Static Pattern Thoughts

David Bohm, in a series of talks (that later became the book Thought as as System) once said that we should delineate between ‘thoughts’ and ‘thinks’.   Thoughts are former products of consciousness that are stored in memory and passed around from person to person, while ‘thinks’ are products of consciousness created in the present moment with active mentation (or which consicousness is actively operating on even if former products of consciousness).  Bohm’s clever wordplay has finally led me to a perfect catchy term for describing the far less catchy term ’static pattern’:  thingk. That is, a static pattern, in the form we are most interested in for application can be called a thingk.

Thingk is a union of the words think and thing, and when pronounced sounds deceptively identical to think.  I like it because it embeds a lot of semantic hints that convey what a static pattern is:

• The first word in static pattern, static, comes from Greek and Latin roots for standing, remaining, and implies persistence.  When something persists, we usually identify it (generically) as a thing.
• When you first encounter (or create) a static pattern that resonates with you, it has the effect of gathering such awareness and attention in consciousness that it seems less like a thought and more like a thing.  It usually invokes active mentation and becomes a think in Bohmian terms.  This duality, as it grows, begins to qualify it as a thingk (in the cognitive domain).
• In the physical or virtual domains, before that thingk is manifested, it is just a thought ( think ); however, as you, the creator, drive it toward manifestation, it becomes not just a thought ( think ) but also a thing that exists (stands, remains, persists) with some degree of physical persistence (depending on degree of virtuality).  Yet, behind that now existent thing is the thought(s) that resonate with the creator such that they evoke active mentation and thus are still think(s).  Thus, the manifested static pattern is a thingk spread across multiple domains (cognitive, physical, virtual).
• If you encounter a thing that you can perceive with your senses, there are thoughts that brought it to creation.  When these thoughts and the thing itself invoke resonance in a perceiver, it can be now be described as a thingk.
• When you find a talented individual with a personal connection to the work they create, you can certainly be assured that everything they create has the quality of also being a thingk.
• If you begin to approach the things you work with with the intent to turn them into thingks (or to change your work so that the things you work with have a higher rate of probably of being thingks for you), or you begin to have the intent to find thoughts that resonate enough to become thingks in consciousness and then reified thingks in the cognitive, virtual, and/or physical domains, then the nature of your creative work is transformed.

I intend to not only use this term for describing static patterns in a more easily graspable semantic framework, but also intend to use it drive the fluxpoints project further.  A fluxpoint, by criteria, will be in fact a thingk; however, I am actively working on a partner project to actively get people moving from thought => think => thingk, which will ensure a natural evolution path toward turning those thingks into FluxPoints as well as physical, virtual, and/or cognitive creations.  This will most likely be a free community web site that will allow for active work on static patterns (or thingks) with the intention of bringing them about as creations.

Until then, I still prefer to use the technical term static pattern, but after discussing this more compact and expressive reduction with people who have talked to me about SPs for years, it immediately catches on and they finally ‘get it’.  Nonetheless, this particular journal about static pattern engineering will probably continue to use the technical term – I intend to post a link to the community site once I get it going and that site will probably make scarce use of the technical term, favoring the one described in this post.

Thanks for reading.

I honestly believe I will be working on SPE my entire life, and am prepared to do so; however, a life goal of mine (i.e., before I die) is to see the knowledge base of the field (core theory as well as tried and true mapping of it to case studies and implementations) developed enough so that three roles – actual professions – can emerge as viable careers for the 21st century. As I continually work on static pattern engineering, I intend to work within all three of the roles to further define their domains as well as the output these roles produce in their differing capacity is essential to the development of the field.

In order to introduce these roles, I need to talk briefly about what a static pattern is without going into much detail (a separate set of posts will be required for that***). Briefly, a static pattern is a product of consciousness[1] that has reached a degree of coherence[2] that it can persist (stay, remain) within one or more realm/domain (see virtual, cognitive, and physical in the first post on this site) or across these three domains. [ Static pattern engineering seeks to give us the ability to further operate on and transform these units of consciousness in extremely effective ways. Note that we already operate on and transform these patterns as part of our creative lives, our vocations, and perhaps even our spiritual lives; however, SPE seeks to greatly enhance the process toward expected effects as well as results. ] A static pattern can — and will — remain in one or more of the domains by its very definition, especially if an act of will has given a high degree of virtuality — that is, it has been persisted by some means into the physical realm with a high cognitive component to it; however, SPE concerns itself with –activating– the pattern (making it an active pattern) using resonance, operators, and transforms and bringing innovative results and effects back to the domain of origin (often cognitive) as well as the other domains where a pattern can manifest (virtual, physical, and/or cognitive again).

Now, for this discussion it is important to note that these products of consciousness that have coherence often don’t take an immediately analyzable form (so they can be mapped between languages and domains at will), and expressing a pattern, whether by embedding it into physical matter (giving it a higher degree of virtuality) or directly manifesting it into the world (creating it), and the resonant language[3] used to do so start to give form to these three roles/professions I see emerging.

My previous stub post on Artist, Artisan, Artificer finally comes into play in this discussion as well. The act of expressing/manifesting a pattern into the world usually can be categorized as the work of an artisan, artificer, or an artist. The label of artisan is usually associated with a craftsperson or skilled worker who can usually do a standardized operation or piece together standardized operations to produce an instantiation of a desired template or a unique combination or evolution of previous templates. The label of artificer is usually associated with skilled devising, inventing, construction, design of something entirely new or a more complex derivation/transformation of previous creations (thus, implying a longer time scale) but will nonetheless become a template. The label of artist is usually associated with someone who has imagination and noticeable talent in a particular domain that can produce something (through sometimes more mysterious and less-defined processes) that may be described as aesthetically pleasing, unique, original, such that the concept of template is utterly meaningless – it is an individual act of willed creation.

• PatternSmiths will forge a static pattern into the physical, virtual, and/or cognitive domains based on their highly refined resonant language. The act of PatternSmithing itself will be shared by all three disciplines — and actually I dream of a day when every single person with knowledge, experience, and associated resonance in some language can be qualified as a PatternSmith of some type. The desire for ‘every person’s SPE’ that this represents doesn’t detract from the pattern-smithing role in the least or elevate the others; rather, if the engineering role does its job properly (see below), the vast array of fields (vocation[4]) and resonances possible will allow for everyone to become a skilled craftsperson to some degree or another. This fact in itself will confirm the success of the entire body of research and application for static pattern engineering — the patternsmithing is the application of the field.
• Static Pattern Architects will draw on many domains of knowledge, experience, and language to conceptualize and transmit the design for large scale projects that straddle the cognitive, virtual, and physical domains. Working closely with Static Pattern Engineers, an inspiring and innovative design will emerge that will be further improved by the design aspects of SPE’s processing and collaborational technology for identifying the larger context the creation exists in across all three domains as well as the resources that can improve its implementation and continued existence/evolution in aspects of each domain. Because the Architect is examining all three domains in the design, he or she is in fact working not only at a physical level (as we have currently with traditional architecture), nor at just a computerized level (as we have with software architecture), but at a cognitive level and considering -all- virtual manifestations (e.g., creation of a business model is virtual, or defining a set of publications, or designing ways of disseminating the requisite knowledge, etc.).
• Static Pattern Engineers work on multiple dimensions across the field of static pattern engineering and it is going to take a separate post*** to enumerate all the various aspects this will entail, but briefly it will involve managing the movement of knowledge and matching resonances across multidisciplinary teams to actualize (engineer) a complex product that can span multiple domains, operating/facilitating the process of collaboration and innovation in analysis, design, and implementation phases of that product, serving as a subject matter expert in one or more specialties (which they resonate highly with) within the domain of engineering, cognitive science, or computer science to serve as a contributing team member in analysis, design, and implementation phases of that product, developing artifacts which allow for more effective execution of static pattern engineering processes, developing tools which allow for improved detection of resonances (and thus location/training of qualified PatternSmiths), driving teams toward higher challenges and ensuring a high rate of innovation, and doing experiments and/or research which will advance the field on a continual basis.

The important thing to note is that all three of these roles at any point in time be acting as an artist, artificer, or artisan — the large difference between them is the granularity and function of their work (what they are focusing on). A PatternSmith could
in fact be a full-time artist and producing nothing but one of a kind, original productions in any domain, or they could be a craftsperson (artisan) that produces templated results with skill, or even they could be called upon for their artificer skills in producing something unique and innovative. Additionally, the PatternSmith’s varied resonance may allow them to serve in all three capacities across different domains or knowledge areas. Likewise, in their larger scale context, a SPA (StaticPatternArchitect) may use (and often will be required to use) a blend of all three modes of working to produce their initial and continued design, and the output itself will probably be considered a blend of the three — carrying out its refinement and implementation will likewise require a blend of the three in most cases, which the SPE (StaticPatternEngineer will facilitate, as well as initial design). Unlike the other two, however, the StaticPatternEngineer will be –required– to use a blend of all three. He or she has to be a skilled artisan in using the technology for matching resonances, moving knowledge, or invoking collaborations throughout a distributed system of thought – there is no time for innovation or art for this extremely important functional need; however, there will be a need for an artificer skill set in the unique design constraints of each product where only the static pattern engineer will have the requisite ability to perceive and identify unique approaches for that team. I will elaborate further on the SPE’s mapping to these labels in their activities, as well as the artistic output, in a future post***.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this as much as I enjoyed writing it — for some who have asked me questions, I hope it also gives a _much_ deeper glimpse into what this whole field is going to be about. Until next time I post, I wish you the best!
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[1] Don’t be mislead into thinking this is restricted to only human consciousness. More on this later.

[2] I literally mean this in both the sense of coherence we see in physics (explaining how thought patterns can have this kind of coherence requires a much larger discussion) as well as a sense of cohesiveness (with other patterns, with the consciousness hosting it, with a requirement/necessity (perceived or real)) that literally ensures the pattern’s existence.

[3] In a paper on resonance, titled “The Power of Resonance“, I worked on in 2001 with Christopher Galtenberg, we carefully qualified language this way:

In our framework, language serves a critical two-fold mechanism: it converts experience into explicit, transmittable knowledge and transmits knowledge to invoke experiences. Language [thus] can take many forms, and in this framework, fits this broader definition: A language arises from a set of elements allowing transmission (expression) and reception of knowledge and/or experience.

The paper went on to then qualify resonant language, which I will do later in a future post***.

[4] I hope one day we can return to vocation as a calling (where really resonance represents the increasing call itself), and that a vocation, as a way of life, can encompass diverse fields, knowledge, associations, experiences, and possibly roles, as resonance implies a –set of callings– rather than just a singular one. Then we can have career-crafting as an ongoing process.

*** I am just explicitly marking my promises for posts now as a reminder to myself.

Several years ago, led by intuition and instinct, I embarked on an intellectual journey to carve out what I believe will be one of the more important, nascent expansions of the field of engineering. For hundreds of years, we have honed our understanding of the physical laws that govern phenomena in nature into mathematical constructs that could be leveraged by individuals (engineers) to bring about constructed, replicable creations in reality. Throughout the last century, our understanding of two other realms have increased in breadth and depth[1]:

• During the last century, our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that govern the human mind began to emerge, and…
• During the middle of the last century, we were finally able to leverage our partial grasp of those laws to create a virtual working model of those mechanisms where we could recreate, persist, and thereby automate the very products of our thoughts — this was the advent of the computer.

These three domains — the physical, cognitive, and virtual realms — have fascinated me since childhood and attracted me into differing but complementary provinces of knowledge. This study eventually educed a proprioception of the underlying patterns that lie across and between these three domains. I began to get the sense that a new branch of engineering that concerned itself with these underlying patterns would ultimately enrich all other branches of engineering (this complex sequence of thinking will be expanded in greater detail elsewhere). This new branch of engineering would operate with and on these patterns in their abstracted form (apart from their domain of manifestation) and transform them within and cross the respective domains (i.e., physical, virtual, and cognitive) to bring about constructed, replicable creations that span or cycle through these three domains as they evolve. The new branch of engineering would be called Static Pattern Engineering.

[1] Footnote added 01/01/2006: My colleague Galtenberg wisely points out in comments (see comments below) that I made it sound like the virtual and cognitive realms arose during the last century — I appreciate his catch of a possible misunderstanding. From conversations we’ve had in person, he knows I define the virtual realm as existing as soon as human thought could be embedded onto or into physical matter — thus hundreds of years before the 1900s, so he calls me out on that (thank you sir). Please note that I am showing how advances in our _understanding_ of these realms increased asymptotically during the last century, thus making it possible for the emergence of fields like SPE. Anyway, I’ll be talking in depth about the virtual realm/domain and the degree of virtuality that defines it. Also, that the three domains intermingle at the boundaries (as their interconnection makes the obliteration of the subject/object artificial line possible) is central to the thesis that static patterns in fact are transportable between all three. Thanks again Chris for the catch!

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