Holotopia: Collective mind

H O L O T O P I A:    F I V E    I N S I G H T S

Collective mind

The digital media technology, which is now in common use, was conceived to give us a completely new collective capability—to think and create together, as cells in a single mind do. By using it in the manner that suited the old technology—to merely broadcast information—we ended up breeding collective insanity, not collective intelligence as the creators of the new technology intended.

Being immersive and ever-present, the new media damage also our personal ability to comprehend and create.

Stories

The academic big question

We need to see the academia as a system. It has a vast heritage to take care of, and make use of. Selected creative people come in. They are given certain tools to work with, certain ways how to work, certain communication tools that will take their results and turn them into socially useful effect. How effective, and efficient, is the whole thing as a system? Is it taking advantage of the invaluable (especially in this time when our urgent need is creative change) resources that have been entrusted to it?</p>

Enter information technology...

The big point here is that the academia's primary responsibility or accountability is for the system as a whole, and for each of its components. The academia had an asset, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. This person was given a format to write in—which happened to be academic books and articles. He was given a certain language to express himself in. How good are those tools? Could there be answers to this question (which the academi has, btw, not yet asked in any real way) that are incomparably, by orders of magnitude, better than what the academia of his time afforded to Bourdieu? And to everyone else, of course.

Analogy with the history of computer programming

A good way to begin might be to trace the analogy between the situation in computer programming following the advent of the computer, in response to which computer programming methodologies were developed—and the situation in our handling of information following the advent of the Internet. The point, the really big point, is that a dramatic increase in size of the thing being handled (computer programs and information) can not be effectively responded to by merely more of the same. A structural change (a different paradigm) is what the situation is calling for.

A new paradigm is needed

Edsger Dijkstra, one of the pioneers of the development of methodologies, argued that programming in the large is a completely different thing than programming in the small (for which textbook examples and the programming tools at large were created at the time):

“Any two things that differ in some respect by a factor of already a hundred or more, are utterly incomparable.”

Doug Engelbart used to make the same point (that the increase in size requires a different paradigm) by sharing his parable of a man who grew ten times in size (read it here).

The solution was found in developing structuring and abstraction concepts and methodologies, within the programming methodologies (as we summarized here).

It remains to highlight the punchline: There is also an interesting difference between computer programming and handling of information. The fact that a team of programmers can no longer understand the program they are creating is easily detected—the program won't run on the computer. But how does one detect the incomparably larger and more costly problem—that a generation of people can no longer comprehend the information they own? And hence the situation they are in?

Our collective mind is plain insane

The most wonderful story, however, is without The Incredible History of Doug (Engelbart), introduced by the story of Vannevar Bush. This story will be federated in the book "Systemic Innovation" (subtitle "The Future of Democracy"), which is the second book we are preparing as part of the tactics for launching the Holotopia project.

What more to say about the fact that Vannevar Bush, as the academic strategist par excellence, identified the problem we are talking with as the problem the scientists must focus on and resolve—already in 1945? And that Douglas Engelbart understood that (well beyond what Bush anticipated) digital computers, when equipped with interactive terminals and joined into a network, can serve as in effect a collective nervous system—and enable incomparably better ways to respond to the "complexity times urgency" issue, that underlies the humanity's contemporary challenges. See our summary here. This short video introduces The Incredible History of Doug, this one explains his vision.

It remains to highlight the main point.

A collective mind, combined with broadcasting (the process we've inherited from the printing press), spells collective madness—and not "collective intelligence" as Engelbart, and also Bush, intended.

The cultural big question