“Intro Citation 3“ lists “four main forces arrayed against a future network of free and open data”. Although these negative forces MUST be addressed, as immediate trends to resist; we must also deep dive into future potentials that are blocked by the best of our current infrastructure designs and by personal and social resistances to change. While we wonder at the enormous assets we have from contemporary infrastructures and technology, we are also blinded to what actions they suppress and what new developments and innovations they block.

“la duree” – no search engine will provide a definition.

My primary reservation of a flat commons, at this time in history, is that the vast majority are highly incompetent; not their fault. Civilization survives as the mode of mass organizing because it suppresses relevant learning/development of the population. Even if we were to filter out destructive perspectives, seeking statistical averages for policy will slow, if not eliminate, needed innovation. Not all Crowds are Wise. We must come to sharply distinguish power elites from those with special assets, rare in the wide population. We must base a viable commons on the vast cognitive diversity of all humans.

Pincheback, whom I highly respect, has given priority to fixing the human-Gaia interface – which IS a requisite for survival. Unfortunately, the Human System must be fundamentally changed before it will be able to implement those actions to improve the human-Gaia interface. We are already rich in viable ideas to initiate regeneration; but the human system is trending away from the competencies to organize the synergistic emergence of these and other ideas. P2P Infrastructure will certainly help, but persons need to be motivated to use them – to fundamentally change – a challenging scaffolding can’t do it on it own.

An ideal P2P Infrastructure would not, itself, be sufficient to insure the desired reality shifts. Persons need to learn to use the infrastructure, which involves strategies for UPLIFT, that are based on information patterns enabled by the infrastructure scaffolding, but not determined by it. Human Reality (HR) are patterns superimposed on Material Reality (MR), but HR follows their own “laws” (which don’t violate the “laws” of MR). This introduces a very radical shift in basic epistemology, which requires interactive exploration and not a quick up/down evaluation.

I have surveyed the many detailed ideas and actions covered in the rest of the posted document. All of them appear relevant to helping face our current crises and I am pleased to see this activity occurring. There is so much of relevance happening today, which is difficult to adequately summarize or access via our current communication infrastructure (which amplifies the negative and hides the positive).

The P2P Site, itself, appears to be very high quality and embarrasses me about my ignoring such developments – which have improved so much since I last looked at them. I would have loved to emerge my big ideas on such a site. I gave up: (1) when I recognized the task required teams/communities weaving diverse competencies and I didn’t have the social competencies to start by myself; and (2) when I recognized the great difficulty I had in sharing “why” and “what” I wanted to do, or have the site augment.

In 2004, in partnership with one other, we started to create an org within the wiki system of Omidyar.Net . Just as we were gaining momentum in design, Pierre shut down his site. I was unable to retrieve the work we had done, and my partner and I realized we had different objectives. I have contemplated using the framework on a quality existing site as a positive parasite. I have come to accept that any task/project/enterprise I imagine and want to use & be part of, I cannot do or create, myself. Yet, paradoxically, I need such a site/scaffolding to share with others enough for them to partner with me.

Exploring the P2P site, I had an insight about my own limit working consciously with complexity. I would need to force extended concentration to learn to use your P2P site, and would need to relearn if I didn’t use it for months or more. With greater concentration, or an extended duration, and in an isolated setting, I could design the functionality for a site of equivalent complexity. With even more of all the above, I could learn to actually create such a site. Except for a few periods in my life I have not has settings conducive to working with complex systems.

My formal education, including two PhDs, with one in theoretical physics was possible because the college setting seafed me to focus on each course at a time, master the complexity required, but soon forgetting the detail. I now realize how weakly dependent college courses are. I carefully avoided courses that required rote memory. In physics I worked each problem from basic principles and never remember the formulas (I derived them each time). I passed (barely) my comprehensive tests (as for my PhDs, but for course finals) by concentrated review days before the test, with one day to totally relax before. On such tests, if I couldn’t fully solve a problem, I wrote about what I knew and sometimes solved a related problem I made up. I filled many bluebooks. A faculty test reviewer at Yale said to me, in a hall while grading our PhD tests: “Victor, you have diarrhea of the pen.”

My entire formal education was very rocky, but I earned good grades, and never, ever considered that I might fail. Naive, yes. My accumulated learning never resulted in my developing professional competencies to be a member of a discipline. I never was a physicist. Indeed, I never have identified myself within any category (often, to my dismay): son, brother, father, teacher, friend, etc.); I’m in those classes by credentials, not by mind-set. Today I scan the AAAS journal SCIENCE, weekly (on the john). Although I can’t read most detailed reports, I have a good sense of what they are about. I know (with time, effort, and some help) I could learn to comprehend all but a few. I am deeply aware of the greater depth of scientific research developed over the decades – the progress being “exponential”, yet perceived my most as “linear”.

Being trans-disciplinary I grok the Whole-of-Science, including the fundamental basics of each “professional discipline” and their associated “phenomena”. I recognize this is part delusion, as I am frequently making new discoveries and noticing my “overview” alter. I am never fully conscious of this overview, and the intuitive halo that embeds the explicit experientials feels the same for all situations, until my attention shifts upward to bring part of this ground/context into explicit figures of attention. To my intuition, most of my detailed thoughts appear to fit together. When they don’t, I examine the discrepancy. This frequently happens when fundamentals of two disciplines appear to conflict. The resolution I come to is often made later by the disciplines.

My whole mental system (named “nuet”, for the “wrld” hosted by Larry) emerges (1) by adapting to new information and (2) by making a “quantum-like” shift from one org-form to another org-form. I experience these shifts as “insights”. I experience insights a few times daily, mostly minor. I try to stop what I was doing and attempt to record something to refer to later. Sometimes they occur in cascades. I’ve had about 100 geisterblitzes in my life, a few which forced me to change direction.

All of this happens within my strange “states of consciousness” where there are no “mental images in any sensory domain”, which excludes all sensory remembrances and sensory work spaces. I have no experienced past, my history involves recognition of records, as if reports of others. I have a sharp emotional experiential when passing locations where I had high emotional events, at that place, in the past. Usually I can’t remember what the event was. Most of these memories are of the prior, repeated sequence of memories, and not of the initial experience.

I have two concerns.

(1) Can the P2P movement gain support of a growing portion of the population. Can it resist the well funded efforts of those forces is opposes with the new P2P insights and proposals. Can our system be fixed, or significantly transformed, given all the “facts”. The trends accelerating within this Trump Era makes the success of such a prospect more questionable.

(2) What may be missing from this detailed analysis and action strategy? As mentioned above, the focus is on designing a viable P2P Infrastructure which will avoid all the negatives listed for our current Infrastructure. What seems missing is parity effort on what innovations are need to assist the emergence of a truly episteme shifting means for humans to interact and share. Again, we must look to how prior innovations we first applied to a limited domain of preexisting issues; only to later discover new issues and potentials. In spite of all the glitter and excitement, our information/digital technologies remain in the infancy stage. We need to give some time to unrestrained exploration of what humankind might do if they had a much better infrastructure AND the competencies to use it.

I suggest some innovative developments I would hope to see. These are but hints to what I imagine.

(1) Enable integrated nested and networked organization.

Hoisting in outlines, as a tool for readers is absent. To first read a compressed doc, then be able to expand to different levels, would be a very useful tool for designing complex docs with different paths for readers to use. Docs designed for study, not just reading, with study facilitated. Some way to use both Map and Outline Forms.

(2) A new visual digital language.

Why do we still use the linear sequence of symbols, as used here, when it is no longer needed. We need a new visual language that can’t be read linerally. Present text as dynamic diagrams. A complex sentence could unfold, word by word, over time. The nested structure of phrases could be visually represented. Use of symbol size, bold, font, color could be used for relational information. User could chose format from options. Authors could provide suggest routes for processing docs. New systems of “punctuation”. Sound bites to possible accompany cursor activation. Integrate with dynamic diagrams and video sequences. Ability to add/activate links to points on screen or scene in video (early versions of this exist). Border of screen page may include related pages or sites – visible.

(3) New integration of multi-sensory input and output.

Reading and listening to text, simultaneously enhances comprehension and speed. This feature should be many generally available and easy to use. More user promotion and instruction Help for users with text2speech and speech2text. Easy to set audio commands for such format changes as color and bold and capitalization. Foot pedal controls. Take into account vast individual differences in cognitive functioning.

(4) Colab Studios 2007 NEH Grant Proposal ; links don’t work.

(5) Initiate semfield development research.

(7) SEAFnets

(8) UPLIFT & OLLO

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From: Michel Bauwens 11/292017