Designing for the
Emergence
of a Global-scale
Collective Intelligence:
Invitation to a Research
Collaboration
by George Pór
george.por@insead.fr
an updated version of paper presented at the Global Brain Workshop,
Brussels, July 3-5, 2001
version 01.07.26
Abstract
The dual aim of this essay is to:
• Identify design
qualities and opportunities for
optimizing our global nervous system for the emergence of web-enabled
collective intelligence. That aim implies the possibility to design some
indicators for an evolutionary threshold, beyond which the presence of a
global-scale intelligence can be clearly detected.
• Call for a
large-scale research collaboration to
explore the potential of globally distributed intelligence for solving world
problems and closing the gap between the human condition and human potential.
That mission is ambitious but not impossible, given that we’re living in
a time of historical confluence when technological opportunity, economic
imperative, and moral responsibility, all point in that direction.
Our motivation is to present a framework
for the "social evolution" dimension of GB research, coherent enough
to attract the peer attention necessary to refine it and collaboratively
develop it into a source document suitable to guide our work in that dimension.
We also hope that some of the specific research
questions suggested for the agenda of a "GB/Social Evolution"
learning expedition will engage the imagination of those who are fascinated by
the epochal challenge of growing a global-scale symbiotic intelligence for
closing the gap between the human condition and human potential.
This paper is the
final, updated version of my presentation at the GB workshop, complete with the
graphics and references. It's "final" only in the sense that at some
point I had to suspend my listening to the changes in my thinking on the
subject, and focus on those thought patterns that seem to have most coherence
and longevity. Because of that, the paper is more like the map of a terrain
seen from a satellite. It's a temporarily frozen snapshot of an ongoing
dialogue between my mind and the GB community's mind, between the internal
discourse of frameworks and distinctions I use for making sense, and the
unfolding, many-voice discourse of the GB community. The dialogue between those
two discourses has been moving so rapidly that the current version is the third
re-write in 3 weeks.
It’s comprised of the
following sections:
1. Questions in focus
2. The evolutionary
opportunity/challenge
3. Time bubbles of emergence
4. Global brain,
intelligence, and systemic wisdom
5. Designing a collaborative
design inquiry
6. The “learning
expedition” metaphor and model
7. Co-designing our learning
community
1. Questions in focus
The two questions in focus of
this essay correspond to its dual aim outlined in the Abstract.
• What qualities
will have to be present in the process
of designing for the emergence of a global-scale Collective Intelligence (CI)
as an enabler of solving world problems and closing the gap between the human
condition and human potential? This question will be directly addressed in
section 5 on “Designing a collaborative design inquiry.”
• What will it take
to learn how to design for the
emergence of CI ? It is a fundamental, non-trivial question that we recommend
to be considered by all those who are involved with “global brain”
research and share a “designing for emergence” perspective. The
answers will most likely differ from one researcher to another, and from one stage
of the research to another. However, asking that question may help all of us
get better equipped for the journey ahead. We will directly address it in
section 6 on “The ‘learning expedition’ metaphor and
model.”
Asking those two
questions-in-focus, we imply that:
a) Design and emergence are
not contradictory and exclusive concepts.
Social and techno-social systems can be designed for emergence, if the design inquiry is focused on generating the attractors and
conditions favorable to emergence.
b) Human choice and
prioritization of societal values will remain a key element of solving global
problems, even when more powerful technical systems will become instrumental to
developing those solutions.
c) What is unknown is not
only how to design for the emergence of CI, but also, what it will take to
learn to do so. As the late Dr. Aurelio Peccei, former President of the Club of
Rome, wrote, "What we need at this stage of human evolution is to learn
what it takes to learn what we need to learn, and then learn it."
2. An evolutionary opportunity/challenge
“[S]ocial progress is lagging behind technological progress, and because of
the rapid pace of change, the gap has never been larger between what could be
and what is.” (Stock, 1993) We have never had in human history such an
opportunity to optimize the design of social institutions for closing the gap
between the human conditions and human potential. Whilst that opportunity is
very real in the post-industrial world, it is not so in the developing
countries. We will address that difference in the next section about the
“time bubble.”
Here, we’re going to
give a brief approximation of the opportunity inherent in the creative tension
between the rapidly evolving means of intellectual and physical production and
distribution, on one hand, and the social relationships of organizing work,
that we inherited from the past century, on the other hand.
As individual and collective
knowledge and intelligence became the primary productive force, the caring for
the well-being of all is no longer a utopian dream but an economic imperative
illustrated by the following circle of increasing returns.
The powerful opportunity
expressed by the “virtuous circle” above exists in tandem with just
as dramatic challenges:
• A growing
interdependence, uncertainty, and “complexity multiplied urgency”
(Douglas Engelbart) make
future-responsive decisions increasingly difficult. They created a
global problematique, in which making sense out of the fast-changing, kaleidoscopic
pictures of our knowledge landscapes, requires collective intelligence.
• There’s an
“exponential breakdown in people's ability to experience being related to
the whole and to each other, as organizations become very large and distributed
in geography. There also occurs a major breakdown in their members’
ability to relate, communicate, and express themselves in fulfilling and
productive ways.” (Michael McMaster, in email communication)
The good news is that the
very technologies that brought forth both of these challenges also have the
potential to enable us to meet them. All we need to do is recognize that the
augmentation of human intelligence, individual and collective, became a
survival skill for our organizations and the species as whole. Then we must act
on that insight.
We can do this by growing a
symbiotic, human/machine intelligence that elicits the synergy of the
cross-impact of various scientific and technological breakthroughs combined
with the human qualities of creativity, consciousness and compassion.
The development of such a
global-scale, symbiotic intelligence can lead us out of the prehistory of blind
evolution, into the Emerging Planetary Reality of our conscious evolution that
opens unprecedented opportunities for human freedom, creativity, and
well-being.
3.Time bubbles of emergence
3.a Differentiation and
integration
Differentiation-and-integration
is a foundational pattern in calculus, the life and social sciences, ancient
wisdom traditions, and Western masters of dialectics. Given its central role in
evolutionary theory, it cannot and shouldn’t be overlooked as we build a
framework for addressing our two questions-in-focus.
The main evolutionary drives
of the biological, social and technical worlds, are differentiation (generating
variety) and integration (generating interdependence) that occurs through the
the selection of the fit.
According to the Special
Integration Group of the International Society for the Systems Sciences
“the purpose of differentiation is for a further integration, and a
further integration is for an even farther differentiation,” (Tang,
1996). If so, then differentiation--without the requisite complementary
integration--leads to a separation fallacy. On the other hand, we’ll know that integration is
complete when we can observe that the subsystems are supporting one
another’s goals.
When integration is moving so
slowly that it allows differentiation to threaten large bodies of the society
with disintegration, then concerted corrective action is needed. It was
Joël de Rosnay who introduced a form of the
“differentiation-and-integration” pattern, particularly pertinent
to the challenge of optimizing our global nervous system for facilitating the
emergence of CI. It’s called
the “time bubble” (de Rosnay, 2001).
3.b The “time
bubble” distinction
De Rosnay compares the
acceleration of time within specific domains of the technical-social world to
the densification of sound waves in front of an airplane as it’s
approaching the sound barrier.
“When the speed of the
airplane exceeds the speed of sound, it breaks the sound barrier, and sound
bubbles form behind it. The time bubbles I have described are like those sound
bubbles. They form contemporary sets,
organized hierarchically according to their temporal density. The creation of new fractal bubbles
within those that already exist corresponds to the phenomenon of emergence
[emphasis added - GP]. When their high temporal density suddenly reveals
their presence within the low-density bubbles, a mutation or explosion
occurs. What is called a
‘technological revolution’ (the industrial, biological, or digital
revolution), the ‘explosion’ of a sector, or a ‘decisive
mutation’ represents the opening up of a time bubble within our universe
of reference.” (de Rosnay, 2000)
The “time bubble”
is a rich metaphor, with implications for diverse possibilities such as
re-interpreting theories of evolutionary emergence and managing how we fight
attention overload. Whether this metaphor itself will become a “time
bubble,” it may influence how rapidly we can answer the question-in-focus
of this essay.
“The densities of time
flows are mutually exclusive – it is as if two people, one on a
high-speed train and the other riding a bicycle, are trying to exchange packages. Yet sharing is essential if we want to
avoid the irreversible process of competitive exclusion between communities,
people, and nations. The cybiont
is beginning to develop and evolve in a hyper-accelerating time bubble, and it
is up to human beings to prevent imbalances that could imperil the future of
humanity.” (de Rosnay, 2000)
The galloping, unbalanced
differentiation which is a source of the global problematique cannot only be
better understood through de Rosnay’s theory, but additionally, the
“time bubble” distinction points to the direction in which we may
find some key ingredients of the
answer.
If system A is the
environment of system B (and vice versa), and they are locked into time bubbles
that move with different speed, then chances are that the system with a faster
evolutionary trajectory will set a fitness criteria so that the other cannot
meet. That’s a situation that threatens millions individuals, communities
and nations, and not just those on the loosing side of the digital divide.
Consider the price that “winners” would have to pay for leaving
behind the “losers.”
3.c The challenge of
harmonization across time bubbles
A vital criteria of fitness
for any global symbiotic intelligence is whether it can help humankind pass the
evolutionary test of harmonization across time bubbles. There’s a
conceptual path drawn by Francis Heylighen, that we consider suitable to allow
harmonization--escaping into higher order complexity--across time bubbles of
widely different velocities:
“If B's configuration
fits its environment A, by definition, their mutual configuration will be
retained, and a constraint will be imposed on their relative variation. B has
‘snapped into place’, or ‘discovered a niche’. Thus, a
new, higher order system or supersystem, consisting of the subsystems A and B bound together by their relative
constraint, is formed.” (Heylighen, 1996)
This possibility raises more
questions than it answers. They are fertile questions, worth pondering. For
example: What could be a scenario which would bind together some of the richest
and poorest countries of the world into a higher order learning system?
Imagine, if a “learning
society” agenda were to evolve in
Canada, Norway or the Netherlands, and part of it was a global forum on
the dangers of digital divides both between and within countries. What if its
design was optimized for learning outcomes valuable to all participants. What
if the organizers of the next G8 meeting and the accompanying Global Social
Forum started collaborating on addressing the toughest issues in the center of
their conflict, with the best possible design for a multi-stakeholder
problem-solving conference held online and off-line? What could the rich
countries get from it? Well, besides their contribution to a better world,
wouldn’t it be highly valuable to them the development and testing of
their competence to mobilize symbiotic intelligence to solve complex and wicked
global problems?
What is at stake, for all of
us is this: Will the emerging symbiotic intelligence be capable to prevent the
balkanization of humankind, by cultures locked into mutually exclusive time
bubbles? Will it enable a future envisioned by Joel de Rosnay, as follows?
“Just as different
times coexist in our bodies, the cybiont will live by the harmonization of
super-imposed times. Sharing,
solidarity, temporal harmonization, and respect for differences will be the new
rule, the new way of life of symbiotic humanity.” (de Rosnay, 2000)
4. Global brain, intelligence and systemic wisdom
4.a Global brain and
global society
Can a GB help global society
to pass the evolutionary test of harmonization across time bubbles?
The definition of GB that we
use as a starting point is the one offered by Francis Heylighen, according to
which it is “the mental, information processing part of the cybernetic
system” that we call the global society. The potential of GB to usefully
inform societal evolution is proportionate with its capacity to map and improve
the “collection of information gathering, interpretation and
decision-making mechanisms” that the global society uses “to select
the actions that seem most likely to achieve these goals.” (Heylighen in
an email message).
Just like a living brain
cannot exist outside a living organism, a global brain cannot exist abstracted
from the global super-organism. The brain’s and the organism’s
evolutionary paths may follow what Karl Popper termed “genetic
dualism.”
"Popper differentiates
between two distinct parts to an organism: 'roughly speaking a behavior-controlling
part like the central nervous system of the higher animals, and an executive
part like the sense organs and the limbs, together with their sustaining
structures.' These parts are subject to the possibility of independent
mutation.” (Shapiro)
I’d rather speak of
“interdependent mutation,”
given the closely coupled relationships between an organism and its
nervous system. A generalized representation of that relationship can be found
in our double helix of “tool system / human system” evolution, at
http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/kd/introke01.shtml#slide3 . See
below.
4.b Global brain, nervous
system, and convivial technologies
If the Web, as a globally
interconnected hypertext document-linkage system and network of conversations,
is a source of inspiration for the
“global brain” concept, then the concept could be more
appropriately termed a “global nervous system.”
Neither a “global
brain” nor a “global nervous system” is synonymous with the
intelligence that humankind needs if it is to complete the current evolutionary
leap (or “meta-system transition”), at the lowest cost in terms of
human suffering and wasted resources.
The nervous system of the
global super-organism has a potential to enable the emergence of a collective
intelligence, the same way as organic nervous systems enable the emergence of
intelligence in living systems.
What are the nervous
system’s functions which may serve that emergence? They include:
• To facilitate the
exchange and flow of information among the subsystems of the organism and with
its environment.
• To effectively
coordinate the harmonious action of the subsystems and the whole.
• To store, organize,
and recall information as needed by the organism.
• To guide and support
the development of new competences and effective behaviors. (Pór, 1995)
Corresponding to those
functions, the subsystems of a nervous system--which play a large role in
enabling the emergence of intelligence--are the subsystems for
sensing/learning, communication, coordination, and memory/knowledge. How well
these subsystems are performing and coordinated, will strongly affect the
organism’s chance for survival.
“An
‘electrified’ nervous system is the infrastructure needed for the
self-organization and self-improvement of a community's collective
intelligence.” (Pór, 1995) A global CI will most likely come into
being as an ecosystem of globally interconnected intelligent communities
growing a knowledge ecosystem of insights, information, and inspiration,
supported by an ecosystem of technologies.
The interface between
community, knowledge and technology ecosystems can perform its enabling
function only if its implemented in convivial technologies defined as the ones
which enlarge “the range of each person's competence, control and
initiative.” (Illich, 1973)
4.c Designing for the
emergence of collective intelligence
We use the term
“design” in this context in a sense defined as follows. “most basic human
activity system: the family. Design
is a creative, decision-oriented, disciplined inquiry that aims to: formulate
expectations,
aspirations and
requirements of the system to be designed; clarify ideas and of alternative
representations of the future system; devise criteria by which to evaluate
those alternatives; select and describe or ‘model’ the most
promising alternative; and prepare a plan for the development of the selected
model.” (Banathy, 1998)
Banathy’s
highest-potential contribution to the “social evolution” dimension
of GB research is the concept of “evolutionary guidance system”
(EGS) that he and his graduate students applied to the development of various
types of organizations (Banathy, 1993). “If guided evolution is possible, as I suggest
it is, we face three critical questions: (1) What kind of systems can enhance
the creative purposeful unfolding of human evolution from the family on to the
global human community, along the multi-dimensions of
human
experience? (2) What are those dimensions that represent the wholeness of human
experience? (3) How do we go about designing those systems?” (Banathy,
1998)
In the quoted
article he proposes possible answer to those questions by introducing the
“generic image an EGS as an arrangement of a set of interacting
dimensions that enables purposeful evolutionary unfolding.” In this stage
of the evolution of our own thinking, it would be too early to try to assess
whether the methodological challenges of applying Banathy’s EGS model to
designing for the emergence of CI can be overcome. In any case, the GB/Social
Evolution research will certainly gain some useful perspectives from a dialogue
with Banathy and his theory. In its most recent and comprehensive expression,
he wrote about designing social systems: “We cannot know the end state,
but we can move toward our best vision of it” (Banathy, 2000).
Another source for building
our “designing for emergence” framework is de Rosnay’s
symbionomics, the first rule of which is “Foster the emergence of
collective intelligence: Many agents following simple rules and connected
through communications network can solve complex problems (de Rosnay, 2000)
The more complex the problems
are, the more likely that it will be not simply connected agents who will solve
them but communities of connected agents. It is an important distinction
because focusing on learning communities rather than individuals as the
substantive nodes of a global CI would give us better access to building
scalable, fractal-like models of it.
A fractal model of fostering
the emergence of CI should be scalable across the nested hierarchies of 1. teams (small groups), 2.
organizations (large communities), 3. inter-organizational webs and alliances
(societies), and 4. the global metabeing (cybiont).
The Community Design
Architecture™ of Community Intelligence Labs provides an early version of
such a model. It has a 4-fold architecture comprised of a social, knowledge,
technology and business architecture. Sample questions of which are listed in
section 7.a.
What are the key design
principles that promote the emergence of CI? If we’re to foster the
emergence of a global CI, that question should be on top of our high-priority
research directions. At this point, all we can do to is to provide the following
pointers that may guide the articulation of some of those design principles.
• Respecting the need
for the balanced cultivation of the four architectures listed above seems to be
a prime candidate for a CI design principle.
• A well-designed CI
should maximize the synergy potential of synchronous/asynchronous or
“Real-Time/Delayed Time” (RT/DT) communication, collaboration and
coordination. That’s because combining the best features of those two
primary modes of collective cognition has more chance to enable learning
breakthroughs.
• The evolutionary
fitness of a community of any size depends on the development of its repertory
of evolutionary competences. Investing in the strengthening of different
segments of that repertory will have different impact on fostering the
emergence of CI. An early work-in-progress articulation of this concept can be
found in our Wheel of Evolutionary Fitness, http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/tools/wef.shtml.
• To serve as an evolutionary
guidance system, CI will have to be able to accommodate and model multiple
intelligences. Various models of multiple intelligences have been proposed by
various authors, that will have to be examined.
4.d Awakening systemic
wisdom in the global society
“Any framework of
knowledge that doesn’t include wisdom requires us to operate
blind....” (Allee, 1997)
“Wisdom” refers
to our effective use of intelligence, as evidenced by our capacity to alleviate
suffering and increase joy in human and organizational systems. “Wisdom
is...a highly creative and connective way of processing knowledge that distills
out essential principles and truths.
Wisdom tells us what to pay attention to. Wisdom is the truth seeker and pattern finder that
penetrates to the core of what really matters.” (Allee, 1997).
“Systemic wisdom can help with intuiting the long view, understanding
systems in the context of their larger whole, and anticipating future
crises.” (Pór & Molloy, 2000)
Systemic wisdom is also
described as “the ability to see and to know, in Gregory Bateson's
phrase, the pattern that connects. This wisdom looks for and understands
how to discern the interconnections, interdependencies and resonances that form
the weave of life. We see the need for such systemic wisdom in dealing with the
current crises in ecology, for actions taken narrowly dealing with a specific
environmental symptom may have unexpected reverberations throughout the entire
ecological web. We need to see the web, the whole system, not just the part in
isolation. Systemic wisdom is a form of perception and insight and a
willingness to look beyond the immediate moment and the surface of things for
deeper connections and patterns. It is being sensitive to consequences that
might be apparent unless we see the deeper patterns that connect.” (David
Spangler)
How will we know that the
systemic wisdom of the global society is awake? What will be the indicators of
its activation? That’s another question that deserves a collaborative
exploration by those who feel concerned by it. In the next few paragraphs, we
will suggest some starting points for such an exploration.
"Unless the awareness of
interconnectedness can stir compassion, it is of little use. The real design
challenge in cyberspace will be to use it as a basis for enlivening
compassionate action." Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Corporation and the
Electronic Frontiers Foundation: Tricycle, Winter
1995
• Can we say that an
indicator of the presence of systemic wisdom would be when CI will be used for
mobilizing global resources to address global crises?
• Another candidate for
a “wisdom indicator” would be the global brain’s measurable
contribution to happiness described as follows.
“Statistics about life
satisfaction in different countries show that people are most happy when their
society provides them with sufficient health, wealth, security, knowledge,
freedom and equality. The GB can directly or indirectly contribute to each of
these fundamental values.” (The Global Brain FAQ, http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/GBRAIFAQ.html#happy
)
Various instruments for
measuring “Quality of Life Indicators” have been developed by
economists, some of which are well-poised to overshadow GNP as a measure of a
society’s advancement. If the activation of systemic wisdom in the global
super-organism will manifest in increasing life satisfaction of more and more
people of all countries, then it wouldn’t be impossible to detect its
presence by creating and looking
at “the ‘planetary indicators’ of balance and
evolutionary vitality: Hunger, poverty, violence are decreasing rapidly, and
the rate of decrease is increasing.
Integration and synergy between different areas is observed and
increasing.” (Larry Victor) That would also include the integration and
synergy across the different time bubbles that we referred to in section 3.c.
The same way that having a
nervous system doesn’t make one wise, having a global brain won’t
automatically lead to the activation of systemic wisdom in the global
society. If and when that
activation happens, it will be the result of more than just the enabling
technical and knowledge infrastructures provided by GB. Its other condition is
in the evolution of social innovation practices, for example the ones outlined
in “How do we practice wisdom in cyberspace?” (Johnson-Lenz, 1998)
5. Designing
a collaborative design inquiry
The design of a design
inquiry in systems science corresponds to what is known in software engineering
as “metamodeling” or “method engineering.” This is the
domain on which we clarify the epistemologic foundations of the research and
specify the knowable requirements of its process. When this phase is overlooked
or omitted, the design inquiry risk to be ineffective or inefficient, or both.
The categories of qualities
to pay attention to when we design a design inquiry, include the qualities of
the inquiry and its product, and the qualities of the design team and its
members. The following quotes from Bela Banathy, Professor Emeritus of Saybrook
Graduate School, reflect also our view of the those qualities of the inquiry
which will be the most influential on the outcome of any design for the
emergence of a global-scale Collective Intelligence.
Design Inquiry Qualities
“Qualities of the
design inquiry include: attaining the stated purpose, bringing about a viable
authentic and sustainable system, using everyday language, applying up-to-date
design technology and multiple perspectives, seeking the ideal, attending to
the uniqueness of the design situation and the uniqueness of the Designing
Community, and the seeking of aesthetics.” (Banathy, 1996)
Qualities of the Designing
Community
The community of designers
seeks; high ethical qualities, sensitiveness toward the impact of design on
future generations and on those who are affected by the design, taking
responsibility for the design they create, and diversity in membership. Members of the Community accept and
respect each other, they aspire to become a learning system and aim to develop
their own design culture. They
regard having a shared worldview a quality of the highest order.”
(Banathy, 1996)
The Banathy paper quoted
above has a systemic inventory of specific qualities that we will review in
more depth and consider in the process of designing our design inquiry into
fostering the emergence of CI.
6. The
“learning expedition” metaphor and model of design inquiry
We call the design inquiry
into the emergence of CI a “learning expedition,” and use that term
both as metaphor and a model for a specific genre of inquiry.
In its broadest sense, the “learning
expedition” metaphor refers to
the evolution of human consciousness in individuals and communities. In a more
specific sense, we use it for labeling the collaborative process in which an
“expedition community” increases the learning capacity of itself
and the larger community that it serves.
The main metaphoric function
of the “learning expedition” term is to “render
comprehensible a complex set of elements and relationships... It is the
peculiar strength of metaphor that it can convey the essential without
excessive oversimplification, preserving its complexity by perceiving it
through a familiar pattern of equivalent complexity.” (Judge, 1987)
While an expedition typically
unfolds in physical space, the “learning expedition” unfolds in
conceptual space. They both are a team endeavor, a joint enterprise of
researchers linked by a shared purpose.
The “learning
expedition” model refers to an
activity system of collaborative inquiry that includes such subsystems as:
seeking shared meaning and purpose; designing and improving the expedition
community’s communication and knowledge-creating systems and practices.
A successful learning
expedition has three types of outcomes:
a) learning outcome - the
development of new or enhanced individual and collective competence;
b) research outcome -
contributions to the evolution of knowledge and better maps of a particular
knowledge landscape
c) design outcome - a
knowledge product, e.g. educational materials or newly developed, successful
and replicable practices
The “learning
expedition” model is supported by a complementary set of metaphors and
processes which includes “scouting parties” (self-organizing,
special-focus discovery teams) and “base camps” (periodic,
face-to-face gatherings of the scouting parties). In the context of the
suggested research, the “scouting parties” will be self-organizing
GB research teams focusing on various aspects of what needs to be discovered or
invented. The “base camps” will be our periodic, in-person meetings
to complement our online exchanges.
The “scouting
parties” concept corresponds to the
factorizing strategy of addressing complex problems, where “each
sub-problem can be solved by a much smaller combination selected from a reduced
set of actions.” (Heylighen, 1996) However, the correspondence is only
partial because, whereas factorizing implies top-down structuring of the whole
problematique, the learning expedition model allows to address it by the
formation of self-organizing scouting parties.
We have implemented
customized variations of the “learning expedition” model of
collaborative inquiry in various team, organizational, and inter-organizational
settings in business and education. A more detailed description of the model
can be found in the article (Pór, 1991).
In the next and final section
we’ll present some ideas for the formation of a GB learning expedition
community.
7. Co-designing our learning community
A learning expedition that
will be able to answer those questions in focus, can only be designed through
collaborative effort. To contribute to the convening process of such an effort
focused on the links between global brain, collective intelligence, systemic
wisdom, and social evolution, we’re going to present:
• A sample set of
candidates for specific research questions and directions
• Suggested components
of methodology
• Process elements for
the formation of a learning expedition
7.a Specific research
questions
The following set of specific
research questions represent a sample of directions that “scouting
parties” need to explore. It is assumed that the actual research agenda
will be developed and defined by the participating researchers, and its
articulation will be an important constitutive act in the formation of the
“GB/Social Evolution” research community. The network of questions
from which the agenda may emerge will most likely cover questions related to:
• Building a coherent
and robust conceptual and methodological framework capable to both guide
“GB/Social Evolution” research and connect our work with other
dimensions of GB research
• Assessing the present
conditions of global trends facilitating the emergence of CI, and key lessons
from them
• Applying the
4-dimensional Community Design Architecture developed by Community Intelligence
Labs to designing for the emergence of global CI
Questions for building
our conceptual frameworks
• How could the
interaction of Meta-Systems Transition (Turchin, V. & Joslyn,
C., 1993) and Evolutionary Guidance
(Banathy, 1998) theories enhance the organizing perspectives of designing for
the emergence of CI?
• What insights gained
from multi-agent based social system simulations (Goldspink, 2000) should be
taken into account as we design a “GB/Social Evolution” framework?
• What is the
implication of de Rosnay’s concept of the “symbionomic time
capital/interest” (see below) in the context of fostering the emergence
of CI?
“[I]f we adopt a nonlinear
type of time management, we can generate niches for new activities without
necessarily eliminating any of the old ones. In order to do this, we have to invest time in the
creation of time capital (a library, a computer, a file management system, the Internet,
an artistic creation, etc.), which generates interest. The
interest may take the form of time gained – for example, by using a
computerized database for personal documents – or time as use value,
compressed or expanded as desired. It
creates new niches for expansion and encourages synergy with other niches,
enhancing the value of the original capital with a minimal investment of
time.” (de Rosnay, 2000)
Questions for building
our methodological frameworks
• What qualities will
have to be present in the process of designing for the emergence of a
global-scale Collective Intelligence (CI) as an enabler of solving world
problems and closing the gap between the human condition and human potential?
• What will it take to
learn how to design for the emergence of CI ?
• What are the core
design principles that we should honor in a research on the emergence of CI?
Questions for assessing
present conditions
• What are
the successful practices of sustaining coherent conversation in cyberspace?
• What large-scale,
social innovation processes are already supported by significant technical and
knowledge innovation, that can be looked at as harbingers of GB-like functions?
• How are the growing
phenomenon of virtual learning communities and professional learning networks
already generating scalable CI practices?
Questions for
specifying the design architecture of CI
Social Design
• What are the network
of roles, responsibilities, agreements necessary to foster the emergence of CI?
• What is the role of
old and new types of universities--centers of intellectual creativity--in the
emergence of CI?
Knowledge Design
• How will we know that
the systemic wisdom of the global society is awake? What will be the indicators
of its activation?
• What ontologies
should be developed and how? How should knowledge be organized and portrayed?
• What are
the ecosystemic conditions (Pór, 1997) for enabling collaborative
knowledge development across various communities?
• How can our research
be optimized for synergy with the huge Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human
Potential published by the Union of International Association?
Technology Design
• What mix of
technologies has to be orchestrated in support of the other design
architectures?
• What is
the state-of-the-art and anticipated evolution of ontology editors that would
allow ontology building by non-programmers?
Business Design
What kind and level of
resources will be needed for the design, implementation and maintenance of a
global? How those resources will be gathered and allocated?
7.b Sample components of
methodology
Here are some sample
components for a methodology to consider in the design of our work.
• Jointly articulating
a core idea of a GB and the emergence of CI, focused on solving global problems and closing the gap
between the human condition and human potential. It is the clarity and
coherence of that core idea that will serve as the attractor of our
self-organization.
• Interviews with
thought leaders from relevant fields, for example:
- Bela Banathy, on the
application of systems theories and methodologies in the design of evolutionary
guidance systems
- Douglas Engelbart,
Bootstrap Institute, on his life’s work on bootstrapping human
intelligence, individual and collective, the methodology for Networked
Improvement Communities and Dynamic Knowledge Repositories
- Peter Schwartz, Global
Business Network, on the “art of the long view” and scenario
planning as collaborative research
• An online version of
Delphi study
• Scenario planning
• Building a
pattern-library of successful, large-scale social innovation practices that
take advantage of global brain-like capabilities; e.g.: the Global Knowledge 97
conference sponsored by the Canadian government and reported by Rossman, 2001.
• Shared Learning
Journals
A shared learning journal is
a semi-structured research tool--embedded in software--designed for optimizing
the synergy between individual and collective observation, interpretation,
insights and intuition.
7.c Process elements for
the formation of a learning expedition
The suggested research
agenda, methodology, and expedition formation, are left intentionally sketchy,
waiting for input and refinement by all interested to contribute. Our current
thinking about the start-up process includes the following steps.
• Form a
“GB/Social Evolution” group of researchers attracted by the
approach presented in this paper. That group would work in close collaboration
with the rest of GB workgroup.
• Develop the design
framework for a “social evolution”-focused research as a learning
expedition, including
• Articulate the core
idea (raison d’être), values, and high-level objectives (long-term,
qualitative goals) of the system to be designed.
• Develop an initial
specification of the functions of the system necessary to meet its objectives.
• Develop and agree on
a broad-brush methodology for carrying out the design inquiry.
• Develop alliances
with research organizations, teams and individuals which have a similar or
complementary research agenda.
• Seek the
institutional sponsorship necessary to resource our research.
• Present a report
about the status of this initiative and organizing a track on “Global
Brain and Social Evolution,” at GB 2002.
• Establish
relationships with organizers of selected global events, with the objective of
using their venue for mutually beneficial action-research pilots on fostering
the emergence of CI.
For further information and
exploring ways in which you can contribute, please write to george.por@insead.fr
.
References
Allee, Verna (1997) Knowledge
Evolution: Building Organizational Intelligence (Butterworth-Heinemann)
Banathy, Bela H. (1993)
Evolutionary Consciousness, World Futures, 36/2-4
Banathy, Bela H. (1996)
Qualities We Seek in Designing Social Systems, in the proceedings of the the
"European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research 1996”
Banathy, Bela H. (1998) Evolution
Guided by Design: A Systems Perspective, Systems Research, volume 15
Banathy, Bela H. (2000) Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View (Kliwer/Plenum
Publishers)
Goldspink, Chris (2000)
Modelling social systems as complex: Towards a social simulation meta-model, in
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 3, no. 2, http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/3/2/1.html
Heylighen, Francis (1996) The
Growth of Structural and Functional Complexity during Evolution, in: F.
Heylighen & D. Aerts (eds.) "The Evolution of Complexity" (Kluwer
Academic Publishers)
Illich, Ivan (1973) Tools for
Conviviality (Calder & Boyars)
Johnson-Lenz, Peter and
Trudy, (1998) How do we practice wisdom in cyberspace? On the page of
http://www.awakentech.com/AT/Wisdom.nsf/By+Title/FrameSet?OpenDocument click on
the link “How do we practice wisdom in cyberspace?”
Judge, Anthony. J. N. (1987)
Governance through Metaphor. Paper prepared for the Project on Economic Aspects
of Human Development, Geneva
Pór, George (1991)
What Is a Learning Expedition (International Center for Organization Design)
Pór, George
(1995) The Quest for Collective
Intelligence, in "Community Building: Renewing Spirit and Learning in
Business" (New Leaders Press) http://www.vision-nest.com/cbw/Quest.html
Pór, George (1997)
Designing Knowledge Ecosystems for Communities of Practice
http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/dkescop/index.shtml
Pór, George in
collaboration with Molloy, Janice -
"Nurturing Systemic Wisdom Through Knowledge Ecology," Systems Thinker, October 2000.
Rossman, Parker (2001)
“Networking and Mobilizing Collective Intelligence” http://kabir.cbl.umces.edu/CrisisResearch/U-4.html
, in: Research on Global Crises, Still Primitive?
http://users.trib.net/~prossman
de Rosnay, Joël (2000)
The Symbiotic Man: A New Understanding of the Organization of Life and a Vision
of the Future (McGraw Hill, New York)
Shapiro, Jeremy J.
Species-being and Human Evolution http://www.sunyit.edu/~harrell/billyjack/marx_crt_shapiro.htm
Stock, Gregory (1993) Metaman:
The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism (Simon &
Schuster)
Tang, Yongming (1996) The
Synergy Principle, Human Action and Evolution of Consciousness
http://www.newciv.org/ISSS_Primer/seminzi.html
Turchin, Valentin
& Joslyn, Cliff (1993) The Metasystem
Transition,
http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/MST.html