Evolving Collective Intelligence by Tom Atlee

Exploring how to generate the collective wisdom we need

Exploring how to generate the collective wisdom we need

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Candida International

What Does MHRA Stand For??

Bono and Bush Party without Koch: AIDS Industry Makes a Mockery of Medical Science

Profit as Usual and to Hell with the Risks: Media Urge that Young Girls Receive Mandatory Cervical Cancer Vaccine

 

Health Supreme

Multiple sclerosis is Lyme disease: Anatomy of a cover-up

Chromotherapy in Cancer

Inclined Bed Therapy: Tilt your bed for healthful sleep

 

Share The Wealth

Artificial Water Fluoridation: Off To A Poor Start / Fluoride Injures The Newborn

Drinking Water Fluoridation is Genotoxic & Teratogenic

Democracy At Work? - PPM On Fluoride

"Evidence Be Damned...Patient Outcome Is Irrelevant" - From Helke

Why Remove Fluoride From Phosphate Rock To Make Fertilizer

 

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Islanda, quando il popolo sconfigge l'economia globale.

Il Giorno Fuori dal Tempo, Il significato energetico del 25 luglio

Rinaldo Lampis: L'uso Cosciente delle Energie

Attivazione nei Colli Euganei (PD) della Piramide di Luce

Contatti con gli Abitanti Invisibili della Natura

 

Diary of a Knowledge Broker

Giving It Away, Making Money

Greenhouses That Change the World

Cycles of Communication and Collaboration

What Is an "Integrated Solution"?

Thoughts about Value-Add

April 27, 2008

Gathering storms of unwanted change

In addition to its immediate relevance for our personal behaviors and health and as a public health issue, this report from The Ecologist on "The Gathering Brainstorm" of damaging Wi-Fi impacts, includes the sentence "The technology is now moving far faster than it can be tested or regulated."


This is one of the rare occasions of a specific reference to a phenomenon that really concerns me:

As the speed of technological development moves beyond our ability to comprehend, individually and collectively, there is no time or capacity for adequate collective reflection or action, which breaks the balancing feedback loop of intelligence, learning, and response. (The acceleration of technological development is central to the idea of "the singularity", but I've seen little about its implications for our collective comprehension and response.)


A formula for disaster: laissez-faire economics, science, governance, etc., in the absence of
(a) negative, or balancing feedback loops (such as regulation, quality of life statistics, social taboos, etc.) to counter the expansion of unwanted "positive" (magnifying) feedback loops (i.e., self-reinforcing technological and market dynamics) and
(b) the development of the kind of societal collective intelligence that can evaluate and institute such limits and balancing feedback loops.


Positive (magnifying) feedback loops exhibit "runaway" dynamics in the absence of balancing feedback loops -- they grow exponentially to dominate the system until they destroy themselves, often along with the system they are part of. Cancer is an archetypal example.


The social magnifying (positive) feedback dynamics involved in runaway technological development are similar to the positive feedback loops in nature which are driving the runaway acceleration of climate change. Melting ice caps, released methane, and forests dying from new pests all enhance and accelerate the climate change that causes them.


We may not be able to predict where the disaster will come from, but my understanding system dynamics makes it seem almost inevitable to me, without a dramatic shift in awareness, attitude, and action. If there is hope it must include public and powerholder recognition of the systems dynamics described above, and efforts to simultaneously slow the pace of development (e.g., the precautionary principle) and increase the reflective and responsive capacities of society (e.g. wise democracy).

 


posted by Tom Atlee on Sunday April 27 2008

URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/tom_atlee/2008/04/27/gathering_storms_of_unwanted_change.htm

 

 

 

 


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Diversity is possibility waiting to be born. So how can we use our differences most creatively?

 

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These articles are brought to you strictly for educational and informational purposes. Be sure to consult your health practitioner of choice before utilizing any of the information to cure or mitigate disease. Any copyrighted material cited is used strictly in a non commercial way and in accordance with the "fair use" doctrine.

 

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