After all these years: chicken or egg problem has one or more solutions

How often have you heard this:

"which was there first, the chicken or the egg?"

And how did it make you feel?

Especially when you are all fired up about a project of your choice and someone offers this as a non-solution?

Not helpful at all.

Well, I like paradoxes, and was reminded of this when I read my first article of the new year

 

MIT Launches Phone-Enabled Work Site for Haiti

(Thank you, Monika, for forwarding this  RWW article, very worth watching the interview with the builders, about voice-based skill indexing. )

quoting consultant Angela Dean

"We spoke to the UN Development Program, Clinton Foundation, Partners-In-Health, Peace Dividend Trust, at the State Department, and more. Everyone was the same--they thought the project sounded great and to let them know when it was deployed. We wanted more concrete feedback on how to cater the system to their interests, but they were so overloaded already and they didn't know if this was pure vaporware considering the timing. So we discovered the answer to the chicken & egg is egg."

 

The answer is egg

Wow, can a solution be that simple? The philosopical discourse on Wikipedia is sure interesting, but hey, if we want to make change the chicken or egg question is actually irelevant and inappropriate.

Why?

Because we've had it backwards.  If we take this question serious, and think about  finding an answer, where do we go with our attention? Backwards in mental time, just as the question intends us to. Not helpful at all, because in making change, we are facing a future - complex, uncertain, yet changeable. How is this paradoxical question - aiming towards a resolution of events in the past - ever going to be helpful with hatching a good future?

 

Start with egg if you aim for the future

Keep looking forward, and build the eggs first. Especially when it is easier to build eggs than chicken. Sharing, education and collaboration will spread your eggs. Warm-hearted people and time will hatch the ideas and further nurturing will grow the chicken. May your plan of changes for 2011 and beyond find followers and come true.

 

One more thing: let's break an egg to make an omelet here. Thanks to @johnccarver for sharing this slow food for the inqiuring mind.

@xianrenaud Probably the best video I've watched all year: Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning http://vimeo.com/5513063

 

 

 

Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning from Dr. Tae on Vimeo.