Adaptive challenge

AKMA points to some posts about the challenges of digital identity, and in doing so comments about the ways in which this author:

"calls attention to the extent to which our frustrations and conflicts over 'digital identity' and 'privacy' involve conceptual confusions left over from the conditions that prevailed before the advent of digital interaction. The technical problems are aggravated by linguistic confusion."

I think this is an excellent example of what Heifetz refers to as an “adaptive challenge” (as compared to a “technical” one), a dilemma I have tried to deal with for some time in the context of religious education. In other words, when AKMA identifies the linguistic confusion which is aggravating the issue, he is pointing to one of the key elements of an adaptive challenge: the necessity of rethinking, the need to reconceptualize the underlying problem and one’s responses, rather than simply picking up a tool and “fixing” something.