Mind Colonies

Progress is not enhancing what is, it is advancing toward what will be.

Kahlil Gibran

Ants have no (or little) problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly every other species. Humans are bogged down by anxieties over food and shelter. With minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead, not trailing fractions behind ants?


Q: What does Bala Pillai do?

A: He evolves and invents self-sustaining telebusiness (mind) ecosystems (aka mind colonies). [Think of business = a social process of trust-building and complementing]. Akin to a cross-media evolution of the non-violent warrior and violent pacifist Gandhi (including some of Gandhi's money man, then Birla), Bala is a "feeling of connectedness", self-reliance, self-esteem, standards, Open Source (strategy, connections, processes, content and software) and communityness activist. [Make a living with acumen, whatever form it takes]. And he advises companies on change leadership, virtual organisations and those that need fast ins into Asia. As well, in preparing for a US and UK services-buying/strategic alliances office presence, he is identifying suppliers and partners.

Since 1995, he's been onto mind colonies for shared-ethos groups for Asian and Asia-loving minds off online mind communities, mailing lists, forums, print/TV and ground locations. Pioneering and leading mindcosms in their space, like Malaysia.Net, Tamil.Net, Asian Internet Marketing Community are amongst those led by Bala. At earlier formative stages in their lifecycle are Teleindia.Com, Singapore.Net, Indonesia.Net, Pinoydom.Com and Apec.Net

Q: What are mind colonies?

A: Think of them as parallels to ant colonies. Or as ageographical villages for shared-ethos groups.

Imagine you are looking at Planet Earth from the Moon. Imagine nerves running all over spherical Earth. Notice human minds like dots pulsating and sending signals between them. Some nerve connections are bold , some are dotted. Some minds are emitting a lot, some nothing, some in-between. Some nerves have lots of noise/resistance/signal loss, some are flowing smoothly and rapidly like cholesterol-free arteries, some in-between.

Can you dissect "mind colonies" for me?

A: Mind colonies are trust and spirit-rich, self-sustaining, cross-media networked mind exchanges for shared-ethos groups. Energetic full-time hosts catalyse minds in a mind grid to learn, work, play and complement each other. The catalysing currency is a colony equivalent of Diners Card (alternative currency).

What are the most important imperatives in making mind colonies work?

A: (a) Shared-ethos (Common Purpose is *not* enough). Spirit. Passionate Catalysts. Legitimacy/transparency. Trust. Customer Intimacy. Courage. Chutzpah. A Complementing Mindset. Commitment. Strategic Change Agency Acumen. Process Savvy. Innovation Climate. Open-Mindedness.

(b) Grasping that 90% of the value of a person today is the sum of:-

i) how she uses her mind *plus*

ii) how great she is at building actionable relationships

Notice none of these appear in the balance sheets of companies -- does that give you a clue for why the telco+hardware+software+accountants driven dot com bomb happened and can recur unless the underlying metrics are perceived and fixed? And therefore greater opportunities for the earlier foresightful birds who can see where the value in an Acumen/Knowledge/Networked Minds era springs from? The opportunities from organising bankable social capital valuation metrics? You may ask what is the root cause of this gross misvaluation. It is the mislanguage thus the miscognition of resourcing. The language of resourcing, of finance, is accounting. Accounting values ends and tangibles rather than processes, climates and values. Accounting values the end, the golden egg more than the process, the golden goose. It values the product of a mind more than that mind. That which is under-recognised is under-measured. That which is under-measured is under-valued. That which is under-valued is under-resourced. Thus the misallocation of resources. Retrofitting of the mislanguage, accounting, is not enough. A fundamental shift in line with Nature's common sense is required

What's cross-media?

A: First take the mind as the pivot. Be mind-centric and mindcosm-centric (as contrasted with being tools, medium or protocol-centric). For example, be story-telling-centric. Realise that *complementing* is the game that all folks are doing with the plethora of F2F (face-to-face), email, email groups, instant messaging, web, POTS phones, VOIP, mobile voice, SMS/MMS, WiFi, broadband, television, video-conferencing, radio, P2P, streaming, books, photos, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, call centres, IVR, interactive television and movies. Get better and better at coming up with the right cocktail mix of these for given shared-ethos groups, for categories of purposes. Always bearing foremost in mind that you are dealing with human minds that want simplicity and fun in complementing. That they put up with dissected complexity only as much as they are not aware of better alternatives in an overly-cluttered world.

Is it hard to sell mind colonies to prospective members?

A: No. Because they create jobs and income opportunities. They bring an A-Z of small and medium service and product providors, who are first of all human minds (eg Ryzers) together. For example, they bring those who want jobs and income opportunities in the Knowledge/Acumen/Networked Era with those who can train or apprentice them into them in a congenial way. They develop societies. They are easy to sell because they are self-sustaining.
They are in line with where the world is going, i.e. grid computing, web services architecture, convergence, virtual organisations, telecommuting, outsourcing, offshore moves, more wanting jobs that grow their passion than jobs to merely pay bills, more wanting to get out of the drudge and routine in the cities into better intentional community locales, more caring for the environment and wanting to live closer to and with Nature; lots more Open standards including business processes standards to enable small businesses to interconnect with each other on a global services grid. They are like the Linux movement on steroids with non-geeks being the majority. What better killer WiFi/broadband application is there than mind colonies - complete Acumen economies?

How do mind colonies make money?

A: (a) Similar to how credit card companies do. just more, because a deeper set of services are provided and underutilised capacity is unleashed. Prospective members go through psychometrics and credit evaluation, and based on that amounts averaging US$2000 is put into their account with the cooperative. This "free" money reduces the customer acquisition cost and the costs of incentiving folks to self-change. They *must* use the money to buy products or services from the network. And they repay this by providing products or services to the network. When someone buys a product or service from a fellow mind for $100, they are charged $110 in their account with the cooperative, and the seller gets $90. The $20 goes towards all the trust, matching, clearing, camaraderie building, consensus climate, standards leadership, role models provision and digital-era societal/cultural services the cooperative conceives, organises and provides mostly through third party service providors or by member firms.

(b) after introductory periods, membership fees and selected user-pay services to members.

(c) fees from larger companies for providing targetted audiences to them - these are companies that satisfy a strict criteria pre-approved by the membership and applied by a task force for this purpose (an evolution of how the Olympics business model works. The nexus for the Olympics is the attentiondom from love of sports; the nexus for mind colonies is the attentiondom from the love of culture/ethos/societal longevity)

What's the biggest challenge then?

A: (a) Buying. You would think common sense is common right? Wrong! You would think that if ants have no problems with food and shelter, Mankind with minds should have less problems with food and shelter right? Wrong! Getting the attention of service providors to grasp this, in a "30 seconds of CNN attention mesmerised" world and to sequence and synchronize them together is the biggest challenge. So if you can complement me in speeding up our buying of these services, by referring service vendors who have attention spans and who are interested in ongoing revenue streams for ongoingly providing ever-improving services in their space, rather than a quick immediate sale tomorrow , we can launch full-fledged mind colonies (given the acumen and wisdom gathered since 1995 and before and the viral marketing extendible beach-heads of minds in our existing colonies) in no time.

(b) Communicating common sense. For example, (i) that one man's income is another's expense; that we can increase income in a network by incentiving expense; that we can fund expense incentiving by liquidityising and unleashing underutilised and undervalued social capital. That, that which is undervalued is under-resourced and that which is under-resourced is where woes pus. (ii) that as bad as hope (aka optimism) is, hopelessness (aka pessimism) is no better. Pessimism is a shameful waste of mindtime. Mindtime that is better spent on precise diagnosis given ambiguity, and prioritised/sequenced greater good/lesser evil of available solutions. We should tax the cancer that pessimism is!
(c) Articulating that the highest priority activity for Mankind today is the resourcing of and assuring returns from mindset change. Not too dissimilar from that swell of energy and minds that, when it was not common knowledge, convinced financiers and backers, that they would be able to convince folks (and get them to pay for) that brown-sugared water is better than the natural kind. Yes, the TV and promotion guys behind Coca-Cola from about the 50s onwards.

Why is Common Sense so rare?

The main and root cause is ditheism - the unnatural belief in two opposite forces. Humans have drifted too far from Nature and Naturalism. Ditheism has bred viewing the world with binary (opposites) lenses. Consider the following examples: Is not light more complementary to darkness than opposite? What use is a lightbulb, if not for darkness? Are not males more complementary to females than opposite? Are not plugs more complementary to sockets than opposite? Is not pretty complementary with ugly? If every flowering plant were a rose plant, would you like roses as much? Doesn't the diverse ecovariety of plants play a role in roses being special? Is not war more complementary to peace than opposite? Is it not true that it is those who have first-hand weary experience of the pains of war who provide the greatest energy for peace efforts? Is it not true, that prolonged peace-time leads to apathy and denial, which in turn leads to ignoring the plight of sections of the population? Which in turn leads to Martin Luther King's "riots are the language of the unheard". And which John F Kennedy remarks with "those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable"? And war is the last straw of cascadingly intense tension? Take any pair that are said to be opposites and see it as a process, and you will sense a complementary circle of life. Similar to waves, mountain ranges and the spinning orbiting Earth.

Default viewing things as opposites has lots of ripple effects. Ignoring corollaries is one. For example when someone says "Oh it is expensive". We ought to be thinking "expensive compared to what?" and "can I afford to have the problem continue -- can I afford *not* to spend in solving the problemt? What are the costs of *not* buying?". And the best answer would come from balancing the obvious with the corollary.

Another ripple effect is defensiveness and hypocrisy because of focus on the superlatives rather than the infinitives. For example, in most Eastern languages we ask "how age are you?" not "how old are you?". Age = infinitive. Old = superlative. With "how age are you?" the question is asking for state information. It does not allow for emotive loadings upon "young" and "old" to develop as easily. When we ask "how old are you?" we immediately put lots of people on the defensive. We also encourage folks to lie (by rationalisation) if the answer is not an "acceptable" answer. Isn't language meant to bridge human beings not cause trillions of dollars worth of misunderstandings?

Viewing the world as default opposites obscures one's ability to abstract. Combined with defensiveness which feeds fear, this oppositism has many to exaggerate the exception and downplay the rule. And to not perceive that which one is less comfortable with - denial. This is the gravest effect of ditheism. It dulls one's perception of reality. It weakens one's ability to act on ambiguity. When a population cannot distill observations, when they behave akin to those who insisted that the Earth is flat because it is uncomfortable to admit it is spherical, they cannot become smarter. They become prey to incumbents with power. Like in the Dark Ages of Europe. And no amount of KM tools are going to change this.

What's the solution? Try viewing the world naturally for 7 days -- see corollaries. Sense the dialectic. See that side of the moon that your eyes can't see. Feel the world, as default full of complementaries, apparent or not. For example when someone asks "how's your day?", consider answering "roses, thorns and in-betweens". This probably is more accurate than "good" or "bad" :-). If it helps your perception of ambiguity, great. If not revert back to status ante.

Do you have a vision for mind colonies? And where they will head?

A: Yes. Lots and lots of detail that needs to be compiled better. The essay "Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems" below essences it.

How can I complement?

A: Complement by making this message lots easier and faster to grasp. Complement by spreading the word. Complement by meeting up with like minds. Complement by becoming a Mind Ecosystems activist. Complement by mind ecosystems-enabling your services for mind grids -- become aware of plugising/socketising them. Complement by making your actionable relationships and chain-of-trust extension capability available to us. Complement by providing your service to our members. Complement by grasping, communicating, organising and structuring. Get usual returns and by learning, relationship building and from the cooperative (shares/income). Or get returns by being part of a consortium that provides turnkey mind colony establishment and operation services to mind colony promoters. Just as turnkey township contractors provide services to township promoters. Or one of the many sub-responsibilities there are in any self-sustaining organisation, be it Genghiz Khan's army, Gandhi's movement or The East India Company. Only committeds at this stage, please.


Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems

By Bala Pillai
Sydney, Australia

"Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be."

-Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"

Imagine a world where each of us can telepathically find and match with our complements instantly. Any moment we have a want or a have.

Call that point downstream, in the flowing river of our and our childrens' lives, "N".
Work backwards, upstream, from N. What is N-1?, What is N-2? Let us say N-5= us being able to find and match our complements very quickly using the Internet and through minds that bridge the wired with the unwired. In short N-5 = Halls Without Walls, Metrics-Rich Automated Matchmaking & Human Bridges

What are the problems (for which there are rewards to those who solve them), that we have to address to reach N-5? Readiness to reveal our complementaries? Knowing what it is that we really want and have? Hierarchy of values dissonance? Semantic dissonance? Cognition dissonance? Valuation (of our respective traits and talents) dissonance? Distrust? Commitment (Unconditional love) dissonance? Ethos dissonance? Interfacing our minds with the tools, protocols and processes that find, search and bridge us with our complements?

How do we swim with the current more, in finding the metrics for the answers, as we head towards N-5?

If we have put Man on the Moon, can't we make it to N-5?

Can we try Ecosystems Thinking? Can we try "reverse engineering" Nature for clues?

Each of us can see only up to a certain big picture cause-effect level. To see cause-effect beyond that big picture level, one has to think and reflect deeply or be attentive and be able to ask questions of one who does. As well, one has to interact with unlike minds, for the very existence of greater pictures to be sparked.

Ecosystems thinking has us to look at some of the biggest pictures possible. The small picture-big picture continuum is best imagined by its representation, concentric spheres.

Concentric spheres in turn are best recalled by their two-dimensional equivalents, concentric circles -- yes, those reverberating circles you see when you throw a stone into a pond. You may see 20 concentric circles.

Average man only sees with his eyes and he tends to believe that his eyes cannot belie him. He is wrong. What you see is *not* the truth, though it may be. For example, if you understood a tree by what you see, you will understand wrongly, because you cannot see the photosynthesis process. Neither can you see the crown roots. The most important parts of the tree, are hidden to the naked eye.

Perhaps the single biggest reason for average man's misperception is him thinking that he is aware of his environment. To paraphrase mind and media genius, Marshall McLuhan, a fish is not aware of water. A man who loses his legs is more aware of steps than one with legs. We are *not* aware of our environment. We only become aware of our *last* environment, when either the environment or we change. And by environment we mean the whole range of our environments including relationships, family, societal, cultural, social, physical - the works.

If you trust your eyes fully, you are seeing the smallest concentric sphere. It will not occur to you that much of what happens in this concentric sphere, is caused by a sphere one size larger. And much of what happens in the one size larger sphere was caused by a sphere yet another size larger. This goes on and on.

Why is ecosystems thinking crucial today?

Let us take the Internet. It is really an emerging ecosystem of human minds that combines those on the Net and those off with wired to unwired human bridges.

It is working best where minds share a similar ethos -- where minds have comfortable references to build trust and relationships off on the path towards becoming aware of and acting on complementaries.

When the ecosystem is more complete, it will thrive lots more than it is thriving today. Some questions you may ask are:-

(a) Why is the ecosystem of minds on the Internet not working perfectly?

(b) What components are missing?

(c) What processes are missing?

(d) What components or processes are already there, but are not understood well or not accorded the priority they deserve?

The answers to these are best found in paralleling Nature's ecosystem to that of what the ecosystem of minds should have viz (a) to (d) when it is much closer to the completeness of Nature's ecosystem, than it is now.

For example, let us for argument sake, say that there are (i) 300 components and (ii) 200 processes in Nature's ecosystem. We know that one of the topmost processes in Nature is photosynthesis. Other topmost ones are symbiosis, osmosis and catalysis.

Question: What are the equivalents of these processes in the minds ecosystem? What are the hurdles to them forming? What returns are there if these hurdles are removed? Remember, the harder the problem, the greater the reward to they who solve it. Problems = opportunities. No problems = no opportunities. What ingredients are needed to remove these hurdles and to forge these processes?

Why is photosynthesis important? It is at the bottom of the food chain. It is the process by which trees and plants obtain resources to start the whole food chain.

Now ask, what is the equivalent of photosynthesis in the ecosystem of minds on the Internet? What is the most significant source of resources for significant new Internet ventures? In the West, it is passionbits including Open Source and venture capital. How about your ethos' space?

What are the parallels to the other 300 components and 198 processes in Nature's ecosystem, in your mind ecosystem?

Would trust between participants be one? Would more intensive networking between minds be another? Would networking between complementary folks, as in Nature, make it more worthwhile? How can complementariness be revealed easier? Would a database of profiles that is shared by participants be a way?

Would a rating on each of the 6Rs be one?

[6Rs = risk-taking,resourcefulness, responsibility, responsiveness, reliability, rapport-building]

How do we rate the 6Rs? Can we experiment with some of the models currently used in psychological testing, while we find better ways?

Is interaction a precusor to trust building? How do we increase interaction? What are the key ingredients of interaction, that make it a precursor to trust building? Would the sense of "presence" when we see each other face-to-face, be one? How do we recreate this in the minds ecosystem? Can we go some way through the sense of presence in Instant Messaging and Webcams?

Of these which is of a higher priority than another? Why?

The prioritised and sequenced solving of all these needs are income opportunities for minds in your ethos space.

The unearthing of other whitespace, unfilled space in your mind ecosystem, will show up all the other opportunities.

And that comes from ecosystems thinking. That is why ecosystems thinking is important.

'Ants have no (or little) problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly every other species. With minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead, not trailing fractions behind ants?'

And ants do not have government, NGOs, universities, religion, media or bank accounts to pass the buck to.

(This message is released for use, redistribution, or modification under the OpenContent License . In plain English, the license relieves the author of any liability or implication of warranty, grants others permission to use the Content in whole or in part, and ensures that the original author will be properly credited when the Content is used. It also grants others permission to modify and redistribute the Content if they clearly mark what changes have been made, when they were made, and who made them. Finally, the license ensures that if someone else bases a work on OpenContent, the resultant work will be made available as OpenContent as well. Please send comments, suggestions or edits to the author, Bala Pillai at bala@apic.net Thanks)
Bala Pillai
Yahoo IM: bala2pillai Email: bala@apic.net
"Networking Minds in Halls Without Walls"
Founder/Producer, The Asia Pacific Internet Company (Since 1995)
Founder/Producer, Malaysia.Net, Tamil.Net, Sydney.Net Etc (Since 1995)
http://www.apic.net/news.phtml

content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Ants
have no (or little)
problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly every other
species. Humans are bogged down by anxieties over food and shelter.
With
minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead, not trailing
fractions
behind ants?

A: He evolves and invents self-sustaining
telebusiness (mind)
ecosystems (aka mind colonies). [Think of business = a social process
of trust-building and complementing].
Akin to a cross-media evolution of the non-violent warrior and violent
pacifist
Gandhi (including some of Gandhi's money man, then href="http://www.malaysia.net/lists/sangkancil/2000-12/msg00356.html">
Birla), Bala is a "feeling
of connectedness", self-reliance, self-esteem, standards, Open Source
(strategy,
connections, processes, content and software) and communityness
activist.
[Make a living with acumen, whatever form it takes]. And he advises
companies
on change leadership, virtual organisations and those that need fast
ins
into Asia. As well, in preparing for a US and UK
services-buying/strategic alliances office presence, he is identifying
suppliers and partners.

Since 1995, he's been onto mind colonies
for shared-ethos groups for
Asian and Asia-loving minds off online mind communities, mailing lists,
forums,
print/TV and ground locations. Pioneering and leading mindcosms in
their
space, like Malaysia.Net, Tamil.Net, Asian Internet Marketing Community
are
amongst those led by Bala. At earlier formative stages in their
lifecycle are Teleindia.Com, Singapore.Net, Indonesia.Net, Pinoydom.Com
and Apec.Net

Q:
What are mind colonies?

A: Think of them as parallels to ant
colonies. Or as ageographical villages
for shared-ethos groups.

href="http://www.cosin.org/docs/img7.htm">Imagine you are
looking at Planet Earth from the Moon. Imagine nerves running all over
spherical Earth. Notice human minds like dots pulsating and sending
signals between them. Some nerve connections are href="http://www.ryze.com/go/orgnet"> bold , some are dotted.
Some minds are emitting a lot, some nothing, some in-between. Some
nerves have lots of noise/resistance/signal loss, some are flowing
smoothly and rapidly like cholesterol-free arteries, some in-between.

Can
you dissect "mind colonies" for me?

A: Mind colonies are href="http://www.planetwork.net/2003conf/textpages/whitepaper.html">trust
and spirit-rich, self-sustaining, cross-media networked mind exchanges
for shared-ethos groups. Energetic full-time hosts catalyse minds in a
mind grid to learn, work, play and complement each other. The
catalysing currency is a colony equivalent of Diners Card ( href="http://www.openmoney.org">alternative currency).

What
are the most important imperatives
in making mind colonies work?

A: (a) Shared-ethos (Common Purpose is
*not* enough). Spirit. Passionate Catalysts. Legitimacy/transparency. href="http://www.planetwork.net/2003conf/textpages/whitepaper.html">Trust.
Customer Intimacy. Courage. Chutzpah. A Complementing Mindset.
Commitment. Strategic Change Agency Acumen. Process Savvy. Innovation
Climate. Open-Mindedness.

(b) Grasping that 90% of the value of a
person today is the sum of:-

i) how she uses her mind *plus*

ii) how great she is at building
actionable relationships

Notice none of these appear in the
balance sheets of companies -- does
that give you a clue for why the telco+hardware+software+accountants
driven
dot com bomb happened and can recur unless the underlying metrics are
perceived
and fixed? And therefore greater opportunities for the earlier
foresightful birds who can see where the value in an
Acumen/Knowledge/Networked Minds era
springs from? The opportunities from organising bankable social capital
valuation
metrics? You may ask what is the root cause of this gross misvaluation.
It
is the mislanguage thus the miscognition of resourcing. The language of
resourcing,
of finance, is accounting. Accounting values ends and tangibles rather
than
processes, climates and values. Accounting values the end, the golden
egg
more than the process, the golden goose. It values the product of a
mind
more than that mind. That which is under-recognised is under-measured.
That
which is under-measured is under-valued. That which is under-valued is
under-resourced.
Thus the misallocation of resources. Retrofitting of the mislanguage,
accounting,
is not enough. A fundamental shift in line with Nature's common sense
is
required

What's
cross-media?

A: First take the mind as the pivot. Be
mind-centric and mindcosm-centric (as contrasted with being tools,
medium or protocol-centric). For example, be story-telling-centric.
Realise that *complementing* is the game that all folks are doing with
the plethora of F2F (face-to-face), email, email groups, instant
messaging, web, POTS phones, VOIP, mobile voice, SMS/MMS, WiFi,
broadband, television, video-conferencing, radio, P2P, streaming,
books,
photos, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, call centres, IVR,
interactive television and movies. Get better and better at coming up
with the right cocktail mix of these for given shared-ethos groups, for
categories of purposes. Always bearing foremost in mind that you are
dealing with human minds that want simplicity and fun in complementing.
That they put up with dissected complexity only as much as they are not
aware of better alternatives in an
overly-cluttered world.

Is
it hard to sell mind colonies to prospective members?

A: No. Because they create jobs and
income opportunities. They bring an
A-Z of small and medium service and product providors, who are first of
all
human minds (eg Ryzers) together. For example, they bring those who
want jobs and income opportunities in the Knowledge/Acumen/Networked
Era with those
who can train or apprentice them into them in a congenial way. They
develop
societies. They are easy to sell because they are self-sustaining.

How
do mind colonies make money?

A: (a) Similar to how credit card
companies do. just more, because a
deeper set of services are provided and underutilised capacity is
unleashed. Prospective members go through psychometrics and credit
evaluation, and
based on that amounts averaging US$2000 is put into their account with
the
cooperative. This "free" money reduces the customer acquisition cost
and
the costs of incentiving folks to self-change. They *must* use the
money
to buy products or services from the network. And they repay this by
providing
products or services to the network. When someone buys a product or
service
from a fellow mind for $100, they are charged $110 in their account
with
the cooperative, and the seller gets $90. The $20 goes towards all the
trust,
matching, clearing, camaraderie building, consensus climate, standards
leadership,
role models provision and digital-era societal/cultural services the
cooperative
conceives, organises and provides mostly through third party service
providors
or by member firms.

(b) after introductory periods,
membership fees and selected user-pay services to members.

(c) fees from larger companies for
providing targetted audiences to
them - these are companies that satisfy a strict criteria pre-approved
by
the membership and applied by a task force for this purpose (an
evolution of how the Olympics business model works. The nexus for the
Olympics is
the attentiondom from love of sports; the nexus for mind colonies is
the
attentiondom from the love of culture/ethos/societal longevity)

What's
the biggest challenge then?

A: (a) Buying. You would think common
sense is common right? Wrong! You
would think that if ants have no problems with food and shelter,
Mankind with minds should have less problems with food and shelter
right? Wrong! Getting the attention of service providors to grasp
this, in a
"30 seconds of CNN attention mesmerised" world and to sequence and
synchronize them together is the biggest challenge. So if you can
complement me in speeding up our buying of these services, by
referring service vendors who have attention spans and who are
interested in ongoing revenue streams for ongoingly providing
ever-improving services in their space, rather than a quick immediate
sale tomorrow , we can launch full-fledged mind colonies (given
the acumen and wisdom gathered since 1995 and before and the viral
marketing extendible beach-heads of minds in our existing colonies) in
no time.

(b) Communicating common sense. For
example, (i) that one man's income is another's expense; that we can
increase income in a network by incentiving expense; that we can fund
expense incentiving by liquidityising and unleashing underutilised and
undervalued social capital. That, that which is undervalued is
under-resourced and that which is under-resourced is where woes pus.
(ii) that as bad as hope (aka optimism) is, hopelessness (aka
pessimism) is no better. Pessimism is a shameful waste of mindtime.
Mindtime that is better spent on precise diagnosis given ambiguity, and
prioritised/sequenced greater good/lesser evil of available solutions.
We should tax the cancer that pessimism is!

Why
is Common Sense so rare?

The main and root cause is href="http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/data/d0004723.html">ditheism
- the unnatural belief in two opposite forces. Humans have drifted too
far
from Nature and Naturalism. Ditheism has bred viewing the world with
binary
(opposites) lenses. Consider the following examples: Is not light more
complementary
to darkness than opposite? What use is a lightbulb, if not for
darkness?
Are not males more complementary to females than opposite? Are not
plugs
more complementary to sockets than opposite? Is not pretty
complementary with ugly? If every flowering plant were a rose plant,
would you like roses as much? Doesn't the diverse ecovariety of plants
play a role in roses being special? Is not war more complementary
to peace than opposite? Is it not true that it is those who have
first-hand
weary experience of the pains of war who provide the greatest energy
for
peace efforts? Is it not true, that prolonged peace-time leads to
apathy and denial,
which in turn leads to ignoring the plight of sections of the
population?
Which in turn leads to Martin Luther King's "riots are the language
of the unheard". And which John F Kennedy remarks with "those who make
peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable"? And war is
the last straw of cascadingly intense tension?  Take any pair that
are said to be opposites and see it as a process, and you will sense a
complementary
circle of life. Similar to waves, mountain ranges and the spinning
orbiting Earth.

Default viewing things as opposites has
lots of ripple effects. Ignoring
corollaries is one.  For example when someone says "Oh it is
expensive".
We ought to be thinking "expensive compared to what?" and "can I afford
to
have the problem continue -- can I  afford *not* to spend in
solving
the problemt? What are the costs of *not* buying?". And the best answer
would
come from balancing the obvious with the corollary.

Another ripple effect is defensiveness
and hypocrisy because of 
focus on the superlatives rather than the infinitives. For example, in
most
Eastern languages we ask "how age are you?" not "how old are you?". Age
=
infinitive. Old = superlative. With "how age are you?" the question is
asking
for state information. It does not allow for emotive loadings upon
"young"
and "old" to develop as easily. When we ask "how old are you?" we
immediately
put lots of people on the defensive. We also encourage folks to lie (by
rationalisation)
if the answer is not an "acceptable" answer. Isn't language meant to
bridge
human beings not cause trillions of dollars worth of misunderstandings?

Viewing the world as default opposites
obscures one's ability to
abstract. Combined with defensiveness which feeds fear, this oppositism
has many to exaggerate the exception and downplay the rule. And to not
perceive that which one is less comfortable with - denial.
 This is the gravest effect of  ditheism. It dulls one's
perception of
reality. It weakens one's ability to act on ambiguity. When a
population cannot distill observations, when they behave akin to those
who insisted that the Earth is flat because it is uncomfortable to
admit it is spherical, they cannot become smarter. They become prey to
incumbents with power. Like in the Dark Ages of Europe. And no amount
of KM tools are going to change this.

What's the solution? Try viewing the
world naturally for 7 days --
see corollaries. Sense the dialectic. See that side of the moon that
your eyes can't see. Feel the world, as default full of
complementaries, apparent or not.
For example when someone asks "how's your day?", consider answering
"roses,
thorns and in-betweens". This probably is more accurate than "good" or
"bad" :-). If it helps your perception of ambiguity, great. If not
revert back to status ante.

Do
you have a vision for mind colonies?
And where they will head?

A: Yes. Lots and lots of detail that
needs to be compiled better. The
essay "Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems" below essences it.

How
can I complement?

A: Complement by making this message lots
easier and faster to grasp. Complement by spreading the word.
Complement by meeting up
with like minds. Complement by becoming a Mind Ecosystems activist.
Complement by mind ecosystems-enabling your services for mind grids --
become aware of plugising/socketising
them. Complement
by making your actionable relationships and chain-of-trust extension
capability available to us. Complement by providing your service to our
members. Complement by grasping, communicating, organising and
structuring. Get usual returns and by learning, relationship building
and from the cooperative (shares/income). Or get returns by being part
of a consortium that provides turnkey mind
colony establishment and operation services to mind colony promoters.
Just
as turnkey township contractors provide services to township promoters.
Or one of the many sub-responsibilities there are in any
self-sustaining
organisation, be it Genghiz Khan's army, Gandhi's movement or The East
India
Company. Only committeds at this stage, please.

Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems

By Bala Pillai

Sydney, Australia

"Progress lies not in enhancing what
is, but in advancing toward what
will be."

-Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on
the Shore"

Imagine a world where each of us can
telepathically find and match with
our complements instantly. Any moment we have a want or a have.

Call that point downstream, in the
flowing river of our and our childrens'
lives, "N".

What are the problems (for which there
are rewards to those who solve them),
that we have to address to reach N-5? Readiness to reveal our
complementaries? Knowing what it is that we really want and have?
Hierarchy of values dissonance? Semantic dissonance? Cognition
dissonance? Valuation (of our respective traits and talents)
dissonance? Distrust? Commitment (Unconditional love) dissonance? Ethos
dissonance? Interfacing our minds with the tools, protocols and
processes that find, search and bridge us with our complements?

How do we swim with the current more, in
finding the metrics for the
answers, as we head towards N-5?

If we have put Man on the Moon, can't we
make it to N-5?

Can we try Ecosystems Thinking?
Can we try "reverse engineering" Nature for clues?

Each of us can see only up to a certain
big picture cause-effect level.
To see cause-effect beyond that big picture level, one has to think and
reflect deeply or be attentive and be able to ask questions of one who
does. As well, one has to interact with unlike minds, for the very
existence of
greater pictures to be sparked.

Ecosystems thinking has us to look at
some of the biggest pictures possible.
The small picture-big picture continuum is best imagined by its
representation,
concentric spheres.

Concentric spheres in turn are best
recalled by their two-dimensional equivalents, concentric circles
-- yes, those reverberating circles you see when you throw a stone into
a pond. You may see 20 concentric circles.

Average man only sees with his eyes and
he tends to believe that his
eyes cannot belie him. He is wrong. What you see is *not* the
truth, though
it may be. For example, if you understood a tree by what you see,
you
will understand wrongly, because you cannot see the photosynthesis
process. Neither can you see the crown roots. The most important parts
of the tree, are hidden to the naked eye.

Perhaps the single biggest reason for
average man's misperception is
him thinking that he is aware of his environment. To paraphrase mind
and media genius, Marshall McLuhan, a fish is not aware of water.
A man who loses his legs is more aware of steps than one with legs. We
are *not* aware of our environment. We only become aware of our
*last* environment, when either the environment or we change. And by
environment we mean the whole range of our environments including
relationships, family, societal, cultural, social, physical - the
works.

If you trust your eyes fully, you are
seeing the smallest concentric sphere.
It will not occur to you that much of what happens in this concentric
sphere,
is caused by a sphere one size larger. And much of what happens in the
one
size larger sphere was caused by a sphere yet another size larger. This
goes on and on.

Why is ecosystems thinking crucial
today?

Let us take the Internet. It is really
an emerging ecosystem of human
minds that combines those on the Net and those off with wired to
unwired human bridges.

It is working best where minds share a
similar ethos -- where minds
have comfortable references to build trust and relationships off on the
path towards becoming aware of and acting on complementaries.

When the ecosystem is more complete, it
will thrive lots more than it
is thriving today. Some questions you may ask are:-

(a) Why is the ecosystem of minds on the
Internet not working perfectly?

(b) What components are missing?

(c) What processes are missing?

(d) What components or processes are
already there, but are not understood well or not accorded the priority
they deserve?

The answers to these are best found in
paralleling Nature's ecosystem to that of what the ecosystem of minds
should have viz (a) to (d) when it is much closer to the completeness
of Nature's ecosystem, than it is now.

For example, let us for argument sake,
say that there are (i) 300 components
and (ii) 200 processes in Nature's ecosystem. We know that one of the
topmost
processes in Nature is photosynthesis. Other topmost ones are
symbiosis,
osmosis and catalysis.

Question: What are the equivalents of
these processes in the minds ecosystem?
What are the hurdles to them forming? What returns are there if these
hurdles are removed? Remember, the harder the problem, the greater the
reward to they
who solve it. Problems = opportunities. No problems = no opportunities.
What
ingredients are needed to remove these hurdles and to forge these
processes?

Why is photosynthesis important? It is at
the bottom of the food chain.
It is the process by which trees and plants obtain resources to start
the
whole food chain.

Now ask, what is the equivalent of
photosynthesis in the ecosystem of
minds on the Internet? What is the most significant source of resources
for
significant new Internet ventures? In the West, it is passionbits
including Open Source and venture capital. How about your ethos' space?

What are the parallels to the other 300
components and 198 processes in
Nature's ecosystem, in your mind ecosystem?

Would trust between participants be one?
Would more intensive networking between minds be another? Would
networking between complementary folks, as in Nature, make it more
worthwhile? How can complementariness be revealed easier? Would a
database of profiles that is shared by participants be a way?

Would a rating on each of the 6Rs be one?

[6Rs = risk-taking,resourcefulness,
responsibility, responsiveness, reliability, rapport-building]

How do we rate the 6Rs? Can we experiment
with some of the models currently
used in psychological testing, while we find better ways?

Is interaction a precusor to trust
building? How do we increase interaction? What are the key ingredients
of interaction, that make it a precursor to trust
building? Would the sense of "presence" when we see each other
face-to-face, be one? How do we recreate this in the minds ecosystem?
Can we go some way through the sense of presence in Instant Messaging
and Webcams?

Of these which is of a higher priority
than another? Why?

The prioritised and sequenced solving of
all these needs are income opportunities
for minds in your ethos space.

The unearthing of other whitespace,
unfilled space in your mind ecosystem, will show up all the other
opportunities.

And that comes from ecosystems thinking.
That is why ecosystems thinking is important.

'Ants
have no
(or little) problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly
every
other species. With minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead,
not
trailing fractions behind ants?'

(This message is released for use, redistribution, or
modification
under the OpenContent License
. In plain English, the license relieves the author of any
liability or implication
of warranty, grants others permission to use the Content in whole or in
part, and ensures that the original author will be properly credited
when
the Content is used. It also grants others permission to modify and
redistribute
the Content if they clearly mark what changes have been made, when they
were
made, and who made them. Finally, the license ensures that if someone
else
bases a work on OpenContent, the resultant work will be made available
as
OpenContent as well. Please send comments, suggestions or edits to the
author, Bala Pillai at bala@apic.net Thanks)

Bala Pillai

Yahoo IM: bala2pillai Email: bala@apic.net

"Networking Minds in Halls Without Walls"

Founder/Producer, The Asia Pacific Internet Company (Since 1995)

Founder/Producer, Malaysia.Net, Tamil.Net, Sydney.Net Etc (Since 1995)

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