Alan Kay talked about how, by focusing on 'objects' most software developers missed the more important meaning of 'messaging'. It was the messaging, not the objects, that brought software programs to life.
Chris Alexander focused the latter part of his career on better understanding the life spirit within architecture . He sought to explain its preconditions through the Fifteen Properties. Those, he felt, were essential for this spirit to flow and allow That Which Emerges. Maturana noted that all autopoietic systems exist within an 'ambience' that which we might sense as an aether.
Patterns are artifacts. It's the forces between them that matter – a dynamic tension we are now calling 'vivacity'. Each object or pattern, must have the capacity to be a self-forming, self-healing and self-creating. For this capacity to manifest, each must have wholeness, goodness and the potential to delight.
**Objects** then develop **connection** with other **objects** to form a dynamic relationship of three – a semantic triple – through which vivacity flows. We may also begin to think of these as **patterns**, **behaviors** and **patterns** in complex systems of Natural Order.
Emergent patterns are formed as intention inspires action into an unknown where there is surprise and updates are experienced. New patterns form and become the artifacts from which subsequent learning is done, creating collective learning systems through Stigmergic Iteration.
As we seek to reimagine, we recognize that we must abandon the intention of _engineering causal relationships_ and embrace a new aspiration, that of _cultivating emergent vivacity_.
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