Blog of Collective Intelligence

Sofia Bustamante wrote:

> If our world is a living system of systems (holistically embedded), then the base concept of ecology must have biological connotations...

I love both the depth of her insight and what it inspired me to see:

YES! Our world is a living system of systems. It is alive, expanding and contracting, dancing on the edge off chaords, between "nothingness and eternity."

Sofia continued:

> And aspects like finance, social, environmental factors need be considered within this context.

YES, again! And when more of us understand, feel, and relate to them as living systems, we may even inspire the awakening of their sentience, who knows. Just imagine…

Continue reading "" If our world is a living system of systems"" »

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Evolution's Edge from Best Futures says:

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that all the necessary elements of a sustainable system will develop quickly enough to prevent irreversible environmental and social damage. Major evolutionary transformations only occur after a critical number of useful paradigm-changing developments (functional mutations) have taken place within a biological or social system. If these new system components are compatible, their interactions can begin to change the form and function of the entire system.

How can the new components learn whether they are compatible with one another, when they exist still only in germ form inside the old system? By engaging in collaborative inquiry in what is the next, larger subsystem of which they are part, how would it function, and what is the unique contribution of each of them to it. That inquiry will facilitate the differentiation and integration of the parts. It will also support and be supported by the CI of the whole.

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I've just finished reading an amazing book by Joel Garreau, a reporter and editor at of the Washington Post, titled "Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human."

Garreau presents three scenarios of the future: the "Heaven" of technological optimists, like Ray Kurzweill, the "Hell" of technological pessimists, like Bill Joy; and the "Prevail" scenario of people like Jaron Lanier who doesn't believe in technological determinism and thinks that:

"Even if technology is advancing along an exponential curve, that doesn’t mean humans cannot creatively shape the impact on human nature and society in largely unpredictable ways."

The quotes below are from "Radical Evolution".

Continue reading "Connectivity ramp, CI, and Jaron Lanier" »

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I started reading the work-in-progress online Excerpts from Wilber’s forthcoming "Kosmic Karma and Creativity" and found the gems quoted below. They are followed by my burning questions.

“[T]he technological revolution can speed through the social system extremely quickly--leaving the old cultural worldview completely out of sync with the new realities. To change that cultural worldview requires, of course, a difficult subjective transformation of consciousness in order to tetra-mesh with the new social realities of increased depth.”
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“[T]hat modest 2% of the population that is now integral might soon swell to 5%, 10%, or more. I believe that, as with any evolutionary unfolding, we will especially start to see evidence of this increasingly integral consciousness at the growing tip, or at the leading edge, or in the avantgarde (by whatever appellation)--in academia, the arts, social movements, spirituality, thought leaders.”
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“Once individuals download and install [an Integral Operating System] IOS in their own worldview, they begin more conscientiously attempting to include all views, all approaches, all potentials in their own sweep of the Kosmos. IOS initiates a self-correcting, self-organizing outreach to all aspects of the universe previously marginalized by worldviews that were too narrow, too shallow, too self-enclosing to serve as more transparent vehicles of Kosmic consciousness.”

The power and clarity of those provocative ideas triggered some new insights and questions:

Continue reading "Why to invest our time and attention in an Integral Operating System" »

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In his comment on the entry about Is self-awareness a requirement for CI?, Tom Atlee called our attention to something that's a truly foundational condition of boosting the CI of large social systems.

His perspective is also essential to further the inquiry into the concept of evolutionary threshold that we opened last month with the entry on How would we know, we reached tipping point? (After reading Tom's passionate call below, you may want to loop back to the "tipping point" entry to get a sense of yet another context in this network of CI conversations, to which his idea is highly pertinent.) Tom Atlee wrote:

I'd like to see greater understanding, application, and nurturance of ALL dimensions and types of collective intelligence -- even such mundane factors as designing economic measures of success such that the self-organizing market dynamics that get motivated by those measures (and the rewards associated with them) automatically generate outcomes that serve the quality of life of all who live within that economic system.

Whose intelligence is expressed by the "self-organizing market dynamics" that Tom refers to?

Continue reading "The challenge of co-intelligent economy" »

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At the end of his feature on the Mystery of Collective Intelligence, in the May-July 2004 issue of “What Is Enlightenment?” magazine, Craig Hamilton asked: “What would it take for us to remove any barriers to the emergence of collective consciousness, not just as an occasional peak experience but as a permanent ongoing capacity?”

That question comes on the last of 24 pages filled with stories of small groups experiencing spontaneous irruptions of collective consciousness—described in very evocative images by their participants—and interviews with pioneers of the collective intelligence and wisdom movement. It is breathtaking survey and vista of this rapidly emerging field, that I recommend to all readers of this blog to visit.

The rest of this blog entry is a modest contribution to the efforts of addressing the question raised by Craig Hamilton.

Continue reading "From states of collective consciousness to a new, higher stage of CI" »

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Here are some more comments from Jay Cross about Shift Happens!

> When I look back at your definition of Collective Intelligence: "the capacity of communities to evolve towards higher order integration and performance through collaboration and innovation," I have a tough time figuring out when the tipping point has tipped, e.g. when the ice turns to water or when the performance is of such a higher order that an observer would say, "Boy, that's really different."

Are you asking, what is the evolutionary threshold for a system-in-focus to reach metasystem transition? Discussing the Big Shift, or the threshold for entering the next phase of global society, a friend of mine, Larry Victor responded in an email, 10 years ago:

Continue reading "How would we know, we reached tipping point?" »

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