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Activity Analysis Network #12: Design, Medium, and Agency Resonance

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Activity Analysis Network #12: Design, Medium, and Agency Resonance
Photo by David Pisnoy / Unsplash

This is the 12th issue of the Activity Analysis Center newsletter

by Oliver Ding

February 28, 2026

Hi, and welcome to Activity Analysis Network, a newsletter hosted by the Activity Analysis Center.

Each issue is organized around the "Flow - Focus - Center - Circle" schema, the primary model of the World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025).

As a biweekly newsletter, I share summaries of new articles from the Activity Analysis Center, along with updates on related activities, including some of my own published work elsewhere.

In this issue (#12), nine new articles have been added to the site:

These articles contribute to the development of the Anticipatory Cultural Sociology (ACS) framework, which culminated in v1.1.

Flow

The historical development of the Activity Analysis Center and my experience of daily life

It was a Saturday in early February. My sons were in their Chinese school classes, and I was in the library — my usual weekend waiting spot.

I had been revisiting the Knowledge Engagement Framework, a tool I developed in 2023. On that morning, something shifted. I had always understood this framework as a knowledge project tool. But sitting there, I suddenly saw it at a different level: not the project level, but the action level. A project is a structured series of actions; what this framework actually names is the characteristic tendency that animates actions themselves, prior to their organization into projects. A different word was needed.

I pulled out a notebook and sketched a diagram. By evening, the concept had a name: Posture.

One word, one Saturday afternoon. What followed, over the next two weeks, is what I've come to recognize as Agency Resonance — the structural pattern in which a new concept activates a network of past projects, drawing them into unexpected dialogue with the present and with possible futures. It is the opposite of a linear cascade. It is not planned. It simply begins to resonate.

By the end of February, that single concept had activated: the World of Life boundary framework, the Ecological Practice tradition, the Knowledge Engagement framework, the Discover–Design–Deliver model, the Living Coordinate Model, a LinkedIn post about CLAUDE.md, a 2022 case study about project networks — and more. The ACS framework reached v1.1.

Which brings me to the Appropriating Activity Theory installment for this issue. #1 — AAT #12: Agency Resonance Behind the Project Network (2022) looks back at a case from 2022 in which what appeared to be several separate creative projects revealed itself, in retrospect, as a single resonant network: multiple nodes activating simultaneously, the whole exceeding the sum of its parts. That 2022 case is now legible as an early instance of Agency Resonance — a pattern that only found its name in January 2026, but had been operating long before.

Focus

The Thematic Foci of the Activity Analysis Center

The diagram below is The Landscape of Anticipatory Cultural Sociology (ACS) v1.1, dated February 27, 2026.

The diagram follows the logic of the Living Coordinate Model introduced in Lake 42. It has two parts: a 3D coordinate and three circles.

The 3D coordinate: three directions of creative work

The three axes represent the three directions along which the creative work of this period was advancing:

  • Thematic Creation — building the ontology of thematic creation itself: Mindentity, Folkentity, Worldentity, unified by the Agency Cascade as their dynamic engine
  • Cultural Projection — pushing the operational development of existing models further, producing three nested container structures that specify how Discover, Design, and Deliver operate at each level of engagement
  • Bureaus of Agency — mapping the structural patterns through which agency manifests differently depending on position: Cascade, Resonance, Threshold, Frontier

These three directions were not advancing in isolation. They were simultaneously independent in their own theoretical logic and entangled in practice — a concept developed on one axis would resonate into another, a question raised in one direction would find its answer elsewhere.

The three circles: the center unfolds

The three circles represent ACS as the creative center. Each circle corresponds to one dimension of the Discover–Design–Deliver model and unfolds into a nested container structure on the right side of the diagram:

Each nested structure moves from the most individual and action-level inward layer outward to the most collective and social outer layer. Posture sits at the innermost position of the Discover circle — the concept born in the library on that February Saturday, which set the entire resonance in motion.

From v1.0 to v1.1: Scaling the Focus

ACS v1.0, established on January 5th, curated six meta-frameworks into a landscape, grounded in the ontological foundations of the World of Life and the HLS Framework. It anchored ACS as a creative center — answering what cultural development is and why it unfolds as it does.

What remained was the ontology of Thematic Creation itself: what is the status of a thematic creation as it moves through social life? What are its states of existence, and what drives the transitions between them? This specific gap, along with the operational and structural development across the other two axes, defined the work of February.

In the language of Lake 42, what happened from v1.0 to v1.1 is Scaling the Focus: the anchored center growing outward, filling in depth and detail across three dimensions simultaneously — through the mutual activation of three independent yet entangled lines of creative work.

v1.0 was the center, anchored. v1.1 is the center, scaled.

CENTER

The Core of the Activity Analysis Center

The Activity Analysis Center hosts two major theoretical enterprises: the Life-as-Activity Approach (including the Project Engagement Approach) and the World of Activity Approach, now operating within a nested structure: World of Life ⊃ World of Activity.

This issue marks two significant developments within these enterprises.

Design as Activity: a new direction

The first is the introduction of Design as a new thematic direction within the Life-as-Activity Approach. Previously, the Activity Analysis Center developed project engagement, knowledge engagement, and cultural projection — but design, as a distinct lens, had not been formally brought in.

#7 — Design-oriented Project Engagement changes that. Building on the Discover–Design–Deliver model, it situates design not as a separate discipline but as a mode of activity engagement — Design as Activity. The three nested container structures that appear in the ACS v1.1 diagram are a direct product of this development: each circle of the Living Coordinate Model is articulated through a design-oriented lens, from the innermost personal orientation (Discover) to the outermost cultural delivery (Deliver).

[Discover-Design-Deliver diagram]

This is a meaningful expansion of the Life-as-Activity lineage — design thinking entering the framework not as a borrowed methodology but as an activity-theoretical concept in its own right.

Agency Resonance: the third Bureau

The second development belongs to the World of Activity Approach. Over the past three issues, the Four Bureaus of Agency have been introduced one by one as a framework for understanding how agency operates differently depending on structural position within the World of Life.

Issue #10 introduced Agency Cascade — the pattern in which agency flows downward through nested levels of social structure, each level's Other becoming the next level's Self.

Issue #11 introduced Agency Threshold — the pattern in which agency operates at structural boundaries, where transformation most powerfully occurs, and where the gap between projects becomes a site of creative choice.

This issue introduces Agency Resonance — the pattern in which multiple activity circles activate simultaneously and begin to trigger one another, producing emergent developments that no single circle would have generated alone. It is not sequential like Cascade, nor boundary-based like Threshold. It is lateral and networked: a concept begins to vibrate, and nearby projects, past and present, begin to vibrate with it.

As the Flow and Focus sections of this issue describe, Agency Resonance is not only the theoretical theme of this issue — it is also the pattern that best describes how this issue's creative work itself unfolded.

CIRCLE

The Context of the Activity Analysis Center

Over the past several years, I worked on several theoretical projects, such as the Ecological Practice Approach, Curativity Theory, Creative Life Theory, and Thematic Space Theory.

Inspired by creativity researcher Howard Gruber's idea of "Network of Enterprises," I used the "Knowledge Center" approach to manage this large knowledge system. Each knowledge center hosts one or two related theoretical approaches.

  • CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab): the Ecological Practice Approach and Creative Life Theory
  • Curativity Center: Curativity Theory
  • TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement): Thematic Space Theory
  • Frame for Work: A theory about Knowledge Frameworks

This issue marks a particular moment in that network's history — because two projects were running in parallel, almost perfectly synchronized, from early January to late February.

The Lake 42 manuscript began on January 2nd. Its task was retrospective: to document the Generative Confluence journey of June–December 2025, writing twelve chapters that trace the eight movements from Awareness from Flow to Setting the Enterprise. Initiated on the first day of 2026, the project was completed with Lake 42: The Great Confluence on Possible Press, on the Lunar New Year.

ACS v1.1 began taking shape on January 5th, when v1.0 was anchored as a creative center. What followed — through February — was Scaling the Focus: three lines of development advancing simultaneously, independently, and entangled, expanding the center across the dimensions of Thematic Creation, Cultural Projection, and Bureaus of Agency.

These two projects were not separate. Lake 42 was writing the story of Scaling the Focus while ACS was living it. The theoretical tools developed in the manuscript — the Living Coordinate Model, the logic of Anchoring the Center and Scaling the Focus — were being directly applied to understand and navigate the very development they described. The Reflective Medium was illuminating the present journey in real time.

Moreover, as usual, I often run GAP projects. This time, I was inspired by Lake 42's Epilogue and Appendix, moved to reflect on the Creative Life Curation method and the broader landscape of Creative Life Theory and the Ecological Practice Approach. The outcome was The "Cognitive Hydrology" Trilogy (#6) and a new practice named Thematic Development Study (#3).

This is Agency Resonance at the project network level: two enterprises activating each other across time, the retrospective and the prospective vibrating at the same frequency.

The book ended. The streams kept flowing.

World

Me, You, and We

As 2026 unfolds, let us embrace the spirit of Re-engagement—to rediscover the unforgettable people, moments, and things from our past, and cherish them as the delicate culture of our lives.

With beautiful anticipations, let us journey into Co-becoming—creating a shared path alongside the uncertainties of the future.

Oliver Ding

Founder of the Activity Analysis Center

February 28, 2026

p.s. I am based in Houston, Texas, US. Where are you?

v1.0 - February 15, 2026 - 1,914 words