[From Dennis McCracken 9503123 1230PST]
(Dag Forssell (9503123 2130)
Are you talking about the entire archive or the disks I posted
about?
I was referring to the update list. How can I get the 810 KB file.? I am
mainly interested in specific files. How did they get packaged by subject ?
Are old archives available in similar prepackaged files as well as
chronologically?
(Did you already get the disk w/ 640 KB)?
No, Do I send you $10 or $20 for the two disks?
If you are interested in the entire archive, why don't you tell us about
your equipment, software.
Don't have enough hardisk space for the whole thing and haven't got tape
storage yet. Is there a Windows search program available if I do get a
tape backup? I have a 14.4KBS hookup to a PPP gateway and use Netscape for
WWW.
I have used the archives and was right in the middle of a search on
"reality" patterns in 1993 when the archive dropped the old posts. I would
like to access the whole thing eventually. Any possibility of finding a WAIS
server for the entire file?
(Kent McClelland 950323)
(Paul Stokes 950321)
You probably don't have my first post describing my interests in PCT but
briefly I'm a clinician in a large HMO, (degrees in social work and
psychology). My REAL interest is in community development using the internet
as a globally oriented information conduit tailoring delivery of information
to local interests and needs.
Currently I am designing my own WWW home page to demonstrate these ideas and
link up with those similarly interested.
Theoretical view point has been influenced by " social construction of
reality" a la Berger and Luckman and lately Keneth Gergen, the
narrative/constructionist school in psychotherapy. My aim is to transfer
useful ideas from these perspectives to practical applications in
psychotherapy, health education, community development, etc. I am also
interested in popular media as time-slice statements about the "state of the
culture" and as sources of perceptual control variables and construction of
"self". ( Incidently, we (clinicians) are noting an increase in incidence
of "multiple personalities" as well as a notion that for many people,
"selves" are not as coherent as they once may have been). I have a strong
interest in comparative religion and theological perspectives as sources of
high level perceptual control variables and the related thorny problems of
dialogue between differing religious perspectives including atheism, scientism.
As we move toward a planetary society/culture I am concerned that we find
ways of understanding how to live with one another in a pluralistic
conceptual universe. ( especially when, as Ed Ford well describes, its
difficult enough to manage it in the same house hold or neighborhood!)
Connected with this is an idea of politics as social cybernetics: aggregates
of individual perceptual control systems cooperating (and competing with
other aggregates) in the management of resources ( This idea goes back to
Peter Corning, as far as I know-- correct me if I am wrong).
I seem to recall Bill Powers saying we don't have to wait to validate every
level of the HPCT hierarchy experimentally to use the basic concept (
behavior controls perception) to sort out our thinking about higher order
control mechanisms. I don't think we can afford to wait that long. Like Ed
Ford, as a clinician I have been concerned with working from and on the top
levels.
Paul,
Do you have any insights to contribute in this area ("getting along" or
"politics"), especially since Irish folks seemed to have made recent
progress in this area. Do you have some ideas from a PCT /sociology point
of view about what has changed.
Kent,
I have have read the 1992 version of your paper on PCT and Social Theory
and I would like you to send me a preprint of the '94 paper in Sociological
Perspectives.
In viewing the 93 PCT conference video, reference was made to your paper
presented in Wales and a diagram you made of a conceptual mapping of
sociological projects " for the next 20 years" that could usefully be
explored using the PCT frame of reference. Is there anything on paper like
this? Are reprints available of the talk then or revisions thereof?
Bill Powers (950323.0830)]
Thanks for permission to cite your posts.
Regards,
Dennis
ยทยทยท
____________________________________________________________________________
Dennis McCracken,MSW,PhD
2038 Joyce Ln.
Suisun City, CA, 94585
dennis@community.net "Reality is always in Beta"