| Monday, November 11, 2002 |  |
| Group Forming |
 Seb Paquet mentions there's a group for group-forming discussion, which grew our of his own inquiries into the subject. On the table are questions like: "How are new communities born?Those are big questions indeed. Creating the circumstances for productive groups to form is a non-trivial problem. Particularly when we're talking about self-organizing groups. If I have the resources to pay some people to do certain things, I can create a group. If I stand on a street corner and hand out free beer, I'll have a group quickly too. But the interesting question is how groups will come together in a less pavlovian way, where it isn't just a matter of lining up to get your treat, and doing whatever it takes to get it. If there are just a number of possible interest areas, or a number of tasks at hand, or there's just a number of people who exist in the same space, who have different interests - what facilitates that they self-organize in a useful way? I can guess at many things. Of course it helps a lot to have some tools freely available. In a physical space, some different meeting rooms, some comfortable chairs, and some whiteboards to write on, would help a lot. In a virtual space it would work in similar ways. If there are spaces available you can move into, on your own impulse, and start drawing on the boards, some fundamental groundwork is in place. And if you can easily see who is around, who's available, and what their interests are, that certainly helps greatly too. But it takes more. It takes purpose. A group needs to exist for something. A common interest or a shared space might be a trigger, but it doesn't provide the purpose. The purpose can't be faked. There needs to be something REAL that these people are together for. It might not be important to anybody else in the world, but it has to be important for the people in that group. [ Organization | 2002-11-11 23:48 | 3 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Co-Intelligence |
Tom Atlee has gathered a lot of resources about the phenomenon of "co-intelligence". See the compact vision of co-intelligence. Co-intelligence is essentially that a group of people somehow becomes much more than the sum of its parts. The group itself, as a whole, starts acting intelligently at a higher level. Imagine that happening in small teams, in organizations, in communities and in whole societies. Read these stories and examples of collaboration and wholeness.
"What really interests me is that when I tell people about co-intelligence, they usually look at me blankly. But then I ask them if they've ever seen co-stupidity -- and they start to chuckle! What a commentary on our culture, that people who have never heard either word can't imagine co-intelligence, but are already familiar with co-stupidity." [ Organization | 2002-11-11 23:48 | 1 comment | PermaLink ] More > |
| Wealth vs. Poverty |
 "Wealth is when small efforts produce big results.Well, that is maybe a lot more profound than it seems. OK, its a cool thing to quote when you're selling get-rich programs. But it is a lot more, and it applies to any kind of effort, not just to money making. Some people predominantly produce a lot of hard work and effort that doesn't accomplish much. Others do some relatively simple things that make much bigger things happen. That is leverage. Doing more with less. Is it maybe a driver for human evolution? Is it what we're here to do - to accomplish more, more and more easily? Those who get the most done with the least effort are spearheading evolution? Maybe. But we need to sort out some kinks. The easiest way of getting the biggest result with the least effort is to steal the result of somebody else's work. It is easier to pump oil out of the ground than to figure out how to make our own energy. It is easier to steal a car than to design and build one. Is it ethical to have people work hard for you, for little money, while you go on vacation in the corporate jet? Where's the line between intelligent doing-more-with-less leverage and the buy-low-sell-high exploitation of others? [ Patterns | 2002-11-11 23:48 | 2 comments | PermaLink ] More > |