The Golden Flow of Boundary Objects

After watching the movie Crash (Lions Gate Films, 2004) in class this past week, I started thinking about how people affect one another and how we’re all linked through our various interactions and communities of practice. We affect other people every day. Individuals flow in and out of our lives, some having more of an impact than others. Our choices and actions affect others and sometimes we impact them by imparting part of our community of practice into theirs with a boundary object. These boundary objects will often cause a ripple effect, with boundary object after boundary object being shared with different community of practices.

How many ripple effects in transmitting boundary objects have you caused?

As Etienne Wenger explains in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (as listed on Chapters.ca), boundary objects can be described as “objects that serve to coordinate the perspectives of various constituencies for some purpose” (p. 106). He further explains that these items are developed through the reification process in communities of practice so they provide a shared meaning, understanding, and use for those members. As you recall from Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca) being human allows us to share meaning of items (like boundary objects) with others in our community of practice or to act as brokers to those in other communities of practice in order to pass along the meaning of that object.

How then, do we impact other humans in communities of practice outside of our own through the transmission of boundary objects? As members of certain communities of practice, we often relate to those in our immediate community more than those who belong to a different community. As Tomasello would tell us, this is primarily related to the fact that as primates we relate to and look out for those in our in group and opposed to those in out groups. As such, we tend to think of individuals who are different from us and in different communities of practice as objects as opposed to people. We don’t relate to them as one of our own since we haven’t established a sense of belonging or any negotiated meaning with them so we place less value on their contributions to our lives. Since we don’t value them as much, we don’t tend to dwell on the impact our mundane day-to-day interactions with those people may have on their lives.


To further illustrate the notion of how our actions affect others, remember the movie that Gwyneth Paltrow starred in called Sliding Doors (Paramount Pictures, 1998)? At the beginning of the movie, we see Paltrow’s character Helen rushing to catch a subway train. She’s rushing down the stairs into the station and has to momentarily pause to dodge a child walking up the stairs who tries to show Helen a doll she is holding in her hand. As a result Helen misses the train. The film then rewinds and we see Helen rushing down the steps again. This time, however, an adult (presumably the child’s parent) pulls the child out of Helen’s way before she can block her with the doll and Helen is able to just catch the train.  From there on, we see the two divergent paths that Helen’s life would take if she caught the train versus if she missed the train. Here’s the opening scene of the movie:

As you then witness in the movie, the little girl’s actions could have started a ripple effect of boundary objects being transmitted which would have had a huge impact on Helen’s life. When you start to think about life in terms of how your actions and transmission of boundary objects affect others, you can see just how much impact we all have on each other’s lives, in both a negative and positive ways. I realize that this is all part of “real life” and is “how the world works” but it is interesting to examine nonetheless.

On a larger scale, we briefly discussed how the ripple effect or “golden flow of boundary objects” is present in government and with those in positions of power in this past week’s class. To illustrate this idea, Dr. Plumb explained how the leader of a country’s order to go to war acts as a boundary object that is handed down through the various levels of government and military (ie. communities of practice within the overall city of practices in a government), which acts as a catalyst for other boundary objects to be transmitted to other communities of practice with that “city” and beyond. As a result, soldiers at the bottom of the pyramid of command go to war carrying out orders of the person at the top of the pyramid. This not only affects the people in their close communities of practice like their family and friends, but will also affect those they may injure in war and those people’s family and friends, their family and friends, and so on.

In many government structures, the golden flow of boundary objects starts with one person at the top of the pyramid of power. 

Although we easily get swept up in our own lives and within our own city of communities of practice, it’s also important for us to understand how our interactions through transmitting boundary objects to others affect them and those beyond them. When you realize you have power to influence others’ lives, perhaps you’ll think twice before jumping in front of someone when you’re in a rush or beeping at someone in traffic for example, and think about ways you can use that power to positively influence those within your city and beyond instead.

Are Communities of Practice Stressing Us Out?

Walking to work Thursday morning, my mind was filled with numerous details from the myriad of communities of practice I’m a part of. My psyche was swirling with thoughts of tasks that I had to complete at work that day, I was processing the ideas and discussions in our class the evening prior, reminiscing about my conversation with a close friend two nights prior and thinking that I should call my other long-distance friends more. All while dodging other pedestrians on the sidewalk and obeying traffic signals at crosswalks. By the time I was half-way to work I knew that my stress levels were rising from just thinking about everything I needed to get done. Then it donned on me: Are our primate brains wired to withstand the demands and details of multiple communities of practice in a “city”? Have diverse communities of practice evolved faster than our primate brains?

As we have learned through reading Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca) and through our discussions in class, we know that human society has evolved faster than the human species and as a primate species, humans are fairly young. So have our brains evolved quickly enough to keep up with the multiple demands we place on it in modern day society or are we becoming more stressed as we introduce more communities of practice to our lives?

As we read in Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (as listed on Chapters.ca) we don’t necessarily have to physically be “in” a community of practice in order to be a part of one. This can be problematic for the over-analysers and thinkers out there like me. At any given time I have multiple details about multiple items swirling around in my brain, largely unrelated to each other. We know that our human brains are robust enough to accommodate complex thinking and provide us with the capacity to recall important details, lessons, and events in our lives.  But how much is too much? Are we trying to accommodate so much that we’re putting undue stress on ourselves?

What's on your mind?

Workplace stress is a leading cause of stress in North America.  According to a 2010 Statistics Canada study (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2011002/article/11562-eng.htm), “slightly more than 1 in 4 Canadian workers described their day-to-day lives as highly stressful”. The majority of the people identified work as their main stressor. As Dr. Plumb discussed in class, people didn’t jobs that required them to work for money until a few hundred years ago; meaning that there was a huge community of practice with many sub-communities of practice that humans didn’t have to deal with. According to an article published in Biological Psychiatry by J. Douglas Bremner (Vol. 45, Issue 7, pages 797-805, 1 April 1999), an excess of stress can “result in damage to the hippocampus, a brain area involved in learning and memory, with associated memory deficits.” This could also explain why I only have the capacity to deal with a few stressful events at a time, easily forgetting details of non-related items when I’m experiencing stress.

Stressors of highly stressed employed population aged 20 to 64. Statistics Canada, 2010.

A second major contributing factor to human stress in North America is finances http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/06/02/10637.aspx). People are worried about accumulating debt and how they’ll pay back the money they owe. Enter in the communities of practice within banks, loaning agencies, credit card companies, and so on. As I mentioned above, humans didn’t always work for money. Since currency wasn’t always used as a means of obtaining goods, people wouldn’t have had to worry about incurring monetary debt. As we know, there is a debt crisis in the Western world affecting millions of people. Humans are accruing more debt than ever before, which would lead me to conclude that humans are also experiencing more stress about finances than ever before, putting even more strain on our primate brains when we have to deal with our financial situations in banks or on the phone with customer service representatives.

Other causes of stress can include family and relationships, and major life changes such as career change or birth of a baby (http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/publications/factsheets/stress). Although our ancestors would have had similar communities of practice with their families and others, and of course experience childbirth, I believe their communities of practice would have been much less detailed and layered. Hundreds of years ago, humans’ families all lived in the same place at the same time. They didn’t have to worry about keeping tabs on what they were doing from afar or figure out how to post pictures on Facebook for their relatives to see. Nor did they get thrust into the pressures of ensuring their children kept up with the latest styles and fads so that they fit in with their peers.

Although communities of practice provide humans with a sense of belonging and shared understanding, I do believe that the multi-layered “cities” or “multimembership nexus of perspectives” (Wenger, p. 105) we create in our lives is getting too intense for our primate brains. If people are becoming more stressed due to multiple demands of their overlapping communities of practice, causing damage to the hippocampus and memory loss, worst case scenario is that our transmission of culture would start to break down as a result of less communication and information sharing with each other. Perhaps our brains will evolve to withstand the added stress of complex cities of communities of practice one day. Until then, it’s up to us as members of the human species to take care of ourselves and deal with our stressors so we can stay healthy and transmit culture for generations to come.

We need to transmit culture to ensure viable communities of practice for generations to come.

Human Competitive Advantage through the Transmission of Culture

As we learned through reading Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca), humans have thrived as a species and were able to evolve due to our capacity to share information with purpose and teach other. It is through the transmission of culture that humans have a competitive advantage and are able to progress as quickly as they did as a species on Earth.

Our ability to transmit culture and purposefully pass on lessons and tools from generation to generation has allowed humans to elude nature’s survival of the fittest that other species face. An interesting example that we discussed in class was Dr. Plumb’s mention of the fact that humans have been replicating caves since the days our ancestors lived in them full-time. I had never pondered why classrooms, boardrooms, and so on are usually set up with tables that seat everyone in a u-shape or a circle. I assumed that it was so all parties could engage in eye contact and to encourage open communication (which I’m sure is at least partially the reason). But what I hadn’t realized is that a conference room or classroom is a reproduction of a cave setting. All parties can sit in an enclosed space together without distraction of having to worry that there is danger or a predator behind them.

When you consider this notion further, you realize that human ability to transfer meaningful information and culture has literally helped us live longer. The advances in modern medicine and healthcare have increased an average human life expectancy at birth in America from 58 years for men and 62 years for women in 1938 to 74 years for men and 80 years for women in 2001 (http://www.prb.org/pdf06/NIA_FutureofLifeExpectancy.pdf).  As noted in the article, life expectancy for the other G8 countries is following the same trend.  People in developed countries are living longer, healthier lives. New drugs are being developed to aid in the recovery from diseases and various ailments based on research that has been built upon and shared from one laboratory to the next over many decades.

This graph is a little blurry but you can read the full article this graph came from and view a clearer image on the StatsCan website: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-229-x/2009001/demo/lif-eng.htm

 As humans, we are also unique in our use of tools in everyday life. As Johnson-Frey discusses in his minireview (http://pdn.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MiamiImageURL&_cid=272195&_user=10&_pii=S0896627303004240&_check=y&_coverDate=2003-07-17&view=c&_gw=y&wchp=dGLzVlB-zSkzV&md5=1ef131adeeca1c16dccf90a1f50e295d/1-s2.0-S0896627303004240-main.pdf), human and nonhuman primate brains are similar but it is human ability to reason about an “objects’ physical properties and interactions” that likely explains humans ability for complex tool use (p. 2, 2003). I think Tomasello would agree. It is this same ability to understand an item’s multiple properties and how it can purposefully interact with other items that allows us to pass the information to our fellow humans. This cognitive benefit along with Tomasello’s “joint attentional scene” (p. 96, 1999) allows humans a huge competitive advantage as a species; we share best practices of complex tool use, innovate the tool use and pass it on for the next generation to improve on further.

In a basic context, reflect for a moment on the number of tools and utensils you currently have in your kitchen for preparing food.  We have sharp knives to cut our food, pots and pans to cook our food over heat, and numerous dishes to serve the prepared food in, not to mention the numerous kitchen gadgets to do just about any other task you desire (my favourite is a Magic Bullet – it helps you make the easiest smoothies, salsa, and guacamole http://www.buythebullet.com). All of these things have made us more efficient in preparing the food for our sustenance than our ancestors. Gone are the days of using sharp rocks to cut food, preparing everything by hand from scratch, and cooking over fires for our survival.

My favorite kitchen tool, the "Magic Bullet".

From our use of tools, came the development of weapons. As we know, early humans used weapons to hunt animals for food and to protect themselves from falling prey to animals. Knowledge of using objects for tools and tool use was an important part of culture that was passed from generation to generation (for an interesting quick read on the Ngadjonji aborigines of Australia’s tool and weapon use: http://earthsci.org/aboriginal/ngadjonji%20history/food/weapons/Weapons%20and%20Tools.htm).

Over time as societies have developed and progressed, so have weapons. Weapons for hunting prey became more robust and automatic in the form of shotguns and rifles, and personal weapons in the form of handguns are now commonplace.  And let’s not forget the emergence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and biological warfare. Weaponry has now advanced so far that sophisticated artillery is used in conflict and wars against each other. According to the NATO website, “The use or threatened use of weapons of mass destruction significantly influenced the security environment of the 20th century and will also impact international security in the foreseeable future”  (http://www.nato.int/docu/briefing/wmd/html_en/wmd04.html). As you can see, the advancement of weapons is so robust that we may end up harming the progress of the human species if the full capacities of weapons are unleashed against one another.

Have we gone too far in the development of weapons?

I’m sure we can agree that the culture that was passed on to us (including the tools and traditions in that culture) as we developed and the culture that surrounds us shapes our lives. The use of our advanced communication and cognitive skills as humans to collaborate with each other and transmit culture helps our species move forward. However, we are still fragile beings like every other living organism on Earth and are affected by others’ use of tools and weapons. As such, we need to ensure that major devastation to the species does not occur due to the use of weapons and super weapons. Hopefully our world leaders will continue to use their inherited reasoning and communication skills to prevent the use of weapons causing major devastation so the human species can continue to innovate and progress.

The Ratchet Effect and Day-to-Day Life

When I began reading Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca), I quickly became interested in a concept that he briefly mentions early in the book. On page 5, Tomasello discusses human how practices are improved to the point that they cannot be reversed and then passed from one generation to another, modified by an individual or group of individuals over time, producing a “ratchet effect”. This was the first time I had heard about such an effect and thought the idea of “cultural ratcheting” was extremely interesting.

The first example of this form of social transmission that popped into my mind was the modern tradition of the Christmas holiday and a video a friend of mine had posted on Facebook in December regarding the history and origin of Santa Claus (click here to view the video in YouTube). Through this video I learned that the jolly old man I believed in as a child originated in Europe and is the result of North American culture merging a number of Christmas and winter characters into one persona. When the red and white-clad Santa went mainstream in America in 1930’s in Coca-Cola ads (http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html), the ratchet was set in place and there was no going back for the modern-day Santa Claus. I had a light bulb moment when I connected the two and started thinking about all of the things I take for granted in my day-to-day life that are the result of the ratchet effect.

A depiction of Santa Claus in a 1931 Coca Cola ad.

When you reflect on modern human life you come to realize that current North American lifestyles and daily life is shaped by ratchets in many contexts – traditions, technology, food procurement, shopping (the exchange of value for goods), education, and so on. To examine this further, let’s consider a normal day in my life: I wake up to a digital alarm clock that automatically plays the radio at a time I’ve programmed it to turn on. I shower in a bathtub that has hot running water with a turn of a tap, using cleansing products I purchased at a drugstore. I wear contact lenses to improve my vision and brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I eat cereal from a box with milk from a carton that I purchased from a grocery store. I walk to work in rubber-soled boots or shoes and a coat that I bought at a shopping mall. Walking to work, I wait to cross streets until I’m given the okay by automated stoplights and crosswalk signals. When I arrive at work (after taking an elevator up eight floors) I turn on my computer and check for a blinking light on my phone that will tell me if I have messages waiting or not. My computer automatically connects to the internet and I check my email inbox to see how many electronic messages I have received, then send a number of emails out. On most days, my work day will include the use of an online webinar program which I set up with a laptop that has a built-in webcam. A number of people from across the Maritimes, and sometimes from across the country, log into the webinar program and they take part in a seminar or we have a meeting. In the evenings, sometimes I meet my friends for dinner in a restaurant that prepares food from another country. I get to and from the restaurant by driving my four-door, automated transmission car that has a built-in car stereo and can play my iPod. Some other nights I’ll connect to Skype and talk to family and friends from different parts of the country or other countries.

I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to illustrate. When you really examine your daily life, you realize that life as we know it is the way it is due to our forefathers’ innovations and the ability to share knowledge with each other in order to keep building on these achievements because we’re human. Or we can say that daily life is a culmination of ratchets that were set throughout human history to the point that we are so dependent on the innovations that life wouldn’t be the same without them.

When I think of my parent’s generation (they were both born in the 1940s), they wouldn’t have been able to fathom as a child how different their children’s lifestyles would be from theirs. Or that they would be corresponding with their children over computers with something called “the internet”. When you really think about it, the amount of human advancement in terms of lifestyle and technology and how it forms daily life over the past 60 years has been incredible. However, although these advancements have been to the betterment of human society in the Western world, I can’t help but wonder how these advancements have been a detriment to the earth and its environment. Over time, humans have created an “easier” and “more convenient” lifestyle in the Western world, but in many cases, it has been to the detriment of the earth (think corporate-driven industries with no regard to how they affect the environment, mass production, over-harvesting). I couldn’t find any scholarly publications exploring this question but I think it would be an interesting topic for future research.

Will the harm that human advancement has caused the environment be reversible?

It will be interesting to see what advancements will be made over my lifetime and how the ratchet effect will affect my generation. Aside from technology, I hope that there will be further social movements that will provide positive change in sustainability efforts for a healthier planet to undo some of the harm mankind has imparted on the earth. Maybe if more people learned about the ratchet effect they could see how their life has been shaped by their forefathers and how their actions will affect the day-to-day lofe of those to come that we will share our history, our human race, and our planet with.