Me in Second Life. (Everyone here is beautiful)
What I'm Thinking of Writing (and Podcasting) About Soon:
Coping With the Strategy Paradox:
I met recently with Michael Raynor, who wrote The Strategy Paradox.
He's now looking at what else we can do to deal with this paradox, and
he poked some holes in my argument that what we need is resilience, not
planning.
Does Our Formal Education System Preclude Natural Enterprise and Natural Community?:
There is some strong evidence that the education system destroys our
creativity, and our natural propensity and ability to collaborate,
self-organize and self-manage. Can we hope to have Natural Enterprise
and Natural (Intentional) Community unless we first re-form, or blow
up, the education system? Is the kibbutz a better environment for
learning, or does it merely invoke and reinforce social tyranny,
conventional wisdom, short-term, uncreative thinking and
industrial-economy action without allowing time for research,
imagination and reflection?
What Do We Do With Old Social Network Content?:
When MySpace was succeeded by FaceBook, what happened to all the old
MySpace stuff? Perhaps old blog posts are like old newspapers, of no
use to anyone except historians. If our posts are essentially
'forgotten' once they slide off the home page into the
archives, perhaps we should just delete them and, if they become
important again, resurrect and update them. This 'loss' of thousands of
terabytes of 'information' into forgotten archives may be just a
reflection of its conversational, transient nature, rather than a
catastrophe of unprecedented loss of collective memory.
A Coming Class/Generational War?:
Exploding economic disparity, and the widening wealth and opportunity
gap between the old and the young, may be sowing the seeds for a class
war between the old & wealthy, and the young & poor, that could
transcend geographic borders.
Second Life as a Platform for Videoconferencing and Distance Learning:
I'm part of an upcoming forum on the future of education -- the forum is being held in the virtual reality environment Second Life.
After just an hour there, I can already appreciate why it has such
enthusiasts, and how it might revolutionize videoconferencing and
distance learning.
Why We Handle Risks So Badly:
In our failure to prepare for and mitigate risk, as decision-makers,
citizens and investors, we play out our essential human nature.
Why We Need a Public Persona:
The journey to know yourself is the first step towards understanding
how the world works and becoming truly yourself, which is necessary
before you can make the world a little better. As de Mello said, this
journey is mostly about getting rid of the everybody-else stuff that
has become attached to us as part of our social conditioning, and
getting rid of this stuff is perhaps what ee cummings meant when he
said the hardest thing is to be nobody-but-yourself when the world is
relentlessly trying to make you everybody-else. From birth, we pick up
all this everybody-else stuff that clings to us and changes us, muddies
us. We are rewarded by society for doing so. I find the 'figments of
reality' thesis helpful in this hard work -- realizing that our minds
are nothing more than problem-detection systems evolved by the organs
of our bodies for their purposes, not 'ours'. That 'we' are, each 'one'
of us, a collective, a complicity. What makes it so hard is that
becoming nobody-but-yourself opens you up to accusations of being
anti-social, weird, self-preoccupied, arrogant etc. So we end up, I
think, having to adopt a public persona that is, to some extent, not
genuine, not 'us' at all. That's hard. How can we make this public
persona as thin and transparent as possible?
Why are Gas Prices So Low?: Delayed until I have some clue as to what the answer might be. This has got me stumped.
Vignette #6
Blog-Hosted Conversation #2:
This week I'll be publishing my narrated, edited interview of Jon
Husband, which I recorded earlier this week, on hierarchy, community
and education, and recording a third
interview.
Possible Open Thread Question:
What
would happen if we just abolished the education system, and in its
place allowed communities to create their own sets of learning
objectives, programs and assignments, which would be done hands-on,
collaboratively with others of the student's choice, mostly involving
research and practice out in the community, and completion of which (at
the student's own pace, their own way, self-managed) would entitle them
to claim certain credentials, apprenticeship-style? |
12:47:30 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
