Finally, I found the fuller context of what Matt was talking about, at 1:14:49, here.
“What if there’s a day where, when I have a thought, and… you guys are all there in my consciousness, the world is there in my consciousness; [and] people who have already made sense of certain things that I’m attempting to make sense have become transparent to me. And then when I want to articulate those thoughts, there are vehicles for me to do that that are really really easy and so, things that you need when you need them to make sense of the world in a more intelligent way or at the level that’s required to comprehend what we’re dealing and comes into the frame when you need them. I’m wondering how this conversation can be continuous without it being synchronous.”
That’s an illuminating, tremendous rich epiphany of a possible future that many people working towards, including here in OGM. I have a small and a larger piece to contribute to it. The “small” piece has to do with making conversation continuous without it being synchronous. I addressed the how-to of it, first, in a workshop I gave about “intermedia synergy,” defined as follows:
Synergy brings together the depth of the printed medium, the interactivity of the computer medium, and the intimacy of face-to-face interactions. Intermedia synergy brings the computer users “out” of the virtual world and allows them to network face to face, to exchange services, goods, and ideas, and to make friends. Asynchronous transfer mode is a method for dynamic human communication via the Internet at any time and from any place with a computer.
(at the Electronic Networking Association’s annual conference, Philadelphia, 1988)
Of course, the tools supporting intermedia synergy changed a lot in the last 32 years, but its fundamental principles and practices that I outlined there haven’t changed much.
The second aspect of what SymmaSys could contribute to Matt’s “dream space” is about expanding the subject of sensemaking from me to we to all of us. What if not only an individual but, let’s say, OGM wants to articulate a response to an emergent challenge that other groups have already dealt with and could find a vehicle (e.g. pattern-language-based knowledge ecosystem)? What if we could make sense of the world in a more intelligent way and at the level that’s required to comprehend what we’re dealing with? That’s why the design of SymmaSys, that we will discuss here, will be optimized for enabling mutual learning among people, organizations/communities, and social systems.