Share This Course!

I found this recent article on Jaron Lanier entitled “The Web Gone Sour” rather thought-provoking as well as reiterating some of the themes explored in Share This Course.  Among these are the notions of connectivity, hyperintelligence and the balancing of the individual and the community (drawing parallels here so these weren’t the exact words in the article, ok?)

The article writes,

One of the main targets of Lanier’s critique is the concept of the “wisdom of the crowds” or the “hive mind”. This is the idea beloved of so many social media enthusiasts that the collective wisdom of a large number of people, generally harnessed online, will exceed that of the individual.

I think the internet, as with anything within Information Technology, is a tool – valued for its potential and use. Hence, its value depends on the people who see its potential and use. It’s about the people.  Technology, no matter how advanced or ‘super’, is useless if not used….as I learned years ago, sometimes there is merit in stating the obvious (the purpose of Philosophy as a course of study, I believe).

So what has this got to do with us here?

Well, I think that this really highlights the goal of hyperempowerment because that brings the focus (and value) back on the individual, where it starts. The individual who shares and participates in the sharing culture to build hyperintelligence is thereby empowered as part of the process. It is not about the media that connects us but that which we eventually become for partaking in the process and the product of it.

Of course, this is just my interpretation of it. What do you think?

Many years ago, when I studied to be a preacher-man, I learned how to write a strong sermon.  The best sermons have three parts: an opening, an exegesis, and a closing.  Put together, these three elements create a dramatic arc which the congregation can latch onto and follow.  Nearly all of my lectures and public talks – as can be seen on my other blog – are presented in three parts.  It seems to work well, whether the subject matter is biblical or technical.  All these years of breaking everything into threes may have affected the way I think.  It’s become difficult for me to think outside of this ‘rule of threes’.

Just as in my earlier book, The Playful World, Share This Book is structurally broken into thirds.  In the first third I want to cover the sharing of culture – that is, all the ways we have become expert in the sharing of various forms of media: songs, videos, links, thoughts, and so on.  This will not be presented as something new, but as the foundation for what follows: the sharing of knowledge.  When the sharing of culture becomes directed and specific to a domain – whether that might be Star Wars or mental health or French cooking – it transcends the contributions of any single individual, and can create a condition of group intelligence, or ‘hyperintelligence’.

Once hyperintelligence emerges, anything is possible.  For example, community of self-professed geeks might take on Scientology (ANONYMOUS).  When applied to the achievement of a goal, hyperintelligence translates into hyperempowerment: individuals punch far above their weight.  That is a new thing, something which destabilizes every institution in the 21^st century.

Three sections: culture, knowledge and power. It’s a sermon, of sorts, designed to illuminate those who hear it.  With your help.

Well, quite apart from the fact that almost everyone is fairly much hypnotised by all things networked, the infrastructure of society is now so heavily reliant upon it that there is, frankly, very little room for the modern equivalent of a Luddite.

Do not even attempt to imagine what it takes for you to roll on up to that hole in a wall on a suburban street to extract some readies for the big night out with your mates. Because it will hurt your brain once you realise that you’ve but done a stratospheric fly by over the surface, let alone scratch it. Just kidding. Look up banking networks on the Internet. It’s fascinating.

Anyway.

The thing is that the handloom weavers didn’t just stop existing when the first mechanised loom came onto the scene. There was a transition. But during that transition there was a resistance to change. A change that had well started, a change that was well in play and essentially past the point of holding back. Other factors were involved, to be sure, but for the purposes of my metaphorical swirl to an idea, I reckon you’ll give me a bit of free rein here.

Reading everyone’s input into this project so far confirms to me that Share This Book – whatever it will be – is a thing that embraces change.  A book that identifies the tools and the people – which is which? *smirk* – to ride this wave of change. A book that showcases the realities of hyperintelligence and hyperconnectivity (already in place now for many earthlings), which can be harnessed for no other purpose than to share with even more people the knowledge and the communities that can be tapped into to achieve a shared purpose.

We can’t smash the loom, because we love the loom.

I thought I’d share another picture with you to prompt some discussion.

What you see below is what I have conceptualised after having reread a few of Mark’s articles on changing culture and the various ‘hyper’ terms that we have been studying over the last few weeks.

This was a slightly more difficult exercise than my attempts of the first schematic I shared with you and I am not quite as confident on it’s capture of the various notions.  But I figure, why worry about not getting it exactly right when I have a group of people who will examine it and provide useful feedback on how it may be improved, not least for the fact that amongst you is the author of the articles I read to construct the picture.

In contrast to my (consciously provocative) depiction of the features of our current culture, I have given an interpretation of the features of the new culture emerging.  Note that we are only looking at a limited set of features and the picture is not really capable of describing either the current or the emerging culture as a whole.

The culture is changing

Three weeks have passed,  The holidays have come and gone, leaving nothing but a vaguely bloated sense of self in their wake.  And the visitors have been sent home.  The question on all our minds: what’s next?

As originally envisioned, the actual process of writing Share This Book starts from today.  I am going to be drafting the introductory chapter to the work over this week – while also getting caught up on a number of other tasks.  Chapters will not appear daily; most likely they’ll appear weekly, or perhaps twice a week.  Writing is an intense business, and can’t be hurried.

The interesting work beings after these chapters get posted.  That’s when we can all set to work on them.  Do they make sense?  Do they prove the points their trying to make?  Do they flow?  What else can we add – from a wealth of possible examples, stories and anecdotes – to improve the arguments?  And what has been mistakenly left out?  The raw chapters are a starting point, a framework for discussion.  They give us something we can collaboratively build upon.

The basic argument of Share This Book is very simple: hyperconnectivity leads to hyperintelligence leads to hyperempowerment.  But saying it in a way that anyone can understand it – and believe it – will take a few hundred pages.

Sharing underlies everything.  Sharing is the engine which drives all of this forward, both as the theme of the book, and in the creation of the book.  Sharing the work, sharing the creativity, sharing the trials and triumphs, that’s what we’re in for now.  That’s what Share This Course! has always been aiming toward.  We know each other, we trust each other, we have a place to meet, and many tools to work with.  Now we begin.

(Although I had thought I would not post during my holidays, indulge me.)

The big movie this Christmas holiday is James Cameron’s SciFi epic Avatar.  In a major feat of creativity, Cameron and crew have imagined a whole world – Pandora, which circles a gas giant in Alpha Centauri’s system – and all of the flora and fauna native to that world.  Of most interest to us, both as filmgoers and as humans, are the Na’vi, the three-meter-tall humanoid natives of Pandora, about whom hangs the plot of Avatar.  The Na’vi speak their own language, referenced in the film as various human characters try to master the tongue, and presented translated in subtitles when the Na’vi speak to one another.

Cameron is known for his eye for detail: the Na’vi language received the same attention as the animals and plants of Pandora.  Working with Paul Frommer, a linguist from USC, Cameron developed a language that was easily pronounceable by the actors while still retaining an alien flavor.  Na’vi is a ‘conlang’, a constructed language, with its own syntax, grammar and vocabulary, standing alongside other constructed languages, such as Esperanto, Tolkien’s Sindarin, and Star Trek’s Klingon.

Frommer was invited to write an article on Na’vi on The Language Log, the premier blog for linguists, and in its comment threads something wonderful happened: people shared their own enthusiasm for Na’vi, and began to work together to create resources which would help them learn and master the language.  Within a few days after the film’s release, a full Wikipedia article documented the language, a website invited visitors to learn the tongue, and a mailing list allowed linguists to explore the topic in detail.  The phenomenon of Na’vi is a perfect example of hyperconnectivity (a blog) leading to hyperintelligence (a community of learners).  It’s happening in real-time.  Go and see.

The invitation to post came earlier than my readiness but here I am now and what better way to start than to consider sharing as a risk. Here I will attempt to use the focus suggested by Mark, i.e. sharing of culture, knowledge and power…in 300 words or so….

Everyone who has participated in this blog, by reading and/or commenting, has shared individual and collective knowledge.  Shared authoring privileges has further broadened the opportunities for sharing knowledge AND power.

I do not take this authoring power lightly because I believe sharing is a risk. On one hand, a sharer risks ridicule, rejection and being taken advantage of.  On the other hand, a sharer risks affirmation, acceptance and learning.

Now I’ve taken the risk with confidence in the sharing culture of this community.  Although there have been differences in viewpoints, there were no instances of negativity. In fact, there has been much positivity. Sharing has been espoused and promoted within. Hence, we have built collective knowledge even as we used each other as mirrors – or sounding boards – to reflect/echo and advance our own learning and knowledge.

Our culture is grounded in the ethos of sharing for maximum benefit, using accessible language that remains mutually respectful even in times of disparity.  Part of this culture is that every day there are posts and comments such that there’s always a chance to teach and learn.

We feel safe and comfortable with the process of sharing within this community. BUT, are we ready for the product, Share This Book? Open to a wider audience, the risks of ridicule, rejection and judgment are more likely. Will we hide behind pseudonymism or put our personal stamp on the destination of the journey we have enjoyed thus far?

… <300

Share This Course has been in existence for rougly two and a half weeks. The community continues to grow. THE FRONT PAGE IS YOURS has unleashed the beast and we are posting tons of info and having great conversations. Connections are being made.

Some questions have come to my mind. As much as i enjoy the very theoretical conversations, i feel i am more focused on the way these things work and trying to help them be efficient.

In an early blog comment, Sylvano mentioned protocols. This topic has not really been explored yet. So in thinking about an idea for the blog, i wondered how exactly i should go about changing this blog in what i thought was a good way.

In the new posts flurry of Dec 7 and 8 2009 a post was made into a page and it was weird, but that was fixed quickly enough by just changing the page to a post. But what if a new page is needed? Who decides that? Mark? Definitely. But who else and why?

Searching google for hyperintelligence shows 50k+ results. In my mind number one should be a page here at STC.org. Permalinks are also very important in my opinion, for readers and search engines.

So i thought how to go about doing this? i could just do it and make the page. But i also want to see what others think first. i thought i would like to message Mark and see what he thinks. i could email him or facebook or post on the blog or comment on another post.

That brought to mind the question, Should all communication involving this community be public? Is there a need for private communication? How does this community make decisions about itself? And that led me back to protocols.

This community, my inner anarchist is dying a little, needs some protocols. Nothing law like but whos and whys. Is this project going to be just a free for all? Or will there be some sort of, for lack of a better metaphor, hierarchy? Im down for either or both. But i think these are things that need to be put into words.

How do we as participants in this group interact with each other in both our own and the groups best interest?

Hyperintelligence doesn’t happen by itself.  It requires a sufficient level of hyperconnection among a community of individuals, the proper set of tools to support their knowledge sharing, and a goal.  Only when all three of these elements cohere – something that doesn’t always happen – can a hyperintelligence arise.

Hyperintelligence used to be very rare, restricted to closely-bound communities of peers – monks in a monastery, or researchers in a laboratory.  It’s broken its shackles of place and space; we’re connected digitally, globally, simultaneously, so communities can form across countries and continents.  The goal of that knowledge sharing can range from Star Wars to Creationism.  But the tool we use for this knowledge sharing is almost invariably a wiki.

Wikis are not complicated; the technology for a web page which can be edited in-place has been around since 1995.  Yet it took us several years to work out that editing is the principle function in knowledge creation.  Group editing is the principle function in hyperintelligence: when we can add to and prune our knowledge, a process supported by the connectivity among us, we can all become smarter.

A few days ago, @Sylvano created a wiki for all of us to use, an example of sharing and initiative which Share This Course! needs to reach its goals.  We need a place to store our knowledge. A blog is perfect for establishing connections and capturing conversations, but knowledge requires something different, something more permanent.  For this reason, the address wiki.sharethiscourse.org now points directly to that wiki: it’s now officially a part of Share This Course!

Now we have to have a good think about what knowledge we want to capture.  All of it, from the inane to the sublime, should go into the wiki.  To make us smarter.

We human beings are very good at sharing information.  Much of the tremendous success of our species is due to the fact that we pool our informational resources.  Something learned by any one of us can be known to all of us because we share.

We have lately stumbled upon a new type of sharing, which arises out of our hyperconnectivity.  Connect people together and they begin to share.  Give them a goal – such as say, the creation of a book about sharing – and people can begin to share very specifically.  If enough of these people have expertise in their domain of sharing, the aggregate effect of all this sharing will be to multiply the wealth.  Everyone will benefit from the specific knowledge of every person.  Gaps in one person’s knowledge will be met by strengths in another’s.  When this works well, everyone wises up.

The exact conditions needed to produce this flowering of ‘hyperintelligence’ differ from task to task, and community to community.  Wikipedia stumbled into it, and created a model that can be adapted to different needs.  The most important ingredient is the committed involvement of a group of intelligent and passionate individuals.  Given that, almost anything can happen.

Can we create hyperintelligence here?  Pooling our intelligence and our sharing our knowledge, can we create something greater than the sum of its parts?  That has always been my goal with Share This Course! – a hyperintelligence which will power the creation of Share This Book.  But hyperintelligence takes time to mature.  I set an artificial limit of three weeks for this first stage in our task – impossibly optimistic.  Do we have the patience to wait for our hyperintelligence?  Can we supply the energy and attention it will need to grow into potency?