Warm Data
- Information That is Alive -
“Information that does not take into account the full scope of interrelationality in a system is likely to inspire misguided decision-making, which compounds already ‘wicked’ problems. Warm Data is not meant to replace or in any way diminish other data, but rather it is meant to keep data of certain sorts ‘warm’ — with a nest of relations intact.”
— Nora Bateson
Complex, systemic challenges are shaped by the interaction of multiple contexts—the economy, nature, art, culture, technology, etc. — and to effectively address such challenges, we have to understand the transcontextual interdependence. With this awareness, we can shape responses to meet the complexity around us effectively. Without it, we often enact simple responses to complex challenges which in turn create their own problems.
Warm Data is the relational and transcontextual information about and within the interrelationships that integrate elements of a complex system.
Warm Data familiarizes groups of people with the ways in which the contexts of their lives marinate and overlap into each other, and it offers an introduction to the complexity of their own lives so that they may better see the complexity of others. Through this discovery, people begin to see how vital it is to tend to their families, and the land, and they are able to respond to emergencies with warmth.
Hope lies in the very fact that, as living beings, we are made for relationship. It is only possible to express our humanity in relationship to other human beings. We exude warm data in our eyes, our smiles, our verbal and non-verbal conversations, and the importance we attune to relationships with others at the personal, family levels and in local, national, and global contexts. We also can reach into ancient wisdom to add to our store of warm data and the capabilities unleashed when ‘I see you in me and me in you’. Our well-being and that of our planet is possible only if we permit ourselves to perceive and embrace the rich expressions of who we are as humans and to find a way in relationship. This will require warmth and rigorous attention to relational integrity above the anxiety to control.
At times Warm Data is also described more simply as: