“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
WARM DATA
What is Warm Data?
Warm Data is the relational and transcontextual information about and within the interrelationships that integrate elements of a complex system.
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 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 relationships. 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:
Information that is alive.
Warm Data Theory & Practice
Warm Data Lab
People Need People (Online)
In order to interface with any complex system without disrupting the circuitry of the interdependencies that give it its integrity, we must look at the spread of relationships that make the system robust. Using only analysis of statistical data will offer conclusions that can point to actions that are out of sync with the complexity of the situation. But information without context and interrelationality is likely to lead us toward actions that are misinformed, thereby creating further destructive patterns.
Grounded in over a century of deep theoretical roots and a lineage of systems thinking, the Warm Data practices transform complexity science into an experiential approach of profound mutual learning and relationship building.
There are two warm data practices—
these are made for today’s fragmented and broken world—Warm Data Labs and People Need People (Online). The Warm Data Lab is created to help release and revitalize sensitivity to the sacred processes of life that have been fragmented by the last several hundred years of history. People Need People (Online) adapts this practice to offer uniquely rich and storied online communication, in contrast to the common experience of polarized and divisive digital communication patterns —they are made for a broken world.
Visit warmdata.life to learn more about the Warm Data Theory and Practices, and information on upcoming online and in-person trainings.