SHORT ENTRY for today to share a little insight into a new project I’ll be working on for a bi-weekly or monthly series on “How to Read The New Economics”. The aim is provide new solo learners a method for getting into the material quickly and easily, and to contextualize the lessons for the modern era. I’m envisioning this to include a short podcast on each chapter where I guide you through the highlights, along with a “map” that can be used to facilitate learning.
What kind of map? A dialogue map. These are horizontally-organized flow-maps that look a lot like a mind-map but with some specific features and differences. They are the creation of Jeff Conklin back in the 90s as a method for facilitating meetings with a live-diagramming application which is projected on a screen. Below is a sample map about a small dilemma about a ring that you can probably intuit how to read - start with the “?” node on the left side and read to the right:
I first learned about these from a colleague in Australia over a dozen years ago as a tool for developing taxonomies for content management systems with clients, but they have a wide range of applications, including tracing out the arguments in complex papers, articles, and books. For example, below is one I created to explain Plato’s Apology about the corrupting influence of some gadfly named Socrates — and here you thought ancient Greek philosophy was difficult to understand!
So, you’ll notice that each of the map’s nodes have icons - these comprise the notation that’s called IBIS or Issue Based Information System which is used to express the various paths through the “dialogue”, always beginning with a Question (?) that is followed by one or more Answers (light bulbs), which in turn may have one or more PROs (+) or CONs (-). Answers, PROs and CONs can all have emerging subsequent open-ended questions as the dialogue progresses.
While you read the map’s nodes naturally from left-to-right, the nodes themselves are connected with directional arrows that always point back in the direction of the originating question, making it easy to retrace your steps.
Another feature of these types of maps is they are non-linear in terms of how the information may be organized. This is because in groups, dialogue tends to dart around as people sort through messy, wicked problems by raising new points, then going back to older ones to reconsider the original arguments, etc. Given that Dr. Deming’s style of writing in The New Economics is like a university level lecture, mapping it with IBIS notation seems a perfect fit, and an idea companion for navigating the topics.
Unfortunately, the original application I used for my maps back in the day, Compendium, is no longer supported so I can’t make true-to-form dialogue maps, however I can mimic the style with Miro’s Mind Map template - the only thing missing is the ability to automagically create nodes with “?”, “+”, or “-” and have directional arrows pointing to the left. This said, Miro does make it easy to share the map and enhance it with frames for navigating like a slide deck and embedding images for amplifying points. You can check out my progress on Chapter 1: How Are We Doing? here.
I’m planning on having the Preface and Chapter 1 maps available for free, but subsequent maps will be paywalled as part of the How to Read The New Economics series, which I hope to get up starting next month.
Let me know your thoughts on this venture, if you could see it being useful to you or your colleagues, and what you think of the map so far.
PS: Don’t forget to submit your questions for this Friday’s Doctor’s Orders! Drop yours in the Chat thread here.