Tiny Paper: The Structure of Developmental Platforms

In this part of the Tiny Paper series, we introduce Oliver Ding's "Platform as Infoniche" framework, which is part of his larger work on the Developmental Platform—a social environment designed to support adult development. These ideas are introduced in Ding’s 2021 book draft Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century.

Ding establishes the theoretical foundation for this framework by examining established concepts from various psychological approaches, including Daniel J. Levinson's life structure, Ryan and Deci's Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and Urie Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Systems Theory.

Ding integrates these ideas with his own Ecological Practice approach, particularly expanding James J. Gibson's concept of "Affordance" into the social realm with the concept of "Supportance," which represents potential action possibilities offered by the social environment.

Ultimately, the Infoniche framework is applied to conceptualize the structure of Developmental Platforms using a three-level, nested structure: Zone (micro level), Project (mezzo level), and Platform-ba (macro level).

Furthermore, Ding introduces the Ecological Offer framework for the Zone level analysis, and he also reviews some ideas about Project and Platform-ba.

At Possible Press, we are collaborating with several knowledge centers to publish a series of Tiny Papers.