# An Abstract Inviting Your Suggestions

**URL:** http://discourse.iapct.org/t/an-abstract-inviting-your-suggestions/1001
**Category:** CSG1995
**Created:** [May 7, 1995, 2:15pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/an-abstract-inviting-your-suggestions/1001 "1995-05-07T14:15:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![George\_Por](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/54ee81/32.png) [@George\_Por](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/George_Por)
#### Post date: [May 7, 1995, 2:15pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/an-abstract-inviting-your-suggestions/1001/1 "1995-05-07T14:15:24Z")

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Dear Gary,

I'm grateful to you for clearly articulating a key criteria that indicate  
whether the emerging technologies of communication and knowledge building  
do indeed form an infrastructure to enable the Big Shift to a sustainable  
civilization: whether they enable "various collective actors to modify  
their programming to be symbiotic with each other and with Gaia."

Such modification of programming is both a sign and a condition of the Big  
Shift: the apperance of the self-aware and self-organizing collective  
intelligence of humankind.

You may be right that "most people just dumbly execute the collective  
programs that they are parasitized by," but if we want to promote the  
awakening from our collective hypnosis, we'd better focus our attention on  
the tiny signals in which that awakening, that modification of the  
programming is \*already\* happening on the Net and in the analog world.  
David Hawkins said once, imitate nature where great beginnings are hardly  
perceptible.

The most important task of evolutionary agents, from my perspective, is not  
changing the world but observing the ways in which it is already changing,  
and amplifying those changes by stewarding their self-aware and  
self-organizing collective intelligence.

You said, "A special type of self and mutually critical creative reformation  
communication is needed." Would you please elaborate on what you see as a  
special type of self?

Gary, the last time we met, it was years ago, at the American Society for  
Cybernetics conference in Victoria. I'm looking forward to meet you in  
Toronto at the Knowledge Tools conference, where I will present a position  
paper on a Knowledge Management Framework for a Sustainable Civilization.

By the way if there's interest, I'd be happy to upload the abstract to the  
list and receive some feedback.

If any member of this list coming to Toronto is interested in forming a SIG  
for a collaborative, systemic inquiry into the emancipatory pontential of  
cyberspace, let me know by e-mail; I offer to coordinate our communication  
about it until the meeting in June.

George

George Por  
Organizational Learning Systems  
gpor@ols.com

"Electronic media is to be one of love's most powerful and effective tools  
of transformation during the last days, facilitating education  
and catalyzing widespread awakening."  
Starseed: The 3rd Millennium  
by Ken Carey

> **···**
>
> On Wed, 3 May 1995, Gary Boyd [Education/AudioVisual]tel.1-514-848-3459. fax 1-514-848-3441] wrote:
> 
> > > Yes in a sense communication can be the answer if it enables  
> > > various collective actors to modify their programming to be symbiotic  
> > > with each other and with Gaia. However most people just dumbly  
> > > execute the collective programs that they are parasitized by, and  
> > > moreover do so by using whatever communications channels are available  
> > > to them. Cheerfully spreading pathological cultural virii (like the  
> > > US republican radio talk show hosts).  
> > > A special type of self and mutually critical creative reformation  
> > > communication is needed.  
> > > Can we create such interactions via the net? maybe?