Augmenting our personal bandwidth, the elasticity of our attention, is one of the ways, in which we can contribute to augment our collective intelligence.
If that hypothesis is true, then any learning partnership of 2 or more people should be able to verify and validate it. The “collaborative inquiry” in the title of this entry is a suggestion/invitation to the verification of my hypethesis.
This conversation started with the following exchange:
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 22:38
From: Pierre Lévy
To: George Por
Hi George,
I just read your message and it is almost 10 PM… (I’m still in my office in Ottawa…)
yes, I am still working on the project of designing the growth of the CI network. But the time that is left to me by my current business is not enough.
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2003 17:26
Subject: attention ecology / shared attention
From: George Por
To: Pierre Lévy
Time pressure is an interesting thing. What I find interesting about it is the link that connects our experience of time and attention. When we’re in “flow” attention, time flies fast, yet we don’t notice it, and accomplish much.
The quality of our attention influences our experience of time not only when we’re deliciously focused on a single, both very demanding and energizing task or project. It is also a decisive player in limiting or augmenting our capability to concurrently sustain several co-creative, multi-channel and multi-community conversations.

I believe that capability is a generative factor of CI, and it can be enhanced and expanded. Whilst we can’t make the days twice as long as they already are, we can certainly augment our personal and collective bandwidth, and create more value together. Would you want to test that idea? If yes, then let’s see how well we can configure our co-creative capabilities in the design of the Network, and how it will affect what will get accomplished.
à bientôt,
george
p.s.: Pierre, this message is also an example of the kind of stuff that maybe worth to blog. If you don’t mind, i’d put in our blog. If you decide to reply, please make a new entry, not a comment. As a general courtesy, I always ask the sender whether it’s OK to put in a public blog a sentence or a paragraph from privately received email.
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 21:15
Subject: Re: attention ecology / shared attention
From: Pierre Lévy
To: George Por
You can put it in the blog !
Dear coach, I will be very interested by your advice about expanding attention bandwidth and – therefore – time. 🙂
Pierre