Why EnneaConnectom?

My pedagogy is simple. Each day, I think about a microcosm of the planet which is undergoing threats to its incredible climate, health care and economic systems. I believe our great solutions are found in re-aligning with nature; from the atomic to the cosmic; from the micro and to the macro. And I believe Enneaconnectom can be the model that addresses not only personality challenges, but global challenges as well. My philosophy and pedagogy is nature-based design aligned with technological breakthroughs to create a sustainable planet. We are excited about combining nature-based sustainable design with emerging technologies of quantum computing, Artificial intelligence, Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Fractal Systems, Lindenmayer Systems (L-systems), Iterated Function Systems (IFS), Genetics, Fuzzy Logic, especially Quantum Theory and Nano Technology to build sustainable innovative systems and immunology that extends past the current pandemic.

While it is an emerging field, quantum technology is at the heart of the evolution/revolution in designing sustainable global systems. Nature is at the heart of quantum solutions that address our many planetary crises, from environmental degradation to overpopulation and viral pandemic.  As Caltech physicist Richard Feynmann famously said, “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem, because it doesn’t look so easy.”No, it’s not easy, but there are workarounds. The physicist Max Di Ventra’s work on memcomputing, which embraces quantum solutions without quantum hardware. With emerging technological breakthroughs happening throughout USA, EnneaConnectom can create sustainable solutions. As a cognitive scientist and designer, my research parallels these emerging technologies with an exploration of human potential. Through my original PhD and Post-doc researches, which mapped how 400 expert and novice designers, then 100 personality types solve problems, and my lifelong passion for natural science, we realized and teach how associative reasoning is crucial to create Design-Your_Life solutions that mimic the dynamics of nature. 

Restated, our pedagogy and philosophy aligns with environmental, architectural and medical systems synchronized and compatible with nature. After my original PhD study of designers, we saw how our conditioned mind and its limitations restricts our ability to recognize and create new pattern formulations.  Hopefully our personal research project in cognitive research should enhance humanity’s ability to solve its biggest challenges. 

If humans do not have the bandwidth to keep up with and harness these developing technologies, we cannot create a sustainable planet. Then technology controls us, much as we have seen with Facebook allowing elections to be hacked via disinformation algorithms.

At the same time, California’s leadership in emerging technologies can help designers, scientists and immunologists adapt natural solutions in a more holistic way. My research with the enneagram promises not only to expand our brain’s individual firepower, but it can also show how conditioned neural pathways not only limit our potential, may cause or exacerbate mental disorders such as dyslexia, dementia, autism, Aspergers, PTSD and other personality disorders. After helping a student with dyslexia overcome his disability, we showed the dean of a prestigious American law school how his enneagram type exacerbated his dementia and how simple lifestyle changes could free him from a condition his medical doctor deemed incurable. 

We know that most of us only use 10 percent of our brain’s capacity, so my vision as a design lab director aims to help people realize their highest potential. Design should consider the adaptive qualities and evolution of nature. Nature has no definitive end goal, and therefore uses the Golden Ratio to optimize systems dynamically according to changing environmental forces. Nature has to be flexible to adapt to a dynamic network of constraints with optimizing reactions. 

Nature is evolving and natural, not a frozen optimal one-time solution. Likewise, every design we create should be considered as a living organism rooted in natural cause and effect. 

California faces monumental challenges with climate change, wildfires and the pandemic. Yet these challenges and the state’s considerable economic and educational resources also create a perfect petri dish for design innovation. Scientific thinking and knowledge transfer among different disciplines like those found on The Design Lab team can lead to deeper understanding of natural and artificial world issues. Identification of biological analogies and levels of organizations can be framed parallel to technology, scientific theories and biological knowledge development by new representational models combining macro and micro levels of biological, chemical and environmental phenomena.

Emerging technologies have allowed us to investigate, analogize and apply systems that our ancestors were unable to take advantage of on a grand scale. The question is: How can we as designers approach the knowledge of a biological phenomenon and abstract it on a more objective level to develop a more systematic method to close the gap between design and scientific developments? We propose that quantum thought, with or without a quantum computer,  provides designers a new perspective to understand any biological phenomena and to inspire novel designs connecting parallel disciplines – especially neuroscience, physics and biology – and assigning them to solution principles and strategies of nature beyond current theories.

In conclusion, our philosophy and pedagogy is based on aligning natural systems with human needs. Cognitive sciences in the standpoint of analogical reasoning will be taken as a means to transfer the knowledge from other disciplines to design solutions and therefore these disciplines will be used as a theoretical framework to align with nature’s point of view. Design is our main tool to create a sustainable future, a healthier life, to keep forests and oceans safe and clean while considering climate change and human rights. Nature will be considered as a source of inspiration from which designers gather the ideas to solve global design, health and economic problems.