Oliver Ding - Activity Analysis Center (Page 3)

Revisiting, Rebuilding, Re-engaging with Past Selves

Furthermore, once Past Selves are established as a legitimate theoretical category alongside Present Selves and Possible Selves, a new possibility opens up: the three can be curated together into a coherent, dynamic framework of creative identity development.

Revisiting-Rebuilding: Agency Cascade and the Transformation of Self

When a creator returns to earlier work and rebuilds it from a more developed standpoint, they are not just producing a better theory. They are enacting a relationship between their past self and their present self — a diachronic Self-Other structure that drives the Transformation of Self.

The Landscape of Anticipatory Cultural Sociology (v2.0)

ACS v1.0 was a curation of meta-frameworks... Precisely these two needs have driven the development from v1.0 to v2.0: building out the operational layer and establishing the coordination structure that holds it together.

Activity Analysis Network #13: Learn, Weave, and Agency Frontier

These articles collectively mark a significant expansion of the World of Life framework, introduce Spatial Heuristics as a new methodological stream, and advance ACS to version 1.2 with a refined model of the actor.

The Landscape of ACS 1.2 and a New Model of the Actor

The ACS model is oriented differently. It is not primarily about constraint or calculation. It is about orientation — what directions are available, what positions are possible, what forms of action are open.

Appropriating Activity Theory #13: Agency Frontier Behind the Hierarchy of Human Activity (2020)

When I sat down to write this issue's column, I found myself asking a question I hadn't asked before: Does the tradition of Activity Theory have anything analogous to the four boundaries of the World of Life?

World of Life: Four Positive Frontiers of Project Engagement

I rediscovered a diagram I made in 2022 — The Shaman's Mandala — which maps four concepts from the Ecological Practice Approach onto a four-boundary structure: Affordance, Supportance, Attachance, and Curativity, each occupying a distinct position.

Spatial Heuristics: From the Margins to the Center

The present case study documents six weeks of systematic development in which a single structural discovery — the Double Square diagram — served as the engine of an entire theoretical expansion.

Spatial Heuristics: Developing a Pedagogy for Cognitive Hydrology

If Lake 42 documents the Generative Confluence pattern — the development of Creative Life Theory v3.0–v3.1 through the convergence of multiple streams — then the development of ACS from v1.0 to v1.1, across January and February 2026, documents a different pattern: Spatial Heuristics.

World of Life: Four Negative Frontiers of Knowledge Engagement

Beyond those edges, a second square frames the four negative frontiers: Mystification, Dogmatism, Echo Chamber, and Tragedy of the Commons. They are not distant dangers. They occupy the zone just outside the working space, adjacent to every boundary, always within drift.