Menu

technology

Web Technology as Sacred

, , , , , , , , , , , 0

I want you to take your business hat off for a minute to read what’s below. I am about to enter the twilight zone and attempt to bring in what some may consider ridiculous or impossible. For me, what I am about to say touches on the profound, and believe it is a critical subject for our times. READY ?!

The Web has reached a level of maturity where it can be viewed as an extension to our interconnected conscious selves. With the Planet now growing its own neural network (i.e. a global brain) ‘Learning’ takes on a new integral role as meta-teacher/student. This perspective brings a new dimension to our idea of ‘global awareness’ and stretches the meaningfulness of ‘Gaia’.

Yes, we have reached a place in our own evolution where ‘Technology’ can be viewed as an extension of our Selves, making each of our inter-connections and collaborations truly ‘Sacred’. Now, together in this Union of humanity, we can reach for a more whole ((w)holy) realization of what ‘gGod’ is. It is truly an expression of Spirit manifesting Itself into Matter; and into what matters.

For practical info on how the web is creating practical forms of collaboration and creativity among us humanoids, go to this page, check out this D.F. community search, and watch these insightful videos on how we are growing a global brain.

Reconsidering the Meaning of "New" Technology

, , , , , , , 0

A critical piece to technological success in an emerging era of the green (or sustainable) design marketplace is to, not just create cool, cutting edge technologies, but to also define design itself differently so that technology’s underlying processes comply with the new principles of triple bottom line (sustainability) management. That is, we must redesign our underlying methods for designing technologies. To do this, we will have to take a much bigger look at how we define – not just the end-result, but also reconsider the actual design processes themselves by asking questions such as: ‘why’ are we designing a given technology in the first place?, ‘how’ does this technology need to be created with alternative design principles in mind (see Bucky Fuller’s Design Science as an example)?, ‘what’ will be different about the form and function of the end-product?, ‘who’ does the technology affect?, and what is its (w)holistic impact on the greater earth ecology of living systems?

I’d love to hear from you all what you and your teams are doing to make this shift in technology design thinking.

Vic Desotelle
http://DiscoveryFuel.com

Technology's Influence on Behavior Changes

, , , , , , 0

I watched this interesting video on company and personal branding, which are often one in the same these days. Check it out because it tells an underlying tale of how technology is influencing our behavior. Additionally David Armano tells a story here of how positive interactions with his iPod has changed his ‘dropping’ behavior. This triggered an insight for me that is relevant to collaboration and design. Online collaboration tools are rapidly filling a new industry space, and it is my belief this phenomena will continue to grow and evolve to the point where human interaction will dramatically increase within the virtual space of the web. Now, did you feel a hit in your gut with what I just said? Some of you, I’m sure, felt excited. And many of you, I’ll bet, heard an inner voice of concern for how you think technology is separating our humanity by disconnecting us from our physical interactions. You know, after a lot of thought about this, I think this later hit needs serious review. Certainly it is going to change our behaviors. That is, the ways in which we interact and are comfortable with, are going to change. Personally, I have gone from a place of concern, to being keenly watchful of what’s happening, to going fully on board with these changes. To the point where I have committed myself to a study and emerging business offering of online collaboration environments. Because I see it as the future of how we can rapidly change (shall we say) our ‘meta’ behaviors on this planet for the betterment of a world that we want to live in.

I encourage you to open your mind and heart to the possibilities that might unfold for you and others by daring to step into the uncomfortable places being created for collaboration within the online virtual world. For me, thinking about what I can design and who I can design with rrrrreally exicites me because possibilities have opened up to a point where my long standing vision and bag full of ideas could actually be manifested. So cool! All with what I believe will include a deeper sense of compassion and reverence for our world and the people in it. Also note that, so far, it has been WAY easier for me to find others that think like me and want to create things that I am interested in ….  And I find that even more exciting!

Sooooo, behavior change? Yup. It’s happening, and that’s a good thing in my book. As long as we stay conscious watchers of the changes that are occurring and constantly question them deeply and collaboratively.

Let’s talk more about this soon.

The Need For Communicating About Our Communication

, , , , , , , , , , , 0

Join Abhijit and I in this dialog about the evolution of “communication” …

————————-

Dec 24, 2008 AM

Vic,

I’ve been in the business of mass communication and making efforts to ease the man-to-man communication process.

Abhijit Banerjee, 54
Calcutta
India

————————-

Hello Abhijit,
I am curious to learn more about your statement: ” efforts to ease the man-to-man communication “.
Kindly,
Vic D
http://discoveryfuel.com

————————-

Abhijit Banerjee
Reply Message

Hi Vic

I was expecting this question from the time I joined Copperstrings. And when I almost gave up, you asked. It’s a rather long story, but to cut it short, I am supposedly a mass communication specialist. Made my living in this profession for 30 long years. Created mass communications which helped sell several products, benefitted a number of companies. And all the while I kept wondering why when we are in direct communication with people – even one-to-one communication, there remains in most cases so much which is half understood, misunderstood or not understood at all. My wish is to ease this as far as possible. Not been very successful so far. Love to be your friend.

Best wishes.
Abhijit

————————-

Hello Abhijit,

Yes, yes; I agree with the principle inquiry you are making.

As a facilitator of group collaborative design processes (http://DiscoveryFuel.com), I am very interested in what makes communication happen between both individuals and the among the global collective (the masses). It has triggered some thoughts for me, which I’ve added below as a list of points.  We may be able to build on a couple of them and see where the possibility of helping to generate more evolved forms of communication …

1- I believe that the primary glue that holds (or doesn’t hold) a group of any kind and size together is ‘communication’. It seems in today’s world that building group infrastructure needs to be based on how communication emerges between individuals within companies. Rather than the other way around as we do today, where people step into preconceived info-structures.  This backwards approach works for the masses but fails miserably for individual to individual interactions.

2- With such poor interaction between us humans as individuals, it amazes me that functional products get out the door of any company. It does seem that ‘mass’ communication is ruled by principles that are different than ‘individual’ communications. This raises a thought that ‘fractal’ theory may be relevant to clarifying and creating an evolved forms of communication.

3- Our technologies may get out the door, which is a direct result of communication. Yet there seems to be underlying design principles that are not “communicated”, which is causing huge decline in the ecology of our earth system. This loss of ‘ecology’ (i.e. the interaction between living systems) could be thought of as a breakdown in communication at the larger earth scale. This is beyond just human communication. The concept of ‘sustainability’ is helping to bring in new forms of awareness into our language and as a result, the way we create and live on this planet is changing.

4- The internet has opened a portal for entirely new forms of humane communication to emerge. What this looks like is not for any one of us to decide since they are mostly ’emergent’ through a collective process (i.e. emergent means showing up in organized ways that are not pre-planned). At the same time however, many of us are riding the desire for humans to connect in unique way and across world cultures (as we are now) to watch for patterns that may help to identify who we are becoming or want to become. The ideas of self responsibility, interdependence and collaboration have never been so relevant.

5- You may want to join my new online community called http://ChangingNormal.com. It is an experiment in advancing human interaction and collaborative design, and is founded on the question: “What is communication and how does it become a tool that we use to deepen our physical and spiritual lives as both individuals and the collective become aware of communication as a guiding tool or map to the creation of chosen states of being. Rather than today’s approach to communication which metaphorically acts like a vehicle that we are unknowingly riding in. This level of conscious communication falls under what I call ‘the squared principle’ meaning that it is about the “communication about communication”. This is what you and I are doing in this dialog.

6- Our connection has triggered me to start a blog conversation about this subject regarding ‘mass communication’ vs ‘person-to-person communication’. I was hoping that you might join me in this dialog there so that other’s may be able to jump into the conversation as well. Plus it will be easier for us to review, synthesize, and track the lineage of conversations that emerge. More later …

What are your comments or insights?

Best to you,
Vic Desotelle
DiscoveryFuel.com