THE FOUR STAGES OF THEORY-U
When we open ourselves up to the dynamics of listening-dispositions we have while interacting with one another, we can distinguish four different stages in our attention. The final aim of the Theory-U, that describes these stages and the dynamic/strategy of reaching them, is to become in a state of presencing, where there is a oneness of the individual with its environment. First we go through the other stages, that each has its own character and qualities.

To receive information we use a downloading technique, where we see hierarchical lower people in the organisation as instruments to obtain information without involving them in decisions. A more interactive strategy, although not really cooperative is the technique of debating. The organisation is much more deregulated in this stage and functions like the market. Arguments are used to overrule each other, but consensus is possible. The third stage is that of the dialogue. The strategic aim of this organisation is a collective result through negotiation. Together we strive for a common goal, which was formulated in a dialogue. This network organisation consists of equal nodes and power resides in relationships.

THE NETWORK
The view that Scharmer here has on the network is very much consistent with our intuitive ideas of a primary sense of equality and the necessary consensus from out of that equality in order to be a productive organisation or society. The network thus is an organizational form that lives up to the expectations of a democratic society that is possibly beyond representative democracy and maybe even direct, made possible by its density of communication lines (note that representative democracy was partly designed in reaction to the impossibility of collective consultation and consensus). In other words: the network is a form of organisation that is close to our intuitive ideas of the organic form of society, or yet again differently formulated, it is an organizational form where synthetic or artificial relationships are reduced to a minimum and relational structures are as much as possible not formed by means of abstraction.

THE ECOSYSTEM
We can then see the origin of the idea of an ecosystem organisation. This organizational form must lack any form of artificial relationships and abstraction as structuralizing tool. This organization is not structured (as in: made by means of structures) at all, as the present structures, or actually structure, is absolutely organic or natural and is just existent. That one structure is the oneness of everything. It is the network society without connections, so very much the organisation seen from a holistic point of view. The ecosystem is in this sense also a inter-network organisation, as all networks are related in being one. Outside the network does not exist, as the ecosystem contains everything and everything is one.

I don’t know if the ecosystem has a potential of existence and if it does I don’t have the smallest clue of how it will in reality function, how its processes will look like. I can make a conceptual sketch of what it will be, but that’s about it. Maybe it is part of a paradigm that is thus far away from my current paradigm, that it is even impossible for me to see marginal existent fragments of the ecosystem paradigm. But one thing that really fascinates me is the fact that the ecosystem must lack all forms of abstraction, it is just because it is and not because it represents. Would that mean that the ecosystem lacks any form of technology? And if not, it must mean that technology then has reached the level of nature. Then technology does not reconstruct or represent any thing any longer, but is just because it is, it has become organic.

THE FALLACY IN BOOCH’S ARGUMENT
This is also where I find a fallacy in the argument that Grady Booch makes about software and its functioning as an utility for people. He says that in comparison to physicists, that translate complex processes into simple schematic images the work of software developers is in the opposite direction. Software producers take simple mathematical concepts like the notion of computability and language and translate them into very complex structures of programming language. Especially because he mentions language, but I recon the same goes for computability, in connection with “simple mathematical concepts” I wonder what he sees to be the ultimate power of abstraction, which he correctly states to be the human strategy to attack complexity.

There has not been as a matter of fact any kind of technology or mathematical concept that completely captures the notion of human natural languages. That is due to the fact that technology or mathematical concepts always use a form of abstraction. The software Booch refers to might be existend of very large codes, still it remains a symplification of the functionality of the human brains (as in interacting human brains) that produce both structural semantics (the way language is structured, for example the notion of truth as a relation between two sentences) and lexical semantics (the meaning of words as in relation to the object they refer to in the real world). Booch might see software codes as very complex, but still it is an abstraction of the more complex entity of human natural language.

THE UTOPEAN IDEOLOGY OF THE ECOSYSTEM
Now I don’t think technology ever becomes in this sense intelligent and with that I also state that humans do not become intelligent enough to explain and instrumentalize their own functioning in this matter. The restriction we have to do that is linked to the tool we use to do so: abstraction. But if abstraction is the only strategy to attack complexity, if we do not have another tool to formalize the complex structure of nature and specifically the structure of human language, is it then possible for us to reach the stage of precensing and thus the ecosystem? Or do we need to abandon human culture and go back to a state of nature to reach that objective? Then my first picture of the ecosystem is right and it lacks all forms of techology and I think that is an utopean ideology.