1. The worlds problems are primarily a result of bad organization
2. Human society progressed from disorganized primitive societies to hierarchical C & C (HCC) organized societies, achieving many great feats as a result of social organization, such as great empires (eg Aztec, Byzantine, Han, Roman), great structures (stonehenge, egyption pyraminds, great wall of China), religions, science & technology.
3. They did this through various organizing systems (Feudal, Dictatorship, Democratic etc)
4. Though some of these were more empowering than others, they all left the majority of individual members with very little involvement or choice in the day to day directing of the overall society. This was left in the hands of select few and social structure was strongly hierarchically based.
5. There is an alternative. This is non hierarchical and without a central C & C - CAOS.
6. CAOS are systems that act as if the whole made up of the parts has its own control, direction, purpose over and above the individual components that it is composed of
7. In Human organizations we are the components, the organization is the whole. It is a CAOS. However CAOS is nearly always subdued under HCC.
8. There is no central command & control. Parts may be placed in positions of leadership, but only under the self organizing principals of the whole system.
9. Such leadership is not of the C&C kind, but is more of a temporary focus of attention in the CAOS. Any focus, attention, leadership shifts away as effortlessly as it arises.
10. The environment & technology available to human societies has been well equipped for traditional HCC organization, but has been insufficent to allow a truly CAOS organization to emerge. Vocalized communication, written communications, printed communications, broadcast communications, and even most forms of Internet communications have only reinforced the HCC capabilities with little advance in CAOS abilities.
11. Very recently new tools & forms of communications on top of the Internet have emerged that do begin to allow better CAOS that can replace & improve upon HCC.
12. They are available today for all those who have access to the Internet.
13. Unfortunatel many people in the world are still unable to get decent access to the Internet. This is called the Digital Divide, and is now an urgent & critical issue.
14. The key tools that have emerged as enablers for CAOS & CI are the following
15. Publishing tools that allow anyone with Internet access to easily and effectively produce and publish their thoughts and choices for a global audience. Whereas before this ability was in the hands of a minority through barriers of wealth, knowledge or pre-existing power & advantage.
16. The current parties in positions of power are unable and unwilling to recognize the current deficiencies and limitations of HCC, and are uniterested in seeing other systems such as CAOS replace or compete with existing organizations.
17. Increasingly the rate of technological and social change has accelerated to the point where these powers are unable to keep pace and unable to reign in control of the organizations & systems they command.
18. Many political structures have fallen as a result, many business organizations have been eliminated as a result.
19. One of the key memes that currently misguides many people, organizations, countries, businesses, NGO's, is that society has been and still is progressing through the following phases: ... agricultural, industrial, infromation, knowledge. And in such a meme there doesn't seem to be a clear statement of what comes after the "knowledge society", other than some references to "care" and "wisdom' economies. References to wisdom economies, have never elaborated well what it really means. References to "care"economies are far more encouraging, but still don't define well how such transistion comes about and is sustained.
20. My view is that a more correct view of progression is based on froms of communication and the way that societies are organized as a result.
21. There are sveral ways of viewing this, eg:
22. Verbal, written, printed, broadcast, digital (few write, few read), Internet 1 (few write, many read) - mostly a uni-directional web, Internet 2.0 (many write, many read).
23. Internet 2.0 (many write, many read) is the stage we have recently entered. And is a stage that opens up the opportunity for a "participatory" culture. Internet 2.0 is a participatory medium, not a partcipatory culture, but it is one that can enable a truly partcipatory culture.
24. The idea of a "participatory culture" shares many similarities with many other memes increasingly building momentum today. recognized and labelled under many other concepts, all of which converge to the same thing. CI, CAS, ICAS, CAOS, Network Centric, Edge based, Power to the edge, viral, emergent democracy, peoples democracy, edemocracy, etc etc.
25. They are all gaining increasing and accelerating momentum as a result of the early impacts of the internet 2.0
26. To resummarize:

§         1, Unorganized

§         2, HCC organization: verbal, written, printed, broadcast, digital, uni-directional Internet, bi-directional Internet 2.0

§         3, CAOS organization: participatory culture, self emergent organization

 

Mission:

• To make strides towards moving beyond Hierarchical - Command & Control organizations
• To create the right medium for collective Intelligence
• To build a medium for CAOS (Complex Adaptive Organizational System) to emerge, providing tools & architecture.
• Providing spaces for the Collective mind of the whole to emerge from the parts and self organize as CAOS.
• The  technology is here, the early tools are helping, but they are still not quite right.

Key enablers:

 

1) Real, Open, Honest Dialogue as a firm foundation for interaction

 

2) Identity & Personal Centered Communications

 

All communications and engagement is centered around the person. Every individual has a personal space where he centers all communications. This lets him have freedom of expression and independence of thought. It is a space which represents her to others when they are not present. It is a space where all communiactions with everyone/thing/place is associated. It is a space where one builds ones identity and indeed ones reputation.

 

3) Communities

 

Safe spaces where individuals come together for a common purpose or interest.

 

All social engagement takes place within such spaces. Learning, projects, interest groups, social groups, business departments and cross departments and so on, all are enhanced through such spaces that encourage safe and open dialogues

 

4) Medium & Tools for collective intelligence (social software & technologies)

 

User Centric Digital Lifestyle Aggregator

Blogs (podcasts, vlogs) as a basis for independence, freedom of thought & expression

Blogs as a basis for easy publishing

Blogs as a basis for global communication

RSS as a basis for global communication 

Collective Classification (Tags & Folksonomies)

Personal data ownership (Distributed data model)

 

Steps:

 

Create an initial enabling platform for change

The initial bootstrapping for the rest of the process

 

Individuals have a PKM suite 

 

Content creation & publishing

A personal centered communication space

All base communication comes from here

Channels farm content to different faces

Each face presents to a specific audience with levels of access

Channels are created as RSS feeds based on tags which categorize the content

So "Group X" gets content tagged group X

Grop X has Y access permissions

While Group A gets content tagged group A

Group A has B access permissions

And so on.

Grupos form the basis for a layered (set space in fact) social network

And the social network has comms built in with appropriate access perms

 

Group formation must be easy

 

The Base platform is drupal

Content created is blog / audio / video

Blog must be deepend and made independent, ie own domain or subdoamin at least

Permalinks fo each content item

Purple numbers for microcontent

Unlike drupal - body content is separated from Node type

Node types become Microcontents

Drupals glue for groupforming is good ( OG expanded)

But every member gets their own drupal subsite, but focussed around blog/workspace(wiki) and groups + social network/comms

 

Groups are replicated per each member...

Ie every member owns a version of the group on their drupal site

Group data is synchronised

 

User Case:

Persons sees a group they like

They sign into other drupal site (distributed ID, so use own ID)

They join the group

The new data from joining gets distributed to all other group members including the new member who gets the full group data populated on their site as well

Their social network data also gets updated if appropriate - ie perm level approved (across all members) foaf/buddy perms/commnication/contact details

 

So Groups don't reside on one members site only (effectively an owner) but instead on all. This expands the personal centered ness - even when interacting in groups. And rather than just seeing a comment out of context in an individuals blog that was channeled to the group, the comment can be viewed in the context of the full group from within any member site including the owner of the comment, thus all his communications and contributions are centered for him, and each other member also. Each one can work on the group from within their own space.

 

Thus we have a real ownership of all their data and communications, within their own space.

Thus everyones space is their whole enterprise. And in fact this is the basis upon which all future "virtual enterprsie/orgs" will be built. Each member will be a fully equal participant in the partnership. There wont be a leadership imposed, only one given that emerges from the participants themselves.

Ownership is not dependent on investment but contribution, as judged by the participants themselves.

 

 

Practical application.

 

Start out with an incomplete but sufficient CAOS platform

Civicspace with CI tweaks

Every member has a civicspace site for themselves

The community begins as a single group of co-inspirators

A single Civicspace install runs the multiple sites. But the platfrom is Open for other installs elsewhere which will startout likely in the same manner.

However once started it's a chain reaction because every member can enlist new groups of their own these groups will be the same and expand the pool of individual sites. Some form the same install, others from different ones, But because of the Drupal distributed ID and Open API's and adherence to open data owned by participants not the install, there is no effective difference between groups formed within a drupal install or between installs, or any mix in between.

 

The specific community we might begin is one that strives for all said above as opposed to the many other communities that will form as a result of this striving. So in a sense it is a meta community effort a community or a CAOS whose purpose is to give birth to and nurture such forms of community & CAOS.

 

Another aspect that goes hand in hand with this ideal is the concept of passion curiosity, empathy and self responsibility. The concept of sustainable entrepreneurship. Ie entrepreneurship (passion, curiosity, empathy, self responsibility).

 

As such every member of the community sees themselves and their fellows as entrepreneurs, each committed & invested in each other. The community as a whole is one incubator and kieretsu. Members propose their enterprises and receive a level of community assessment that determines where common efforts, contributions, funds are prioritised amongst the members. This impacts the shape of growth of the community as a whole.

 

The community may wish to reach out in particular to those groups currently under developed, under supported, nder emowered. The community as a whole may wish to direct its growing shape toward inspiring new possibilities amongst those most in need of them.

 

In most practical terms:

 

Prepare a sound program of fully equitable and common invested partcipating entrepreneurs.

Ie a common  overall entity, (make it an open source template for other s to follow)

Develop simple open contractual inter-relationships

Prepare individual entrepreneurial legal style/templates

Form a core group of committed members.

Form a legal entity that is appropriate for an entrepreneurial community/incubator structure.

Form legal entities that can be simply and cheaply established for every single particpant.

Form system whereby this can be 100% subsidised by the community in return for common stake

Form process for letting people exit when necessary. Ie they fail to uphold principles that are essential

Develop a sound basis for self organizing mangement/decision making

Short term rotating positions for specialist functions

Nominated by member voted by members

Assessed by members

Reviewed by members

Judged by members replaced by members

Real time democracy capability

New forms of community financial & social currency

Create and deploy an initial CAOS platform.

Continuosly strive to improve its CAOS supporting capabilities.

GO WITH THE FLOW

BE THE CHANGE

 

A specfic entrepreneurial effort that members may wish to be invested in would be my own entrepreneurial effort in the area of Knowledge, learning & Innovation services to organizations

Another may  be in the area of education and learning, looking for new more effective forms (possibly Govinds personal entrepreneurial contribution). There is no need for a member to have an entrepreneurial effort active at any time, though members would be expected to be naturally looking for them.