Is self-awareness a requirement for CI?

Posted on May 28, 2004 by George Pór

In a comment to The emergence of CI, an online experiment, somebody asked this question:
> In other words, is self-awareness a requirement for being a CI?
I choose to respond here, in this entry, as to give more visibility to that question, the importance of which cannot be overestimated.

Continue reading →

Posted in Autonomy, Communion, and CI | 5 Comments

The collective intelligence of the imaginal cells

Posted on May 27, 2004 by George Pór

This afternoon, I heard of “imaginal cells,” the first time, from Peter Merry. I’ve immediately googled the term but found mostly bio-science references, except one webpage that had some thought-provoking excerpts from Butterfly , a bookby Norie Huddle , published on Earth Day, 1990.
I thought if fans of collective intelligence are a little bit like me, then they’ll appreciate Norie’s beautiful story about the butterfly’s ‘imaginal cells. It evokes images of possibility to escape to a higher level of intelligence and fitness, with utter naturalness and eloquent simplicity.
Here’s the story:

Continue reading →

Posted in Ways of Tuning with Collective Consciousness | 15 Comments

When community intelligence becomes market intelligence…

Posted on May 24, 2004 by George Pór

Have you ever wondered what is common in “community intelligence,” “swarm intelligence,” “smart mobs” and “tipping points”? According to market intelligence guru, Britton Manasco, they are all about a “drift toward potential innovations that draw on the unspoken and unanticipated knowledge of today’s (and tomorrow’s) customers.”
Frankly, I would have never thought of them that way. First, I was shocked by the concurrent obviousness and trickiness of his statement. Then, I got fascinated by the fertile questions that his thoughts give access to. I will tell you why, but to give you a fuller context, I suggest that before that, read his short but very insightful entry on “Wise Crowds” in the “Customer Intelligence” blog of Corante.

Continue reading →

Posted in Collective Intellect Augments Individual, Spiral Dynamics & the Colors of CI | 2 Comments

“The Wisdom of Crowds” and the colors of collective intelligence

Posted on May 16, 2004 by George Pór

This morning received an email from a friend with “Re: something’s emerging:” on the subject line. It called my attention to a new book on The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, a columnist at The New Yorker. I googled it and found out that it is not published yet but has already 425 pages carrying its reference, as of today.
The message threw off what I was planning to do today because I instantaneously became very curious of what’s happening, went to the Q&A section of the booksite, and found reasons for both some concerns and joyful anticipation of the book. (I will follow this entry about the concerns with one about the joyful anticipation, in the next couple of days.)

Continue reading →

Posted in Cognitive Relations, Spiral Dynamics & the Colors of CI | 11 Comments

Social learning theory can stabilize new peaks of CI

Posted on May 12, 2004 by George Pór

In the new “From States to New Stage” category of blog entries I started exploring what it will take to reach a new, higher plateau of CI not only as a temporary group experience but as a sustainable capacity of human communities. The most exciting and most promising development I know of, which will shed light on the path, is a collaborative learning journey (May 17 -June 20) that will be facilitated by Etienne Wenger about his new research plan, Learning for a Small Planet.
Building on his earlier work as a pioneer of “communities of practice,” the new phase of his work expands to “large-scale social learning systems involving complex constellations of communities of practice.” It will be hosted online by CPsquare and the best is that you can join us there if you want to. In the blog of the European Collaborative for Communities of Practice (ECCoP), Seth Kahan explains how to.
It will be a unique opportunity to accelerate our learning journey to become more effective facilitators of CI emerging at every level, from workplace communities and their constellations, to global movements and projects. I will be there and hope you too.

Posted in Academic Research in CI, CI & Communities of Practice, From States to New Stage | Leave a comment

synergy / feedback loops / surprising capabilities

Posted on May 11, 2004 by George Pór

In the Unpredictable Emergence of Learning entry of his blog, Julian Elvé looked into the white space between my entries on How local meetings w/global experts can boost CI, horizontalization of learning and blognotes by two other people. Julian established a couple of—cognitive and trackbacked—links between them, including:
The public, linked, asynchronous nature of blogs and related technologies both exposes conversations to a wider pool of people and helps the ideas start to flow before any face-to-face meeting.
His picking up on that fave theme of mine inspired me to share more about it. The “it” is intermedia synergy, the social, knowledge, and (potential) business value emerging from the right combination of two or more modes of communication, including real-time and asynchronous. I’ve been extensively thinking and writing about this since 1986, most of which has never made it to my blogs.
What this trackback-facilitated exchange with Julian reminds me is that what is getting cross-fertilized in blogosphere is not only information and ideas but also inspiration. The fact that somebody is paying attention to and find useful what one writes, establishes a posiive feedback loop calling forth more on that subject. In this way, what we pay attention to tends to expand. Directly or indirectly, our attention is guided by our values, AND in its aggregates, it is guiding the global brain’s imprinting new neural paths upon itself.
When a significant minority of change agents in an organization starts paying attention to what they pay attention to, their emerging new knowledge and combined capabilities will be rather surprising.

Posted in Time, attention, bandwidth & CI | 2 Comments

Visualizing social networks

Posted on May 11, 2004 by George Pór

I received this message via an email distribution list:
> you may have seen this already, but this is a beautiful example of visualizing networks (and their intersection). kind of a brain-like tool for community. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/infovis/final/
and responded:
Thank you for the pointer to the site. I looked it up and am happy for having done so. That’s because I think:
Increasing the capacity of people and communities to visualize their (online) social networks is essential to the evolution of Collective Intelligence (CI). I believe it is one of the key conditions to move from fleeting moments of collective consciousness of what we’re becoming to new, stabilized stages of CI.
It is also essential to “the advancement of the Collective Comprehensional Bandwidth. If mutual respect depends on understanding, and understanding hinges on information sharing, then anything that can be done to increase productive information sharing is also helping our world towards increased mutual respect.” (Jason Wilson)

Posted in From States to New Stage, Visualizing Our Ecosystem | 1 Comment

How local meetings w/global experts can boost CI

Posted on May 10, 2004 by George Pór

This entry is copied from an email exchange with ChrisMacrae, with his permission. He wrote:

> the need of deep foreign experts who travel through London to find 10 disciples (in any way that disciples can help as the opposite of audiences paying to hear)…
Chris, I remember, you mentioned that idea in the conversations we had with you and Johnnie Moore, last Friday, and suggested me to participate in such conversation, the next time when I will visit London. In the same conversation, besides gently deflecting to be treated as a guru 🙂 I extolled the benefits to our collective intelligence if we could seamlessly integrate and synergize our real-time and asynch dialogues. Your email provides me with an opportunity to illustrate my point as follows.

Continue reading →

Posted in Events | 5 Comments

From states of collective consciousness to a new, higher stage of CI

Posted on May 10, 2004 by George Pór

At the end of his feature on the Mystery of Collective Intelligence, in the May-July 2004 issue of “What Is Enlightenment?” magazine, Craig Hamilton asked: “What would it take for us to remove any barriers to the emergence of collective consciousness, not just as an occasional peak experience but as a permanent ongoing capacity?”
That question comes on the last of 24 pages filled with stories of small groups experiencing spontaneous irruptions of collective consciousness—described in very evocative images by their participants—and interviews with pioneers of the collective intelligence and wisdom movement. It is breathtaking survey and vista of this rapidly emerging field, that I recommend to all readers of this blog to visit.
The rest of this blog entry is a modest contribution to the efforts of addressing the question raised by Craig Hamilton.

Continue reading →

Posted in Evolutionary Threshold, From States to New Stage, Questions Worth Asking | 3 Comments

“CI — exploring the the next step in human evolution:

Posted on April 24, 2004 by George Pór

Could collective intelligence be the foundation for the next social and spiritual revolution?”
Craig did it! Craig Hamilton, one of the four editors of the “What Is Enlightenment?” magazine pulled together an amazing issue on collective intelligence. The magazine’s website says:
In our May 2004 issue, Craig Hamilton’s groundbreaking feature, Come Together: The Mystery of Collective Intelligence introduces you to pioneers who are discovering that wholes are far more than the sum of their parts. When individuals unite in a shared intention, something mysterious comes into being—with capacities and intelligences that far transcend those of the individuals involved.”
The collective intelligence pioneers who gave interviews that you can listen to at that site include:

  • Juanita Brown
  • Tom Atlee featured also in this blog, here and there
  • Rupert Sheldrake
  • C. Otto Scharmer
  • Chris Bache
    There’s also a list of CI-related books organized by these categories:

    • The Art of Dialogue
    • Socio-Cultural Studies on Collectivity
    • New Order of Business & Leadership
    • The Science of Collectivity
    • Spirituality & Collective Consciousness

    To absorb the richness of materials in this issue will take loooong time…. If interested readers of this blog want to engage with the those pioneers, you can just click on their name, listen to the interview, then come back here to share the questions and insights that they provoked.

    • Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment