The interesting thing about'suspending disbelief' in order to unlearn harmful habits and models in order to see the emerging future is that from the moment that you create a taxonomy of a future, such as declaring yourself for 'collective intelligence' you have created a model that instantly moves into the past. It is importent to ensure that in accepting any new belief, even in a potentialy beneficial are such as collective intelligence, you don't enclose yourself in your self-imposed dogma and cease to look to the future.

I very much appreciated the comment about 'learning through authentic conversation'. The problem of course, is to know when you are engaged in 'authentic conversation'. For example, there is a current tendency among many in Canada to assume that the Bush camp in the US is engaged in a form of inauthentic conversation, while the Democrats are engaged in a more authentic conversation.

Once ego and dogma steps in, it is very difficult to distinguish between 'collective intelligence' and what satisfies my own belief system, and betwen 'authentic conversation' and what I take to be mis-directed conversation. Even mapping digital knowledge cannot overcome this fundamental human condition.

Hi George, Whenever I visit your blog, I wonder why it took me so long, because you create great posts.

What I particularly like in this one is your point on weblogs, as this for me has been a key point I try to stress about blogging. The critical aspect is that they are owned by the individual, and it is paradoxically this valuing of the individual that then releases the growth of the collective intelligence. Unfortuantely its so hard to communicate this, unless people blog they simply dont seem to follow the point. People dont seem to think its that big a difference between a discussion board and a set of blogs. But I think weblogs as you mentioned and Marc stated so well, are absolutely a critical element in releasing a new level of capability/performance in CoPs and CI. Wiki type tech's definitely great for aggregation, but blogs are different and equally important, maybe more critical

And btw, Im really happy to see you linking CoPs and CI so well.

Finally can I link to your blog from a new CoP on CI that I just created? Youre welcome to comment at the wiki page, part of a new KM community were putting together, but its very basic, and really aimed at drawing in people from the KM community who are only just thinking CoP, and where CI is reall going to blow there mind, so its a bit like a gentle front porch for them to begin to absorb, rather than the study where buisness and leading thinking occurs... (analogy from Alexanders Pattern thinking approach to architectiture , the Intimacy gradient ) However having a leading thinker on CI such as your self have regular blogs posted, no extra effort on your behalf, would be great for such a membership.

CI'ers - 'real knowledge resides in knowing what is best to be done.' i find that marvelous and all i need to know ;-) Hope it contributes something to the wisdom here. love, andrew