even if you remove wrong assumptions you still need creative thinking to make the next "leap."

I think I agree with you, if thatis, I understand what you mean. Help me out, Galen: what's the "next leap" and what's your definition of "creative thinking?"

This makes me think of structural hole in conjunction with De Man's idea of aporia, a gap in the levels of meaning in a text, through which it contradicts itself (or something like that).

Punchiness aside, I think that you hit here on one of the crucial differences between P&S and Burt, in the sense that there's a fundamental distinction to be made between an outside observer mapping an institution (and/or intervening there), and devising simple rules by which an institution might map itself. Want to push this further?

Yes. If I take what you mean as you mean it, Burt's has given us language to talk about opportunities for changing/directing the flow of information of a system/institution that are derived from his ability to stand on the outside of that organization and "watch" interactions (read, analyze data, watch...all of those and more I'm sure).

I'm not sure, but I think that P&S give us an amalgamation of rhetorical strategies (Burke's terministic screens and other theoretical lenses) that Burt doesn't consider, perhaps because it doesn't seem necessary as an outsider--(an illusion) which we've all experienced at one time or another: it's easier to see someone else's problems even when you can't see your own, you know? My point is that with Burt's terminology and P&S's rhetorical strategies, there may be a method for identifying places to intervene and change the flow of information, hence make change, in the institutions compositionists interact within.

My beef about P&S is that their "maps" are really weak: there is a disjunct between what they say they do and what the diagrams actually describe....and because Burt has not yet put the maps into his doc draft, I can't tell if he does any better. (I liken this to dress patterns I curse when I'm sewing--where the words and the diagrams conflict--incidentally, I priveledge the diagrams in those cases. Hmmm.)

The brokering of information to the advantage of the broker, and ideally the organization (but I'm not willing to make that a given), in the business models Burt describes is easy for me to see and understand. I want to be able to see it where I live and work. What I want to know is this: How can we do something with these ideas to change the nature of information flow between and about composition/rhet's intellectual projects in the academy? And how could that then give us a model for flow for things we do outside the academy, like so-called "service-learning?"