Tags : collective wisdom, cyborg anthropology, eric rice, gnomedex
How do we tap the collective wisdom?
The internet has become a great enabler in democratizing information. The elitism of paid information easily accessible by a rich few has been replaced by a wealth of knowledge accessible via a few mouse clicks in our own homes. And yet, for all the positives the internet provides, our own sub-cultural biases steer us to content that often reinforces our own ignorance, as opposed to enlightening our understanding of the world and the people in it.
I sat opposite Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist at dinner last night. As much as I struggled to understand much of what she was saying, it none the less challenged me in ways I didn’t think possible. She spoke of dimensional space, what we can and cannot see, and asked whether the internet was the 4th dimension. Eric Rice sitting beside me said in response that he finds himself considering what is behind an object or person in seeking to understand the full picture. I’ve since tried visualizing things from the perspective of what I can’t see; I have no solid idea what the purpose of doing so is, but the lateral thinking involved may, with time, help me develop a broader sense of looking at the larger picture in any situation as opposed to what Case describes as a two dimensional view.
I cannot honestly provide a fair assessment of this wisdom having true validity, and some one else that night suggested that there was way too many drugs being taken by those at the table, a call which in the past I probably would have agreed with, and yet I know that in part by chance (I was invited to the table at the last minute) I had discovered notions that I was not previously aware of, a wisdom that was foreign to my own.
There are other stories I could use from my week in Seattle, but I purposely picked the extreme case in terms of thought as a challenge to our understanding of collective wisdom. That knowledge exists, and that we as humans continue our long march towards understanding is a given proven throughout history, but how do we better tap the collective wisdom, and what role does the internet play?
We’ve covered the echochamber of the Crunchmemeosphere previously on The Inquisitr, and yet it is only one particularly small part of the collective echo. Conferences like Gnomedex go some way in sharing wisdom that may not be as well understood or explained, and yet it is the domain of a select few with the money or foresight to attended. The age of Barcamps and Podcamps and unconferences is upon us, and yet like Gnomedex they often suffer from a collective echo imposed upon them by geography. Ross Dawson’s Future of Media Summit drew an audience in Silicon Valley and Sydney together to share and discuss media, but in reaching across continents it still did not open its doors to a broader wisdom to those without the presence, or finances to attend. We have comments on blogs, or discussion threads in video on Seesmic, but do they truly allow us to yet fully tap the collective wisdom?
The answer may not have been invented, nor even technologically feasible, but there must be a better way. Could it be the next generation of virtual spaces, technology that will allow us to fully emerge ourselves into a shared space of reality based sharing where we can collaborate no matter where we are on the globe as if we were actually there? Or is it something else machine enabled that will allow our 2.0 tech world to emerge into 3.0 or 4.0 as a movement of global enlightenment that delivers the collective wisdom as a force for good. Ask yourself that if we are all so smart today why we still have wars, or why people starve, why Armageddon is still a red button away, and we continue to look at our own problems in a narrow perspective when as Scott Maxwell noted when he showed the first picture of Earth taken from another planet, we are but a small spec in the universe.
We may not have the answers, but we can start the movement for change. Listen to opinions and voices different to your own, accept that you do not know everything, and develop your own knowledge further, leading by example. It’s a small thing, but it may be a start.
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There was acid in the kool aid
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... is wondering how long it will take me and Hodson to deprogram him...
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lol. No acid, honestly. I'd pass a drug test tomorrow.
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mystics say there is only one mind, we are all part of it. experiencing this has great value. it gives context for any particular event, helps with understanding relevance, removes the fishbowl effect, provides a measure of what is useful and what is not, and it wins in the end. collective wisdom is wisdom. our apparent individuality is subsumed in the end. this is the most reflective post i have ever seen here, a sign of transformation (which can be defined as leaving a lower understanding for a higher) and a necessary step in unfolding the collective consciousness. technology is ourselves pushing ourselves towards collective wisdom, because our inner self knows it is a higher reality.
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I had much the same thought Cyndy but if you listen to tonight's elite Tech News when it gets posted tomorrow I provide a possible explanation for Duncan's "behavior" especially regarding Winer for US CTO :)
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Ooh, I can't wait! What is it? Mass hypnosis? A brain tumor?
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ooh, i gave a serious reply, how dumb of me
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Sounds like Duncan to me. This is why we love him
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@Gregory, serious? I thought you'd dropped a tab or two yourself... ;)
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Oneness of anything like wisdom as a simple sum of all knowledge that humans accumulated cannot IMO be tapped or used in any systematic way. See, for example in14th century, Christian Church still prescribed prayer to cure epilepsy, despite all wisdom existing hitherto. Humans are unable to tap anything collective cause history is never considered and goals/objectives of many are very egocentric!
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@jason, no tabs ... lot of meditation though .. no one to talk to about that in most social media forums, i am finding, might have to start a blog to provide some context .... lots of connection between tech and consciousness
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@gregory Mystics are smoking crack. Why on Earth would anyone think so little of themselves and their individuality and dehumanize the uniqueness of proprietary thought by lumping themselves into some non existent "collective wisdom". It's too encapsulated and therefore too confining for a true "thought leader" TM Sarah Lacy
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@matt4rd...you have it backwards, a global awareness (collective consciousness) only comes from thinking of yourself as large, it is no barrier to uniqueness, in fact awareness of uniqueness is heightened ... one sees what is, not just one's personal box. thought leader and sarah lacy in the same sentence, hmm. cannot respond to that :-)
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Asking the question begins that process. I understand where Gregory is coming from in terms of a more mindful approach to it and agree with his perspective, but there may also be a modeling/tech perspective behind your question, that can feed the previous perspective and bring us where we want to be as a society. How do we utilize/pool the experiences and wisdom gained from our lives to benefit each other without repeating the same mistakes in whatever aspect of life is involved.
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@Gregory The "collective consciousness", albeit insignificant to me personally, only exists so long as there are individual free thinkers to propogate it. I realize that my thinking seems counterintuitive to you and perhaps even to society as a whole. Your characterizations of humankind are akin to a 32 bit Vista install on a machine with 4GB of system memory; restrictive. Lacy used the phrase "thought leadership" at Gnomedex. I have no idea what else she said, really, and it doesn't matter. That phrase made me think.
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Thought and consciousness - 2 birds
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Dodo and Ibis
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@Mattb4rd - I don't want this to come across as sarcastic, because it is not, but did someone ask you to give up your ability to think as an individual? My point being that your thoughts or thinking brain reacted rather vigorously to something that was not said. It interpreted a threat to its existence that did not exist. I would suggest, that maybe your "ego"/thinking brain wants to stay in "control". I know mine does that all the time. No judgement. Its normal. I don't think Gregory or anyone here expects
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you to give up you or actually expects anything. Gregory saw a question that he "thinks" could help us get to a better world and existence. I don't know you, but your profile has an image of you playing the guitar. Have you never played with others and things just flowed? Were you able to let go of you centricity to create a more beautiful piece of music with the whole? That is collective consciousness.
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Sorry to continue the ramble, but collective speaks to a collection of pieces all choosing something for the betterment of the whole. That shouldn't seem threatening, but it does to everyone(me included) despite meaning we retain who we "are". I am a smart guy, why would I give up my brain and my thinking, when I have so much value to add to me, my family, and the world, as me?
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Excellent points Brad. I especially appreciate the metaphor you employed "greater than the sum of the parts". The phrase "collective consciousness" implies a "containerization" of sorts and although the power of collective effort is real, I resist the notion that the power is attributable to a collective just because it is a collective. Individual free thought and individual responsibility are much more worthy of packaging within a label.
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consciousness is infinite, means it has no boundaries ... (experiencing where your thoughts come from as they come into awareness is the door to understanding that) ... and/but ... technology is the out-picturing of this boundary-less reality into the 3D world ... we are finding that space and time evaporate, that nothing can be hidden with hyper-connectivity ... and wisdom simply, naturally emerges when everybody can know everything ... this is the "whole being greater than the sum of the parts", revealed
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@matt4rd, even scarier, mystics say there is only one mind and the concept of being an individual is an illusion, but we better save that for another day :-)
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Wow, navel gazing has spread like wildfire in here. It's just some webapps people. You're killing time chatting with people you've probably never met, not forming a higher mind.
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@Steven Considering that the last posted one is from like three weeks ago, I'll have completely forgotten all about it by then. Care to share?
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@jason carreria .. webapp people are enabling this stuff ... the higher they can see it from, the better will be their products, and if they know where it is going, the products they make will have more chance of success ... it has strategic value to understand consciousness now... and i assume i am speaking to thought leaders such as yourself who care "out of the box". which is what duncan's post is about
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The only thing that is hindering us are our minds! If we can go beyond the socially accepted norms and let the Internet and Social Media truly be the conduit of our expressionism, we will achieve the true utopia, even if it is only in virtual space!
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Every communication medium leads to these "it's going to change how people think and bring us all closer together!" idealistic phases.... The internet has gone through at least 3 of these so far. In the end they fall back into the old patterns of 1 - porn (always drives adoption of new technologies), 2 - business (how do we make money with this), 3 - scams (see also 2), 4 - sharing goofy stories and/or pictures (see also LOLCats), and 5 - religion / self help gurus / hippies (see also 3)
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Jason, love UR pragmatism! LOL
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it is not pragmatism.
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Realism? LMAO
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fear?
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"fear" The Dinosaurs are coming quickly hide in the cave while we eat the one U killed! LMAO
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