From Emergency to Emergence : learning to inhabit complexity and to expect the unexpected

Our hypertechnological civilization, obsessed with attempting to control and predict every event and every aspect of our lives, has not yet understood that emergency is a connotative element of complexity and of the complex systems that we call "life". This means that emergency, like error, is an intrinsic part of our lives and can never be predicted, prevented or managed, much less eliminated.

Seeking solutions by delegating carte blanche to technology, staking all on knowhow, speed and simulation, is the "great mistake" of today's digitalized society and of its educational institutions. In dealing with emergency, rather than rationalizing our inadequacies and those of our authorities and experts by using the ageold metaphor "black swan" (Taleb, 2007 2012), students and teachers alike need to be empowered to inhabit complexity, to expect unpredictability, and to tackle emergency through creativity and selforganization, in order to be able to fully comprehend how emergency can become emergence. [Publisher's text].