The Deep End

Visualizing the reactive surface area of a network

2006-08-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

To get a really good sense of what's going on in complex network interactions, try a visualization that displays "surface area" as a feedback mechanism:
Connectedness: Visualizing organizational change

More at my regular blog, and specifically here where kind of rant a bit more about surface area.

Note to selves: Sub Selves and Super Selves

2006-02-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

Both sub- and super- selves have interior and exterior components.

Big-Mind process, or Voice Dialogue gets at the sub-selves from the interior. fMRI recordings while performing various tasks get's at the exterior of sub-selves.

Super selves are those grouping that we belong to. Katrina was a bigger hit to us in the US than was the tsunami. This is a blanket statement and true to different levels for different people. It's not black and white, either.

That's really the point, the boundaries between inner and outer are non-absolute. They are fluidly dynamic, ambiguous and partial.

My family is a super-self. There is a definite inner and an outer, but the fuzziness is noticeable. I have brothers and a sister, some cousins and uncles and aunts. While anthropologists may like to come up with simple formulaic principles that rely on how much DNA we share, it is clear that this is way too simplistic. I have some friends that I generally care about more than some family members.

Physiologically, there is something that happens to pierce the veil of separation between people when someone falls in love (or there can be). The release of oxytocin creates a bond, but that's a very reductionist way of stating it. Another way of viewing it is that the bond is only prevented by a sense of separation that is maintained by a brain-state of me-ness, and oxytocin interrupts that separation, allowing the bond to form.

Bringing in Spiral Dynamics, the more that one is aware of and can express second tier vibrational frequencies, the more that one can modulate this bond between anyone.

[Quick note: I haven't written online about the distinctions between the "center of gravity" conception of stages that I got while studying with Ken Wilber, and the "situational spectrographic chord" model that was more prevalent while studying with Don Beck. I need to say something about that, but this note will do for now.]

Eternally findable self promotion

2005-12-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Seth asks a great question. I think his answer falls a little short of the next paradigm. De-siloing information needs to be thought of across all the dimensions.

I didn't attend, but I hope Ester Dyson's When 2.0 conference addressed this issue to some degree. Blogs are falling into a streaming meme where older stuff falls off the attention span and into the nether regions only to be recovered by a focused search. Not long tail-ish enough.

Findability. Make your brand your ad, if I could click on an about button for Seth (or he for me), we could find out what is always available, what's coming up (book release, conference appearance, workshop, etc). Then I could even subscribe to this feed, so that I get the bleeding edge Seth experience. This frees up the blogspace to write that related stuff and the "in yo face" promotional stuff can be saved for those lusty souls who crave it.

"Self-promotion. It's just one of the channels available in my media empire. Check it out."

Lead by getting the hell out of the way

2005-10-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Reading up on the librarians take on this issue gave me pause to think further on the consequences of the shift toward enabling the general population to find any information that is available. After reading this particular entry I added my own perspective, which is as follows:

I would argue that there is a quantum mindshift that is occuring right now, and the biggest bottleneck is the paradigm inside of which we are operating. Paradigms have a very nasty habit of being invisible when viewed from the inside (kind of like dreams; in both cases, it takes a significant amount of mental labor to become aware of the boundaries). I would like to make a couple of observations that may bring the boundary of the current predominant paradigm into focus a bit.

People are outgrowing the need for librarians. Ironically, the job description is morphing into something like: obsolete yourself as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then to reinvent what you do at a higher level. The growing demand for information will no longer make it tolerable to stand in line for information, or to explain my issue to a human being before getting an answer. Roy’s maxim above, that people like to find more than they like to search doens’t even quite go far enough. People like much more than to find. In the same way that searching is just the prerequisite to finding, finding is just the prerequisite to contributing. People ache to contribute, and they are doing so with folksonomies, and wikis, and applications for building applications that will soon do everything from indexing the worlds knowledge to solving unheard of problems (see ning.com).

Our linear solutions for solving large scale problems are no longer agile enough to accomplish the task before us. We are shedding the skin of the current paradigm. The best we can do is to let go of it, and embrace the omniarchy of multi-paradigmatic navigation.

The population is becoming empowered and situated to start making most conventional jobs obsolete. We are used to thinking of people as needing the help of an expert to do make real headway on any significant task. Most hierarchies are set up to concretize the expertise of individuals. These silos are to restrictive for the kind of collaboration that is striving to be born. Rather than looking at division of labor, we should start looking at multiplication of labor. Rather than thinking of ways in which you can more efficiently give people access to your expertise, learn how to hand them your expertise so that you aren’t part of the bottleneck between them and their contribution.

It's been a while since I've seen the bumber sticker that reads "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way." Perhaps it needs to be updated and brought back. It should now read: "Follow those who lead by getting the hell out of the way."

[Metacomment: I realize that I'm a bit behind the curve here. I just caught up with Brewster Kahle's talk at ITConversations. In it, he mentioned the Googlezon presentation, which I watched. I wanted to know who else was looking at this, so boogied over to del.icio.us to check out the tag, and came upon the LITA Blog. We need to keep an eye out for the librarians, because they are on our side.]

Unevacuating Houston - How's traffic?

2005-09-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

My brother, sister-in-law and his three kids came here on Wednesday in horrific traffic (14 hours for what is normally a three hour trip).

They don't want to fight the same traffic on the way back. Tried to get a sense of what the traffic is like on the web, and couldn't find anything. All the online news sites are talking about missing the worst of the storm in the Houston area, and the flooding in Beaumont and Louisiana.

Finally figured the best source for traffic info might be a news radio station in Houston. Currently streaming from that station.

Here's the current situation. Many areas of Houston still without electricity, so traffic lights are out in many intersections. There is considerable debris, and curiousity has started to get to people who want to get out and rubber-neck the missed disaster.

It is frustrating that eye-witness is really the only way that one can get good info right now.

I hope that this blog helps a bit with the desire to find out how things are going.

Inbound traffic sounds like it is bad coming southbound on I-45 toward Houston. There also is very limited gas available, and the one or two stations that have gas have huge lines. Make sure to gas up early to come back home. Be prepared for gawkers, power-outages and debris. It sounds like most of the streets are navigable, but some people are whizzing through those intersections without traffic lights, so be very alert.

I haven't heard much about east-bound on I-10, or Southwest-bound on Hwy 290. My brother has decided to try 290.

My thought was that, from Austin, he should have headed south on Hwy 183 to Alt-90 eastbound. There will be less traffic coming from the south than the north and west.

That's all for now.

How to get the most out of SXSW Interactive

2005-08-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Last year's SXSW (2005) was my first. I was absolutely blown away by the immediate relevance of the sessions to pressing issues that I'm passionately interested in. And yet, I left with a sense that something more could have come of it. I want to leave more than wowwed and inspired. I want to leave fully connected and moving forward. If anything is obvious to me about SXSW, it is that this is the place where things get started. Unlike a lot of conferences which may have a nugget or two of useful information that I can't wait to unpack in the privacy of my own office when I get home, SXSW is chock full of people who are putting stuff together as we speak.

But for the beginning attendee, it can be a bit overwhelming. So, here are my suggestions for next year.

1) I would like to see more applications of all of the design talks from last year. Yes, my appetite was whetted! Now give me something to sink my teeth into.

2) Podcast the sessions live or nearly live. How hard can this be? Maybe it is harder than I think, but do it anyway.

3) Someone create a wiki and give a little heads up about how to use the wiki in concert with StumbleUpon and del.icio.us to help foster birds-of-a-feather sessions real-time.

I'll think of more later. Right now, I want to capture this notion that the potential collective intelligence of a SXSW-interactive gathering is just mind-numbingly gargantuan. I think too damned much of this potential is left on the table at the end of each year. Let's not let these oppotunities spoil!

What's going on this week.

2005-05-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

Cleaning the house. And this little bit of news to a recently new friend:

-------

I've spread myself a little thin on the new contacts front and I'm having a bit of an issue keeping up with everyone. You are definitely someone I don't want to lose track of.

I've just recently started renewing my post activity on my blog (meme-pool.blogspot.com) and on the Integral Naked site (my member ID is dls0 -- initials D L S followed by numeral 0).

As I mentioned earlier, I've also started recording some of my conversations. Need to find a good audio editor to make them passable (as well as checking with the other participant to make sure they are sharable).

I've been listening to more of the dialogs on WIE unbound. If you haven't joined WIE unbound, I think it would be worth the trouble of the 1-month free trial just to download a messload of those. In particular, Brian Swimme (sp?), Howard Bloom, Ray Kurzweil, Susan Blackmore, and Edgar Mitchell come to mind as particularly useful tracks.

I'm interested in connecting with whatever community you frequent, if you are amenable. I've got a Skype request outstanding to you, if that works as well. Have you published anything accessible of late? Recommendations?

---------

With the recognition that Yahoo Groups is not perfect for accomplishing the desired result of a functional community of like-minded people, I want to create a community to figure out how to create a better community, and I'll bootstrap it with, what else? A yahoo group!

Private list by subscription to maintain coherence of the group. If you choose to subscribe, do please submit a blurb in the space provided giving me some kind of idea of why you want to join and where you heard about it (eg. meme-pool blog, etc.).

- David

Narcissus via Matthew

2005-05-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.matthewdallman.com/2005/05/mcluhan-narcissus-autobiography.html

Matthew Dallman in the above blog carries forward an interesting interpretation of Narcissus and what the myth represents. I'm currently trying it on for size to see how it fits with my post yesterday, in Notes to Self.

Part of the insight that comes to light is the extension of ourselves through technology as conceived by Ray Kurzweil. Becoming aware of ourselves deeply, means that we understand how our artifacts contribute to our sense of self, and that an artifact is anything that is altered by us. Quantum mechanics reminds us that even the act of observation affects that which we observe. Our gaze has the power of a butterflies wings, to stir storms of consciousness on the other side of the cosmos.

My dreams have been reflecting this shift in perspective as well. Hmm, can't really call them dreams. Last night, I experienced a deep state of bliss in my sleep, and as I bowed in Nameste (in my sleep), the reverberations of bliss were just about overpowering. This isn't just nocturnal activity. I can feel rippling of those waves during the day as well.

I'm picking up my holosync practice after having left it aside a while back, but all the above reverberations have come before that.

Notes to self

2005-05-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

In reading Dan's blog regarding the feeling of being watched, and therefore of feeling the need to perform, I've come to realize this is what I do by default. I wonder how Dan has escaped the sense that if he writes a journal on the web, that it still is somehow his own private domain. I am so conscious of what people will think of me that the first thought when I commit a word to page is "how will they read this." I've also had a sneaking suspicion for a long time that "they" is so complex a notion that there really isn't a way to phrase what I want to say so that everyone get's the experience that I want them to have. All of this has contributed to an attitude adjustment which is, frankly, just screw it. You all think what you want. I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me.

Whew! What a relief.

Sources for today's thoughts:

Ray Kurzweil dialog on What Is Enlightenment site.

Susan Blackmore dialog on What Is Enlightenment site.

The Global Brain, by Howard Bloom.

And the Scientific American May issue (http://www.sciam.com)

[note to reader: there are so many more sources than this that have been a tremendous influence, including individual conversations which haven't been recorded or published. So, what you're getting here is the amalgamation of so much more than the sources I've listed. But, I'll try to give linkage to the stuff that is accessible and that is most influential in my thinking. I won't be making this note often, so just infer it always.]

Background of thought. We are on the verge of a paradigm shift of unheard of proportions. We are already in the middle of it, and the tides are turning, but as it unfolds, I imagine things will get a bit chaotic at times.

To get a sense of the scale of this paradigm shift, let's compare it to other paradigm shifts: (A) The world is round rather than flat, (B) The earth revolves around the sun instead of the earth being the center of the universe, and (C) observation creates reality.

How does this coming paradigm shift compare to those listed above? Frankly, it blows them away. Actually, it is very closely related to (C) above. (A) and (B) are pretty much accepted as fact now, so much that it doesn't even seem necessary to mention them. These truths seem self-evident, as in "of course it's this way, how in the world could anyone ever have thought otherwise." So obvious does it seem that (A) and (B) are true that it is easy to believe that a person would have to be an idiot or crazy to disagree. But what evidence do you have? We have a model in mind about what the earth/sun system looks like from outer space, but we don't have first-hand access to that experience. We use a metaphor of balls to understand what is happening as we experience the sun "rising" in the east. But we then collapse that metaphor down to a confusion with reality and think we can, in a sense, feel the earth rotate under the sun's gaze causing it to appear to rise.

So, what is this new paradigm? In a very similar fashion to the way people used to view the universe from an odd perspective to see the earth as the center, we currently view the universe inside out. The prevailing common sense notion is that there is something known as objective truth out there, and there are many subjective experiences of that truth, each of which is slightly flawed due to limitations in the perceptive and cognitive apparati of the organisms which own those subjective experiences.

Shift it to this perspective: "There is only a single subjective experience with imaginary bounderies which give rise to the illusion of an objective world."

That's a pretty big chunk. Better break that down just a tad. What does it mean that there is a single subjective experience? Well, to begin with, what does it mean to be at the center of your subjective experience? Does your experience have a center? It feels like it's in your head, if you just notice. But with a bit of practice, it is pretty easy to notice that it shifts around your body following your attention. We just happen to focus the majority of our attention on the combinition of what we see and what we think about what we see. What we feel plays a smaller role as long as there isn't an emergency. If you accidentally slice off your thumb, there is quite a bit of cognitive dissonance about where you are and where you are not. Also, have you even noticed that when you see someone else experience pain, you experience a bit of it as well? Oooh, listen. Did you catch that? Did you hear yourself try to explain why you feel other people's pain from the dominant perspective of objective reality? Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. Keep on the listen-out for that tendancy; I suspect it will show itself many times.

Diving down a layer, what are you made up of? Cells, right? And "you" are the sum total of those cells. Which of the cells give rise to the feeling of being you. Which ones are responsible for the sense that there is a subjective reality? This could get long and drawn out, so I'll jump to my point. They all do. Every single cell contributes to the overall sense of what is going on within your organism. The weird thing is that we give preferential treatment to the sensations that we are aware of, but all of that cellular activity that is going on beneath the surface of conscious awareness has just as much, and probably much more influence on your sense of self as the conscious processing.

Jumping ahead again, I propose that every single cell, molecule, atom, proton, electron, quark, superstring, and all of their constituent parts have a subjective experience which adds up to your whole experience. And because matter is deeply entangled at the subatomic level, it doens't just give rise to your experience, but to the whole universes experience. So there is one subjective experience. Big leap, I know. Try it out for a second.

It doesn't "feel" right, does it? The boundary between you and me is pretty clear, substantial and undeniable, right? What about when you fall in love? Where is the boundary at that point? It pretty much disappears, doesn't it? For a while anyway, it's as if two people merge into one person. It is a profound experience. One which we last had as an infant when we were gazed upon with unconditional acceptance from our parents. But that "oneness" doesn't last. Pretty soon we wake up to "reality" that we are a separate human being and in starts the loneliness of isolation, or the thrill of autonomy. My contention is that this sense of separation serves a purpose of differentiating in order to experience more of what is in the universe. The separation is an illusion, but one that is carefully cultivated for a higher purpose. But the problem is that this strategy can become too effective, and it can result in the feeling of actual separation, in which case it can lead to insanity or death.

Last piece, the illusion of objective reality. How is it that these boundaries give the sense of an objective world out there? Not only is it advantageous for us to differentiate, just like ants spreading out to find food, it is also important for us to have a point that we call home so that we can come back and compare notes and take advantage of what all we have learned. I think that sense of home is what we call objective reality. We think it is a stable unmoving geographical location, but it's just where the heart lives.

If you have taken these thoughts seriously at all, you should be feeling quite a bit of vertigo right about now. I've been working through this for a while, and I still get this sense.

Listening to the Susan Blackmore dialogue above (free one month trial!) really kicks that feeling into overdrive. The interviewer at one point asks, "So you believe that this is just this mechanistic experience that organisms have and that the universe just proceeds deterministically." She answers, "Yes." And then the interviewer says, "So if that's all there is, why have morals?"

Do you see how funny a question that is? Boiled down: if you don't have any choice, why do you chose to live a moral life?

Our notion of choice is flawed. But the flaw isn't that we perceive options where there are none! The flaw is that we think there is an "I" to make the choice which is distinct from the thing chosen. In fact, it's all an interior process. There are only insides which from some angles look like outsides.

The freaky thing is that all of this isn't new. This is known deeply by us but forgotten. The new part is that we are on the verge of remembering this at a much deeper level.

In listening to the Ray Kurzweil interview, I come away with a bit of a notion that he's a little mixed up. I agree with his projections, but disagree with the notion that human processing will basically be the same in the future as it is today. While the physics of this apparatus between our ears remains relatively the same, the functioning goes up in incremental waves. It is capable of much more than we are putting it through. One of the things that happens as we move toward electronification of matter, giving it the ability to interact at a basic level with our organism, is that we bring it and us into the same subjective experience. Those illusory bounderies start to dissolve. There can be no us against them. It us, baby! all the way up and all the way down.

There ain't no one here but Me.

If this scares you too much, don't worry. I just made it all up.

Voice & Text simulchat

2005-05-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

1. Download the On Demand Education Manager from the top of Free Classes page. Download and install (small enough to be able to click "open")

2. Click on the Mr. Pennyman icon on your desktop for the On DemandEducation Manager This provides many features including access to your Online Room

3. On the Main Menu click on the button Life Skills U Online Campus

4. Select "Facilitated Study Groups"be sure you are connected to the Internet

5. This bring you to the Marquee - Scroll down to Morphogenensis click on the entrance link

6. This Login Page will have a link to assist with checking your Active Xsettings this is vital. This page also has many troubleshoot hits and links for the help email and Live Help Desk.

7. Complete the page - click submit...

8. "Run" or "open" for the download, click install... this will download and install the Voice software

9. When asked for your Username - enter the name you want displayed in the voice room and leave the password blank

10. Enjoy the Online Voice room

Long overdue update

2005-02-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

I think there must be something about self-consciousness in the over-thirty crowd that makes blogging seem less appealling at first. Somehow, it seems so narcissistic, or something.

But now, I realize that this is a good way to keep track of myself. And possibly a few other souls can peek in now and again as well.

My last post mentioned my reading list. I've been reading so much lately that I can't even keep track. Here is a slight update. Just finished "The Wisdom of Crowds," by James Surowiecki. Absolutely incredible, a must read. And then check out http://www.theworldcafe.com website. This is one way to possibly harness co-intelligence. Next, check out the email exchange on Slate's site where Surowiecki and Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) talk about their respective books, and the synergy between them. I haven't read Blink yet, but it's going on my humongous reading list. Oh, the link for the discussion: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111894/entry/2112064/

I'm currently reading Matthew Fox's Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, which is also amazing. I'm helping organize the American Creativity Association's annual International Conference, which will be here in Austin March 30 - April 2. I'm chair of the Spirituality Track, and we've got Matthew Fox coming to present a keynote and a 4-hour preconference session! I can't wait.

I just finished listening to the 12-CD lecture series on Existentialism (No Excuses), put out by the Teaching Company. Robert Solomon is the lecturer for all 24 lectures. He's the professor who talks about Existentialism in the movie Waking Life. I completely recommend listening to this lecture series.

Well, I'm sure as hell not going to be able to catch up on multiple months activity in just one post, so I'll stop here for now. He self, keep this thing up so it isn't so daunting next time (like tomorrow!), okay.

Okay, if I have to.

The Music of Silence

2004-10-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

I'm currently listening to the audio version of "The Music of Silence" by David Steindl-Rast. It is deceptively simple, and very easy to listen to. But as soon as I turn it on, my nerves settle and something starts to make sense of the tangled mess of my mind.

I'm an incurable seeker. I was born looking for deeper answers. In my search, I've gravitated naturally toward paradigms, even before I knew what they were. Perspective is essential. There are a lot of authors who talk about this explicitly, but I really don't want to be another one. The answer isn't in paradigms, but perhaps it is through them, above them.

I look for concepts that are productive for me to contemplate. Puzzles that tickle my mind just so. Paradox works well. One that is mentioned in the above audio book is eternity, and the relation to time. I had heard before that eternity isn't endless time, but beyond time. In holographic fashion, I imagine eternity as an unbroken whole that is paradoxically broken up into shards of moments, each containing the whole, but giving the illusion of limitation.

There is a very close counterpoint in considering the notion of God breaking God's Self into a myriad parts, again, holographic fashion, where each part contains the whole, and scatters the pieces around.

From both of these perspectives, the illusion is that the limitation is real, and the whole unbroken fabric of reality is imaginary. For those of faith, the thought is entertained that some day in the future we will return to the unbroken-ness, or that the cloth can be mended if only perfect action is achieved. And hence the idea of heaven. But trying to perfect something that is already perfect is obviously absurd. Manifestation itself is all but illusion, a further expression of the perfection in which perfection seems far away. Human beings just have a particular talent for conceptualizing the state of perfecting, and so we believe the illusion ever so deeply. When it gets too deep, sometimes, the illusion comes crashing down, and God in all of Gods naked, splendid glory is just standing there, radiating and we can only be in awe. That much nakedness is too much for this world.

There's a hole in the web this morning

2004-10-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

I had a friend, and now she's gone. A very busy spider made her home in my window above my computer. She was on the outside, and I enjoyed watching her spin her web, catch her prey, clean up the messes and start over.

In a very real way it is hard to imagine her existance. On the one hand, her existance is her job, there is no distinction, and so after the work of spinning is done, she takes up her throne in the middle and waits.... patiently.... for.... something.... to.... happen...., then she scurries to her meal and tenderly wraps it up, savoring the fresh juices of this morning's catch.

But back to that waiting. She doesn't have a blog to write, or email to check, or friends to visit. What an incredible solitary practice. Occasionally I find myself wondering about the insects that she captures. Do they feel terrified when they ensnare themselves in her silk? Does her venom soothe their minds as well as calming their bodies? How long do they remain conscious during her wrapping ceremony? And do they get clausterphopic?

Well, this morning, she isn't there. Her throne is a gaping hole. A wound in the web. I can only imagine. Probably a bat found a tasty morsel sitting on a silken plate, and couldn't resist. Still, I want to curse the bat. Why did you have to take her, what did she ever do to you? But I know its futile. What has any of us ever done to the others. The circle continues, we may try to forget it, but ultimately, we are all someones meal, just ripening and being readied for consumption.

Some cold comfort, that.

2004-10-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

Elbow Scrabble

Um. Is this thing on?

2004-08-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

Not one to blog much. Kinda out of my generations frame of reference. But I do have a few things I'd like to say, and I sorta would like a few people to be able to check in on me, so why not, you know?

First, thanks to my parents for donating the requisite starter kit and necessary materials for my manifestation. Oh, and lastly, thanks to Dan for being the latest bifurcation point that led to this blog. Ain't happenstance the blits?

Have you ever felt that you are in the middle of an evolutionary step in your development? Kinda like your growing an overmind or something? I can kinda tell that this is eventually going to be a pretty cool tool for, like, doodling with the cosmos, but right now the walls look a little bleak and the wiring isn't all connected right. Still, it's amazing that it works at all. Bootstrapping, here I come....