Constitute
Description
Pat Kane:
"What is a "constitute" - as opposed to an institute? Or a constitution?
Personally, it's an answer to my anxiety about being drowned in rich and meaningful connections in the social-media age, and not being able to turn even a small percentage of them into resources for action or enterprise (of whatever kind - civic, intellectual, commercial). Do we need to forge a "craft of info-citizenship" or "netizenship", some guild-like or practice-like behaviours or conventions, that can capture the value of the relentless connecting, conversing and curating we do with our networked devices? Similar to the hacker ethic, or agile programming, or the Transition Towns protocols - but at the level of a great conversation in a cafe that we don't just want to let sink into the background of our busy lives? "Ok, this has gone well...let's make this a constitute...." So what behaviours/duties/commitments would that imply?
The word "constitute" points to a need to name a new, network-society subtlety in the relationship between idea and action (of course, there are older and other words like rubric, model, method, praxis, meme... I just happened to notice that constitute wasn't a noun!)." (http://www.theplayethic.com/2011/11/whatisaconstitute.html)
Details
Historical definition:
"Constitute( v.) mid-15c., verb use of adjective constitute,"madeup, formed"(late14c.), from L.constitutus" arranged, settled," pp.adj. From constituere "to cause to stand,set up,fix,place,establish,set in order;form something new;resolve,"of persons,"to appoint to an office,"from com-,intensive prefix(see com-), + statuere "to set"(see statue). Related: Constituted; constituting" (http://www.theplayethic.com/2011/11/whatisaconstitute.html)