I say “early stage” (in spite that I’ve been researching, contributing to, teaching, writing, and consulting about these fields since the mid-'80s when Doug Engelbart introduced me to them because this is the first time that I gear up to a multi-year action research focused on the dynamic, mutually uplifting co-evolution of Personal and Collective Knowledge Ecosystems.
What motivates me to do so, primarily, is the sorry state of our world and my anticipation that it will get (much) worse before it can get any better. That’s not to discourage all those who are yearning and working for a better future, just to be realistic, and realizing that we don’t yet have the frameworks, tools, and consciousness necessary to cultivate the systemic wisdom that humankind needs to pass its evolutionary test.
Many transformative initiatives, networks, and communities are doing great work that, on the long run, can contribute to our Phase Shift, but they are disjoint and lack the requisite complexity-absorbing capacity.
I believe that the development of personal & collective knowledge ecosystems or DigiGardens (under any other name), and curating their co-evolution are pivotal conditions to match the complexity of our evolutionary test.
Interesting! I’ve been leaning towards this direction in one of my research streams, too—it is going to be a hot topic, I think. Thanks (in advance) for sharing!
I’ve been sprinting towards this very puck for the best part of the past 17 years. 7 years before I ever knew about Augmenting Human Intellect and Collective IQ.
The last five years, thanks to the Decentralized Web revolution Dreams turned into Visions combined with tasks. My Xanadu is called Opidox is NLS and DKR on the Decentralized Web starting with impoving the intellectual effectiveness of individual human being and allow co-evolving improving the improvement process in letting knowledge flow freely and constructively.
In a word https://futurehow.site/index.php/2020/08/31/combining-personal-collective-knowledge-ecosystems-for-nurturing-systemic-wisdom/ could be moved into delivery phase with a low budget under 100k
Ryan, would you say more about that direction, particularly if it happens to contribute to what you mentioned on Medium about your search for strategic opportunities for change because my work is yet another expression of the same search.
The primary objective of our ART (Action Research for Transformation) project is not to deliver a new technology but to use an updated version of my 20-yrs old approach to knowledge ecology for creating a framework (complete with methodology) that supports symmathesy and the co-evolution of individual and collective ecosystems needed to enable such mutual learning across social actors.
Thank you for the opportunity to let me specify this.
“Symmathesy” is a relatively new term for me - this was only the second time I happened across it. Any other software engineers or systems engineers out there might be interested in Jessica Kerr’s perspective on being a “symmathesist”: https://jessitron.com/2018/10/25/symmathecist-n/
@osgav, you wrote in your blog, two months ago, that you weren’t swayed enough by Obsidian to try it out, but it does look very powerful. Now that you became interested enough and you’re here, I’m wondering abt how would you design an experiment for optimizing your preferred ensemble of Obsidian features and plugins to facilitate the symmathesy of its users? If you’d need a use case for that, let’s cook one up.
I never considered myself a “solutionist”
Technology will not fix “us”.
However the technology we have need fixing.
Create something that induces whatever it get’s in contact with to go down a path of deliverance from the technological mess we have.
The Web is where we are. It is being fixed at the protocol level with things like IPFS. Need to fix it at the Application Ecosystem level like Holochain and go beyond even that.
My approach is to turn a little corner of the Web into
an emergent Augmentation Research Community for the Decent(ralized) Web with a Minimal Viable metadesignab;e co-evolvable Kernel Prototype kind of NLS on the Permanent Web.
Well indeed a lot can happen in a couple of months - I find myself here because after giving Joplin a good run I couldn’t resist the lure of [[double brackets]] for linking notes with great ease and of course the graph view. I’ve been using Obsidian for a couple of weeks now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it!
As for designing an experiment I am not sure, however I am very intrigued by the new Workspaces feature which looks like it could lend itself to this idea. Having preset layouts that you can quickly switch between should certainly help the discovery of which features and plugins are useful under different circumstances.
Reading Nora Bateson’s description of symmathesy again I feel like I’m thinking more about arrangement than interrelationality of the elements of Obsidian… Perhaps Workspace layouts will be as easy to share as custom themes, which would allow the whole Obsidian community to work together on refining patterns that get the most out of using Obsidian.
