Overview Effect
Project: Polytopia

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.

Synapsing with an interview



Jamais Cascio - The Future and You! Security, Privacy, AI, Geoengineering

Jamais Cascio discusses the Participatory Panopticon, Privacy & Secrecy, the ramifications of Disconnecting from the Chorus, what it means to be a Futurist, the Arc of Human Evolution, Artificial Intelligence, the Need for Meaning, Building Agents to Listen to Us, WorldChanging.com / OpenTheFuture.com, Geoengineering and the Viridian Green movement.

Sat, Feb 23, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: future, science, video, collective intelligence, collective intelligence, polytopia, learning, thrivable
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Conscious Space
Project: Polytopia

Meet Gangaji, who speaks about silence and space and writes in Hidden Treasure:

Naturally we have been thrilled to realize that we can choose to live a different story, one we feel more in alignment with. There is yet another choice. We have the capacity to take a moment and release all stories. We can experience what it means to be nobody, uncovered even by our primary identity.

Underneath all the stories, we can experience that deep core of ourselves that is historyless, genderless, and parentless. Naked. That presence is unencumbered by relationships and has no past and no future. In the core of our beingness we are free of definitions. Unencumbered by our definitions we experience ourselves as conscious intelligence aware of itself as open, endless space. This instant of being storyless is an instant of freedom. For even if our story is filled with light and beauty, to the degree that we define ourselves through that story, we are less free.

After such a moment, stories are never the same. They can be present, as they most likely will be, but they no longer have the inherent power to define our reality.

Enjoy the invitation to become conscious of what is always here, while Gangaji teaches us nothing, in 8 minutes video of Satsang, (Sanskrit सत्सङ्ग sat = true, sanga = company), a call to the collective space of refuge, this heart of space.

Thu, Jan 3, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, introduction, polytopia, inspired, video, learning, thrivability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Incumbent Thinking

"Circular reasoning is bad mostly because it’s not very good."

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question

Here a whole large cc-licensed poster by @jesserichardson and @somethingfornow.


While on the topic of logical fallacies, here are their mental bedfellows, cognitive biases. You can download a PDF of the groupings of biases that occur most frequently in business. Courtesy of McKinsey & Co. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/files/article/PDF/BiasSpread.pdf

Tue, Sep 4, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, learning, collective logic

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Gielis Shapes
Project: The Total Library

In 1997 the superformula was discovered, which solved the problem of the limited symmetry of superellipses and supercircles. Supershapes like pentagons and starfish, triangles and rose sepals, flowers and leaves, can now be described by a single equation, based on the generalization of Lamé's supercircles and superellipses.

The key step from Lamé’s supercircles was to convert the equations to polar coordinates and to add a single parameter for symmetry. It was extended into three dimensions as well.

This discovery was published in the book “Inventing the Circle” (2001, 2003) and as Invited Special Paper in the American Journal of Botany in April 2003. Worldwide awareness was created by websites such as Nature Science update, Science News Online, and Wolfram’s Mathematica website.

Supershapes were introduced later in the field of geometry under the general name of Gielis' curves, surfaces & -transformations, also in higher dimensions.

Quoted from GIELIS' CURVES & SURFACES


Bram Stolk, author of the Superformula Shape Miner for iOS writes:

Superformula was created to have fun with mathematics. Anybody can explore the colorful universe of shapes described by a powerful formula.

The Superformula, or Gielis-formula was first proposed by Johan Gielis. The formula can be used to define a wide range of shapes, including shapes that occur in nature.

When describing shapes in three dimensions, two instances of the formula are applied, each with 6 parameters. This results in a 12 dimensional parameter space in which a multiverse of interesting shapes reside.

The Superformula app is developed as a tool to mine this 12 dimensional parameter space. By swiping your finger, the space is explored, two parameters at a time. The strength of this application comes from the lightning fast calculations used to determine the shapes. The app uses an OpenGL-ES2 vertex shader to compute the shapes on the graphics hardware of the device. This means zero wait, and instant visualization of the Gielis-shape.

User Interface of the Superformula app


More

EXPLORATIONS OF GIELIS CURVES & SURFACES by Genicap

Using the Super Formula for building Super-Antennas by Blue Economy

Sun, Jul 22, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: science, technology, thrivability, visionary, sustainability, research, economy
Sent to project: The Total Library

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re:publica 2012 Eben Moglen
Project: Polytopia

Why Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media and Why Free Media Require Free Technology [Video, 1:03:42]

Preserved from re-publica.de

Media that spy on and data-mine the public are capable of destroying humanity’s most precious freedom: freedom of thought. Ensuring that media remain structured to support rather than suppress individual freedom and civic virtue requires us to achieve specific free technology and free culture goals. Our existing achievements in these directions are under assault from companies trying to bottleneck human communications or own our common culture, and states eager to control their subjects’ minds. In this talk–one of a series beginning with “The dotCommunist Manifesto” and “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”–I offer some suggestions about how the Free World should meet the challenges of the next decade.

Sun, May 27, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: open source, media, Freedom of Expression
Sent to project: Polytopia

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In debt
Project: Polytopia

12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt. April 27, 2012 at the Public Banking in America Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Victoria Grant from Marc Armstrong on Vimeo.

For more information see http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org or http://www.moveourmoney.net

Sat, May 12, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: future, sustainability, polytopia, economy, thrivability, abundance
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Ecotopia
Project: Polytopia

Epistle to the Ecotopians
By Ernest Callenbach

[This document was found on the computer of Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death.]

To all brothers and sisters who hold the dream in their hearts of a future world in which humans and all other beings live in harmony and mutual support — a world of sustainability, stability, and confidence. A world something like the one I described, so long ago, in Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging.


As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.

How will those who survive manage it? What can we teach our friends, our children, our communities? Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?

I contemplate these questions in the full consciousness of my own mortality. Being offered an actual number of likely months to live, even though the estimate is uncertain, mightily focuses the mind. On personal things, of course, on loved ones and even loved things, but also on the Big Picture.

But let us begin with last things first, for a change. The analysis will come later, for those who wish it.

More, much more...

Wed, May 9, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: sustainability, learning, future, thrivability, Polytopia, self-organization
Sent to project: Polytopia

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F L U X

Digital animation by Candas Sisman, courtesy of Plato Art Space.

click image for link to video page

 http://vimeo.com/15395471 

Sat, May 5, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: art, animation, video

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Medical Matrix

Jon Rappoport writes:

I rerun this Starfield article every so often, just to push the wheel another turn. Each time I try to write a new introduction. Here is one.

After working as a reporter for 30 years, I've come to understand a few things about public reaction to the truth. People like to say they're enlightened. They like to say they've seen through the major propaganda operations that are launched and are spinning all around us. But when you bulldoze a hole in a part of the Matrix where certain subjects are engraved on stone pillars, and when those subjects are firmly entrenched in the public mind as foundations of Reality, the usual response is silent shock.

Even when people are able to accept the truth, they tend toward silence. They don't pass the truth on.

Retired propaganda master, Ellis Medavoy, whom I interview in THE MATRIX REVEALED, once explained it to me this way:

"You've taken them out of a state of hypnosis, a state of trance, but the truth you're giving them puts them in another trance. In that part of their mind where they've been asleep for so long, they're used to that narcosis. So even though they see truth now, they respond with new sleep. It's not really an awakening at all. It's as if they've walked out of one war zone into another, dazed."

Ellis describes perfectly what happens to many people when they see the truth of medical murder in the US. It particularly happens because there is no logical way to understand it, given the expectations people have about what murder is, what murder means.

And there's another problem. As you'll see, the figures on medically caused death in America I'm citing come from an author with absolutely impeccable mainstream credentials. The review she wrote was published in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. It was all "on the up and up."

That's precisely why I use her figures, rather than those compiled by outsiders, who, by the way, probably have better numbers that are even more chilling.

I've had people stare blankly at me after a discussion of the interview below and say, outright, "This is impossible. It can't be true. You see, if a really respected doctor is making these claims, and if her review is published in a prestigious journal, then mainstream doctors and medical schools and government would have to react. They would have to clean house."

But they don't.

And that is called a clue. We are talking about something similar to the experience of the German people during the rise of Hitler. They went along. They told themselves stories to make it all right. They used the familiar tricks of denial.

This is what makes the Matrix the Matrix.

more...

Image source not related to quoted article, except by posting here.

Wed, Apr 18, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: Science, public, Death, collective intelligence, thrivability, murder, statistics, hypnosis, medical

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The Culture Game
Project: Polytopia

Daniel Mezick's new book due out soon. He was so kind to share a preview, from which I quote.

CHAPTER 01: INTRODUCTION
Everything is changing, and changing more rapidly than ever before.
The rate of this change is increasing like never before.
In 1978, Chris Argyris & Donald Schön published Organizational Learning.
In 1990, Peter Senge published The Fifth Discipline.
In 2001, a tribe of pioneering people in software wrote The Agile Manifesto.
In 2008, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright wrote Tribal Leadership.
The Culture Game, first published in 2012, builds on the shoulders of these giants.
The Culture Game is a how-to manual containing specific practices and principles for increasing group learning inside tribes, groups of about 20 to 150 people. It is a concise how-to manual of sixteen essential learning practices that you can use right now to encourage a greater ability to respond to change inside your teams, inside your personal network, and within your entire organization.
What is next is up to you.

Ok, as I have not read much of the book yet, let me skip close to the end and see if there is some value for Polytopia. Intuition at work...

Here is one for meetings, (preview page 44)

Working agreements are exactly that - agreements. Establish working agreements by discussing the following when every meeting starts:
Core working agreements. Are there any previously established, core working agreements we are no longer honoring? See below for a description of how to develop core working agreements. These are the default for each meeting with this group of people. Discuss any amendments.
Who must leave. Discuss who in the room must exit before the meeting ends.
Start and stop time. Explicitly state these times.
Cell phone usage. Use of cell phones during meetings reduces engagement. Discuss acceptable cell phone use during this meeting.
Use of laptops. Use of laptops during meetings dramatically reduces engagement. Discuss acceptable laptop use (if any) for this meeting.
Breaks. After 45 minutes, people tend to “check out” as their focus drops. Provide a break of 7 to 12 minutes for every 45 to 50 minutes of sit-down meeting time.
Punctuality. Discuss the end-of-break boundary. Consider agreeing that the instant that the door closes, the agreed-upon break is over.
One conversation. Try to establish the rule that when one person talks, everyone else must listen. Discuss prohibition of side conversations and over-talking.
Anything else. Ask the group if there is anything else that makes sense to agree to, before we start.
Write down the understandings on a white board or flip chart paper on the wall. Make these agreements very visible.

Ah, this synapses with two recent findings in my universe:

1. The Modern Meeting Standard as a framework from a quick'n'easy how-to book

2. What I heard about effects of attention span from a trainer for automotive service technicians. Qualification tests pass rate after a day of 90-minute sessions around 40%, after a day of 45-minute sessions usually above 70%.

Sat, Feb 18, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: learning, collaboration, agile, scrum, organization
Sent to project: Polytopia

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