[MD] Memes and themes of community dances

[John Carl]

Hi Arlo,

Thanks for responding, for shedding "light" upon my post.  There's a couple
of additional points that jumped out that I'd like to mention, but first,

[Arlo]
>
> This view also resonates with what Mikhail Bakhtin calls "ventriloquation",
> namely that everything that is said is said as part of a historical
> dialogue,
> always in response to what has been said, and always in anticipation of how
> others may respond, never as a "soliloquy".
>
>
Right!  Even intellectual innovation comes as part of a social flow.




> I think this is supported by Pirsig's notion that intellectual patterns
> come
> from social patterns, not from biological patterns. It is sociality that
> gives(gave) rise to intellectual activity.
>
>
Here I'm not so sure.  It seems to me that there's an extreme individualism
that shines through Pirsig's work - the fact that it's an MoQ truism that
the levels are discrete and it's immoral for intellectual patterns to
indulge in social considerations somewhat obviate your point here, imo.


And, I think this also explains why when you look at "innovations" you see a
> near always co-occurrence of "discoveries". At any given time, for example,
> the
> current state of knowledge radiates probability fields, with certain things
> nearly "inevitable" and other things highly probably that they will be
> "discovered". It would absurd, for example, to think that if Edison had
> never
> been born we'd still be reading by candlelight, or if Ford had never been
> born
> there would be no factories.
>
>
I agree.  Edison and Ford especially are good examples of social engineers,
more than material engineers.  Edison I've read was actually quite a lousy
scientist and attacked the light bulb problem with brute force trial and
error methods rather than really thinking it through, and most of his
reputation stems from his genius at self-promotion rather than his innate
abilities in innovation.  And Ford also, was more brilliant at analyzing the
social aspects of mass production than anything else.  His famous dictum of
making automobiles that his workers could afford was a brilliant way of
capturing the motivations of quality production.



> A friend of mine refers to this as a marathon, we credit the "winner" (as
> defined by "first"- usually to patent) but right behind that "winner" is a
> crowd of others on the same path. And importantly we see that the "race" is
> an
> orchestration of (social) forces that orders, drives and structures the
> race
> towards that particular finish.
>
> This is not to demean the effort or skill of any individual runner. Indeed,
> such things should be celebrated. But getting all hung up exclusively on
> "who
> came in first" is a social level pattern, and I think this "celebrity" has
> been
> what's fostered the "giants" view of history.
>
>
Here's one part of the point I wanted to drive forward of Anderson's Crowd
Enhanced Innovation - that there is a complex ecosystem involved in
innovation and the chief innovators are only one part of that crowd.  The
other necessary aspects - the mentors, critics, superspreader, etc., are
just as vital to innovation as the innovators.  To my analysis then, the MoQ
posits a crowd as competitively responding to DQ, with one alpha dog, where
as Crowd Enhanced Innovation posits the crowd responding cooperatively and
that's closer to the way real innovation happens.

It's something to consider especially in regard to what we're doing here,
now.  In my view, the prevailing trend of MD has been going about this
process all wrong.

The second point of the talk I'd like you to consider with me is Anderson's
TED talk<http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html>.
I read his article, and then I viewed his talk.  Most of the information was
repeated, but there was a big difference in the way I absorbed it between
reading his words and hearing them.  I've been a bit prejudiced against the
whole idea of video-memes, but he really got me questioning my prejudices.
Also, at the end of the video, there was a very moving piece by this guy in
a Kenyan Shantytown which was showing people converting trash and waste into
gardens and harnessing the power of video to get people-power for his
project and was quite inspiring.  My friends Chris and Dana are moving to
Africa for a year, (Chris is the guy I went to Burning Man with).  He's
going to legally continue his Ibogaine research and Dana is going to foster
biodynamic gardening techniques.  So it's a subject near and dear to my
heart and has got me considering ways of "stepping up my game" in my own
way.

This whole area of video-sharing also pertains to a recent topic of trust
and paranoia on MD that we've been discussing.  Video-sharing certainly
obviates the use of avatars, doesn't it.  It's not quite Ian's face-to-face
conversation, but it's much closer.

Take care,

John




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