A new fractal future?

For most of the past few thousand years of human civilization, our thinking has been dominated by geometry. The line. The circle. The ellipse. The square. The triangle.

The geometric is reflected in everything we do. The shapes of our buildings, the designs of our tools, the mental models we use. It is both the basis of our incredible success as a species and a millstone around our necks that gets heavier by the day.



According to ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash, geometric thinking dominates everywhere in the world. Except Africa, where villages, homes, living spaces and their tools are fractally organized.

Fractals or self-similarity is how the real world works. The trunks and branches of trees. The blood vessels and capillaries of our bodies. Rivers, tributaries and streams and the patterns they carve out of mountains and deltas. The feathery path that lightning blasts through a resistant atmosphere. The design of a nautilus shell and the peacock's tail. Snowflakes. Our DNA.

It is this new kind of self-organising thinking that the rest of the world needs now to help us design systems that mimic, reflect or are a better fit with nature. To clean up the mess we have made of the natural world through our over-use of geometry.

Which could be just the kind of inspiration Africans need. To see their culture as a resource for the kind of new thinking the world needs right now.

Here's a workshop to explore the possibilities:

1. What are the big differences between seeing the world in terms of circles/straight lines/polygons and seeing the world as a fractal?
2. In what ways does geometry (circles, lines, squares etc.) restrict how we see and what we can do in the world?
3. What might be the advantages of using self-similarity and self-organisation as the way we design products, services, organizations and how we interact with each other?
4. What might a fractal social relationship be like? Give examples of fractal relationships with employers, parents, children or friends.
5. What might a self-organising/fractal learning program look like/be like?
6. Choose one of these concepts and describe in detail what a self-similar version might look/function. Hotel, transport system, garbage disposal system, book, play, dance, social occasion, family or house/home.
7. Apply the concept of self-similarity to solving one of these world problems. Poverty, war, famine, disease, global warming, virus, dislocation, terrorism/freedom fighting.
8. What features/aspects of self-similarity could we use to design organizations and social systems.
9. How could you use knowledge about fractals and self-organizing systems to create wealth in the 21st century?
10. How can Africa use its deeply embedded knowledge of fractals and self-organizing systems to contribute to a new and more powerful/fulfilling future for the people of the continent of Africa and the world?