heathervescent

The Future of Collaboration

Collaborating can be one of the best things to experience and recently I have had some new mindmelding group borg collaborative experiences - mostly due to technology.

Google Docs: The collective editing experience

My colleague and I were editing/creating the same google doc. We were exploring/creating/clarifying a project/article we decided to work on. We're on different sides of the country, three time zones apart and yet when were working on the document at the same time, I felt closer, able to collaborate more effectively than had we been in person.  We were interacting fully online - with a text chat/discussion and the document editing and creating. Our places in the document were identified by different colored cursors, but there was not change tracking mechanism. We also did not stick to certain sections of the document. We skipped all around, I working on one section for a bit, then him jumping in (reading) commenting, editing/wordsmithing. The end product was one of the most collaborative documents I have co-created.  And I might mention, this is with a colleague I have never met face to face.

 

Barcamp: Ad-hoc Do-ocracy

Myself and a team of ~8 co-organizers have been bringing back this favorite technology un-conference to Los Angeles since late 2010.  What has been interesting to watch is the changing group of active participants.  Although I feel there is one person driving the team (with a light hand) the experience I have had is one of "picking up the balls." Meaning, whatever needs to get done, ends up getting done by whomever can do it. Everyone has contributed their skills and expertise when it was needed. This has been a great experience in ad-hoc do-ocracy.

 

FutrChat: The fastest hour on Twitter

I had not participated in many Twitter Chats before participating in #futrchat. Futrchat is was started by Cindy FrewenWuellner and Jennifer Jarratt for the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), of which I am a (student) member. Each month a new topic around the Future of ____ is chosen. Some framing information is shared before the chat to set the stage. Then the firehose is turned on at a specific pre-scheduled time. In 3-5 minutes, my twitter stream goes from it's usual ticking of random information to lighting up across the globe. Futrchat participants tune in from Australia, UK and all across the US.

Then the hosts begin to pose the questions. (Each chat has 3-6 questions we explore in the hour.) And then the 50 or so conversation participants begin to answer them. In the answering, people respond to each other, chasing down an idea or querying for additional information. And all this is done within 140 characters.  If this was a verbal conversation, it would be cacophony, everyone would be "speaking" at once. And online, in text, everyone is speaking at once. But because text has the ability to be linear and allow multiple responses in the same timespace, no one "interrupts," no one has to be silent to allow others their turn. Your turn is always, if you choose to take it.

Of course, one is not always "talking." There is the time needed to read (listen) to other's answers. To see who is responding to you. To think about what your response is to what you are reading (hearing). (And yes, I hear these people's voices in my head as I read their tweets.)

Although, it is generally just me, in my home office with my favorite furry companion during these #futrchats, I feel more stimulated than going to a conference. I'm in the comfort of my home, with high speed connection, able to quickly type, with my dual monitors to have various screens open to slice and dice and display the chatting data in various ways so I can follow and track the "radiowaves." This is ebonding. The intense human interaction that causes you to learn, understand and share more of yourself and others. For that hour, I am in an auditorium, that is can be filled with the voices of many people talking about things I find interesting. 

And then the hour passes, and the energy and space dissolves, the twitter stream returns back to it's usual bubbling. The channel has closed, for the moment, but it always accessible.

A quick note about participating in these chats. There is no specific location we go to to have these conversations. It's not like we go to a specific chat room, or IRC or private label login. Yes, we are all on twitter, but besides that, the only thing you need to do to participate is to use the hashtag: #futrchat. It is like tuning into a radio station, but instead of only receiving, you can also send.  Additionally, the technology of twitter, allows for both the sending and receiving of the information being sent on the wave (the hashtag #futrchat). 

 

In Closing

Technology is facilitating a way for the individual, completely and fully as an individual - I, to participate in a collective activity - a community - WE - if only for moments. These collaborations facilitated by technology are profound shifts in how individuals and communities form each other and participate with/in them.

Bad Habits of the Technologic

Technology has generally improved my life. But there is one activity where it has definitely screwed me up. Since using communication technology (specifically mostly text and voice without video) I have seriously increased my interrupting. I've been watching it increase significantly over the past 6 months, floundering, not knowing what to do. I hate it when I am interrupted, and even more so, hate it when I catch myself doing it. Sometimes you have to on a conference call, since there are no non-verbal cues. But more recently... I am bulldozing into conversations and sentences without a concern for who is talking... and I blame it on (well besides myself) my significant use of text communication. 

Yes. Increased text communication has increased my interruption of people, even when I am face to face. The text communication has shifted the way I communicate on a core level. Here's how. (And why.)

Background: I spend a significant amount of time in text chats on Skype. I would say, at least 10-20 hours a week. (That's probably an under-estimate.) Since I am in a geographically dispersed team. I spend another 10+ hours communicating in extremely clear emails or email conversations. These are not dissimilar from the skype chats, except that the conversations take days.

In both these situations, I am in control of when and what I communicate. I do not have to wait my turn to write and send an email. There can be 3 people texting in the group chat at the same time. Sure, I have to wait to get my answer, but if someone asks a question, we are not limited to one response at a time. Two people can respond (or in the face to face world, would be speaking) at the same time. However in the speaking world, you generally notice your error and someone stops. One can't parse two voice streams at the same time. However one can parse two (or more) typed streams.... and we are doing this more and more.

Threaded, nested and parallel conversations are not out of the ordinary. Many of us have these all the time. On our cell phone, smart phone or mobile device, text, twitter, email, gchat, work email, facebook. We are all getting very good at parsing and following multi-level/threaded stories and conversations.

<Reminds me of the time I was having three conversations with two other people. I was in Brasil and my broth was visiting me. He did not speak any Portuguese. We were out with a friend who didn't speak any English. I was have a conversation in English with my brother, in Portuguese with my friend and translating the conversation between my brother and my friend into the appropriate Portuguese or English.>

Back to my interruptions. Being exposed, living and creating the environment where it's all text, there are no verbal cues, where there is never an interruption (or alternately, it's all an interruption) has completely fucked with my ability to wait to hear what other people say. 

It's not that I don't want to hear what they have to say. I'm just used to not having to wait to hear them. That, I can say what I want to say, while they are saying (typing) what they want to say. This breaks down in verbal words, where one must wait for another to finish speaking.

This is exacerbated by the soapbox. Once you get on a roll, and no one is interrupting you, well, it's hard to stop. It's like being stuck in a traffic jam and then suddenly all the traffic went away and you have the clear, wide open road.

I don't like interrupting people. But I don't know how to stop. I know how and why I got sucked back into interrupting. (The technology re-programmed parts of my communication methodologies), but.... how to get back. How to show the respect to those who are speaking, those who I _want_ to hear.

It's a problem of switching mediums. Of switching the accepted communication methods. The primary method become the default. And unfortunately for my verbal conversations, that has changed.

1st Day Thoughts

All I can say, since I don't care much about proving anything, is that I'm glad no one from the web 2.0 was in the session on the social brain. Too much awesomeness was divulged and I'm happy to be the odd duck out in this conference of academics. Was today really just one day? I feel like I've been here a week.

We are Connected and Individual

Appealing to my more enlightened self - this TED talk blew my mind. I suggest you watch this right now - and then choose from where you want to live. (Thanks Ralitza for sending the link!)

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Some Links of Interest

An Interesting Article on David Allen - the man behind GTD (wired).

A site on whether a brain is necessary.

Thinking about Dr Schlegel again.

Paradigm Shift

There are things we believe today - things that science has taught us are true - that are not actually true at all. Big things. Things that make us believe the world is the way it is - but it is not. Things that will change the way we see the world.

When I was in grammar school I remembered learning about the solar system. How the sun is the center of our system - but the crazy thing is - it was not always believed to be this way. Before science discovered that it is really the sun that is the center, people believed the earth was the center of the universe. People also believed that the earth was flat and not a sphere.

It wasn't that science had failed those early humans that obsessed me - it was how the new knowledge changed their worldview. The Shift. What was life like when they thought the world was flat, what about after? Did they even know they believed the wrong thing?

And then, in a horror of horrors, it dawned on me, that there are most likely huge beliefs that I believe (and everyone else living along with me) believe as well - in some far far future time, will be shown to be false and incorrect. I could not bear the burden of believing a falsity - being unable to seek out the truth - my 7 year old brain could not bear it. But there was nothing to be done about it, so I went outside and played in the hot humid Iowa air.

But still this idea haunts me. I know that big idea is out there. That big paradigm shift is nearby. The one that will rip the fabric and when the light bleeds out we won't be able to ignore it anymore.

Recapitulation - why - a Hofstader story

Recapitulation is an exercise to recall, review, release, and recharge energy.  It rids a person of assumptions and preconceptions. Recapitulation is remembering or more precisely, reviving events and experiences. [Source]

I've alluded many times to Douglas Hofstader's new book, I am a Strange Loop. One of the reasons this book fascinates me so much, is that much of Hofstader's descriptions, describe almost exactly knowledge I learned through other sources.

But first, I'll come clean. I studied and practiced the teachings of mystic G.I. Gurdjieff actively for 5 years and in a school for at least 3 of those. (Much of what I know of Wilbur's Integral Theory reminds me of those Gurdjieff lessons.) Then I flowed into Aikido and practiced martial movements and paratheatrical rituals. One fine Berkeley day, I was coming back from aikido class and on a whim, I stopped in the temporary Berkeley Library. I frequent bookstore more than libraries. I had no idea what to look for. Them I remembered someone told me about some teachings of don juan. It was the last person I talked to at college. I had no idea who the author was, so I started looking up titles. I couldn't find that particular book, but I found the section that included other books by the same author. I picked two at random and took them on vacation with me. The author turned out to be Carlos Castaneda, and the first book I read, was The Fire from Within. (Shamanism was not new to me. Another fluke library stop, more than 10 years previous got 13 year old Heather obsessed with Lynn V Andrews. I accepted these stories as the myths and fairytales I had read.) I read the stories with a skeptics disbelief - the activities in his books are truly impossible, but I found myself agreeing more and more on the explanation and belief structure. It was so similar to my own, I realized that I was holding in my hands a book I would write had this book not been written. Rather than get angry (like I did at Taoism 10 years previous) I wanted to learn more. I gave myself a year to experience these impossible things. That year was the first of many years of practice and studying personal freedom - true freedom.

So what does this have to do with Hofstader?

Much of the more difficult concepts I learn (and try to explain) about true freedom Hofstader has explained with the ease of mathematical terms, analogies and stories. He easily explains Plato's cave - much more eloquently than Plato did. Here's an excerpt he uses to explain our warehouse (of symbols) and I can use it to show the importance of recapitulation.

(book excerpt after the jump)

Transcendeffervescence

A friend sent me a link to a galley page by Jonathon Earl Bowser. I don't usually go for this type of imagry, but one caught my eye. Gee, I wonder why??? Source.

Now, if she only had purple hair....

Some light Sunday Reading

It's a gorgeous day today, and after Romeo and I sat at squirrel watch for hours on the patio I decided to pick up a couple books I am reading. I am usually a speed reader, but these two books are making me slow down, because in addition to making me think, they each deliver pallet after pallet of wood/explosive material to this bonfire from which a phoenix will one day emerge. For now, we're cooking with gas!

First off is Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick.
This book is absolutely amazing. It's exactly how I think about philosophy. Well, I'm not really sure yet, as I'm just into the introduction at the moment. But my current mental ponderings about skepticism are right in line with his thinking. I can't wait to wade in deeper.

Second off is Stanislav Grof's Psychology of the Future.
I saw/heard him speak yesterday and it was a lot of good food for thought. Most interesting is the redefinition of emergency to "emerge"-ncy. As in, spiritual emergency. Of course, I couldn't help thinking about the art of bleeding and true safety consciousness.

Mix these two books with my results from the perception of perceptions conference a few weeks ago, add a dash of quetzalcoatl and you might get a feel for what I've got brewing up in my brain.