Modern Collective Intelligence

I’ve often thought that the amount of physical labor has long been declining (duh?) as many repetitive tasks were replaced using robotics. But the benefit of that would fall very squarely on any owner of a mass production facility, not at all unlike how Facebook concentrates wealth in Zuckerberg, as Microsoft created massive wealth for Gates. It’s a bit like a golden goose. Whoever holds it gets all the eggs.

Now I’m not trying to discount the innovations or hard work of either, and I applaud Bill Gates’ charity efforts. But my point is that each of these advances might best serve humanity on the whole by accepting that golden eggs are best served as a shared dish.

Naturally, I sound like a socialist at the moment, and I haven’t thought of all the implications of wealth redistribution. But the current alternative is that we all work 40 often quite disengaged hours of work each week (those of us employed, and don’t even think about hours above and beyond that 40), when it kind of seems there’s a lot less work than that left for humans. I mean, I like that it’s an age of knowledge creation, discovery and sharing through technology. But we are still trading time for money like our good friends, the robots, when it is now information we value most.

The system is clearly modeled around industrialism and not at all around collective intelligence, and I strongly believe that we require a revolutionary change to how we think about and measure value in humans and their contributions, and commensurate compensation.

We probably all already know all this, so I’d appreciate it if those of you much smarter and more influential than myself would flesh out this solution already, so I can sit back and reap the benefits, including greatly reduced stress about the future of human interactions. Thank you!

Connecting Content through Systems and Platforms

Many people interested in self-improvement, living an intentional life of purpose, inspiring, mentoring and coaching others, writing about and teaching and offering advice all follow some patterns of how they currently share information. Many have a personal or organization blog where they post articles containing the insights and messages they want to share. They often use Twitter to share those articles, and to find others being shared. Even on Facebook, you may see educational or inspirational articles being shared.

A social network connecting people and ideas should help the content creators share their existing content. It should be easy to bring your newest articles right onto the network when you publish it. Consider the ways that Wordpress, Blogger.com, Tumblr and other blogging platforms integrate with Twitter and Facebook to make sharing new content a seamless experience. The API should include methods on both ends - let you share to the network, and let you share your network content on other platforms.

Consider the different platforms that may create a mutually beneficial relationship, how closely they align with the mission of our network, how much effort and return there is in building the integration tools required to make it happen.

One way to leverage the existing strength of Twitter as a platform for sharing inspiration, quotes and articles would be to load a user’s feed on their profile and integrate it into what other users get introduced to. If the feed can be extended with meta data, individual items could gain value tags, and hash tags could be translated into value tags.

Likewise, a great deal of learning information already exists. Enable people to connect the information content they’ve already generated. For example, let them plug in an RSS feed. Perhaps it is their own blog, or another. Immediately, all of that content will have a connection to the user profile, including their core personal values. There can be some value attached to that for calculating the associated values for that content. The content creator, sharing the RSS feed, could choose to further attach more specific values to individual pieces of content, increasing the relevance of those values for connecting the information with other people. The more people associate themselves with content, the more information is generated about what values relate to the content itself.

Another challenge I want to solve is sorting through other people’s content. There are a large variety of blogging platforms, but the one thing usually in common is RSS. Above, I talked about sharing your own content. Ultimately, this might be helpful for those that join the platform, looking to share and teach. But I consider myself a reader and a learner. I have a few RSS subscriptions, but a long list of blogs I am interested in. I try to bookmark some of the articles that interest me most at http://todo.talltree.us/ but it’s a pretty convoluted system that I’ve built for myself. It would be great if I could attach RSS feeds to my profile, in other words content feeds I follow, and then attach values to each feed. I’ll benefit by having an idea of where to look when I want to learn more about something specific (maybe it’s Passion, Education, Leadership, Business, etc.) and I’ll get their new content as they create it, organized or labeled by the tags I’ve already associated with the overall feed. I can then choose to refine the values that are associated as I check out new content.

Content like that above is already public. Attaching it to people and values helps to organize it. This public content could be displayed for everyone to see - that is to say, new visitors to the site that aren’t sure what value it brings. They can see recently aggregated content, complete with associated values (and perhaps people or counts) and see how that kind of organization and value association could benefit their desire to find new, relevant content that connects to their values, goals and purpose.

So Twitter currently helps lots of people share and find information. The hash tag lets anyone attach some keywords to an article link they are sharing, so there is some room there for search to help you find relevant information. I’m sure there are a wide variety of ways that people use Twitter. For me, I follow people that seem to have similar interests. I find them somewhat by chance, usually because someone else I follow retweets or tags that user, and I take a look. From there, I’ve built up a list of users I follow, and I get a daily flood of interesting articles to read. It’s more than I have time for! In addition, some articles pop up again from different users, sometimes with a slightly different description, and I click through again before realizing it’s content I’ve already consumed. It may be useful to be able to attach some kind of status to an article you find. Maybe it’s “interesting” but you don’t read it just yet. Maybe you do read it, but want to reference it later, or mark it for reading again. Maybe you read through it and like it, but don’t want to read it again, so you want to mark is as such.

To make the site immediately useful to new users, consider a system of continually searching Twitter for new articles. Perhaps someone initiates a keyword search, either in a general sense, or a specific Twitter search, or instead, values that anyone has added to profiles, articles, etc are cycled through by a web service that periodically uses the Twitter API to search for links with attached hash tags that match the value term. Perhaps these would not be “posts” but would come up for anyone using the tool to “search for articles shared on Twitter” which could then be shared as Posts and further tagged, marked as read (etc) and people could then comment on the post.

The Twitter Elite

I use and like Twitter. I didn’t always. I was mystified as to why you would use it. I also spent way too much time on Facebook, soaking in mostly empty, time-sucking entertainment. But my interests and habits have changed, and now one of my favorite things to do is find new articles on the internet that relate to my endeavors and interests. So I’ve learned to use Twitter as a resource for finding articles. Selfishly!

Only on a few occasions have I retweeted or posted an article that I think other people should read. But I am realizing that if everyone was a leech like me, then Twitter wouldn’t be a very good place for discovering new content. So I’m working on making it more of a habit to share. I think that’s proper etiquette, and it’s necessary for the service to have value to everyone that wants to share and find content. But there are other rules I’ve seen posted that make a lot less sense to me.

See, Twitter is a tool. It’s a simple tool that is popular for a pretty good reason. You can use it in a huge variety of ways. You can use it to communicate, obviously, but for different reasons and outcomes. Some will use it for event planning, keeping it touch with local people or local happenings and news or just boasting about the things you’re doing and the food and drink you love. Some businesses use it as a sort of customer support, while some authors use it to let their followers know about new (and revived) articles.

I could go on for days, but the point is that the way that you use Twitter may be very different from most other people, including those that like to follow you. In fact, many may follow you with zero expectation of a follow-back, “thank you” or any communication at all. So it doesn’t really do you any good to set rules (in the form of etiquette) that you expect others to follow. Be happy if someone follows you, and happy if someone you follow posts useful content. Be happy if a company responds to you directly and be really grateful if someone compliments you on the great things you do on Twitter or awesome content you’ve created or connected them to. Stick to the positives you can find by spending time in the Twitterverse, and skip over finding reasons to complain about the different behaviors of diverse users.

One Tired Step Forward

Staring at a screen again. Tired body. Fuzzy brain. I’ve been here before.

Where I want to be is certainly somewhere different. I envision a work/life balance that lets you work with your natural energy cycles. You care so much about the work that you do that you are naturally driven to choose doing that over some other activity during the high energy parts of your day. You sleep until you’ve had enough sleep, and you eat healthy and put your body in motion, and you find your mind alert and eager to solve the problems around you. You want to make yourself better, learn new things and face new challenges. You want to inspire and motivate those around you, like your co-workers, and you want to make the lives of your clients better, easier, more focused on what they do best.

So, idling in this rough spot, the next step is any step. Forward. Write down a plan for a next step. And take it. Do anything except wallow in a place of self-judging or placing blame.

This year has kicked off with a great deal of reading non-fiction, brainstorming, writing down ideas and plans, greatly increased exercise and fitness levels and a renewed optimism about my future. But, of course, there will be grinding. There will be hard work getting from here to there. Those that align their destination with their deepest values, beliefs and purpose find that there is strength to be found to push through the swamp and climb the long, steep hills. That which lies just on the other side is well worth taking just another step.

You Are (Not) Unique (or Alone)

Found this in a super long post I wrote over four years ago after midnight.

I think my biggest fear is that I will find that the way I’ve lived my life (and thus who I am as the sum of those moments behind me) has made me so unique and odd that I can’t ever find my niche, my crowd, my soul mate, my plot in life. I’ve had some sort of conspiracy complex that everyone else knew something, communicated something between themselves that I just couldn’t know, grasp or hear about for much of my life. I think it’s mostly subdued now, but in moments of loneliness, it sometimes trickles in, as this sneaking suspicion that something just isn’t right. With me. I should really know better. Something I hear that often amuses me is the latest story of how someone thinks they are so unique and different from all those that came before them. And things like “no my family is really weird” or “it’s stranger than you think.” Oh no I haven’t seen it all. Sometimes I’m even surprised. But really. Since each and every person seems to believe this, and again and again I meet these “strange” families, I’ve learned just how alike we all are. Our humanity shines through these superficial differences, and above all it’s so interesting to see so many hold onto this mistaken belief that our uniqueness is actually monumentally… unique, among all other unique people. It’s not. Yes, you are all unique… snowflakes. Just like everyone else. That’s what makes you special… but it doesn’t make you… special. So knowing this, I should know that I’m human like everyone else, and I’m not superior or inferior in my value as a human, or how much I deserve to love and be loved.

Choking Isn’t Fun

Following lunch, as I got to the bottom of a cup of water, I thought I’d toss back that last splash and head to the water cooler. A little misjudging and a few seconds later, and I’m coughing and sputtering and my office mates are looking at me funny and wondering if they should call 911. I was fine. Our body’s defenses can be really remarkable at preventing lasting harm. That doesn’t mean it isn’t unpleasant. Pain is a part of keeping our bodies in one (warm, breathing) piece.

Similarly, a bad break-up, a lost employee or a dissatisfied client might alert us to something you’ve been doing that needs fixing. Of course, losing a great employee or a valuable client really can lead to lasting harm, so ideally, you look for signs of pain before you get to that point. Just after my water cooler trip, I stumbled acrossthis rather relevant article to help drive my point across, complete with a reference to drowning. Read it, and rather than choking and dying, find your weak spots and learn from them before it’s too late.

I’m Not Finished Yet

I have a history of not completing things. I graduated high school, but not before abandoning some of my classes midway through the year, having calculated the bare minimum I needed to get by with passing grades. I left college after five semesters. I’ve started more web site projects than I can shake a stick at, though I’m not sure why someone shakes sticks at things or if that’s typically effective. I’ve written the first chapter of several stories. I was engaged once, and went house shopping with someone else. I have a half-finished basement, that was once finished, but then flooded. (I’m still the one who has to pick up those pieces!) I also have a (*ahem* extra) car I’ve been trying to sell for several months. I’ve been working on a six-pack for well over a decade.

So, rambling aside, I should probably talk about finishing things. What needs completion in my life would be the fantastically widespread useful online social tools I’m now building. I feel like I’ve changed and grown so much in three months through education from books, blogs and experiences, and I know there’s a whole world out there full of people living distracted, unintentional lives. They need entertaining education that helps them grow and find true and lasting personal fulfillment, and I will help them get that.

Having developed my own list of core personal values, a vision of my current and future self, my mission in life, and specific (S.M.A.R.T.) goals that take me there, my time is intentionally spent on acts that propel me forward towards completion.

Post originally created as a comment in response to this post on Completion.