Since Alexander there has been a reorientation, away from the built form of material structures, towards the form and steering of *practices*.
In the cases noted in Some pattern languages, practices of urban development, commoning and group facilitation, are engaged with. A pattern language of making the living economy - a foundation of a college - is of this kind too.
# Hypertext and the mutuality of patterns All these pattern languages have been implemented as **hypertexts**, which is a thoroughly appropriate form. The post-Alexander languages above have all been rendered as federated wikis.
A repertoire of network representation tools is available as page plugins, which can display and highlight the local relationship between associated patterns.
These features are important, since it’s **the mutuality of patterns**, and the ’singing’ of them together in ‘a chorus of voices’, that is at the heart of pattern languages’ power in envisioning complex forms of organisation and weaves of practice.
> The characteristic ‘page lineup’ in fedwiki is especially good for generating a gestalt of numerous patterns.
# Mutual awereness and the free association of makers Fedwiki has an architecture oriented to **mutual awareness**, across a ‘federation’ of wiki pages, of activity by others in the federation.
It also is oriented to the adoption and ‘forking’ by authors of work made available by others - it’s a manifestation of associationist, free software culture. Fedwiki is intrinsically and intentionally **a ‘commons’ form of digital media**.
This is exploited in a practice of forming **’pods’** (study circles) for specific projects of mutual learning and inquiry.
>‘Podding’ though fedwiki is a core element of the form of practice projected for language-ing in the college proposed here, and for collaboration between the college’s schools and their partner ventures in the real economy.
# Time, labour and skill All the languages mentioned in Some pattern languages took a lot of **time, attention and discipline, over years**, and contributions from many perspectives and locations.
>Pattern languages are not something to be hacked over a weekend hackathon or an agile sprint.
They all have roots not only in hands-on experience in numerous contexts, but also in long traditions: they are both wide and deep.
Finding the forms of pattern, and the forms of words in which to articulate that pattern, is an aesthetic process calling for **poetic sensibility**; likewise the process of singing or dancing the patterns back again, into the flow of real-world practice.
At the same time, each pattern is an instance of **explicit and disciplined conceptualisation**, both in the selection of terms used in a description, and also in the ‘rationale’ section of a description, which can be quite extended and make many references to research and precedents.
>Appropriate pattern descriptions are great exercises in aesthetics.
This intersectional dance of **poetics, scholarship and analytical discipline** puts pattern language in an extremely important place . . - between (often loose and undisciplined, meme-infested, emotionally pumped-up, in-a-bubble) commonplace practices of **storytelling** on one hand, and, on the other . . - commonplace, casual-but-forceful substitutions of **ultra-formalised language** (highly abstract software encoding, which drives real-world machinery of fiat, provision and access) in the place of human-speakable language and human-enacted vision and valuation.
In this middle place, the literacy of pattern language-ing has an important contribution to make, to **systemic capability in activist practices**, in the face of hugely extended material force on one hand and button-pushing viral memes on the other.
>Pattern language is exactly the form of language to take, as the basis of literacy in making a living economy, and of informing the building of dual power through commons transition.
# See also - Some pattern languages - Pattern language(ing)