Box of Uncertainties

INTRODUCTION (PART 1)

We continue to live in times of uncertainty and in unpredictable economic, social, political or technological landscapes. In a positive context, these ‘unknowns’ can be a playground for those who want to enter uncharted territory, new domains, explore unfamiliar ground or test new environments. 

As you embark on your Unit Two research, you will no doubt face the headwinds of doubt and uncertainty as you start to make choices and decisions that may shape your major project. To facilitate this, it is important to confront these unknowns and uncertainties, to reveal the opportunities that lie beneath seemingly undeveloped thoughts and ideas. 

MA Applied Imagination requires you to develop the skills of critical thinking, analysis and astute judgement. Within the context of Applied Imagination, the status quo does not require us to accept things at face value. Instead, we must be able to interpret and make distinct choices and decisions that frame new ways of thinking and create new knowledge. In the pursuit of this new knowledge, we need to gain access to a broad range of sources that contribute to our research. 

There are two deliverables to this project, on different dates: 

1. The Box of Uncertainties – Presentation date: Monday 21 February We would like you to identify or produce a range of objects, or resources, that can be placed into your ‘box of uncertainties’. These objects and resources are intended to represent materials, artefacts, and experiences in your life that provoke you to ask questions about the unknown or places in your areas of interest that you are uncertain about. It is essential that these objects convey or communicate questions you are asking that signify an unknown path. You might describe and/or present your object[s] via still images, a short video, or as an object or artefact which can be shown to the camera during class. It is also important to consider what your container or “box” might be - or look like. This unknown space or domain could represent the field or arena in which you make your action-research interventions. This project may enable you to identify environments or territories that you do not know about, that may become the location of the research for your major project. (Enquiry, Process, Knowledge Realisation, Communication) 

2. The Diary of Uncertainties – Email Submission – Thursday 24 February – Tutorial– Monday 28 February To get you into the practice of critical analysis and reflection you will be required submit a digital journal which will be a collective account of your research, references, sources and any other visual material that evidences your research on this project. This is an important deliverable which requires you to exercise the skills in sourcing and investigating new knowledge and demonstrate critical and contextual analysis from written sources. It also requires you to be able to reflect and record your findings. (Enquiry, Process, Knowledge, Realisation, Communication) Your Diary of Uncertainties should include; a) Critical reflection/review on at least two journal articles, books (or chapters from books) that comment or discuss a topic or theme around an area of your own interest or area of unknown. (Enquiry, Process) b) a personal perspective on your own journey and relationship with these objects and elements of ‘unknown’ (Enquiry, Process, Communication) There is no set word count for the diary. We suggest that this is a digital file which must be saved as a PDF file no larger than 2MB or an online link that can be accessed. The diary can be supported by imagery, visuals and other supporting material. We encourage you to use headings and dates that help to document your journey on this project.

INTRODUCTION (PART 2)

MA Applied Imagination encourages students to use research as a creative tool with the view to ‘asking better questions’. Questions are fundamental to any research project and should be designed to provoke, instigate change, and produce results. But change can only happen through action. On this course, the action takes shape through your ‘interventions’ that can be tested by means of real-world testing and iterative development. An intervention or series of interventions are undertaken to give form to the question and gain evidence and new knowledge through external testing. Interventions can take many forms, including objects, artefacts, products, processes, services and events. The Learning Outcomes of MA Applied Imagination focus less on the final outcomes of this process, than on the iterative, reflective and analytical testing of the interventions – and the questions themselves.

(1) A Question We would like you to generate a question which is informed, linked or influenced by themes and elements from your Box of Uncertainties. Your question should be one which you feel is urgent and important – both to you, and society. We are NOT asking you at this stage to form the precise question that will power your Unit Two project, but it would be entirely appropriate for you to use this project as step towards defining your area of interest for Unit Two. On MA Applied Imagination, we strongly suggest questions that begin with the phrase “How can…?”, as this phrase demands a specific action research approach and demonstrates the scope through which an intervention is tested as part of the process of addressing your question. (Enquiry, Knowledge, Communication) 

(2) An action We would like you to create and (to the extent that time allows) TEST an intervention specifically designed as a research tool to generate or uncover new knowledge about your question. An intervention is an action deliberately taken by you, as the researcher, to introduce CHANGE into the environment of your question’s stakeholders. It is by observing, recording and reflecting on the changes which your intervention makes, that new knowledge about your question can be gained. (Realisation, Process) It is also important to take every opportunity you can to test your intervention with stakeholders – i.e. the people whose lives would be affected by the change you are proposing. Reflect on these test outcomes, and consider what iterative changes you could make to your intervention to improve its ability to test and develop our question. (Knowledge) Remember: Your action is related to something that you are uncertain of and your potential to impact and change that uncertainty.

MY FINAL WORK

One day last week, I watched a movie called The Butterfly Effect, which described a story: The male protagonist once had a bad childhood because he got into trouble, which filled his childhood with unbearable memories. And when he grew up, he had only vague memories of the terrifying scenes that happened in his childhood, but these scenes haunted his normal life. The male protagonist accepts the suggestion of a psychologist to write down his trivial life on a notepad and accidentally finds that he goes back to the past through the notepad. So he fantasized about using his current consciousness to sneak into his childhood body to make up for the harm caused by various mistakes. However, his repeated changes across time and space can only lead to more and more hopelessness in the real world.

Everything is like the butterfly effect, pulling one hair and moving the whole body. In my opinion, this movie's story creates an atmosphere of uncertainty, as its title "The Butterfly Effect" implies: If the butterfly flutters its wings at that moment, at the end of the chain of time, there will be an extra hurricane out of thin air, and worse, no one knows where the wind is blowing.

When I saw the introduction of project3: the box of uncertainties, I immediately thought about the topic of the butterfly effect, and I have a more in-depth investigation of this phenomenon was carried out.

We live in times of uncertainty and in unpredictable economic, social, political, or technological landscapes. Understanding the butterfly effect can give us a new lens through which to view business, markets, and more. The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon.

During my research, I found that many people understand the butterfly effect as a kind of ‘leverage’. I don't quite agree with this view. I think the key point of this phenomenon is ‘uncertainty’, as General Stanley McChrystal wrote in Team of Teams:‘In popular culture, the term “butterfly effect” is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with “leverage”—the idea of a small thing that has a big impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to the desired end. This misses the point of Lorenz’s insight. The reality is those small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.’

Although the concept of the butterfly effect has long been controversial, credit for identifying it as a unique effect goes to Edward Lorenz (1917-2008). Lorenz was a meteorologist and mathematician who successfully combined the two disciplines to create chaos theory.

In the experiment of simulating weather forecasts, he input the initial condition as 0.506 instead of the exact value of 0.506127 for a more convenient calculation. The results were surprising, with small changes in initial conditions having large, long-term effects, so he speculated that weather forecast models were inaccurate because knowing precise starting conditions were impossible and small changes could affect the results.

                           

To make the concept understandable to a non-scientific audience, Lorenz started using the butterfly analogy. In the speech and interview, he explained that it is possible for the butterfly to produce small changes that, while not producing a typhoon, could alter its trajectory. Butterfly flapping wings represent small changes in atmospheric pressure that compound as the model progresses. Given that small, almost imperceptible changes can have dramatic effects on complex systems, Lorenz concluded that trying to predict the weather is impossible. In the paper, he writes: ‘ If, then, there is any error whatever in observing the present state—and in any real system such errors seem inevitable—an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible.… In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise long-range forecasting would seem to be non-existent. The butterfly is a symbolic representation of an unknowable quantity.

If I want to apply the "butterfly effect" theory that I choose to put in an uncertain box and apply it to my life, according to my personal experience, the first thing that comes to my mind is an episode in 'the devil wears Prada' The heroine Andy scoffed at the controversy over the choice of clothing by the magazine's stylist. After hearing this, Miranda (the devil) said a line to the girl (Andy) in a blue fast fashion sweater: "You go to your closet, choose that bloated blue sweater, and tell the world that you're serious, that you're dismissive of fashion, and that you don't care about dressing. What you don't know is that the sweater isn't blue, it's not turquoise, it's not sky blue, it's actually dark blue. You have absolutely no idea that Oscar de La Renta launched a series of dark blue dresses in 2002, and then Saint Laurent exhibited a series of dark blue army coats, dark blue launched eight series of styles, and soon all over the department store counters, and then down to the terrifying casual wear counter, and then one day you dig it out of the sale cart and buy it home. That blue represents millions of dollars and the work of countless designers, and you're ridiculous to think that it's just a random choice you made and that you have nothing to do with the fashion industry.

My thoughts about this project and research are people always believe they can predict the future and have some level of control over powerful systems like weather and the economy. Yet the butterfly effect suggests we can't.

The systems around us are chaotic and entropic, prone to sudden changes. For certain types of systems, we can try to create favorable start-up conditions and pay attention to the kinds of catalysts that might work under those conditions—that's within our capabilities.

If people think they can really identify every catalyst and control or predict the outcome, then we're just getting ourselves into trouble, and I think we're going to accept the uncertainty of the world and enjoy all that uncertainty brings, As long as every choice you make right now is something you won't regret right now, that's enough.

References

2022. [Online] Available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/butterfly%20effect> [Accessed 25 February 2022].

2022. [Online] Available at: <https://www.americanscientist.org/article/understanding-the-butterfly-effect> [Accessed 25 February 2022].

Hawthorne, S., 2010. The butterfly effect. North Melbourne, Vic.: Spinifex Press.
Rotten Tomatoes. 2022. The Butterfly Effect. [Online] Available at: <https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/butterfly_effect> [Accessed 25 February 2022].

STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL; TANTUM COLLINS; DAVID SILVERMA., 2020. TEAM OF TEAMS;WIE ORGANISATIONEN IHRE ANPASSUNGSFAHIGKEIT IN EINER KOMPLEXEN WELT VERBESSERN KONNEN. [S.l.]: VAHLEN.