The we among us
Project: Polytopia

A meme
to meditate about
what it means
to be in a tribe,
to lead, to follow, or
to get out of the way.



Embrace the we among us.

Let them thrive.

By choice, you are part of the we.

And if not you,

someone is.

Making you part of us.




Click image to download Tribes Q&A, free ebook (pdf, 1.4MB)



Context

Wed, Jan 18, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, polytopia, knowmad, tribe
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Movement Sense-Making
Project: Polytopia

The Future of Occupy project is neither about predicting nor advising the future of the movement. No one can predict or advise the emergent qualities of a living system. What we do want to do is provide a useful service to Occupy, by curating the news and views related to its identity and strategy scattered in the Occupy media and on websites sympathizing with the movement.

You can read the heading of this section both as:

“Occupy Movement” Sense-making, and/or Occupy Movement Sense-making.

As we read it the second way, we see the movement itself consciously engaging with the process of sensing and making meaning out of what is emerging in the world as a result of its actions.

How could that happen? One of the possible ways was identified by a commenter on The Future of the Occupy Movement, by Jules Lobel:

1. OWS needs to develop a video and documentary record/ library of all major debates/decisions and its most valued (if not all) productions coming from Occupied encampments… This record/library needs protection from devilish manipulation/distortion so it should be periodically sent out (CD?) to trustworthy places/people all around the world far safe-keeping and then updated versions likewise.

2. A humble think-tank like mechanism needs to be established/organized that will analyze this OWS library (#1) and produce more literature and actionable material (specific democratic processes, rules and procedures, dynamic manuals, etc.).

3. Link #s 1 and 2 above with universities, movements, organizations, NGOs, etc. which are investigated and perceived as good partners in building a better future.

4. Request contributions in material from heretofore fair players in distribution, like Truthout.

5. Expand the discussion on the nature and the future of OWS in our minds…

Quoted from and more at: http://thefutureofoccupy.org/about-movement-sense-making/

Tue, Jan 10, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: learning, analysis, collective intelligence Polytopia, self-organization
Sent to project: Polytopia

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If we are only teaching what we know...
Project: Polytopia

... our children can only do as bad as we are doing, and this is the challenge we are facing - we have to go beyond it. — Gunter Pauli

Click image for video

Quoting more for context

Forget about the fact that while we were doing in the past the right way is going to bring us to the future.
It is not
and this is one of the biggest lessons we have
as parents, we want our kids to be better
and here is a picture of my little baby
and my two sons
we always want it to be better but that means that we have to create the space of our children
can invent, develop new pathways to the future
Because if we are only teaching what we know
our children can only do as bad as we are doing
and this is the challenge we are facing
we have to go beyond it.

...

My quest today is to see how can we design a new competitive model
a business model based on sustainability whereby we define sustainability
as the capacity to respond to the needs of all with what we have
and that's the way natural systems do it all the time
the past twenty years we've been doing things…
that we thought were the normal way to do it
but it was an economy that was based on what we did not have
and so what do we have?
well, first of all we have a lot of needs
and since there are so many unmet needs for water, for food, for healthcare, for housing
there is a growing demand, even at a time of a recession
and we have the science to develop it
so much of the science is available
and we don't use it, it gets buried
so how do we achieve a sustainable society?
we achieve a sustainable society when first of all, we think positive
that's what this conference is all about
think positive
second, learn creatively
and third, if any one of you thinks this meeting is a success
it is because when you go out of this meeting you do something
too many meetings are talk shops
too much talking, no action
dream it, don't do it
that's unfortunately what we hear too often
so my work today, is very much focusing on doing all of this at once

...

More from Gunter Pauli's TEDxTokyo talk, with full transcript on http://dotsub.com

Sun, Jan 1, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: introduction, science, thrivability, future Polytopia, visionary, learning, education, sustainability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Sensemaking Systems
Project: Polytopia

Jeff Jonas wrote in General Purpose Sensemaking Systems and Information Colocation

... With information trapped in the tailored database schemas of systems of record, operational data stores, data warehouses and data marts, it is no wonder organizations continue to struggle to make sense of it all – despite decades of effort and innovation.

Performing some kind of federated search over all these disparate data sets just has not ever delivered. In fact, federated search bites when it comes to sensemaking because the diverse data structures are incapable of supporting a sensemaking function.

If you want to be smart, you will want to jam the available, diverse, observational space into the same data structure and in as close to the same physical space as possible.

Data is data.

When reference data, transactional data, and even user queries are colocated in the same data structures and is the same indexes as the extracted features from text, video, biometrics, and so on … something very exciting happens: data naturally finds data and context can accumulate.

...

Long story short, when this general sensemaking system came on-line it started finding marketing hosts comping their roommates and lots of other unanticipated novel discovery. So much novel discovery, it earned the name Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness or NORA, we got two rounds of funding, IBM bought my company to get its hands on the technology, and the rest is history.

Simply said, you have to have a brain (multi-purpose, general structure) to think (sense make). Then with a brain, the smartest you are going to be is a function of what observations you have properly contextualized into that meat space between your ears.

Wed, Dec 28, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, Systems Science, bizarre problems, learning, thrivability, analysis, Polytopia, artificial intuition
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Thank You

Song and video by and with Alanis Morissette.

Lyrics from www.lyred.com

Thank you - Alanis Morissette

how 'bout getting off of these antibiotics
how 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up
how 'bout them transparent dangling carrots
how 'bout that ever elusive kudo

thank you India
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you, thank you silence

how 'bout me not blaming you for everything
how 'bout me enjoying the moment for once
how 'bout how good it feels to finally forgive you
how 'bout grieving it all one at a time

thank you India
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you, thank you silence

the moment I let go of it was
the moment I got more than I could handle
the moment I jumped off of it was
the moment I touched down

how 'bout no longer being masochistic
how 'bout remembering your divinity
ow 'bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
how 'bout not equating death with stopping

thank you India
thank you Providence
thank you disillusionment
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you, thank you silence 𝆓

Thu, Nov 24, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: learning, inspired, video, thank you

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Needed: More Wave Riders
Project: Polytopia

Wave Riders have been with us always, usually unnoticed, or if noticed then treated as a curious exception to the rule. And indeed it often seemed that they were playing by very different rules. There was doubtless a time when we could afford to smile sympathetically at the behavior of the Wave Riders in our midst. When good things happened (the difficult was handled with dispatch, and the impossible achieved with a little more time), we could scratch our heads and wonder at the fabulous run of luck which the Wave Rider obviously enjoyed. It would never occur to us that there might actually be a method in their madness. In fact such thoughts could not occur to us if only because virtually all of our training and experience told us otherwise. Wave Riders were clearly the exception, and we all knew the proper way to do business, what ever that business might be. The critical point was to seize and maintain control in the manner of the Great Man Leader. Only then could good and useful things happen. Or so many of us thought.

More, in the words of Harrison Owen:

The times have changed. The anomalous behavior of the Wave Rider holds a critical clue to new ways of surviving, and indeed thriving, in our chaotic world, enabling all of us to achieve levels of excellence and high performance previously unknown.

The search for high performance has typically been a major concern of businesses and other organizations in their quest for efficiency and effectiveness. However, the stakes have risen dramatically. Achieving optimum levels of human performance is no longer just an issue of organizational effectiveness, but now a matter of global survival. The list of threatening possibilities is virtually without end: Global Warming, Nuclear Disaster, Pandemics of various sorts, to name a few. Any one of these, taken by itself, would constitute a real problem, but everything is coming together in a dizzying maelstrom of complex interaction. Even just thinking about all of this is sufficient to produce the maximum headache. The good news is that for the past several millennia, human beings have successfully negotiated the terrain. Not always perfectly, and perhaps less than elegantly, but so far we have made it. There are, however, more than a few disturbing signs that our good luck may be about to change, signs which appear as organizational dysfunction, and individual fatigue and disorientation.

The simple fact of the matter is that our institutions, major and minor, are stretched to the breaking point. Even with the best efforts in the world, the stuff accumulating in the Global Inbox is getting out of hand. The impact on our individual lives is equally obvious and severe. Stress, breakdown, alienation, exhaustion – we know them all. Rather like the mad Queen in Alice and Wonderland, we are discovering that the faster we go, the "behinder" we get.

Doubtless the end is not yet, and for sure we have a few more tricks up our sleeves. However, the time may well have come when the consideration of alternatives would be useful. Typically, we have attempted to deal with our multiple dilemmas by trying harder and harder to do more and more of what we have always done. If our organizations lack purpose and power, it is obviously time to reorganize – and reorganize again. And when events show every indication of spinning into oblivion, we redouble our efforts to assert, or regain, control – layering controllers upon controllers upon controls. I propose that it is not that we are doing something wrong, but rather that we are doing the wrong thing. Or put somewhat differently: Going the way we are going we are not likely to reach our destination. It is time for a change of course.

The argument of the book is that we must now recognize that we, our organizations, as indeed the entire cosmos – are all self organizing systems. Not just a little bit, not just in some special part, but from beginning to end, top to bottom. It is all self-organization. The implications of this recognition, should it prove to be valid, are two fold (at least). First, a large part of what we currently devote a good deal of time and energy to – organizing things – is wasted effort, for our systems, left to their own devices, will take care of that business pretty much all by themselves. Secondly, our efforts at organization and control are not only of questionable value, but also destructive. By imposing our view of organization on a self-organizing system we essentially throw a spanner in the works, thereby reducing organizational function, and our own levels of performance.

Stated in more positive terms, were we to recognize, and fully appreciate, the power of self-organization we could be relieved of an enormous task, freeing time and energy for the many other pressing issues of our day. Even better, we might learn how to leverage the power of self-organization for our benefit, thereby achieving levels of performance which presently lie beyond our wildest dreams. We will ride this primordial power, compensating for our own powerlessness. Wave Riders for sure.

Preserved 2011-11-06. More...

Image credit: Joan Thewlis CC-BY-NC-SA

Wed, Nov 9, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, polytopia, Sustainability, advance, thrivability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Wave Riders
Project: Polytopia

Wave Riders are curious people possessed of an innate capacity to go with the flow, constantly seizing upon opportunity when others see no possibility, or even disaster. Their level of performance is consistently high, and projects are often completed in breathtakingly short periods of time, with a degree of excellence that may seem unbelievable. Not always, not in every instance – but with a regularity that sets them apart, but never alone. Together with their fellows, Wave Riders create the critical community bonds, essential for productive activity. And they bring a special gift – Leadership. Their passion and responsibility for a cause inspires others to make common cause. Not by domination and control, but through invitation and appreciation, the efforts of many coalesce as one.

More, in the words of Harrison Owen:

Saying that Wave Riders go with the flow is not to say that they have a light regard for planning, logic, and hard work. In fact the Wave Rider may be a fanatic for planning, logical to a fault, and a total workaholic. But what sets them apart is that they also possess a clear understanding of the limitations of all three: planning, logic, and hard work. For them the Plan is the map and not the territory. Necessary, useful, but never to be confused with the facts on the ground, and certainly never to be given preeminence.

Likewise with logic. Good and useful for sure, but when the daily course of experience appears to behave in an illogical fashion, usually referred to as counter-intuitive, the Wave Rider will understand that there are multiple "logics" and it may well be that the one employed is simply inappropriate to the situation. A classic case of this phenomenon comes from the world of Physics at the point where Quantum Mechanics made its appearance. Traditional Newtonian physicists were logical past all, perceiving the elegant coherence in the cosmos to be an exquisite clockworks. However, as the world of subatomic physics became the object of study, the traditional logic faltered. And those who were crafting the emerging quantum physics used the sense of illogic to advance their work. Walter Heisenberg, the originator of the Uncertainty Principle, is said to have remarked, " Your Theory is crazy, but not crazy enough to be true."

On the subject of work – Wave Riders do indeed work very hard. They are often sticklers for detail and devote amazing amounts of time and energy to enterprises for which they have a genuine passion. When they care, they care deeply, and the effect of this caring is a devotion to their cause that others may find disturbing.

But there is another aspect to a Wave Rider’s relation to work that many will find strange. On occasion, all of their busy doing simply stops. The task lists are put away, the goals and objectives are all placed on hold. The Wave Rider is content to be there in that present moment. An outside observer might legitimately conclude that the Wave Rider has given up, but the truth is rather different. She or he has simply let go. Not to be confused with a fatalistic withdrawal from life – this letting go has a very different quality. The commitment to the original passionate concern remains unshaken, and if anything, is deepened and intensified. Rather than fatalism, there is profound awareness and trust in the deep forces which drive towards completion and fulfillment. And of equal importance is a recognition that any "doing" in the sense of organizing, managing, forcing – will not only be ineffective, but may well be counter productive.

Preserved 2011-11-06.
More...

Image credit: Joan Thewlis CC-BY-NC-SA

Wed, Nov 9, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, visionary, thrivability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Open Space Technology
Project: Polytopia

Opening Space for Emerging Order. AKA barcamp, unconference.

In the words of Harrison Owen:

OST, as a definable approach to organizing meetings has been in existence for somewhat more than a dozen years. Truthfully, I suspect it has been around as long as Homo sapiens has gathered for one purpose or another, from the days of the campfire circle onward. It is only that our modern wisdom has obfuscated what we already knew and have experienced from the beginning. But that is getting somewhat ahead of our story.

...

The mere thought of inviting 500 relative strangers, united by little more than their conflict around a particular issue to join together for a three day gathering, without a shred of agenda preparation, a small army of facilitators...should be sufficient to raise eyebrows. The suggestion that something productive might occur obviously contravenes most of what we have taught and/or learned about meeting management and the care and feeding of hostile groups, and definitely qualifies as outrageous. And yet productive outcomes from unlikely quarters has been the continuing experience of groups gathered in Open Space all over the planet. The outrageous is now common place. Somehow incipient (or actual chaos) is productive of order. Regularly.

What’s the secret? Some have suggested that the Four Principles and One Law which guide behavior in Open space provide the clues. The principles are:

1) Whoever comes is the right people, which reminds people in the small groups that getting something done is not a matter of having 100,000 people and the chairman of the board. The fundamental requirement is people who care to do something. And by showing up, that essential care is demonstrated.

2) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have, keeps people focused on the here and now, and eliminates all of the could-have-beens, should-have-beens or might-have-beens. What is is the only thing there is at the moment.

3) Whenever it starts is the right time alerts people to the fact that inspired performance and genuine creativity rarely, if ever, pay attention to the clock. They happen (or not) when they happen.

4) Lastly When it’s over it’s over. In a word, don’t waste time. Do what you have to do, and when its done, move on to something more useful.

The Law is the so called Law of Two Feet, which states simply, if at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing – use you two feet and move to some place more to you liking. Such a place might be another group, or even outside into the sunshine. No matter what, don’t sit there feeling miserable. The law, as stated, may sound like rank hedonism, but even hedonism has its place, reminding us that unhappy people are unlikely to be productive people.

Actually the Law of Two Feet goes rather beyond hedonistic pandering to personal desires. One of the most profound impacts of the law is to make it exquisitely clear precisely who is responsible for the quality of a participant’s learning. If any situation is not learning rich, it is incumbent upon the individual participant to make it so. There is no point in blaming the conference committee, for none exists. Responsibility resides with the individual.

One of the more surprising gifts of the Law of Two Feet is the apparent contribution to conflict resolution. I say "apparent" because I have no direct evidence connecting the Law to the resolution of conflict, but it is true that intensely conflicted groups of people find effective and amicable solutions in Open Space without benefit of formal conflict resolution procedure, or even any intermediary facilitators. Apparently they do it all by themselves.

Preserved 2011-11-06. More...

Even more... Opening Space for Peace and High Performance

Image:　Aaron Hockley

Sun, Nov 6, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, polytopia, introduction, learning, thrivability, conference, self-organization, barcamp, unconference
Sent to project: Polytopia

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science of complex systems
Project: Polytopia

The science of complex systems is transforming science and its role in society. Building on the traditional focus on the parts of systems, the new approach integrates the networks of relationships within and between systems. These relationships are responsible for the collective "emergent" behaviors we see in all physical, biological, socio-economic and technological systems.

Complex systems research can answer questions previously considered outside of the realm of scientific inquiry. This includes using science to understand human behavior, social interactions, and the consequences of policies and decisions of our society.


RESEARCH / PUBLICATIONS

• overview
  economics
  multiscale method
  ethnic violence
  networks
  healthcare
  evolution & ecology
  management
  systems biology
  education
  engineering
  military conflict
  development
  negotiation

Evolution and Ecology

NECSI’s research into evolution clarifies basic issues in evolutionary dynamics such as how altruism arises, the origin and characterization of biodiversity, as well as the interplay of evolution with ecology. Specific work addresses:

• Patterns in Space and the Dynamics of Evolution
  The gene-centered view as a dynamic version of the mean field approximation
  Biodiversity and spatial symmetry breaking
  Genealogical trees and biodiversity
  Estimating the diversity of a population from a sample
  Evidence for why reproductive fitness isn’t necessarily predictive of long term survival
  Environment modification and inheritance
  Origins of altruism, including altruism by social signaling
  Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory
  Celllular automata models of evolutionary self-replication
  

Preserved on 2011-11-02 from
New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)

Wed, Nov 2, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: future, collective intelligence, polytopia, Systems Science, bizarre problems, holistic, worldview
Sent to project: Polytopia

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RADICAL EMERGENCE

12. Evolution yields new adjacent possible niches which alter and ENABLE NEW DIRECTIONS OF FUTURE EVOLUTION: this is RADICAL EMERGENCE. (no conscious mind needed for this radical emergence).

13. Same for econosphere and culture: Turing machine enabled Eniac, created a niche for hence enabled main frame whose wide sale into a new market niche created a further new market niche that enabled Steve Jobs to envision the personal computer in that new niche, an enabling opportunity he saw and seized, whose wide sale created a new market niche for word processing, an enabling opportunity that Bill Gates (and others) saw and seized, whose wide sale and use created a niche for sharing files whose niche enabled the creation of the World Wide Web, which enabled selling things on the web and eBay emerged, enabling more content on the web creating a niche enabling browsing the web and Google and Yahoo emerged, then Facebook enabled the Arabic Spring and new forms of social movements, which enable.....

14. The above leads to a profound new issue: Is this becoming of life and our lives entailed by some law - the reductionist view? I will argue NO. No law entails the becoming of the biosphere or human life.

15. Max Weber’s statement: “With Newton we became disenchanted and entered Modernity.”

...

21. Uses of screw drive alone or with other objects or processes are indefinite and unorderable. Thus NO EFFECTIVE PROCEDURE TO LIST THEM ALL. No algorithmic way to list all the uses of a screw driver.

22. Cellular screw drivers and other process and parts may ‘FIND A USE” IN AN UNPRESTATABLE DARWINIAN PREADAPTATION, which is heritable and enhances fitness so is selected by natural selection OPERATING AT THE LEVEL OF THE KANTIAN WHOLE, so is grafted into evolution.

23. This selection at the level of Kantian whole IDENTIFIES THE UNPRESTATABLE BUT NEWLY RELEVANT VARIABLES IN THE EVOLVING CELL OR ORGANISM.

24. Thus, with Longo, we cannot prestate the EVER CHANGING PHASE SPACE of life as it evolves. We do not know the ever new relevant variables.

25. Need settled semantically laden concepts for mathematization. Law of pendulum, Newton’s laws of motion.

26. We do not have settled semantically laden concepts for evolving biosphere, so we cannot mathematize it, we cannot write down equations of motion of biosphere evolving. A fortiori so too for evolving econsphere, culture.

27. Without a predefined phase space, we do not know the adjacent possible niche which is the boundary conditions on selection, eg for worm evolving to live in swim bladder, so even if we had, which we don’t, the laws of motion, we could not integrate them. It would be like trying to integrate for billiiard balls on a table whose shape is unknown and ever changing.

28. Thus NO LAW ENTAILS THE BECOMING OF THE BIOSPHERE, OR LIFE IN GENERAL.

Preserved on 2011-11-01 from

NECSI and MIT/ESD Seminar
Stuart Kauffman
The End Of A Physics Worldview: Heraclitus and the Watershed of Life

Tue, Nov 1, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: holistic, worldview, life, technology

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