"Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All"

In February, I wrote about Tom Atlee, pioneer of "co-intelligence", whom I have the honor to call a friend. Tom talks about the following 5 dimensions of co-intelligence: multi-modal intelligence, collaborative intelligence, wisdom, collective intelligence and universal intelligence. His definitions are rich, reflecting decades of engaged research as a philosopher and social activist. He says, "If we are to know life at a deeper, more engaged level, we'll need to develop a deeper, more engaged intelligence that includes all these dimensions." and I tend to agree with him.

What prompted this blog entry is Tom's soon-to-be-relased book, the "The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All". I think the book is a must read for every student of the emerging interdisciplinary field of collective intelligence and particularly those who want to apply its principles, models, and practices to build a better world.

Explaining collective intelligence to non-specialists

From networked individualism to "we" blogs

The blogging paradigm is barely 10 years old and its narcistic "beauty contest" tendency can be explained with what Shelley Powers in Tying Communication Threads Togethe compared to "our teen years with our fixation on popularity. S/he with the most links, wins." Using the faster-learning in "internet time," we can move into adulthood--tn regard to that phenomenon--without having to wait another 8 oir 10years. Let's see how.

Concept vehicles

George Por just wrote in the Blog of Collective Intelligence: Being "hypertinent"

Hypertinence keeps gaining momentum through the emergence of the current crop of social software (blogs, wikis, p2p forums, free co-authoring and translation tools and services, etc.) that has all the signs of true communication revolution. That should be the subject of another entry. So is the the role that co-creative dialogues between social software makers and practitioners can play in the democratization of the means of boosting our intelligence, individual and collective.

I think this word "hypertinent" is a great concept, one that can be called vehicle concept because it vehicles itself easily through the minds and it "speaks by itself". George, you were right to make it a category.

As we are exploring new worlds and contributing to a new science, I believe that a whole corpus of concept vehicles will emerge. It's important to point them, use them in our vocabulary and collect them somewhere. Why don't we create a lexicography? George, I believe this is what you began by creating the definition category? Shouldn't we make a special lexicographic blog?

Social thermodynamics and mapping the world

Today most intranets and information systems rely on administrator-oriented tools: you must fill in pre-defined forms, upload reports, update databases, provide complete profile information, etc. Such predesigned tools and interfaces are built upon "mass market" rules, i.e. one same item for everyone. Another concomitent aspect of current corporate I.S. is that they rely on the sum of each individual duties. In other words they don't work.

Assumption 1: I.S. should rely on natural and free energies that flow in human environments. The best natural energy, free and inexhaustible, is the permanent need to be in relation with one another. This need generates ongoing streams of actions, reactions and conversations that blow up the whole activity in the information systems and provide exploitable data.

Assumption 2: "Mapping the world" will become a leitmotiv, an obsession for hoisting CI as a science. Modelizing CI theories will to be built upon the analysis of IS layers (there are more than one - see a few thoughts about them here). The IS layer can be considered as a map of part of the human interactions, and we know that maps should not be confused with the ground (they just provide a certain representation of it). Thus Information Systems are destined to serve as observation tools, as harvesters of information drawn from the elusive reality. So it is in any science: it's theoretical corpus gets built from the string of reality collectors.

This leads to an important question: a big part of CI takes place in close geographical spaces where people can directly interact. Of course current tools help them to lever their CI by providing powerful asynchronous conversation extensions. How will the theory be able to collect and count such IC nests? Will these nests be artificialy estimated from their indirect expression, just like the theory allow to "rebuild" astral objects only by watching their attraction on other masses in the neighborhood?

Being "hypertinent"

I've just picked up an interview that Derrick De Kerckhove gave a year ago in TheFeature :: It's All About The Mobile Internet. Here's why I blog it.

I'm in the process of trying to organize my thoughts about the impact of social software on creative networks and evolution. Typically, when I have an intriguing, novel thought, I google it and find out that there's at least dozen other web-connected minds that have already thought of it. Their perspectives about the same enhances mine and taking them in, comparing them with mine, accelerates my learning, helps me finding the niche for the baby thought.

A small step in our individual discovery processes, such as refining a meme in tele-collaboration with colleagues and strangers, is a huge step for humankind. It means that the inter-penetration and co-specialization of our individual and collective intelligence aren't a stuff of futurist dreams, they're happening here and now, as we speak.

My googling of "creative networks" and "evolution" led me to the May-June 2002 aechive of Eccentric Eclectica, a blog, in which "Todd Suomela meets the web and tries to come out ahead... ." I have no idea who Todd Suomela is but am tremendously grateful to him for putting in his blog a quote from and a link to the interview, in which De Kerckhove said:

Ever more efficient search engines are making that access not just merely pertinent but “hypertinent” which is the logic of the memory in our brains. Every time we think, we summon the most pertinent information available in our mind. Imagine having the same kind of access to the contents of everybody else’s mind at once. It’s quite literally mind-boggling.

Hypertinence keeps gaining momentum through the emergence of the current crop of social software (blogs, wikis, p2p forums, free co-authoring and translation tools and services, etc.) that has all the signs of true communication revolution. That should be the subject of another entry. So is the the role that co-creative dialogues between social software makers and practitioners can play in the democratization of the means of boosting our intelligence, individual and collective.

Collective Consciousness

Collective Intelligence (CI), Collective Wisdom (CW), and Collective Consciousness (CC) are all very different phenomena. All of them have many definitions and descriptions, through the lens of various disciplines. To use them effectively, in ways that enable coherent discourse and action, we need to develop an understanding which reflects those differences. Here's my small contribution to that.

The concept of CI is most elaborated in the work of Pierre Lévy and referred to here:

CW is primarily a group dynamics, group pscyhology meme that has a good book exploring it, referenced here. I contributed to that research, but that's not the main merit of the book :-) There are additional comments about CW here.

CC too has lots of web sites and I am in particular resonance with this one. However, my perspective on CC is more sociological. From that perspective, CC exists in the context of a community or social movement and it reflects the evolutionary stage of that community or social movement. Here the Hegelian pair of terms of "thing-in-itself" and "thing-for-itself" apply. The "thing-in-itself" refers to the objective existence of a movement that doesn't have an awareness of itself as such; thus, its members don't realize that they are members in it. The "thing-for-itself" refers to the shared awareness of a movement or a culture with members realizing that they are part of it.

Knowledge <- Intelligence <- Wisdom

A glitch in the operating system of my computer has cut me from the Web for two days, which was challenging in many ways, but also giving me some interesting insights. I was not away from the Web for two consecutive days, since my last meditation retreat, 8 months ago. I an average day, I am jacked in and exchange messages, working documents, news and views with friends and colleagues, for 12 to 14 hours. The Web became an extension of my mind, and I became a neural node in its.

The challenges of coping with the "withdrawal symptoms" of the last two days brought me also the opportunity to look into deeper questions, for which I rarely have time, in the business of daily action. One of them is this:

What is the most valuable and unique contribution that I can make to our Emerging Planetary Reality? What is my place in the ecosystem of life-enhancing memes and services pointing to the possibility of a better world?

Is it creating more performing tools and methods for collaborative learning, work, and the self-organizing shared intelligence of communities? That's how I've been seeing the nature of what I need to bring to my company's stakeholders, for many years. But now, the emergence of the "social software" and "social networking" movements, and the many very talented people in and around them, make me think that the mightiest productive force of our times humankind’s collective intellect is already taking care of equipping itself with the right tools.

But will those tools and methods be sufficient to meet the Engelbartian challenge of increasing "complexity multiplied by urgency?" I don't think so.