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 printing press revolutionized communication, and enabled the Enlightenment. But we too are witnessing a similar revolution—the advent of the Internet, and the interactive digital media. Are we really calling that a pair of candle headlights?

We look at the way in which this new technology is being used. And at the principle of operation that underlies this use. Without noticing, we have adopted the principle of operation that suited the old technology, the printing press—broadcasting. But the new technology, by linking us together in a similar way as the nervous system links the cells in an organism, enables and even demands completely new modalities of collaboration. Imagine if your own cells were using your nervous system to merely broadcast data! In a collective mind, broadcasting leads to collective madness—and not to "collective intelligence" as the creators of the new technology intended.

Stories

We are in an emergency

Knowledge work has a flat tire

We used the brief thread under this title, consisting of two vignettes and a punchline, as a springboard story for launching our Silicon Valley presentation of Knowledge Federation in 2011. We offer it here for the same purpose. An academic and media situation related to the climate crisis, where two esteemed scientists contradict one another on an all-important issue, is described to point to another all-important but less known issue. Our point was that, metaphorically speaking, pressing the gas pedal and rushing forward (writing up, publishing and broadcasting our ideas and opinions) was out of tune with the nature of our situation. Our situation demands that we stop and take care of a structural issue. The stories are shared here.