Facilitating the local/global dynamics of CI calls for a collective sensing organ
Robin Temple commented on the Chaordic
Dialogue Practice blogpost. Instead replying to it in that thread of comments, I've
chosen to put the thoughts that it triggered in a new entry, as to give
more visibility to it and our dialogue. Quotes are from Robin's original
comment.
“On Chaordic Dialogue - two things I perhaps could contribute:
- your proposal of 'dis-locating' dialogue in both dimensions of time and space opens up the possibility for the reality that is not bound by time and space to freely emerge in any such dialogue.
This 'non-located' reality is the one that holds the intelligence and wisdom we so much seem to lose when we get too much caught up in our space-time 'points of view'. Interestingly, this intelligent reality still 'needs' us, as participants in the conversation...”
It sure does. It's only through our active engagement can it become aware of
itself. I am thrilled by that we can't even start fathoming the acceleration of
local evolution when the intelligent reality of the global meta-being awakens
to self-awareness. There’s a beginning conversation about the self-awareness of
the meta-being here, which may be of interest to students of the life of our Emerging Planetary Reality.
I believe there's an increasing return on the double spiral of the local
enriching the global, and the global making the local wiser. I started sharing
my observations about the local/global dynamics here and further explored some aspect of the “collective intelligences
playing at different scale” theme under that heading in a research note.
As we apply both systemic observation and collaborative intuition to the
inquiry into, and sense-making from, that dynamics, we can become better agents
of it.
“… in order to be able to contribute to the our dialogues (as 'insights' and 'inspirations') and to insert these contributions back into time and space 'locatedness', where we can, if we choose, take ownership of them and respond to them if we feel moved.”
The local/global dynamics is one of the key dimensions of designing a 4-fold learning
architecture that Etienne Wenger conceptualized in the context of communities
of practice. His learning architecture design is reflected in the diagram below and summarized/popularized here. Robin Temple’s comment is inspiring to expand and explore the 4-fold learning architecture’s meaning in the context of
humankind’s learning journey.
Wenger's model that is central to his "social learning" theory, particularly, the four dynamics (space, time, power and meaning) of the design, can reveal questions useful to ask about the evolution of large-scale collective intelligence, as well. However, that should be the subject of a new conversation ideally, in the context of negotiating the learning agenda of a
nascent community focused on the practice of hosting and facilitating the local/global
CI dynamics.
Contributing our insights, inspirations, and initiatives to the global flows in
the social body of evolutionary emergence, and facilitating the local take-up
of what supports local emergence are two sides of the same coin. Deepening the
learning about one calls for the deeper exploration of the other.
Right now, the relevant insights, inspirations, and initiatives that could
enhance each other and lead to breakthroughs in social innovation and
creativity of great local and planetary portent, are still largely disjoint and
fragmented. They are groping their way towards each other and the actual cases
of cross-fertilization and synergy painfully lag behind the potential. We can’t
expect a significant improvement of that situation before a community is
coalescing around the purpose of developing a collective sensing and
meaning-making organ dedicated as a service to the evolutionary movement.
Currently, there are some early conversations about forming such a community
under the (temporary) name “Evolutionary Learning & Action Network” or
ELAN, for short.
“The more practiced we become at contemplative silence, as you suggest, the clearer our channels of communication will become for this 'reality-intelligence' that is waiting to emerge through us into our everyday awareness.”
Yes, and the implication of that statement is that for those engaged in the
support of intentional evolution, the honing of one’s contemplative skills is
not only a personal matter but an issue of evolutionary response-ability.
“Just to say I don't take any personal credit for these ideas above - 'my' contribution to this chaordic dialogue ... they just 'appeared' quite spontaneously as the reading your article came somehow together with my (daily) 'practice' of trying to understand and include 'reality-beyond-time-and-space' in my conversations.”
Our brainchildren, just like our biological ones “come through us but don’t
belong to us” (Khalil Gibran). However, credit is due for the daily practice
of contemplative silence and meditation. Without that we couldn’t become
the hollow bamboo for the future playing its songs through us, as it is
emerging from the generative dialogues and actions of millions around the
planet...
“One interesting practical support for chaordic dialogue that I can see appearing on the horizon is Google's latest contribution to communication technology: Google Wave - that is due to be launched to the public soon. The possibilities of being able to add audio/video/photo/text contributions seamlessly to on-going chaordic dialogues, that can be recorded and 'played back' and entered into at any point... (again, freeing dialogues from being 'fixed' in time and space) all suggest great possibilities for our collective learning, sharing and 'harvesting' in this area...”
Google Wave is not yet released and, for good
reasons, already making waves in the minds of a couple of observers. Robin’s
comments around it resonate with the excellent blogpost of Dave Pollard
and my own essay
on “Why will Google Wave succeed, in spite itself."
It seems that the Wave will just arrive just in time to shake up how we work and learn together, as one of the most disruptive innovations in the history of social computing. Technologically curious CI practitioners can help speeding its market acceptance, by developing CI-focused application prototypes, which may well also be a way to fast-track the local and global augmentation of CI itself.