The Footbook of Center Development
Oliver Ding recently published [Wonder and Wander] The Center Journey (2022–2025), a case study about the developmental journey of the Activity Analysis Center. At the end of the case study, he reflected on the journey and explored the meaning of “Center.”
From January 2022 to March 2025, he worked on the Knowledge Center journey and built a network of interconnected knowledge centers, including the Curativity Center, the Activity Analysis Center, TALE, and others.
At the beginning of the journey, the theme of “Center” was understood as uniqueness. A Knowledge Center is a collective project designed to develop unique knowledge.
After the reflection, he realized the concept of “Center Development” is an essential theme within Creative Life, even in adult life development and cultural life development in general.
In the sense of practical philosophy, a center can be understood as the initial point of the World of Activity of a thing. The process of Center Development means the journey of growing the World of Activity.
A person’s Creative Life is a large World of Activity, where we see a network of Worlds of Activity around a series of creative things.
Each World of Activity always has its own Center.
To further present this notion, on May 15, 2025, Oliver curated 23 articles related to the theme of Center Development, using three knowledge centers as examples. The outcome was a new Footbook.
Footbook Overview
- 5 parts
- 23 articles
- Total reading time: 453 minutes
- Total word count: 120,045 words (about 240 single-spaced pages)
About This File
This Preview Edition does not contain the full content of the Footbook. Instead, it includes:
- An introduction
- A table of contents
- 6 selected articles
- Links to all 23 articles published on Medium
Stats for This File:
- Articles: 6
- Pages: 378
- Words: 44,476
The original 23 articles are available as Members-only stories on Medium.com. However, each article can be accessed through a "Friend Link" without requiring a Medium membership.
