CONCEPT

Awe Scaffolding

The cultural practices, institutional supports, and interpersonal relationships that sustain the cognitive work of accommodation when the mind encounters something too vast for its current framework—and whose absence in most organizations leaves people to navigate the AI transition alone.

Awe is not a single event but a process, and the process has a second component that is far harder to provide than the first. Perceived vastness—the encounter with something exceeding the current frame of reference—is what AI delivers in abundance. The second component, accommodation—the rebuilding of mental structures to incorporate what has been encountered—requires support that the AI transition has largely failed to provide. Awe scaffolding is the collective term for everything that makes accommodation possible: the trusted colleagues who share the encounter and provide social confirmation that the vastness is real; the physical space that is open rather than cramped, that allows the body the relaxed posture facilitating vagal tone; the temporal structure that alternates intense encounters with periods of reflection; the narrative frameworks through which people can make sense of what they are experiencing; and the institutional recognition that cognitive restructuring takes time and cannot be rushed. Every major technology transition in history has

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