals’ creative social action. Thus, they belong to the “Social Territory” thematic space.

The theme “Frame for Work” and the “Value Circle” project are about knowledge models and knowledge centers. They belong to the “Knowledge Engagement” thematic space.

I set a new thematic space called “Concept Choice” in order to put the theme “Thematic Exploration” and the theme “The Territory of Concepts” together.

Finally, the “Platform Ecology” thematic space refers to the Platform Ecology framework (v3.1) and the book (draft) titled Platform for Development.

Social Moves Between Social Territories

Three days ago, I published a post titled TALE: The Territory of Concepts and mentioned the theme of Social Moves at the end of the post.

The Optimal Context Canvas presents 16 blocks that can be seen as thematic spaces.
Growing a Territory of Concept can be understood as moving between these thematic spaces.
In this way, the Territory of Concepts is about Social Moves.

The term “Social Territory” is adopted from Ping-keung Lui’s Subjectivist Structuralism which is part of his theoretical sociology.

Lui considers the following four realities for the grand theory:

The Weberian course of action
The Giddensian course of action
Social Territory
Symbolic Universe

I have recently working on the Knowledge Engagement project which adopts Lui’s Subjectivist Structuralism as a meta-framework. I developed the Creative Course Framework for understanding knowledge creators’s life course.

For the Creative Course Framework, I consider the concept of “Knowledge Center” as a concrete example of “Social Territory”.

The theme of “Territory of Concept” was inspired by the concept of “Social Territory” too. I use “The Territory of Concepts” to refer to the subjective experience of objectification of concepts. It means we should make some real objects of concepts.

In the process of objectification, we, as the makers of these objects, will earn the subjective experience such as feedback from others, reflection on mistakes, excited moments, thematic conversations, capturing significant insights, comparing two concept systems, testing an object, expanding a concept system, moving between concept systems, etc.

The Territory of Concepts can be seen as a Subjective Reality. We, as the developers of a concept system, only can see this Subjective Reality and use it to help us elaborate the Spontaneous Concept System.

In TALE: The Territory of Concepts I mentioned the Optimal Context Canvas.

The Optimal Context Canvas offers the following four areas of the Territory of Concepts:

Structural Dynamics: Social structure
Cultural Significance: Social discourse
Embedded Activity: Situated activities.
Project Engagement: Goal-oriented projects

Each area has four blocks for discussion. It’s clear that this is an operational framework for studying the Territory of Concepts.

The Optimal Context Canvas presents 16 blocks that can be seen as thematic spaces. Growing a Territory of Concept can be understood as moving between these thematic spaces.

This is a Significant Insight because it points out a clear path of moving from the Mental Moves project to the Social Moves project.

The theme of Social Moves was inspired by the theme of Mental Moves. While the Mental Moves project is more about knowledge creators’ creative cognition, the Social Moves project is more about startup founders’ creative social action.

Both projects are about the development of the concept of Attachance which is a core concept of the Ecological Practice approach.

New Knowlege Model

I didn’t use the “Attach — Container — Detach” model for the new diagram.

The “Attach — Container — Detach” model is the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach.

The above diagram combines three core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach together: Affordance, Attachance, and Containance. The term “Offers” is an affordance-inspired concept, it refers to opportunities afforded by the Container. The group of “Offer — Act” forms “Event” which changes the status of the Container. The new status of the Container affords new opportunities that guide the new acts and events.

I also developed a set of Perspectives for the Ecological Practice approach. You can find more details in The Ecological Practice Design Toolkit (V2, 2023).

I have applied these Perspectives to many projects. I also wrote some articles about them. See the screenshot below.

On August 17, 2023, I wrote the article titled The Ecological Practice Design Toolkit (V2, 2023) and recognized that the X-Y-Z Echo (see the diagram below) is the most popular model!

In fact, the Network — Container — Platform Move offers a large view for understanding the concept of Attachance. See the diagram below.

Yesterday, I realized that I should use it as the knowledge model for curating the set of possible themes.

Loose Coupling

Inspired by Activity, I consider the process of thought to be an activity that aims to transform ambiguous ideas into precise ideas. This notion is inspired by the principle of Object-orientedness, which means any activity has its motive and goals that point to a final outcome.

My diagramming method indicates three statuses:

Theme— To Do
Project — Doing
Book— Done

According to the Thematic Exploration framework, a possible theme is a mental element of Early Discovery in the journey of Knowledge Engagement.

A theme or a set of themes could lead to a knowledge project.

A knowledge project could produce a book (draft) and other outcomes such as digital boards, thematic cards, etc.

As mentioned above, my diagramming method also emphasizes the Loose Connection principle. The structure of a thematic network can be seen as a spectrum. It can be Loose Coupling. It can be Semi-structured. It can be Highly Structured. You can find more details in TALE: Possible Configurations of A Theme Network.

A Theme Network is a dynamic complex. We can perceive many possible configurations from a theme network.

If we perceive a configuration and believe it is very useful for the present situation, then we can turn this configuration into a situational framework.