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I created this site after having experimented with different websites and online platforms for a couple of years (a note on how I made it). At this point it seems to me that being online is an activity with diminishing returns so I’ve made this website in a way that requires little work in terms of maintenance and updating. But while I’ve come to a point where I want to be offline more, it has been a fascinating and rewarding journey to set up blogs, create websites and engage with social media, because the connections I’ve made have been incredibly valuable in first life too. On this page you can find out about some of things I’ve learnt along the way and some of the resources that I’ve found helpful.

I started off with a pretty big idea for a virtual library of sorts and very few skills to realise it. That was what became PatternWhichConnects. For a long time I struggled with finding time to maintain and update it, and eventually it became a bit of a schizophrenic site, with a WordPress blog module and the rest of the site built in iWeb, which I’m now mainly keeping as an archive. But I learnt lots from it. The content of that site – including the various writings, songs, photos and links – would never have come out in the way it did without a virtual platform. Experimenting with WordPress was very helpful for setting up other sites. And I (unknowingly) further developed my approach to research (both online and offline) through building and using that platform.

What I found was that the website supported and shaped my research and writing – and vice versa. A lot of the insights I came to wouldn’t have been possible without a virtual forum. At the same time, the site itself began to inform how I was seeing things. During my field research it was really helpful to have a (partly imagined) audience for working through my experience and findings. And this in turn began to affect how I wrote. The connections I made through having a blog and reading other people’s posts became invaluable for making sense both of my research and my personal life. It was like a larger conversation that I could see my work within, one that supported and challenged me in important ways.

That is the real power of the internet to me. Unfortunately, the net is also like a highly addictive drug which, if abused, will steal away one’s focus and attention. Being online supported me through a really important stage of me life – and continues to do so – but it is also becoming clear to me that refiguring things requires that I spend more time in my immediate surroundings and redefine my relationship with the internet. Creating this site has been part of that. This is where I post some of those thoughts I think might be worth sharing and practice my writing. The refiguring Tumblr page is for sharing some of the things I would have put in my virtual library. And that’s about as much as I can commit to updating every once in a while.

Managing virtual life and online technologies is a life skill which we don’t really have anywhere to go to to learn (this is a strand of thinking that underpins time culture). The dominant forms of online life involve alienating technologies and signing away our privacy. Social media platforms still seem like isolated islands which compete for our time and attention. And yet there seems to be this moment where the connections and possibilities offered virtually have real transformative potential. Although this is a time where fewer and fewer of the promises held out by modernity and progress are available it seems that new opportunities for challenging and re-thinking the fundamentals are emerging.

If it is true, as Dougald Hine once put it to me, that “the game is almost over” and that “it is time to remind ourselves that it was a game, and that we are the players, rather than the pieces with which we have been playing”, this means we need to think about what sort of rules we want to play by. If it is also true, as Andrew Taggart says, that there’s “a lag in which social reality has actually moved ahead of the concepts we’re using still”, then new concepts and stories may be able to create something truly new. And if “stories are the basic constituents of the world – at least, of the way we perceive the world and our place in it”, as Sharon Blackie writes, the connectedness that is now available offers inspiration and support for a fundamentally different narrative about the world and our place in it to take root.

That’s what I’ve experienced through being online: finding spaces where a different kind of story is emerging, opportunities for sharing perspectives, seeds for collaboration and a chance to rethink my own way of seeing and doing things. I’ve shared many of those experiences along the way and you can find many of the trails through this site. A few pointers for some of the stuff that might not be immediately obvious:

All of my interview-conversations can be found on the Remembering blog. Check out the blog roll on there as well, many of the thoughts and ideas I’ve written about are inspired by those amazing folk.

The Library on PatternWhichConnects has an assortment of links to online resources and articles.

This collection of links point to various sites that have been important to me in one way or another.

I’ve put up a list of the kind of grassroots ideas and projects that I think are changing the way things get done.

Some of the influences for my doctoral research can be found on this (now completely outdated) page.

I never really had a clear idea of where I was going with my online presence, and that’s probably why I ended up struggling with PatternWhichConnects. But what did seem to work was letting go if my initial ideas, not trying to control things too much and letting it develop spontaneously and serendipitously. It was quite surprising how that online platform brought me into contact with others who were willing to share part of their own lives with me, giving me a sense of direction through affirmation, reciprocity and sharing. In hindsight, it seems like I stumbled into some of the basic ingredients of emergence.

I am exploring these dynamics further in first life. Perhaps our paths will cross somewhere down the line. I currently live just outside a small town in Denmark called Ry but everything is close in Denmark so don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’re in the neighbourhood. If you have any questions or want to talk further about some of the things this website touches on, send me an email. Many thanks for reading.