My disclaimer: Rather than an attempt at sorting it all out, this post has turned out to be me processing my reaction to the material and ideas thus far presented in class. It’s more of a stream of consciousness than anything else, so I hope you’ll bear with me.
It is late and I am sitting here browsing the most recent edition of Wired, Verna Allee’s book The Future of Knowledge, and contemplating the rapidly approaching singularity. I would say it’s not exactly the most effective prescription for sleep, though it eventually makes for interesting dreams. Visions drift through my head of learning modes, networks, complex systems and paradigm shifts, artificial intelligence-post humans- that learn from and redesign themselves on a daily basis, and human amplification devices- for better or for worse (from the not too distant language translation glasses, to steroids for athletes, to the strips of leather our earliest ancestors strapped to their feet…surely leather counts, as it allowed hunters to run faster and climb higher, right?). Thankfully much of what my brain conjures up overnight is forgotten before I awake! But not to worry, if nothing else, for me, this course continually elicits images and raises more questions about what the future holds. As I page through my Wired, and read an article about the 2024 presidential election, I’m afraid this groggy brain of mine just might explode. These are big topics with huge implications—and completely changing what I thought to be science fiction into technological nonfiction. In the process of sorting all this out, I am certainly on the chaos side of the chaordic curve. I understand this isn’t a bad place to be, so long as some sort of order or broader perspective of reality is achieved before more chaos ensues. While I am not finished reading Verna Allee’s book, I am finding that The Future of Knowledge is moving me closer to another level of thinking- another level of order, perhaps, in how I understand reality (Verna Allee’s diagram on deep shifts and translation comes to mind). I appreciate her discussion of true wealth (family, health, social fabric), her approach to explaining how old and new paradigms collide and converge, and her approach and illustrations for explaining complex living systems. Moreover, a theme that continues to surface for me as I read about knowledge economies is the value orientation spectrum related to individualistic vs collectivist societal values or norms. Tara raised this issue last week as well. Thus far, it seems that much emphasis is placed on the individual. For instance, when describing leapfrog campus, among other characteristics, Harkins and Kubik (2006) highlight the importance of individualism to the leapfrog campus. This leads one to wonder how concepts associated with the knowledge economy will play out in collectivist societies. I am really interested in the description Allee presents of shifting worldviews of Organizational and Managerial thinking, because from her description, many of the assumptions of the new management thinking mirrors characteristics of collectivists societies- with emphasis on collective creation of knowledge, cooperation, polychromic sense of time, relationships. This is an interesting contrast and departure from patterns of individualistic views that I thought I was beginning to see. It may be interesting to explore these ideas further to see how/where they converge. It seems that if students attend universities that emphasize individualism and then are hired to work within an organization with this new management thinking, there might be a disconnect between the employee’s thinking and the organizational worldview of managers.
Allee, V. (2003). The Future of Knowledge, Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks. Butterworth-Heinemann. Amsterdam.
Harkins and Kubik. (2006). Leapfrogging Toward the ‘Singularity:’ Innovative Knowledge Production on Market-Driven Campuses. On the Horizon.
Yes, it IS possible that a self-starting, self-evolving individualist might find difficulty fitting into a more collectivist context. Right now, collectivist contexts are not so much in the private as in the public sector. Is there a message there? Let’s discuss this in class, OK?
Can I also suggest referring to Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams recent book “Wikinomics - How mass collaboration changes everything”
Although not mentioned explicitly, Verna Allee’s work underpins the methodolology for engaging upon such a programme (refer P 277).
Can individualism support co-creativity and sustainable performance as well as “collectivist” action?
In the UK we are progressing the idea that new entrants to the work force will help existing organisations in the non public sector learn about collaboration and introduce the “collectivist” perspective. It would be a shame if students were taught the opposite!
Foe more on value networks, see http://www.value-networks.com
David Meggitt
Seems to me that problem for the individual is not so much “fitting into a more collectivist context,” as it is realizing that there has never been an “individual” context. In large measure, the “individual” is misnomer. Biologically and sociologically we have always been pluralistic mashups of complex adaptive systems. Unless we are deranged, we can’t even set ourselves aside inside our own head. “Me” inevitably becomes “we.” If you can answer the question, “Who am I?” without thinking of some other person, then -and only then- are you in a class by yourself.
“Individualism” is a sociological fiction, concocted in reaction to social systems that placed humans in the same status as other “beasts of the field,” -that is, mere chattal, entities that had no social rights in and of themselves. One family or tribe had the legitimate right to concquer, kill, enslave, and, in some places, even eat a member of another outside group. “Me” for generations, was simply the smallest unit of “us.”
Only since the Enligtenment has individualism gained the status of “received knowledge” and it has permited a great deal of social reordering along the way, some good, some bad. The thing is, it just isn’t any more ‘true’ than it ever was.
What Verna and others are experiencig, I think, is a reawakening to the existence of a living fabric that ties all living organisms and organic and inorganic elements together. Advances in digital computing and communications have made us more aware of the warp and woof in that fabric -and we are begining to feel the pulls and tugs of other entities more acutely. Whether its the shared economy, or the shared environment, it has become increasingly apparent that we cannot claim exclusive rights to specific property -at least not in perpetuity. In other words, we may obtain temporary “use rights” constrained by the needs of “we,” but we do not necessarily “own” anyting absolutely.
Despite the lexicon of capitialism, and its fiction of private ownership, in practice it doesn’t actually exist. In every system, the “law” can and does step in to regulate what you do, especially when it impinges on the rights of others. So, if we can begin to accept “individualism” as a useful fiction, but govern our relationships in light of our actual interdependencies, we may be able to achieve new solutions… as in Verna’s value systems. Even the literature of “economic mechanisms” point in this direction formulating rules of so-called, non-cooperative games in which the outcome of market exchanges can be structured to produce “winners” and “winners” instead of “winners” and “losers.”
Oversall, I’m rather optimistic. It seems to me, that we may be even “freer” than we thought.
The nature of clollectivist says: “It takes the village to raise a child”.
The nature of individualst says: “Who am I? I need to know!”
The nature of knowledge says: “The culture of interdependence in serenity is the health of mutuality between the village and who we each are!”
Currently, we are at a junction of history when the incompatibilities of the past collectivist ruling units, such as the various war machines and their specific contexts, are resisting the individualism that has taken on a corporate shape, and goes on acting as individuals, competing for survival in a an unsustainable village.
For both, the individual and the village, the genuine paradigm shift comes from discovering the passage from competing to completing, just like the village needs to do with great dedication when the child becomes a teen, in making room for the teen’s deployment in the community.
Failing to do so keeps the teen from getting to know who she/he is, therefore keeping her/him to take her/his place in the smooth running of the village.
Our Western modern society is made of several genrations in which the villages have been built to satisfy corporate individualism, supporting competition and forgetting about completion.
As a result, the corporate agenda finds itself having to re-invent the wheel of life with artifitial intelligence, leaving behind the cultivation needed for the village and the individual’s continuity into maturing.
The vaccum that this is creating is digging a groove which will collapse under the weigth of indifference and ignorance merging in reply to injustice, as we see throughout human history.
When the collapse becomes inavitable, all the war machines will be forced to merge into the corporate agenda, putting in place the artificial mechanisms to keep the masses of villages from interfering with the powers that be, who never had time to adjust to the assembling of going from competing to completing, but who suddenly, will have to behave according to the teens’ uprise against the village.
Instead of witnessing the beauty of a paradigm shift in serinity, the entity of terror-anti-terror is moving globalization with the forces of extreme tensions, which forces the governance of paradox rule upon humanity.
The village and the teens have to learn quickly (and not in a hurry, so as to defeat the stress of extreme tensions), how to fill the vaccum with all that’s been denied to get to the top by competing, as opposed to completing.
My prayer and hope is to see 2.0 to serve the coming of 3.0 in the release of serenity between the village and the child…amen to God’s Yes in us all…
My colleague, Tiite’ Baquero, furthers and deepens this dialog both by example in his work-in-progress of a global art installation piece, “WPMP” and, most eloquently, in his text work, “Human Nature 2.0 — A simple idea for a troubled world”
This is an excerpt…
“…Global issues of great mutual importance remain unresolved because 1.0 just can’t overcome the problem of invariance.
In these terms, the problem addressed by the WPMP can be described as “How can a common objective like ‘world peace’ remain invariant or unchanged after it undergoes hundreds of transformations due to the diversity of the social, political, religious, economic and other forces that intervene throughout every nation of the world?”
The issue of invariance to the idea of world peace as per the WPMP model is solved with 2.0 by the…”
The complete text can be found at:
http://www.wpmp.net/2.0%20final%20version%20web.pdf
Kind regards,
Brent Scheneman
Kassel, Germany