Concerning Wildfire Objects
The Sequel to the Recent "Essay on Wildfire Innovation and Context." Volume 1, Essay Number 3.
Introduction
Much of daily life is concerned with objects. They may be objects with incredible technological power, but remain objects, at their most coarse level of distinction. Objects are generally related to other objects, which are related to even more. Each object sits in a network of other objects that it relates to in terms of means, ends, style, or forming an ecology of interrelated objects. How and why objects relate is a matter of context. The same is true for wildland fire objects. The object of the chainsaw is to the object of the sharpening file, chaps, gloves, eye protection, and fuel containers. In a more extended relationality, the chainsaw relates to the drip torch, the very pistol, the helicopter, aerial incendiary devices, and the digital camera.
This is the second post on wildfire innovation, following “An Essay on Wildfire Innovation and Context,” which would be ideal to read first. Like its prequel, this post seeks avenues toward the advancement and deepening of the design and development of what are henceforth known as wildland fire innovation objects, or “objects,” through a critical approach. The use of the term “objects” here is for clarity and generalizability that characteristics could be added only when necessary. In a way, the reduction of innovations to their most primary characteristic of objects makes the discussions surrounding them clearer and presents a neutral entity that could be anything. The other purpose in leveraging Maturana’s narrative around objects is to access the matter of how they come into being as they are, possibly on the fireline. The matter is not about how they are seen but about how they are brought into existence and the implications of this operation for understanding responsibility for their extended use in the field. It is much more of an active beheld than just perceived.
This essay starts with the subject of distinctions. Like its predecessor, the following is sharply critical writing, but not just for critical writing’s sake. Both essays are critical of wildfire innovation for the purpose of learning how to improve upon the process of conceptualization, creating, testing, and selling. The first essay gave a sweeping view of the wildfire innovation context, whereas this post focuses more on how objects enter reality, how this influences innovators’ relations with objects, and the displacement caused by the object’s design.
This essay is an exercise in the critical to see what is there, and while it has use, for those who are seeking the overtly helpful, skip to the “method” section in the conclusion. FireTech is not denied. Instead, this essay seeks ways forward in the name of the future.
Objects create objects that produce objects that, in turn, create objects that produce outcomes that produce futures that produce landscapes.
Bringing Forth Objects
Distinctions, frequently called by many other names unknowingly, are foundational to objects, particularly in the writing of Humberto Maturana, whose work was used in the last post and has heavily influenced the author. Distinctions are generally a primordial, individualistic operation that underlies and makes everyday life possible. One of the earliest distinctions typically drawn is between whether something is alive/dead, and there is value in drawing this distinction for the observer who now knows how to treat the subject of the distinction thereafter. This is essential within the confines of the distinction and its implications for those that follow.
In Maturana’s work, operations of distinction contain a double movement of demarcating and bringing something forth, the marked state, as Spencer-Brown (1994) would call it, along with a background in which it makes sense. For this post, the background is not necessarily the background from which the entity came or is most directly associated. While a physical visual setting might be the most natural condition for a distinction to be understood, in Maturana and Poerksen (2011) and Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008), Maturana suggests that the background or context the distinguished comes forth can also be narrative. Interpreted further, it can be anything else.
Distinctions, popularized by the work of Spencer-Brown (1994), have been presented by Mingers (1995) as being prelingual and autonomic. A majority of the time (so much so it degrades the value of distinction-making), this is true as distinctions are made beneath the level of human awareness driven by a particular motivation, and dividing the world into residual, that what does not matter (at the moment), and what does matter (the marked state) due to its value and significance. All distinctions produce some value for the individual who drew them, resulting in an interlocking of distinctions that form the smooth texture of the individual’s world, comprised of different entities with varying value and significance (Schultz, 2009; Spencer-Brown, 1994; Yáñez & Maturana, 2013).
"Only what is distinguished exists. Although it is distinct from ourselves, we are nevertheless tied to it (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011, p.31).
It is innate and unavoidable to continuously draw distinctions at the autonomic, prelingual, and unintentional levels outside human experience. However, central to this post is the assertion that many distinctions and their processes are and should be intentionally taking place in human experience, rendering them thoughtful, explicit, spoken, and collaborative. Operations of distinction in the realm of human experience have a considerable role in understanding the surrounding environment and the individual’s “world” and how it and the objects within it came into being as they are.
There is a human need to draw distinctions. Fundamentally, dividing the world into meaningful and meaningless, as distinctions do, is vital to human operations. They are crucial to making decisions and wayfinding. Being conscious of distinctions may fold them into existing sense-making domains and processes of how an individual or a group of people constantly divide their surroundings and interactions with objects into important and unimportant parts, at a minimum. Wildfire innovators use distinctions when bringing new objects into being, and wildland firefighters use distinctions to use these objects to fight fire.
There or not
Regarding Maturana's operations of distinctions, an object only exists once it has been distinguished: "If nobody makes this distinction, then the material or conceptual entity that is specified and demarcated from its environment in this way does not exist" (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011, p. 31). Maturana takes a hardline and perhaps even extreme view toward observing an object when he makes operations of distinction a prerequisite for being able to observe one. In Maturana's network of ideas, an object only exists once it is distinguished and does not pre-exist this operation.
Once an individual distinguishes an object, over time, it may be experienced as an entity separate from their daily functioning, and they may forget they were the ones who brought an innovative wildfire object into the world. A completed object did not pre-exist their activity of a long succession of interdependent distinctions creating a coarse, marked, and residual state (Spencer-Brown, 1994). Maturana (2005) explains that it is vital that an individual who begins to handle objects, notions, concepts, and experiences as if they exist independently of them do so with the awareness of the operation(s) of distinction they performed first to bring them into existence.
Similarly, in Maturana and Poerksen (2011), Maturana describes the necessity of perceiving an object that an observer distinguishes as not separate from them but connected to them. It is transforming separation into the experience of connectedness (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). While the individual who distinguished the object is not part of it, they are the ones who performed the operation, brought it into existence, and then described it and potentially shared it with others, spreading its significance. Across two publications, Maturana suggests addressing the perception that something distinguished exists independently from the person who distinguished it by being aware of their connection to it. For example:
So, although the entity distinguished and the domain of operational coherence in which it exists as it arises in the distinction of the observer do not pre-exist to its distinction, the observer can speak as if both the entity distinguished and its domain of existence existed independently of what they do, as long as he or she does not lose his or her awareness of the fact that the entity that he or she has distinguished, as well as its domain of existence, exist in an operational domain that arises through his or her operations of distinction (Maturana, 2005, p.58).
Objects
Moving forward, “Objects arise in languaging, they do not exist by themselves, and they do not pre-exist to their arising” (Maturana, 2005, p.65). In our daily experience, as discussed above, we distinguish objects “as if they existed independently from our distinguishing them” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.35). Objects appear in language through distinctions, and do not pre-exist the operation of distinction. However, in Maturana (2005) and Maturana & Verden-Zöller (2008), the focus moves above distinctions (while still involving them) in particular in the flow of “ recursive consensual co-ordinations of doings” (Maturana, 2005, p.65). This phrasing can be translated by Baeza-Flores (2022), beginning with consensual. According to Baeza-Flores (2022), “‘consensual’ implies that there is consensus, and there is consensus when there is unanimous consent” (p.82). From this perspective, the term co-ordination appears to connote coordination among people who are in unanimous agreement about the coordination. More specifically, Baeza-Flores (2022) gives the following example of consensual coordination, which can involve a coordination of coordination (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008):
When you raise your hand and make eye contact with a taxi, the meaning is the same for everyone (its meaning is: I need a taxi). If the man lifts a foot or scratches his head while he looks at the taxi driver, he will not be able to communicate because that has no consensual meaning (it does not mean the same thing for the man and the taxi driver)
When you draw a circle in the air with your arm, the consensual meaning is the same for everyone (its meaning is: I need to travel in the opposite direction to your taxi (p.85).
Between steps one and two above, there is an additional meaning of co-ordination which appears as “coordinations of coordinations of doings” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.35) in the same context as Maturana (2005). In example one above, there is the first coordination involving eye contact and raising the arm. The second coordination takes place when the circle is drawn in the air, which causes the taxi to turn around (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). These “coordinations of coordinations” build upon one another in what is known as a “recursion,” which is explained in the following. Lastly, from the beginning, Baeza-Flores (2022) explains recursions referring to the quote above: “In the second coordination, there is recursion because when he draws, this communication was based on the previous one (when he raised his hand to make eye contact; p.85). Maturana has devised more technical definitions of recursion used later in this essay. However, it is sufficient here to understand a recursive co-ordination as one that uses as a platform those that came before it.
Recursive consensual co-ordinations of doings may best be understood as coordinations that build on other coordinations performed with other people, in a consensual domain where there is shared, unanimous agreement as to what things mean, taking place in the doings, or activity, of the same people. Maturana & Verden-Zöller (2008) explain that this is the flow objects arise in known as “a field of shared coordinations of doings that we call a domain of interobjectivity, and which is felt by those who live it as a domain of shared entities” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.35).
In other words, the experience of “objects,” whether connected or external, is dependent on how innovators feel during their coordinations of coordinations of activity as they operate in a domain of interobjectivity. Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) continue, writing “It is to this feeling that we as observers refer when we speak of objects” (P.36). It is normative to feel that the objects and the way they exist has nothing to do with the innovators who have the distinguished them as this/that type of object. This feeling, even when explained to an individual as an act performed in language and activity, that brings forth the object, does not deny an innovator’s experience of the object as existing independently. In interobjectivity described earlier, entities shared in coexistence and consensuality feel like external entities and are lived congruently. This is, of course, in tension with the understanding that nothing exists until it is brought forth through the sensorium in an intentional linguistic operation of distinction, if in the level of human awareness.
Wildfire Objects
This post is all about objects, wildfire innovations described in their simplest form. At their most basic, wildland fire innovations are just objects made by objects, all distinguished as objects and used as objects. The entire wildland fire strategy market is comprised of objects distinguished in different ways, regardless of how similar. Through operations of distinction, parts of the object and the entire object are distinguished during design, connected to the person who performed the operation. While the object or part of the object is demarcated from its environment, it is brought forth with a background that gives the object meaning.
Much has been said thus far about the nature of objects, beginning with the crucial yet oft-overlooked operation of distinction taking place below or at the level of human experience. It can now be integrated within the wildfire innovation narrative. The innovative process begins by drawing a coarse distinction at a foundational level similar to alive/dead that initiates and animates the process, and the following distinction builds off the first, and the next one off of that, and then again and again and again. Dividing up the world through distinctions is an ever-present part of the innovation process, from conceptualizing to sales.
It is important not to overlook Maturana’s two-step operation of distinction. A sketch of a concept may be brought forth through the first stage of a distinction as “good” in the marked state, and the rest of the wildfire innovative context as the residual. The second step of the operation is to bring the first step forward with a background in which what has been brought forth makes sense. The background is not given; there is discretion as to what the background can be (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). There is reason for caution. Exuberance may, at worst, attach an ambitious background that brings forth the innovation within a premature background, leading to the setting of high expectations, overconfidence, and overpromising. This is already known, but perhaps not in these words and dynamics. Investors are, of course, aware that this is so. The object investors distinguish with help from the innovators travels with a selected background that gives the object a certain predetermined degree of meaning that may not have been fully tested and arises from confidence in technology. This is generally referred to as sales.
The object distinguished as such during the sales meeting may have had some degree of intentionality to it, as the object is brought forth with a background that endows it with meaning as a champion of the wildfire space prior to being on the fireground. This may not be dishonest or nefarious, but instead represents a crucial mode of giving meaning to objects and no meaning to others that generally goes unnoticed.
During a sales presentation, effort is put forth to bring the company or individual being pitched to into the same consensual domain that was defined and filled by the innovating company. Doing so is a target. Within the innovative wildfire company, just like any other, objects arise through consensual, unanimously agreed upon coordinations that serve as the basis for subsequent coordinations of activity performed by a group of people who may feel the objects that arise through this are external to them. A consensual domain arises through this object and is comprised of arbitrary distinguished objects, coordinations, descriptions, explanations, and other tokens that trigger in the members of the domain (company) the same meaning, orienting behaviors, and actions (Maturana, 1978; Mingers 1995). The consensual domain is absolutely critical to the functioning of the organization; without it, it could not function. There must be shared meaning in order to operate in a coordinated and coherent manner. Seeking to bring the individuals being sold the object into the consensual domain is incredibly beneficial, as they share the same meaning as the wildfire innovation company and thus the same value. This is a temporal process.
It may, in some intense cases, be natural for a misplaced messianic attitude to prevail in a founder and lead designer who believes they have the answer no one else is capable of creating that will shift the wildfire landscape dramatically. Though if such an attitude is common, it has yet to change wildland firefighting entirely with massive performance outcomes. The messianic attitude is just a self-distinction. A founder distinguishes themselves as the leader capable of saving everyone and everything from wildfire. That is the marked state. Perhaps they bring forth a background about themselves and how they envision their object being used around the world that supports this distinction, where everyone else falls into the residual category, who did not or are not developing the same object. The innovator had the foresight that no one else did. When in reality, it is likely just another object.
The above should be remembered when considering how Maturana advocates for a feeling of connectedness instead of separation from that which we distinguish (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). Earlier, Maturana (2005) explained that an individual who begins to feel separation of the objects around them as if they had independent existence must become aware of the operation of distinction they performed to bring them into existence. For example, distinguishing an innovative wildfire object as a transformative one and bringing forth with it a background in which it could truly be transformative, connects the innovator to what happens with and to that object based on that distinction. Assumedly, the innovator believes, for technical reasons, that this distinction is merely describing something external to the innovator. They do not see that they are performing the operation of distinction that is unique to them, that does not separate the object from them, but rather connects them to it, and they remain responsible for it. Objects are contracted and sold based on distinctions tied to the innovator who makes them.
At any stage of innovation, objects, no matter how small, are distinguished. There is the object brought forth, its background, and what is considered the marked state and the residual. This complicated process may frequently be taking place below the level of human consciousness for processes that do not require engagement through lived human experience. However, when operations of distinction do become part of human experience, they should be engaged with intentionally. Being engaged with operations of distinction when they present themselves exposes the wildfire innovator to a new sense-making process involved with every aspect of design and development. Distinctions that rise to the level of experience require thoughtfulness, reflection, and deliberateness, for they will become part of the object and tied to the innovator who made them. This becomes most noticeable as other distinctions attach or try to attach to the earlier distinction, and the object comes into use on the fireline or is otherwise exposed to the wildfire environment. Building off of the earlier expression of feeling connectedness to distinctions, in the wildfire context, a feeling of responsibility should also be present for all of the distinctions made along the way that resulted in putting that object and any personnel near the fireline.
Wildfire Objects Cause Displacement
Following the discussion of how objects are brought into being is the concern for the displacement caused by the design, manufacturing, and use of objects. There are two types of concrete objects: artificial and natural. Baeza-Flores (2022) explains, “the concrete, artificial things are everything we can invent and manufacture, create with our hands, touch, and feel” (p.96). On the other hand, “a drop of water is a concrete, natural thing since it has been created by nature (humans can also make water with hydrogen and oxygen, but they did not invent water” (Baeza-Flores, 2022, p.96). Innovating humans bring into being concrete artificial objects to change how wildfire is suppressed and, in doing so, produce displacement along the way.
Internationally, the wildfire strategies marketplace continues to experience growth. Anecdotally, more objects are being created than are (occasionally) integrated into private and public markets and generating revenue, so the wildfire innovation space is one to watch.
Innovation is creating and introducing a new object into a space, such as the wildfire strategies marketplace. To bring new objects into being, innovation relies on creation, which is better known as the innate human ability of design. From an innovation perspective, design is fundamentally the act of deciding what should be brought into the world that has not existed before and will benefit it, and acting intentionally to bring it into being. Before materializing anything, astute designers consider the prescriptive and proscriptive constraints of the design, what it makes possible and impossible in the operational context, strategic and tactical value adds, intended and unintended uses, effectiveness and efficiency, safety, and capacity to cause harm, to begin. These considerations are driven by design philosophy and design studies. They could be classified as part of the ideation process or distinguished as an independent stage in the design process where outside expertise is needed to perform a design critique.
Displacement
Part or all of the design process may be cyclical. Circularity begins in design with the feedback loop, where the outcome of an action returns to the source of that action, in this case, designers. The feedback loop sends an action, or the object of an action, out into the world where it interacts with the environment for designers, organizational members, and other key stakeholders to include investors, to observe. The effects of that action, including their reception, opinions, and suggestions, are fed back to the designers, who incorporate the feedback from the loop into the design or redesign of the object.
Too simply put, feedback loops extend from the designer and their senses as they engage in the process of creating, where they constantly learn what will work and what will not work in their making of a new object for wildfire management. In this process, what will not work is displaced by what will work. As the fabrication process begins, the drop saw displaces what is not needed, as does the milling machine and its end mill, the angle grinder, and the welding gun that displaces two pieces of metal for one. New features displace old features, while new technologies displace old technologies.
If testing is constant, whether putting the concept in front of people or testing a material object ranging from low to high detail and functionality, feedback loops may remain quite small and avoid major revisions and significant displacement. Alternatively, an approach to design that does not entail frequent testing may generate a tall and wide feedback loop once it eventually interfaces with required testing that necessitates major changes to the designed object and significant displacement.
Displacement in the form of destruction is also a key consideration. At a basic level, displacement is inevitable in design. As Fry (2009) says below, the egg is displaced to create the omelet. Many eggs are displaced in the course of a local diner’s breakfast. Trees are displaced and rendered into bartops, tables, chairs, stools, and other furniture.
Whenever we bring something into being we also destroy something - the omelette at the cost of the egg, the table at the cost of the tree….This relation between creation and destruction is not a problem when a resource is renewable, but it's a disaster when it is not (Fry, 2009, p.4).
The above brings into attention the displacement of idle minerals at the cost of the battery, extracting the mineral Bauxite from the earth displaced as aluminum, and mining those minerals that produce copper, to say nothing of ore at the cost of steel, pleasure displaced by work, and an explorative strategy for innovations at the cost of an exploitation strategy of established practice.
Displacement also takes place through recursions, as defined above. A more detailed definition and another example are provided below.
When a cyclical process becomes coupled to a linear one, the phenomenon of recursion takes place, and whenever a recursive dynamics begins, a completely new phenomenal domain arises. Walking is an example.
Walking arises when a cyclical movement of some body appendages become coupled with the linear displacement of the medium. Once this coupling took place and walking appeared in the history of living systems, a completely new manner of living appeared that became expanded in an open-ended evolutionary process of diversification in the movements of displacement (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.32).
This definition indicates that a recursion involves coupling a cyclical process to a linear one. Taking a cyclical process, such as wildfire innovation, that wishes to rotate wildfire practice forward, and coupling it to the linear process of wildfire tradition, a recursion may take place as a new domain opens, leading to a new manner of fighting fire. Like the surface underfoot displaced by the repetitive movement of limbs, the coupling of wildfire innovation as a cyclical process to the linear process of wildfire tradition and practice, in pursuit of moving both forward, creates displacement.
By coupling the cyclical process of advancement to the slower linear process of general wildfire tradition and practice, there is displacement. But what does innovation displace through an object? It displaces practice as it currently is, for the way the innovator figures it ought to be. Displacing an interrelated and interdependent web of wildfire practices involving objects, beginning with just one object, will have far-reaching consequences, as that object is attached to every other. Now, firefighters and managers must consider if a practice still belongs in the post-innovation network, if it has a new role, and how it connects to every other object.
As determined to do, whether acknowledged or not, innovations displace practices, and likely more than anticipated. For example, changing water delivery methods to a fire in any modality has the potential to alter tactics on the air and ground, which may cause externalities including reallocations of funds, new hazards, new trainings, new equipment for every firefighter, and displace an established “the way things are.” It is uncertain if there is any means of measuring the effect of displacing how a group of people of any size has been comporting themselves over the course of well over one hundred years in a professional setting.
As has already been said, wildfire innovation is poised to displace long-standing tradition in favor of something new. For example, the traditional way practices hang and relate together to form a stable wildfire practice. It is not just practices displaced, but the traditions that hold them together in a particular way, the traditional way they are carried out, and the beliefs, patterns of thought, customs, and behaviors that are all parts of the wildfire tradition. Displacing tradition in exchange for forming something new is dangerous, is problematically unethical (Do I have the right to produce this change?), and far from a casual or strictly guaranteed positive outcome. Interfering with tradition and the practices it supports, directs, and values, with new, innovative wildfire objects should be deeply contemplated, matched with scenario planning, include design experts, and approached with extreme caution.
Most Importantly
Suppression-centric innovations displace the future in place of the present. The fire landscape of the future becomes at the same time more and more of a corpse, and an evergreen pyrocumulus cloud moving across mountains and communities. What price tag should adorn objects that generate this future through aggressive, unrestrained fire suppression? The future is not for sale. How can innovations become disentangled from machine-like fire suppression and the future it creates, and commit their objects to the protection of values at risk and fire use? The enormity of how much wildland fire innovation will shape the future has not yet been fully imagined, but it must become part of wildfire innovation. Seeking answers on how to design objects to promote sustainable practice when able is difficult, but that does not mean it is not worth doing. This was discussed further in the prequel.
There is no wildfire solutions marketplace; there is a wildfire strategy marketplace, and to date, no one has developed an often scoffed at “silver bullet solution” worthy of all the displacement it will entail. Yet, it is important to consider the overwhelming number of innovations that have yet to be on or over the fireground and if they will. The wildfire community may be unknowingly (but unrealistically) waiting for a high-leverage strategy to make its way through the various pathways to a wildfire incident. However, it seems more likely that there will be a sea of unsolicited force multipliers that further the current agenda.
Conclusion
The last post ended with a number of questions wildfire innovators ought to ask themselves before they start materializing an object that will, through displacement, contribute to or enable great subsequent displacement to include that of the future. Those questions are still valid and will be beneficial for any innovator to ask, especially early on in the design process.
Objects have the same characteristics all the time. However, their characteristics do not have the same qualities, value, and effectiveness all the time. Objects may be steadfast, but their performance is not. Wildfire conditions can be any. Is it fair to say that an object’s characteristics will have the same value across conditions? Similarly, given the price of the object in service, will it truly add value across both prescribed fire and unplanned wildfire ignitions? As was covered in the last post on wildfire innovation, each object has a narrative. Which narrative and truth of wildfire management does it ascribe to and believe? With all this critique, could there possibly be a way forward? Yes.
Method
This has been another critical exercise in understanding wildland fire innovation to bring to the fore issues entangled with developing wildfire innovation objects, ranging from drawing distinctions, a concern with objects, to considering the displacement of tradition, practices, and the future. With all this critique, how could there be anything positive? In the following section, a method for innovating is introduced, just as the last essay did, while keeping in mind all that has been said before.
Distinctions
The method begins with paying attention to something rarely paid attention to, and if it is, it is often by another name: Distinctions. Many, but not all, of the distinctions drawn during the design and development process are of importance to the organization, especially the ones made early on and during sales. It is these distinctions that must be performed consciously.
Early distinctions: The earliest distinctions cut up the world in monumentously important ways. They may occur in conversation, through experiences of wildfire, watching the news, or sketching at the kitchen table. In these defining moments, distinctions are drawn, potentially in the language of the drawer’s internal narrative, assigning value to some areas as important and unimportance to others. As if they were holding a scalpel, the world is divided into two, over and over again. Distinctions are the most basic function of sense-making. They bring forth the important, marked state, the parts or part with meaning, and cast aside the residual. The background may be a narrative, the one drawing the distinction devised as part of the operation of distinction, it may be something from their memories of being a firefighter, or a perceived market need that their innovation will uniquely meet. These early distinctions define what the innovation is, what it will do, and how it will do it. The coarser the distinction, the bigger the outcome (and the more room for heading astray quickly). Distinctions hang in the air as decisions that the innovator or company collectively made, and they become tangible through their materialization as an object or part of one. Once the first distinction has been made that declares this/not that, others distinguish recursively, layering distinctions on top of distinctions. The first distinction set the precedent, though the narrative of distinctions can evolve and mature over time. Take care with what the first distinction is and if it is feasible.
Sales distinctions: Granular distinctions are made throughout the process of the object moving from conceptualization to sales. Such distinctions are made during sales or contracting meetings regarding the technology, whereas coarse ones are made when the object is distinguished as a totality and its functions. The innovative company might draw a distinction between them and related technologies: “Our object will define effective and efficient fire suppression/No one else has our technology,” or it might be said that this “Object’s technology focuses where it matters/Others have lesser technology.” These may be (roughly) the type of coarse distinctions drawn during sales meetings. The second act in the operation of distinction, the background, is a spot to be mindful of and consider its source. Is the background based on purely technical specifications statements that suggest superior capability? Is the background a composite of what experienced officials said about the object prior to testing? Is the background from rigorous agency testing? It is important to consider the background that gives the distinctions their meaning when speaking to others for their safety, the safety of others, and expectations of performance.
Connected, nevertheless. Whether distinctions are recognized or not, we are connected to the objects we distinguish all the same. The way we distinguish the completed object has to do with us. The distinguished object is not part of us, but we were still the ones who performed the operation in that particular way, and therefore, it has to do with us who drew it. In the earlier words of Maturana, “Only what is distinguished exists. Although it is distinct from ourselves, we are nevertheless tied to it through the operation of distinction” (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011, p.31). Maturana also states, “I am not part of the glass here on the able I am pointing at it. However, the distinction of the glass has to do with me; I am the one who describes it, I am the one who uses the distinction” (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011, pp.30-31). We are not part of the things we distinguish, but we are connected to them. What deserves consideration is the responsibility one carries for the distinctions they make, especially if they dictate the actions of others, and even more so if the object, a pile of coherently interconnected distinctions, ends up in the wildfire environment. The innovator is responsible for all the distinctions they make, regardless of how minute. It is important for wildfire innovators to become aware of distinctions and feel a strong sense of responsibility for them, and understand that the distinctions drawn by others will use the ones made by the innovator as a platform.
Objects
Wildfire innovations, or FireTech, produce objects. Objects that have characteristics with qualities that function better or worse depending on environmental factors. In the words of Maturana (2005), “Objects arise in languaging, they do not exist by themselves, and they do not pre-exist to their arising as manners of flowing in recursive consensual co-ordinations of doings” (p.65).
Objects arise with others in languaging, where distinctions occur. As this is so, across a group or company, the object can be brought forth in many different ways with many different backgrounds. For lead innovators or designers, especially as the object moves toward sales, it is recommendable that there be an established, consensual manner of distinguishing the object, after the divergent phase. As stated in the introduction, objects are always in relation to other objects, whether they are distinguished as so or not. Considering how a wildfire object will be situated within a network and what linkages it will have is critical to the design process of creating an object that can enter the existing wildfire network of tradition and practices, and displace both artfully to the degree innovation calls for.
Objects do not exist before arising in the flow of recursive, unanimously agreed-upon coordinations that build on coordinations of activity. According to Maturana (2005), objects arise first in language, then in a unique flow that begins with recursive, unanimously agreed upon coordinations of coordinations (these are seemingly coordinations that build on coordinations as explained earlier) of human activity, whether individually or in a group. Two components stand out. First, that there is a consensual domain in which the coordinations are tokens of shared meaning and build upon each other recursively (Minger, 1995). The second, practical point, while maintaining the everpresence of distinctions, is that “doings” or activity are the last step presented here in how objects arise. There is then to be some sort of activity bound to how objects emerge. Interpreted this way, there is a recursively coordinated activity that is responsible for how objects appear. One step further, there may be a tactile component of the activity. Essentially, objects appear when there is consensus over coordinations of activity that build on itself. Difficult to pay attention to, but an important step in how objects arise that builds off distinctions and gives insight into what is arising and how, and whether it be desirable or not.
Displacement
Displacement appeared from a better understanding of recursions. A primary exmaple was the displacement of the pavement under a walker’s feet. The discussion indicated that the wildfire innovation market is rife with displacement. The overarching contribution to the method by studying displacement is to be aware of what an object will displace at any stage in its development or use, and ensure it is the necessary displacement, of the right kind, at the right time, and ethically considered.
Displacement of the Future. The last post on wildfire innovation discusses wildfire suppression and fire use in detail. In that post, as well as here, the continued suppression of wildfires problematizes itself and is seen as an antagonist to the ability to suppress future fires in the same fashion and with the same effort. Over time, fire intensity and frequency increase and create a future where very little can be done to slow severe forest fires, as smoke appears from more and more places throughout the country, sending gases upward. Fire cannot be fought infinitely without the nonlinearity of making the future worse. How much should an object cost that helps bring this future to fruition? How much should an innovator be paid for contributing to a landscape of more uncontrollable fires? Will those same objects be there when the outcomes of previous decisions make fires harder to fight? There is a price tag for protecting values at risk, certainly, but that does not characterize all fires, and not all fires truly need to be fought. The future is not for sale. For the innovator, the future that their object enables and is paid for should be considered and built into business development and sales. The innovator should wonder what else they could propose through their objects and the objects networked to them to lessen the displacement of the future. One may find a buyer to bring the object into the suppression-dominant present and send the outcomes of aggressive suppression actions into the future. Alternatively, another buyer may understand the drive for short-term goals while balancing long-term effectiveness. Fortunately, for this movement of innovations, the objects they seek to integrate into the private and government systems may find a home amongst the dominant mode of thinking of short-term successes over long-term sustainability. This is a difficult position for fire managers to be in.
Displacement for Materials. Innovators should seek low-displacement options for materials for the objects they are building. Unless it is necessary to dig into the earth and extract minerals and ore, innovators should seek to work with materials already above the surface and in circulation. The sustainability of wildfire objects is vital to consider, which can be thought of in terms of the amount of displacement (of people, of earth, of fuel, of water by shipping vessels) required to put the objects into use.
Displacement of Tradition and Practices. Inextricably intertwined, practices and tradition will be displaced by innovative objects, and that is the point of innovating. Even if it is unrecognized, displacing tradition and practices to install a new object in a pre-existing network of objects and the traditional ways of using them (and perhaps breaking a few linkages and reforming old ones), does not make it any less problematic. It is an ethical question: “Do I have the right to disrupt and discontinue the practices and traditions that have long been sustained as part of the pending techno-centric evolution of wildfire?” “Does anyone?” “If no one has the right, then how will wildfire innovation make progress?” It is a quandary for innovators to navigate, in a state of connectedness to the objects they designed. It is important for innovators to handle the introduction of their objects to the wildfire community with the awareness that it is entering a space already established with interlocked traditions and practices, attitudes, opinions, perceptions, expectations, and arrangements of distinctions that the object will interact with and displace. Objects do not enter a domain tabula rasa; there will always be something there that the innovation will displace and rebuild based on the object’s characteristics and qualities. Innovators need to define a way to navigate this space that can be embedded in an adoption plan, which innovators need more than any other plan, and its creation should start at the concept phase. There must be a plan for respectfully and carefully integrating an object into a place where human beings already work and hold enormous know-how.