Authorities

From Imaginopedia

Those who engage in the act of authoring something. Once that thing is authored, then the author becomes an authority - someone with an elevated claim to knowing, understanding and thereby controlling that which they just authored. In this sense the act of authoring is proposed to be a linear thing.

But is it really? What if authoring was more of a circular activity? (see fig. 1) In this model (s)he who authored would just be one of many co-creators of a thing. The author, in this sense, would not have exclusive ownership of the created thing nor who (s)he have priviledged status as the sole maker of the thing. Various prototypes can also be constructed of said thing. With mixed results.

The author would give way to authoring, the process which in its richness and complexity would shift the focus to the experience of the thing rather than the person who created the thing. In this model, ownership and the control of the thing as an idea, system or product would become much more difficult.

The structure of authority was perfected by the northern germanic tribes in the early part of the 9th century, who first conceived of the imperative modal 'must'. This structure persists to this day. In high german, there is no way to ask a child to sit down. The modal is implicit and direct: 'you must sit down'. Perhaps as a result, sitting-down rates among German kindergarteners tend to be an order of magnitude higher than in other countries where such studies have been conducted.