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No no. I think the question is whether or not we've moved from a throwing ourselves into things half-cocked kind of revolutionary community, into a more mature place, where we accept the need for fundamental changes in the world, we're aware of some of the problems that lie in the way of change, and we accept that we're not all going to want the same kind of changes. I'm suggesting rather than trying to drag ourselves all around one revolutionary banner that we instead look at ourselves more as a community of people committed to challenging ourselves and challenging the preconceived notions of what the world is to be about. And in the process maybe each of us will be able to drag these ideas out into our everyday lives.
I could say that being on Barbelith has helped me think a lot about the world in terms of distributed networking - groups of people self-managing themselves and how they could do it. I've come to be more flexible about many issues in the world. So it's already changed my thinking, and I'm think I've tried to bring that aspect to bear in my work and my life. I'm no longer interested in heirarchy for example - I think that there's tremendous potential for value to be ascribed to people by communities, by looser networks, by huger networks of loosely connected groups. These are things that I think can be changed and barbelith is responsible for moving me in that direction.
In essence what I'm saying is that barbelith has helped me realise how I can move my day-to-day work in a direction that I think COULD change the world, even in its own tiny tiny ways...
And I still at heart think that transformative and imaginative thinking is the core of all world-transforming things. And I think Barbelith excels at that.
But I don't think that we can cling to the folly of a united purpose any more. We're not all here because we believe in the same things. We're not all here because we want to fight the same things. But I think we are all here because we think that the world should be a better place, because we're looking for spice and energy and enthusiasm and excitement in our worlds, and because we believe honestly that discussion, debate, argument and connecting with other people who share those passions is a valuable and exciting thing to do...
I'm treating barbelith very much like the secret underground headquarters of a massive distributed networks of thinkers. Their mission is simple - make the world cooler, make it more interesting, make it better, make it fairer, make people feel valued in their lives. They want to take power away from the self-interests of controlling oppressive multi-millionaires and put it in the hands of the visionaries, the imaginative, the transformative, the utopian. They bring in people to talk to them, to spread their visionary ideas. They take them on board when they can, spread them when they believe in them, let their imagination take hold of them and feed it into everything they do around them - from the smallest thing to the biggest thing. It's the Science-hero country-club, it's the collaborative batcave, it's the orbiting satellite home of the Justice League, it's 221B Baker Street, it's The Magic Shop, it's the Pentagon (but circular).
Is this a picture anyone feels a connection with? Or am I completely off track? |
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... but actually oriented for any sort of interactive endevor... games, sports,