to reflect here a bit on the state of current OGM prototyping (as reflected in the tools we’ve decided to use and are maybe desiring to hack with somewhat…weekly zoom chats, utube, gmail, discourse, roam, kumu…) what does work (motivates, engages) and what doesn’t work, (stifles, feels limiting, switches you off) for y’all in this moment?
thank you @peterkaminski for the prompt in the last weekly call to start building and prototyping at whatever small level…starting with (identifying) what we have to use and any small improvements (hacks) we could be making…
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…and in reply myself here (now that i’m caught up listening to all the weekly zoom calls) my initial, simplistic and superficial response is to complain about the sensory overload! There are (for me) too many disembodied meta clouds floating around (which are ok for daydreaming) that staring at for too long just lead me to a lot of non-sense making and actual disappointment and despair in not being able to contribute…made worse by this style of writing of mine here that doesn’t always make sense to me either…
…ok, so maybe let me just take a breath here (how do I drop in here somewhere a real bodily felt sense sound effect? or a visual? emojis anyone pleez?)
well ok, anyhow, I’ll just take whatever stab I can with this linear form of sensemaking that we have here…
…how to better ‘sense MAKE’ with you all here? What would ‘make’ better sense for me that i could offer to y’all and y’all to me? what or where is the common ground… ground to stand upon and for real embodiment to take place and land amidst these fraught filled meta narratives and endless netherworlds of cyberspace?
@Jerry, yes i do have a brain that i’d like to someone connect with your brain but it’s in a totally different format from what’s currently supported here… mine sits more intuitively in my own body and is accessed in somatic prompts rather than mechanically existing on a website like yours
To consider what might help me better within our current platform options (and starting with the weekly zoom calls) is maybe more one on ones or small group check-ins rather than these huge cumbersome orchestras directed and conducted soley by @Jerry Again for me this form of OGM is a huge sensory overload that intimidates me from wanting to join in.
Again to look at the current tools we’re using to prototype the ogm. What tweaks might we make in better modelling the kind of ogm that feels good for each of us, that make more intuitive sense? Can I ask you guys what that might feel like for each one of you?
Ok, so I don’t also start to drown in my own self-generated endless feedback loop and sensory overload I’ll finish off with one last question. …
Where or who is actually practicing the storythreading/weaving thing that’s been batted around here for a while now? Could others offer a bit more of this sort of practice other than @dougcarmichael and @JayGolden so that it feels we are ‘making’ or embodying ourselves a bit more here? Could we practice/model this very sort of thing much more in the weekly calls? To make those small tweaks/hacks in the zoom calls already why not? Whatever happened to those hastags/memes/small shifts/milton handshakes? Maybe AofH ‘Harvesting’ as we go type thing? Artifacts? Some piece of art, something tangible as our takeaway after each encounter? I’m not seeing any rudimentary attempts at mapmaking in these calls either? Small squiggles, graffiti to begin with anyone?
Ok, well anyhow, just looking forward to collectively squiggling and doodling with you all in a more conducive environment than this one we’re currently inhabiting.
….not sure if I belong to this guild quite yet, but maybe subconsciously I am in my own way trying to do some bits of threading and weaving write here and now??
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Thanks @michaeldobbie for articalating, giving voice to the pain we all feel, the problem we sense the acceleration of non-sense. A problem shared is a problem halved.
I made an attempt to contribute to the conversation using hypothesis annotations. However
it looks like discord does not plays nice with them.
Will be looking into it, and hopefully offer a solution.
In the meantime, here is a link to my current annotations
https://hypothes.is/users/gyuri
Hypothesis annotation links would normally load the page and then display the annotations, but apparently not quite here.
To see the annotations in context you may need to download and install hypothesis browser extension from here
@Jerry It may be a good idea if you could create a Hypothesis Group for this discord channel.
Lauren created one for CICOLAB
https://hypothes.is/groups/ExB16KA1/cico
and she could probably assist you with.
I would like to move my annotations to that group.
One think I can do to start with is to “HyperMap” these conversations based on the annotations. I got the plumbing needed as a prototype:
And here is the best of all possible community to share it with that I could dream of.
Then with the right backing, can move these conversations to a new no-Platform where People are the Platform
https://twitter.com/TrailMarks
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I may be in the minority but I treat the sensory overload of the calls like a stream, and listen to voices and add my check in and enjoy what is happening quite a lot. I treat it like a senseful smorgasboard, not something I need to make seem coherent. Kind of like the gray market on a street in Moscow where every vendor is 18 inches away or less and you wind your way through, with your hand on your wallet and your eyes wide open.
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Hi Michael! Indeed, that makes a lot of sense. You should Just Do It (in the immortal words of Nike, the goddess of victory, lol).
Come up with a topic and a format, recruit some compadres, and do some one-on-ones or small group calls. Do report-outs back to OGM Forum somewhere.
Let me know if you’d like to do a one-on-one call to brainstorm more. 
Hi Gyuri! I would never want to discourage you, but two thoughts:
- Discourse has a significant front-end JavaScript component, it’s not likely to play well with Hypothesis.
- I know it will be clunkier, but since Discourse natively is a commenting and discussion tool, could you just use its native quoting and replies for the conversation you’d usually put into Hypothesis?
Also, for what it’s worth, a few years ago there was a thread about Hypothesis and Discourse in the Discourse Meta forum:
It’s discussing an integration that goes the other way, making a smart onebox from a Hypothesis thread to be included in a Discourse post, but it shows at least some people think about using the two tools together.
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I wouldn’t consider the Discourse, recordings on YouTube and/or the mailing list the attempt to get to an OGM platform/brain or similar, because the software is just terrible and would even be a downgrade from a TheBrain (or other) graph (not to say that that’s very good, to the contrary). Instead, these places might be used for some time or forever to coordinate activities, and also create/collect content.
The mining, curation, sensemaking should ideally happen in a much better way: some data semantics, some controls to navigate/reference, curated/organized feeds of material, because if it’s not like that or trapped in one place/product, I honestly don’t see how to ever get anywhere with signal vs. noise, information overload and the ongoing practice of simply increasing the record without proper tooling nor ways to make proper use of such unstructured, stuck piles/silos.
Then there’s the “issue” that the OGM name/brand/meeting attracts many people who have quite different views of what the nature of the gathering is, and this might apply to myself too as well as it doesn’t necessarily be a problem, if we together somehow manage to create a space where practices, conventions, tools, formats, and so on allow everybody to do their respective things and in such a way also contributing to the larger “ecosystem”. Just to mention a few examples: there’s the brain graph people, system thinkers, media curators, those who want to found a facilitators business, sensemaking people, maybe more, I’m an Engelbart/Nelson/more hypertext/hypermedia/tooling guy, some might personally overlap, some might be in disagreement/conflict or simply separate/non-interested.
So if you’re serious about practically prototyping, consider to take a look at the Action category or post a proposal/request/invitation there, maybe contribute a little to the experiments or provide guidance/feedback to the activities there. The category this thread is in is likely more big-picture philosophical, abstract speculation about OGM, and I personally wouldn’t know how the many places of growing content collections are of any tangible help to improve what would be needed towards some kind of OGM ambition, except for us updating our natural brains one at a time by thinking about, discussing and coordinating in regard of how to proceed.
Hypothesis, be it their centralized server/service or the confused idea of installing a browser plugin for it, I would rather have a discussion about the Web Annotation standard and how we/OGM could come up with another, independent implementation of/for ourselves. Unfortunately, Discourse is technically kind of bad as well, as the embedded HTML in their JSON API is not even well-formed, so I wonder who’s supposed to make reasonable use of that except their own Website frontend in the browser. Don’t understand how they apparently don’t see an issue with trying of getting away with that, because want to see them leaving a curly bracket of their JSON out along the same “reasoning”/“rationale”, which likely would collapse everything that relies on it. Therefore, this Discourse in my mind is just throwaway-communication to bootstrap away from, in order to hopefully eventually get to a better place. Likely, many will disagree/object, no surprise there.
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regardless of tools or platforms we use, something is always open for improvement or for trying something out, for hacking, for maybe pairing something to something else and thus protototyping the next better way of doing something…moving in the direction desired…
the main point here is what is it that gets people to want to even begin, to maybe take the small, simple action of engaging just by reading something, or feeling motivated to just reply or something, to share a thought that might then slowly build and lead into another step in an ongoing way…
what is it that motivates, engages, connects and allows embodiment (action, response, protototyping) to take place here? who is inviting, hosting and how are they (or what is) doing this?
Just from a brief look at the amount of perspectives, questions, answers in this Discourse and the many online meetings and their recordings going on, with the many difficult, complex, urgent problems we’re facing today, if one were seriously trying to keep some overview, make some sense, arrive at some learning/understanding, get a handle on navigating through the mess, I think the alternative of simply growing the data without decent tools to make proper use of it, is not that appealing, or is it? Not even in terms of big-scale world problems, but for coordinating any activity of some online group or organizing their materials is already hard enough for no good reason.
…indeed, to frame ogm from this perspective and then try to solve from this view makes it all so overwhelming…we could also start from the view of who we are right here and now, the few who have taken the time to engage in this space and try to hack that further into some next level of engagement that seems satisfying or rewarding in some way…
soooo, yeah, since it’s just you and me here in this moment and we don’t appear to share a similar language, how might each of us add something to improve our potential collaboration and prototyping of ‘something better’? i think in terms of relationships, small groups and trust not in technological hacks and it seems you work the opposite way around…
so my dear sk, shall we just leave it at that for now? …simply to make this acknowledgement of our complexity and wait for further input from the larger ‘brain cloud’ hopefully forming around us? …or do you feel a little motivation to act differently?
my offering would be to somehow amplify this predicament of ours here to the larger brain/community, collective intelligensia in the making…but i won’t go into detail here just yet, will wait to hear if there’s some other response from you if any…no worries either way…
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thanks for the offer to connect, just doing it is never that simple, i always preferred those t-shirts that say ‘don’t do it’, there’s too much anxiety and doing goin on in this culture and not enough listening, ppl feeling comfortable just being (themselves) (together)…
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Feeling overwhelmed is very common, but I don’t want it to allow blocking me and find productive ways to work around it. From the current situation we’re at, which is a general mess and confusion, little structure, little direction, low on activity, maybe not really grasping/analyzing the nature of the problems even, I can imagine bootstrapping forward by inventoring/assessing the moment, to then invite deeper analysis, and then hopefully identify the levers/opportunities to efficiently/effectively move ahead, by avoiding getting stuck or trapped in some tangent/disagreement. It’s true that we’re likely not all domain experts, working on problem solving directly, nor are we in power/control to improve much beyond this, our own immediate scope.
But then, developing/prototyping the tools and methodologies that would be needed and help in/with/for a more serious future scenario, that takes forever, is tedious, slow and difficult work. Therefore, I don’t see the point of simply waiting until eventually something might arrive or not, that’s not really a viable strategy in my opinion, and almost a guarantee that nothing good/important/helpful will happen my mere chance/coincidence. At the same time, things get worse on their own, and the pile of material keeps growing and some gets lost unnecessarily so, which is why I already feel some urgency to come up with ways for generally staying aware about all of it, and reducing the noise to summarize/wrap it into better, cleaner signal, before it gets way too much or needs to be scrapped/abandoned/ignored, which is in general part of our difficulties on the large scale just as well, suggesting that we’ll always better off the earlier we start with any and all of this.
So fine, language might be different, I care more about the essence/meaning that’s behind it. Sure, relations need time to form, but then, on the other hand, for large-scale activities/projects, I guess it would be entirely inconceivable and impractical trying to establish a connection with every contributor to the articles you read on Wikipedia, or the software you’re using, etc., so at some point some shared general agreements which are acknowledged as good guidelines for constructive, ethical behavior (as common in these larger projects of/by humanity) design in the trust that many paticipants will do the right thing, or at least the ambition can be maintained, even if you don’t know any of them personally nor are aware of their character, and in fact, allows constructive collaboration even in cases where the participating parties otherwise are deeply in disagreement and conflict about every single other point.
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Thanks for the observation, Michael – I really appreciate it.
It’s still chaotic, I agree, and we’ll see if we start to see some coherence and convergence.
FWIW, It’s only been on the last few big calls, and some other calls with e.g. CICOLAB and the smaller Free Jerry’s Brain guild that I’ve started to feel more “ppl feeling comfortable just being (themselves) (together)”. But now, it’s starting to feel, a little, like things are clicking.
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Coordination may not be the optimal form for this group. Its great for discovery with dyads forming from the flow when they recognize something
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appreciating this concise definition of what’s needed
cb
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So if you and I agree that this is roughly the direction of what’s needed, then
- Why doesn’t it exist yet?
- What prevented us and others from simply building it?
- When will someone start to solve/remove the blockers and/or work around them?
At this point, I’m basically out, it’s WAAAY too slow, confused, ignorant, flawed, took too many years of talking with people. There’s the important work to do instead which nobody does.
@skreutzer your impatience is shared.
However, as one who’ve been part of run up to https://thedemoat50.org/
where some of our conversations started, I found OGM and the people around and conversations scintillating and of great promise. The synergy with https://www.collectiveintelligencecollaboratory.com/
MetaCAugs is a peer learning group within a broader P2P learning ecosystem supported by @Open_Learning_Commons is stimulating although I find it difficult to keep up with the time demand.
All in all, considering that Jerry broached the idea of OGM to my knowledge first in December last year I think I see much progress. Virtually every week I see progress and convergence. I believe we will get to practical and significant results within the next 6 months. We all are aware that it may be too little too late, but I see that in many that sense of urgency leads to redoubled effort.
Very much in response to the conversations within this community and the growing sense of urgency I am focusing on things that could possible deliver immediate value.
Today it boils down to running with @saiiam idea of
dreaming of ways that make our conversations continuous without being synchronous, and taking Jerry’s idea of creating a Gateway Tool that is not more difficult then pinterests but can actually open up a way of connecting people and ideas and purpose, problems and tasks in a self organising emergent collaboration space.
I find the group working on Freeing Jerry’s Brain
as a great practical start. @peterkaminski is leading the chanrge in imporiving the communication infrastructure we rely on, so that is also very encouraging.
I’ve been exploring the design space and the technologies needed to pilot capbailities that we know we need. Being part of this community is accellerating. I hope @skreutzer would read this too.
The “run up to thedemoat50.org” refers to an effort organized by Frode Hegland to produce a new demo for the 50th anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s great 1968 demo, but the anniversary event was mostly hosted by the Doug Engelbart Institute and the Computer History Museum, where the group around Frode held a meeting a day in advance and showed demos at the anniversary day, but these two initiatives should not be confused. The DEI + CHM event was mostly the historical retrospective and high-profile, famous people presenting their current projects, and less about a modern community effort for continuing Engelbart’s invisible or unfinished revolution.
@Gyuri After Doug@50 went to scrap in regard of the things I tried to do, I sort of attended the “Practical Knowledge Ecology” for some time (now rebooted/rebranded as “Collective Intelligence Collaboratory”), which too went to scrap in regard of the things I tried to do. With the latter, they believe in “no-tech”/“low-tech”, which makes sense as there are no developers around who have or do or want to invest time/capacity, and even then, you can hardly find anybody who has much of a clue about system architecture, augmentation capabilities, bootstrapping data semantics, interoperability for software components + visualization, inventing interface controls, etc., which largely remains basic research nobody is doing, and the few who do, are so totally not around in this kind of circles of course.
So I don’t want to discuss any of this in any greater detail, instead, here’s a question:
- Are you currently or in the future going to build some software for CICoLab and/or OGM and/or beyond?
- Are you currently or in the future going to contribute and publish libre-freely licensed data that could be used by such groups and beyond?
- Are CICoLab or OGM or individuals attending these using your existing software or data collection for something, or could they, and what would be required?
I personally don’t need answers to these, I’m mostly out and have to focus on doing the work, because these conversations go on forever and don’t lead to much if one were serious about the high ambitions and the urgency of the complex problems and the lack of sensemaking and the primitive, inadequate tooling. But the hope could be that answers to these questions might help somebody else on this OGM forum If you’re doing technical/content work for/with them, that’s great!