Co-evolving Self and Network

Posted on February 8, 2005 by George Pór

Since I last wrote an entry in this blog, I’ve been busy with faciltating projects and communities exploring and using some of its themes. I’m still too busy with living CI in action, rather than blog about it but here’s a piece of news that I thought you’d like to know about. Three of my favorite people, Lisa Kimball, Howard Rheingold and Joichi “Joi” Ito, will be keynoters at an extraordinary web event that will open tomorrow and will no doubt contribute to the collective intelligence of online social networks.

In 1987 I was a columnist for Computer Currents, a California-based computer magazine, when Howard introduced me to Doug Engelbart. The interview with Doug has literally changed my life, by giving a much sharper focus to a key question of my work and learning: I became obsessed with how emergent technologies of collaboration can contribute to the dramatic upshift that humankind’s complex and entangled crises require, from its current level of intelligence. Thank you, Doug, again.
Doug has just passed 80. If you don’t know who he is, check out aTributetoDoug.org.
My friendship with Lisa goes back even further, to our meeting in the early 80’s on the “text-only” online social networks of those years and co-founding the Electronic Networking Association and its award-winning online newsletter, the Netweaver. That’s where I met, back then, with Joi too. I ran into him more recently, virtually, in a multi-channel conference call on emergent democracy, using a chatroom, a conference call and a wiki, concurrently. I’m looking forward to catch up with them at OSN2005.
Starting on Feb 14, at the same place, I will host a workshop on
Boosting the Collective Intelligence of Your Network
This collaborative inquiry is for online facilitators, leaders of virtual teams and communities of practice, change agents, or just about anyone who curious of how to co-evolve Self and Network. We experience the rapid emergence of a new generation of more capable web browsers, co-authoring and publishing tools, free VoIP telephony, photo-blogging, video-chat, etc. What do they tell us about the potential for our co-creativity to rise on the spine of the double helix of autonomy and community?
This will be not a traditional â€œe-learningâ€ event but a time-bound peer learning community of authentic dialogue, where participants can share their learning edges and negotiate their learning agenda related to their experience and aspirations in social networks. Reading materials will be provided based on the participantsâ€™ interests.
I would love to connect at OSN 2005 with all the readers of this blog interested in online social networks and their potential for collective intelligence. If you’re one of them, please click on the button above.

This entry was posted in CI & Communities of Practice, Multi-community membership. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to Co-evolving Self and Network

pad says:

February 8, 2005 at 10:52 pm

Well done George … your long blog silence is perfectly understandable … folks around the planet are just getting on with their jobs and mixing in there own tribes with there special interest at heart.
The CI movement has a lot to gain from some of the other collab pushes. The Appreciative Inquiry (AI) people are doing amazing work around the world. The Evolving Cosmos group is simillarly achieving much. The colour coded Integrant Spiral dudes are progressing well. Each tribe has their Holy Grail firmly in hand and gather in workshops which help them mass.
Here is a thought to ponder >
What happens when the tribes collect and form a simple understanding of each other based on words of only one or two syllables?
Enjoy the Year of the Wood Rooster.
Best Regards PAD

LikeLike

Reply
lars heyerdahl says:

February 10, 2005 at 7:19 pm

George, thanks to some gentle prodding from an “older” “online friend,” (not you – am still eons behind on catching up here) i joined the socialnets.org event, above.
And it is really shaping up well!
But you are “clicking” some of my favorite names here, in my relatively short internet and web hstory/experience, including, of course, Doug Engelbart.
Thanks for that reminder.
(And the nostalgia, since I read, from cover to cover, just about every Computer Currents magazine, from when it first came out, till I left California, some 4 years ago.) 🙂
Lars

LikeLike

Reply
Leslie Simonfalvi says:

February 11, 2005 at 1:48 pm

Dear George
I’m Leslie Simonfalvi from Budapest, Hungary. Teachers, trainers, and students at the International Teacher Training & Development College work together almost 100 per cent on the basis of the principles detailed in CI and Knowledge Ecology and Knowledge Ecosystems, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years.
We did not know about your site and about your theories, and we do not call it CI and KE, but now I must say that the whole thing works beautifully in practice, from top to bottom.
I wish you all the best
Leslie Simonfalvi
director, ITTDC

LikeLike

Reply
C harles Savage says:

February 20, 2005 at 1:03 pm

George,
This Thursday I was talking with one of the leaders of a well known German company. His Ph.D. thesis was at the intersection between physics and chemistry. His question: How do molecules turn and at what rate? By using very fast laser strobe lights and a powerful microsope he was able to take pictures of a molecule turning over micro-second intervals. He was also able to “see” how these molecules interacted with others even at a distance. In essence, he was decoding Brownian motion.
In our understanding of individual, organizational and collective learning processes, are we not moving from the world of “solids” to the world of “liquids” and ultimately to “gases?”
George, when you write: “We experience the rapid emergence of a new generation of more capable web browsers, co-authoring and publishing tools, free VoIP telephony, photo-blogging, video-chat, etc. What do they tell us about the potential for our co-creativity to rise on the spine of the double helix of autonomy and community?” Are you not recognizing the shift to liquid and gaseous learning, where one another’s insightes, questions, huntches, etc. interact with the molecules of the other’s insights, questions, etc.?
Our first economy was one of exchange, then we introduced “money” as a proxy for value. Are we not moving into the “meaning” economy? So many of the words you and others are using are suggesting this?

LikeLike

Reply