June 16, 2001
45 iterations of a Single Intent
The interesting thing about emergent phenomena is that they are not predictable. The interesting thing about exercising intent is that you will have a high probability of accomplishing your objective. The VISION you accomplish will be what you started with and something entirely else at the same time. This is because while intent stays consistent - in my case the INTENT to make a certain kind of architecture - vision evolves.
Intent is constant, vision evolves and the search to find the path is heuristic. There is never just one way to the goal. The direct path is often not the one that works. It is only the constant exercise of feedback and the act of recreation that works. In the end, you do not accomplish your vision, you vision becomes embedded in a ValueWeb process which makes it real. Vision becomes reality.
I set out to do architecture. On the way to doing it, I substantially redefined what architecture is. This “complicated” things substantially for me. It made the goal more difficult - or appeared to. Actually, the “simple” goal would not have suffice. It would have been a false victory - a hollow accomplishment. Looking back, I can see that the seeds that make up my mature vision and understanding of architecture were “there” from the beginning. I had to discover what, in another way, I already knew. Multiple iterations.
Matt Taylor
Borgess NavCenter
June 17, 2001