Evolutionary Salon
Source : Lion Kimbro's Blog
Last Saturday through Wednesday, I was at the Evolutionary salon. Please excuse me, as I crib my post on the CommunityWiki.
“What is the Evolutionary Salon?” Probably the best place to start is the Evolutionary Salon #2 web page. Then the Evolutionary Nexus website. Perhaps look through session notes from a few of the Open Space sessions. (Hmm, looks like the wikipedia article could use some work.)
I wrote up two sets of notes: a write-up of the intro, and a write-up on the session on artificial life.
The kernel of the Evolutionary Salon is “The Great Story,” which is a mythic telling of cosmic history (as presently understood by scientists- big bang, anti-particle particle annihilation, formation of stars, supernova and then creation of next stars, and then our galaxy,) showing just how old the universe is. Then there’s a telling of evolution. This is all done in mythic / human language; i.e., God / the universe is dreaming about what it might become, before the big bang, by this story.
It’s also explained that, as scientists study more, the story may undergo change.
Where this intersects with that I’ve been doing, (and that most of us are doing,) is that the vision includes groups assembling out of humans, and humans and groups becoming aware of each other and their functioning. It also includes the plausibility of mechanical life in the future.
There is very much a community, activist, and pro-communications technology crowd. That said, it also includes (thankfully!) pagan, wiccan, religious, and other crowds, and not all of them are excited about “yet more technology.” I see this as a healthy thing, and a very balancing thing. This is primarily a human (& transhuman) story.
As one of the participants spoke, in all seriousness: “Let us not forget to include, as we move into the future, the dryads, the sylphs, the gnomes under the ground, the fairies, and the angels above.”
This is a very diverse crowd.
(Later, I informed him privately, that they are all, for sure, alive and well on the Internet. In some places, it’s very difficult to avoid them, even.)
One of the things I learned at the Evolutionary Salon, was just how great a gap’ there is between the FL/OSS/technologist/creative-commons crowd, and the offline crowd.
I’m not just talking about “how to use computers”- I mean “what do we do with them” and even “what is our approach to activism” online.
For example, there was a tendency to want to establish replicating groups, and flows of money inwards. The younger generation was asking: “Who needs money? Who needs all that stuff? This doesn’t cost anything on the Internet. And, by the way: Have you googled? Are you sure nobody isn’t doing this stuff already? Who are you networking with?”
I realized that the “networking ethic” isn’t really there. Since communication is so costly offline, it’s a much later step in their order of process.
This is just one example of a disconnect between the generations.
At any rate: Long story short, I’m writing a book now. More on it later, some other time.
Lion
le 21.01.06 à 05:33
dans News / Actualités
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