Spiritual Darwinism :: Scientific Buddhism

This writing evolved into a paper for my degree for which I made a website CLICK

The empathic research pathway has led me all the way back to Aristotle along multiple paths (who would have thunk it?). Darwinism has its roots in Aristotle's approach. Also, as I started reading about Buddhist psychology through the writings and speeches of the Dalai Lama, the term eudaimonia, often meaning leading a good, clean life-- key to the Buddhist escape from suffering. This term, eudaimonia, is linked to Aristotle, I discovered, through -- of all things -- a speech by Dr Timothy Leary. From the Dalai Lama's perspective, eudaimonia implies a psychology that is about discovering the person and making positive changes, especially with the backdrop of the environment. The other approach, what the Dalai Lama would call Western, what I call cold, involves collecting facts from studies and applying them indirectly, and usually unsuccessfully, to therapy.

aristotle and phyllis


These, and other related writings, are leading me closer to a verifiable link between the basic human thinking and feeling facilities (fortified by the new neural research), with local communities (through community knowledge), to the natural environment that we come from (through evolution).

It seems that the paper will have alternate between data collected from the newer studies which I present in as raw a format as possible (so that the readers will be forced to believe the astonishing research), with a series of introductions to the concepts as connectors embedded in between the scientific data.

Major linking information includes writing by David Suzuki about tribal elders, and also a Native tribal document about "historical trauma" that shows how the separation of the Native cultures from the environment damaged the Natives the most. This document shows how the reconnection with nature and the natural community of knowledge is the cure for the inherited trauma disorders lingering since the genocides that ran from the colonial era through to the early 1900s.

In a sense this creates a tight loop against which I can compare cold science-- replete with concepts now proved to be false, such as the greedy gene. I also have examples of animal torture tests done, amazingly, to prove empathy-- showing how much of science can be the most extreme form of stupidity. This stupid, cold science affects us all because it provides much of the data with which didactic teaching is framed, a cognitive approach which does not necessarily, by design, provide students with the truthful concepts. It corrupts society at its very basic learning point: late childhood.

In studying Buddhism, I am finding a positive tool which seems like a form of selfishness. It creates an easy path for an Buddhist towards the concept of self-preservation. Buddhist monks are often former family men-- who abandoned their families, along with their native community of knowledge, for the community of knowledge of the monks-; the Buddha himself abandoned his family. This runs contrary to the concept of empathy and love benefiting the community especially in the evolutionary sense, yet Buddhism is greatest religion of empathy.

And Buddhism goes farther with this selfish concept; it allows for self-actualization in the extreme-- the preservation of self through self-defense with martial arts when we are being threatened. This concept links closely with the aggressive Native rights movement in North America. Both Buddhism and the Native movement create defenses against the destruction of the community, the community of knowledge, and the environment. Buddhism effectively teaches us how to protect constructed knowledge.

The Buddhists promote the concept of the protection of constructed knowledge; the evolutionary approach to nature shows us how constructed knowledge is part of our past and part of the environment, and the Native studies that I am reading prove that humanity needs the environment to survive psychologically and socially.

Unfortunately much knowledge comes from what we lose, in the case of the knowledge learned from the Native tribes comes about from the loss of 90% of their population along with their culture. Much of neurological knowledge comes from the loss of mental abilities in humans, usually from brain trauma. Hopefully, with new research methods such as being used to prove empathy in the mind, empathy in society, and the empathetic link to the environment can be proved through therapeutic positiveness and cultural restoration.

Most religions oppose the idea of aggressive self-defense, rather they prefer to confuse pacifism with cowardice; promoting capitulation to destructive powers. As Mumford points out, religious leaders very often have financially driven agendas. Current global strategies especially oppose self-preservation, promoting capitulation in the face of centralized corporate and multicultural onslaught. In fact they are so certain of their global reach, that they consider the concept of self defence not to be just suicidal, but insane. The terminology revealed by corporations and economic consortia reveals a strategy combining global governance with corporate citizenship; it is reminiscent of the ancient Roman empire and it includes no individual expression in the democratic process. No where in any economic study, especially the study of the psychology of economics, is there any mention of the environment, nor is there any mention of the need to preserve or restore community knowledge. What corporations and economists prefer is the bulldozing of all that precedes them, with the replacement of all those who oppose them. The preservation and restoration of the community of knowledge is nearly purely a tribal, spiritual, and educational idea.


dennis banks, AIM movement



While the tone of the paper is not militant, it is not hard for a reader to get wrapped up in the local struggles of Native peoples everywhere when learning about the suffering Native tribes have experienced, while considering and the benefits of their nature-based knowledge. It so happens that my present sources for tribal information are both Canadian; David Suzuki teaches genetics in Vancouver, BC, and the tribal restoration movement is also in Canada.



The one difficult relationship to be proved in the paper, is that connecting the empathic abilities we experience as humans, with the need for the community of knowledge as the tribal Natives are seeking to restore. A related and equally difficult connection to make is that of the evolution of empathy in nature with spiritual faith: the basis of religion. One source I have found which provides some empathetic linkage with nature is in studies of tribes that are not made up of people-- but are made up of animals. One is a monkey tribe from Puerto Rico, which operates purely synergistically, without possibility knowing who Ruth Benedict is; and the other is the wide reaching tribe of elephants of the world who seem to be rebelling against the pains inflicted by humanity: the elephants seem to be delivering payback to humanity-- they are doing something Goleman would disapprove of, but is natural and in keeping with Buddhist principles of self-preservation. Elephant tribes extend this idea with their legendary burial grounds; a truism that was the basis for much fiction about India and Africa including the story of Tarzan.





As you can see, the cold approach to science has no monopoly, nor has it ever. The cold approach is simply in control because it supports the existing structural arrangement, the one that is causing phenomenal collapse of environments and local society everywhere.

The paper also introduces a new series of thinkers whose philosophy is spiritual and comparable to the Humanists. Daniel Goleman is central to this group, and many of them came from Harvard. Still, I am not as happy with them as I have been with the Humanists. The new group is. well, naive, as they reveal to us concepts that may have been valid twenty years ago, but have now passed. They act as if malevolence does not exist; if it does exist it is very rare, and it is people who resist their perception of how things should be. Following Aaron Beck, Goleman and those he associates with seem to imply that feelings of self-preservation are themselves disruptive thoughts; that simply changing the human mind to feel good thoughts using the science of neuroplasticity will save the day. Goleman is scary in that he supports the concept of rewiring all thinking minds through neuroplasticity. Or more accurately, the minds of people who are troubled, and those who dissent with his ideas. In reality, the well-adjusted Nazis, as Maslow called the most famous of malefactors, will submit to no such rewiring. By changing all thinking to suit his ideals, Goleman proposes leaving us defenseless to economic, cultural, and environmental deprecation-- the work of well-heeled malefactors. The elephants who are rebelling across their habitats will not submit to neuroplastic rewiring either, putting Goleman's thesis for Social Intelligence, his plan to rewire human emotions for global benefits (precisely as Skinner had proposed his world of behavior modification), out to sea into the shark infested waters of reality.

Another area of concern for me relates to the official Buddhist approach with Tibet's domination by China coming from the Dalai Lama; the thought seems to be that Communism is the problem. The solution, as many others as well as the Dalai Lama see it, is that the free financial markets, what they perceive to be democracy, will change China, and the Chinese will give Tibet it's freedom.

That may happen, though I personally doubt it. According to activist sources Communism and Capitalism in China have combined to promote each of the worst traits. The result is a capital growth feeding on near-slavery that has created growth so extreme that it has become the biggest threat humanity has. The effect is that China alone is literally melting the polar ice: China now consumes 75% of the worlds energy; energy consumption for the world has nearly tripled because of combination of Chinese capitalism and communism. This is a threat to the entire planet yet Goleman and the Dalai Lama both turn a blind eye.

Tribal, spiritual, and activist forces may have to move forward without leadership; hopes for pure democracy may have to give way to politics resembling the animal rebellion of the elephants: animals and humans struggling for independence from the dominating controls of governance from all three structures of government, corporations, and religion.

In the empathy discussion, it seems that creation and evolution ideas will clash, yet again. The followers of empathy, at least those of us who allow for the ideas of evolution, there is confusion because, from our perspective, evolution clearly slowly developed minds capable of moralistic and altruistic thought; nature gives us the capacity for faith, and the environment in which to feel it. It is difficult to conceive of why religious leaders have been so commited to separating nature from humanity; putting the two entirely in different domains, giving the human domain the right to exploit, even destroy, the natural one.

When introducing Darwin, my research revealed a root cause of the conflict between evolution and creation; that is that church leaders of the time had no desire to see the human spirit connected with natural beginnings: a phobia to nature. On one side is Darwin; on the other is the Church and Hobbs. Hobbs is an originator of the unfeeling approach to nature; he is possibly the originator of the concept of the greedy gene. Hobbs is heartless, and so is the Church; Darwin is only slightly better; it is he research that benefits nature; not his approach to life. When it comes to everyday human life, Darwin comes across as colder than ice: he viewed the suicides of depressed people as part of natural selection.

Darwin was not radical in the way we imagine the word to mean today. He was a man of his era-- totally misogynistic: he considered male dominance of society to be the result of natural selection. He was nearly antithetical to our notion of a liberal: he was all for locking away people who are foot-loose; he would have put me in prison for my wandering ideals.

I moved on from Darwin to try to find other better examples of empathy as it has been correctly understood in the past, in light of the new research. In other words, I want to be able to say "Hey, that research is great, but we (the old school empathizers) knew that all along."

My reading by David Suzuki and that of the Natives in Canada seeking to treat their cultural losses as historical truama, shows the universal tribal approach to empathy is an approach to nature. In a sense, nature acts as a mediator for humanity; we all relate to nature, but not so much nature, but our perception of nature: our community of knowledge that is built on nature. Knowledge built by people considered to be ideal from the Constructivist point of view, as Tribal members are able to practice a perfected form of community construction, and have the opportunity to be humans at their finest.

This learning helps confirm my view that knowledge, and especially community knowledge, cannot be built-- it can only be built upon. When there is no community to build upon because it has been destroyed, what existed before the destruction, presumably by bulldozers, has to be restored. I developed this concept after taking a ride with some old acquaintances that went wrong; I wrote about it in my blog: The negative flip side of community of knowledge construction.

http://linux-society.blogspot.com/2006/10/negative-flip-side-of-knowledge.html

Bubble 2 dot Oh

Today's Technology Elite: Looking for anything they can get, Web 2 is an attempt
to inflate the bubble again, re-establishing the technical elite, cool and manic, spawned in the fraud and greed of the gutting of the new economy; an economic collapse that was the fiscal black whole that sucked down all the innovative money, and with it the American innovative technology ideology. All the American wealth and development oddly reappeared, and then re-exploded in Bangalore; in the antiquated, and obscenely genocidal and repressive culture of
the dominant Hindus: the Aryans.

Who could have done this? Probably the same people who invented the idea that the collapse of a healthy economy is a natural phenomena: a cyclic rotation. It was probably the culture that triggered their cyclic euphemism into a frenzy of short selling that made some rich, many poor, and destroyed the emerging beneficial cultures of the still young American nation. Those few who benefited got to spend the booty, themselves under-employed, inflating another bubble: the crippled US economy. The irony is that there is no bubble it is a myth, bubbles are being inflated everywhere except in the US; the US economy is completely foreign debt and depleted personal savings accounts.

Only massive exploitation of the order of the colonial invasions of a century ago can repay this debt; a return to the level of exploitation that only recently evolved into this particular monster. Or, more likely, the debt will be repaid with the gifting of American land to foreign lean holders, themselves corrupt lean holders, coming from corrupt nations to enjoy American social stability. America becomes everything but American.

But, was American ever American? Just as surely as Nazism is German and Arianism is purely east Indian, a diverse array of dominant and genocidal cultures have always celebrated their capital commonalities globally, mutually strengthening their dominant family biases as each of their respective lands, annexed from natives, is harvested in a carnival of economic exploitation: humanity is yet again united in suffering. The dominant elite celebrates in New York City.

Or, will the Americans, reclaim their nation, liquidating the yellow liquidators, sending yellow markets spiralling into their own unique implosions? Again, there will be re-exploding. But this time, will there be the Synergistic and equalised return of the Asian garden farmers to their natural positions at the peak of the food chain? Will the warlords go broke from isolation as localities experience Independence and self-reliance from domination; their knowledge cross pollinating in a networked building process that includes mutual support and self-defence?

Meanwhile they, the members of the Web 2 consortia, blissfully re-inflate the technology bubble, un-realizing of the completely distributed model on the horizon, where every textual thought is linked object, joined conceptually. The only service necessary is a linking service to match each linking objects with their families contextually. The natural evolution will be originality built on a component model returning to the world's people the distributed model that had been hijacked long before the cannibalistic technical crash of the year 2000 had even been engineered. Or, was it simply delivered? Who, if anybody, can we trust?

Pure Insanity: The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

Will Potter, a journalist who follows civil rights and green rights-- who has also followed the SHAC 7 trial-- gives a good analysis of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act: Green is the New Red

He says that the new bill changes nothing for the direct action activists; they have long been outlawed: groups such as the Animal Liberation Front.

He points out that the major purpose of the law is attack pacifist activists who use civil disobedience as developed by Thoreau, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi. The act says that because actions like sit-ins may cost a corporation revenue they are terror; the act targets mainstream non-violent activism.

It also confirms that sanctioning cruelty is a priority of the US government-- to be kind, according to congress, is to be cruel. This policy resembles the first defense of hunters; if you tell hunters that killing is cruel, then they will tell you that you are for hurting their feelings. Hunters have homicidal thoughts as often as not; what they won't tell you, or maybe they will if you ask, is that you very likely deserve to die for being so cruel as to criticize their cruelty.

As a veteran of the terror attack on the WTC on 9/11/2001, I know what terror is. Congress and the courts are simply liars; they are using our fears of terror to protect cruelty, a form of terror in of itself, albeit to animals. Civil disobedience is not terror; police brutality is.

Terror, as practiced by experts such as bin Laden, specifically targets the glands in the center of the brains of a population with the stress of horror so as to inflict them with post traumatic stress disorder.

Any other use of the word terror is an insult to all the people who have made sacrifices as rescuers, in wars, or in defense of others; they are heros and have very likely suffered trauma disorders. The US congress has chosen to insult the most dedicated and loyal members of American society. In many respects, this act of congress has nothing to do with eco-terror.

Another equally sickening aspect of the bill was support for the it by the ACLU. In a letter that was used to endorse the bill written by the ACLU, the writers offered the following contradictory text:

Hubert H. Humphrey once said "Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate."

~and~

When Congress singles out a group on one side of a debate for criminal penalties, it must be careful to avoid silencing the discussion, dissent and debate that is so fundamental to our freedom.

Full text:http://www.aclu.org/images/general/asset_upload_file809_27356.pdf

Here the ACLU admits that they act is purely unconstitutional: the government, as if you don't know, cannot under the laws of the land single anyone out for punishment specifically because their beliefs. Furthermore, humane beliefs are spiritual and faith-based in nature; the first amendment protects faith as much as free speech.

In this I actually see a silver lining to this anti-terror bill. Like Bush's arrogant abuse of the American people shows the true agenda of the American elite, this bill shows the world how sick the US goverment has become. It show's how cruel and ignorant elected officials are, and how vulnerable they have made the nation to the new, or neo, terror: complete control by multi-national corporate control.

Congress and the courts (not to mention the ACLU) have traveled so far away from the intent of the Constitution and the rights amendments (which are the basis for the Charter of the UN as well as most national constitutions) so as to put into affect the 2nd amendment-- the right to take military (malitia) action against treachery coming across the borders (globalism) and pure corruption within the nation (today's congress).

If you are interested, I have created a group based on Shay's rebellion and the Whiskey rebellion. These rebellions were a reaction to the corruption and chaos that followed the American revolution; they forced the formation of the constitutional conventions.

The Rattle Snake Rebellion

Join the Rebellion

These rebellions, described as anarchy, stabilized the US.

The (Negative) Flip-side of Knowledge Construction

I am finding that there are many collaborative projects springing up. This is not new, collaboration has been a staple of modern art since the 1930s. What is new is the support coming from the institutional and administrative sides.

I recently had an eerie experience when I visited some friends of mine form the 80s. Back in the 80s, I had befriended many people who I felt were cast of from society. I had lost touch with them during the 90s, as I was a financial technologist, but I have recently made contact with a few of them.

One of them, a man I had know for a long time (who is now in a psychiatric program) was helping me get a new car battery. While he and I, and another old acquaintance, were on our way to get the battery in his car, we picked up a hitchhiker, another old friend. Suddenly when we started again, the plans changed (possibly a typical behavior of crazy people); I wound up in a different place, miles from where I had started.

Effectively, my choices had been removed, and I felt like I was being railroaded--even kidnapped. When I complained, I was criticized for having "bad vibes" and for ruining the friendly atmosphere (there were a total of four of us in the car, all old acquaintances).

At that point, somebody suggested that everybody put their heads together to find a solution so I can get a car battery: developing community knowledge.

When I told them I wanted to go back to where I had started because I knew I was better off getting a battery on my own, I was accused of rejecting the community support that they offered. The idea that all my basic rights had been violated in every way did not occur to all these people; I was the bad person for not wanting to work with the newly offered community knowledge; this was the group consensus.

Herein lies the danger of community knowledge construction; there is no question in my mind, that at least some of these people (all in mental programs) have been exposed to social knowledge construction ideas, probably by one or more of their therapists.

Community knowledge is meant as an empowering strategy, yet, in this case, it was converted, into the removal of all my personal rights: a condemnation of my actions to be independent, and for not supporting that local community.

Granted, all these people have mental problems, but the experience was still chilling to me on a fundamental level. It was almost like science fiction; a future society gone completely wrong as a result of all the best intentions. Here, the best intentions of community construction were converted into into the worst nightmare possible: fascism.

In social intelligence, the idea is to accumulate individual ideas into community of knowledge to help create concepts beyond the sum of the individual contributions; community knowledge is also shared among the community, making the whole community more effective. But, as we well know, groups of people can go bad in a hurry, as happens in biased and hatred situations.

I am thinking that the solution to this obvious quandary is in the cyclic development of ideas , as I have often mentioned in my writing when talking about science projects and concept building for middle school students. We humans work in groups to develop projects (and to combat loneliness), and then return to individual work to access internal inspiration: self-actualization.

In the cyclic scenario, there will be times when controlling people will try to disrupt the cycle to insert themselves as the dominant individual creating the type of groups sociologists, such as Aaron Beck, warn about as being the most dangerous component of humanity. Here, there community itself becomes the disrupting force, removing individual rights, pushing our humanity back into darkness from which we continually try to emerge.

Thought Linking and Resulting Language Technologies

(Part 1) More than ever, public domain software is needed
Linking will resist natural writing, it may very likely create language that is very mechanical. It seems probable to me that the mechanics of language will be described as algorithms in the very near future; machines will develop speech directly form concepts, in any language. While on one level that would seem to be a tremendous aid to international communication, but then we face democracy issues--who will be able to use this empowering technology? And, who will be left out of the process? Furthermore, multi-national corporations will use this (and every other) technology to shrink their staff size, making themselves more effective (and therefore profitable) while shrinking benefits to the average person from the economic system: neo-economics.

Language and linking technology are coming anyway, either by contract to corporations, or through the public domain. Since the goal of the Information Society is to seek democracy, linking and subsequent language technologies have to be created democratically in the public domain to assure that every person has access to these new tools. The alternative is unthinkable, pure control over language by corporate consortia exercising corporate governance (what they call corporate citizenship), resulting pure resource exploitation without regard for humanity or humane issues.

As corporations shrink in size and their powers expand, they eliminate the weak staff members. By stripping away all that is human and emotional, they increasingly concentrate a condition described as "pure intelligence" by Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence. This describes pure objectivism with no emotional aspect as a mental disorder resulting in purely sociopathic behavior on the scale of genius.

Obviously, there can be no free enterprise competition when corporate consortia reach the final levels of technical and political control. Corporations have successfully dominated nearly every government they have encountered, Microsoft successfully preventing anti-trust prosecution, making itself the dominating control center of control itself. What is needed is vigorous resistance to the centralized control of information. So far, the way to do this has been to encourage the democratic public domain to develop truly free software. Now, under increasing pressure form corporate consortia, encouragement will have to give way to actual empowering.

Publicly developed technology is supported by the financial numbers: 90% of the cost of development is in the overhead, most of it being absorbed by marketing and sales staff. Free software has been developed for free, yet I now believe that grants should be provided to the scientists who will most likely continue to develop and promote free software.

In other words, society through the government can provide democratically available software for only a small percentage of the cost to corporations for proprietary software. The alternative is the continued support for the wholly illegal Microsoft monopoly, along with continued suffering resulting from damage to the computing industry by the Microsoft. Examples of technologies damaged by Microsoft's control over computer technology include the computer modeling of diseases: the obvious future of medicine. Microsoft, as an authoritarian entity, can only annex technology, they cannot create effective technology of their own. Since they, along with the globalist market, have left a waste land of commercial technical development, they can now only block public domain development. Furthermore, Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, has inserted himself as a dominant force in the in the policy making of AIDS research: will he allow Linux based supercomputing to cure the disease? Judging from his previous behaviors, that is highly unlikely.

Learning to Learn the "New Way"

From: Learning to Learn

Webbing and the Concept Map

Graphically, the most common image of constructivist pedagogy is the concept map. I think of the concept map to symbolically represent new ways of learning, because concept mapping embraces so many of the ideals of knowledge organization and constructivism. Concept maps, as they appear on the World Wide Web, are beautiful; they demonstrate the aesthetic link to science.

In younger classes, the activity of concept mapping is referred to as webbing. Concept maps, or webs, create holistic pictures of the knowledge that the children are building. They store and reveal facts in relation to the environment: they describe how systems work. Mapped facts, thus improved by showing their relation to other facts, are thought of as concepts.

The connections between the facts, or the connecting lines, have descriptive words in them to show the relationships between the facts. In a sense, concept mapping ideas, when fully utilized, can resemble language. Many well developed maps can actually be converted directly into sentences and paragraphs. For me, this is the most surprising aspect of concept mapping.

Thanks to Patrick, Defining Taxonomy, Green Chameleon

Building concept maps for earth science

They can be used to give a holistic view of any area of study, sometimes called a general systems theory. They can be used to show how areas of study interrelate into a view of all the Earth, everything on it, and possibly even space. A complete map is (at the moment) impossible to build; it would have to include the sum of all science. But, concept mapping technology can potentially demonstrate many aspects of our universe to children.

Thanks to Katy, Michelle, Howard, Martin, Sarah, Mark, Bob, and Suzanne

Creating a concept Map

• Create the concept map so that it embraces the whole area of study
• Make it as generalized as possible so that the important, top-level components, as provided by the students or suggested by teacher, are likely to be correct
• When attaching new ideas to the concept map, allow for alternative explanations, and even concepts, to be added in parallel as alternative learning to encourage generalization and extrapolation
• As concepts are added, design experiments to test the component's validity within the map's structure as well as the validity of the newly modified map itself
• Allow students, as a group, to move concepts around and modify them based on new perceptions
• Allow students to modify and expand the concept map based on both knowledge gained from observation and experimentation as well as valid sources
• Cyclic improvement: As students grow, their ability to model component concepts and critically examine them grows; the concept map becomes more valid both in accuracy and scope
• If students are in agreement as a group about the concepts, hence the map, they can easily dispel scientific misconceptions

Use of concept maps to build correct knowledge

A major learning challenge facing middle school students is the modification of the often un-scientific views of natural phenomena they bring to school from their families and the community. Their misconceptions, however, are not a barrier to learning science; students may be wrong because some of the facts they believe may be wrong, but they are not so much wrong as intelligently wrong--assuming their efforts to understand are genuine (Ault from Shapiro, 21). The misconceptions can springboard inquiry into phenomena, and create enthusiasm for experimentation. Middle school students, especially the younger ones, will believe each other's views over the say-so of a teacher. (Stavy, Tirosh, 87) Therefore, if they can develop the correct conceptual understandings as a group, they will be far more likely to fully absorb accepted explanations of scientific phenomena.

The value of using inter-networked computers for concept mapping is in the sharing, and storing, the maps. Students in one location can work on a map; offer it through the web to another group, which in turn would improve it. Also, as students update their concept maps as they learn more, they can be assured of safe storage for their knowledge, they can return to it, improving it over the years.

A key characteristic of the concept map, then, is in fact cyclic. With each learning cycle, information is accessed and used. If flaws are found they are removed, cyclically improving knowledge by eliminating scientific misconceptions with granular effectiveness. As the improved information is returned, and new information is added, student groups will eventually get to the real science. Because they developed the knowledge themselves, with guidance from their teachers, they will believe it and transmit it to other students, their families, and local communities.

Technology to benefit Learning to Learn

Goals of project science include reflection, sharing, testing, searching, and cyclic improvement:

• Reflecting on existing knowledge and observations
• Developing concepts from new ideas
• Discovering relationships between concepts
• Creating experimentation to test concepts (and their interrelationships)
• Locating and communicating with mentors for guidance
• Sharing new information with learners working on similar projects

Existing technologies and sources are available for students who are building information:

• Text editors for creating documents
• Spread sheets for keeping test data and creating graphs
• Servers to keep information safe and allow for easy access
• WWW search engines to provide clues for inquiry topics, provide information to assist experimentation, and fortify knowledge with valid research material
• Forums and mailing lists that can be used to initiate information finding, and also for locating like-minded investigators and possibly mentors
• Scholarly on-line documents to be searched for potential mentors
• Concept mapping and mind mapping software that may help in developing concept maps

Important considerations when using technology

Information technology is like a car in two respects. Both information technology and cars can take you places to enhance your awareness; hence the use of the analogy of the information super-highway to describe the Internet. Also in both, the underlying technologies are not obviously apparent as on, say, a bicycle.

To successfully use a car, you do not necessarily have to investigate the underlying technology that powers the car; you can easily drive a car without ever raising the hood (until the engine fails from lack of maintenance).

But, the sophisticated use of information technology is very different than the use of a car's technology. If you do not understand the underlying technology of the information systems that you use, their technology will tend to drive you.

Applications will lock you into their methodology of knowledge organization and, in so doing, limit your success in constructing knowledge with the inherit limitations of their underlying technology. Community knowledge construction, as with any physical community construction, can be limited by existing architectural limitations. The architecture of the technology, the underlying principles, hence the limits of the technology, can be purely arbitrary.

Fortunately, anyone using modern languages such as Java, Perl, PHP, or Ruby, can develop new knowledge construction paradigms limited only by their extent of his imagination.

The result of all this freedom is that the majority of information openly available on the web is on web sites built strictly using pubic-domain software. The most common paradigm for information sharing is a mixture of software called LAMP: Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), and PHP (web site programming language). Endless tools, called frameworks, are available to assist in technology development; existing public domain software built with these frameworks can easily be customized.

Added to the list of available technology are the public domain software offerings:

• Operating systems
• Web servers
• Data servers (also called databases)
• Object oriented programming languages
• Turn-key community software

Students are universally enthusiastic about the use of technology. Many are highly adept to learning programming and system control languages, just as they can easily learn new phonetic languages. As soon as students develop expertness with computer use, they should be given every opportunity to build their own community of knowledge construction systems.

Beyond the Discussion Thread

Text can be thought of as words created of letters, but they, by definition more than that, the word text derives from the concept of weaving. Text is push-thought. But, to become valid in society, ideas (push-thoughts) need to move into some kind of context.

"Textual knowledge is that relevant to understanding of grammatical aspects of the language"

"Contextual knowledge means the awareness of inter-sentential relationships and the cumulative impact of all preceding text"

Going beyond that, many define further steps ideas can take into their environments, usually referring to them as something like extra-contextual. Language moves from statement units into a context of surrounding statements, and finally into a social environment to gain real and relevant meaning.

"elements that exceed lexical definitions, sentential rules, and compositional principles" exist in "social structures, cultures, expectations, values, behaviors, and language use." Link

In constructively, the extra-contextual environment is thought of as situational. Situational learning goes a dimension beyond contextual learning. It describes the environment a student experiences as she heads out into the sea of discovery, having been released from the initial community of learning, which is usually made safe with scaffolding. She is truly at sea; her learnings lead to discoveries which in turn create many questions, confusion, frustration, and self-doubt. The process of mastery in new areas of learning is fraught with risk and difficulty.

Situational discovery provides ideas so new that no scaffolding can possibly support them. Situated learning is where significant contributions can evolve; where truly revolutionary ideas and solutions to perennial problems can be discovered and developed. Possibly, the ideal work group size for situated learning is two, to provide mutual support. More than two may result in a desire to turn back into safer areas of learning. And, a solo learner will have to weather the emotional stress of self-doubt unassisted. In project science, it is the responsibility of the teacher to help situated students create structures for inquiry, which may, or course, evolve into newly situated confusion. The teacher will have to develop a sense of humor about all this.

Teachers assist students in their project development by helping them analyze new questions, and mysteries, to help them better design inquiry paths as their situated learning reveals to them questions they never knew existed. In project science, the primary goal is building knowledge development skills first, then achieving significant understandings as contributions to community knowledge.

At a certain point, a discussion will ideally revert into individual efforts again because the supports provided by group discussion no longer help the creation of new ideas and significant change. Questions will arise as the result of attempting understanding; the process of inserting thoughts into the group context, hopefully, will raise questions which will lead to significant new discovery. As efforts become situated in the environment, where true impact can be experienced, relationships may develop with the information target audience, hopefully creating new potentials for generalized perception, action, and societal influence.

In the Information Society itself, as separate from human society, ideas spawn into the cytoplasm of contextual interaction. They become situated with each other: clustered into community by commonalities. So, where is the risk? I imagine it is in releasing into the Information Society cytoplasm thoughts whose ideas are so original that they can find no thoughts to link with. But, this seems highly unlikely; the power of the Internet is to link all of humanity. With six billion humans out there, there must be someone thinking the same things; the cytoplasm is safe.

When is a thought, or idea, best set free? Should it be released as an embryonic idea, or an idea that developed within the context of a discussion (the zone of personal development), or an idea that evolved as the result of risky situational discovery. Could it be that within the process of the empathic delivery of influential information, newly developed information becomes the basis of the initiation of a new comprehension, empathizing, and knowledge delivery. Knowledge building is the process of the creation of embryonic ideas.

The actual cumulative effect of the community may ultimately be to spawn embryonic ideas based on questions developed form successful previous knowledge building, an extension of the classical scientific corollary. Resolving political injustices, the activist task, is in effect the process of creating meaning that can be effectively used to construct society's knowledge tree.

The Information Society, now operating far beyond the fairness ideals of two-way communication envisioned by the Humanist engineers Lewis Mumford and Buckminster Fuller, can now allow activists using thought-linking to arrange their concerns into a matrix of ideas which are not criticisms but beneficial suggestions. This is an improvement of the traditional activist role of complainer. It is possible that a fully sophisticated knowledge structure can be analogized by anybody looking at a snowflake. This structure can be laid down on top of the topography of society, which happens to be the surface of the planet, to create a matrix of interactions that are wholly beneficial and based on trust: a resolution to the pain caused by the inequity of what is called free trade.

The features that make humans beneficial (very likely the ideas developed innocently as children become situated in society), can be accessed easily through linking. Contextual Ideas neighboring to originally and locally developed ideas are already familiar because linked ideas have commonalities. When ideas are linked, thoughts can evolve conceptually based on incremental differences. As people traverse through a (or the) matrix of linked ideas, no great leaps are necessary. People accessing information already have mastery of much of the neighboring information, neighboring ideas can be easily mastered allowing easy travel onto other sightly distant neighboring ideas.

Possibly a strong validating feature in contextual linking, is consensual linking. As in a web based friendship, possibly from a real-life friendship, is the idea of permission in friendship. On Care2 (http://www.care2.com), you ask permission from another member to be his friend. It is rare that friendships are rejected, but the process requires consent. In real life, people seeing things in each other that they like simultaneously mutually bond. Delays within Internet communication systems, as well as difficulty in perceiving emotions through the Internet, prevent instantaneous bonding. But, once online friends are introduced in real life, that bonding often occurs.

Linking takes contextual statements from paragraphs, and bigger documents; and creates from many linked statements, the thought basis of highly synthesized documents. Servers are used to link contextual text, consequentially; but, only the human can reflect on text within context, giving it meaningful linking attributes.

As part of the service process of idea linking (something has to do the linking, it might as well be a public domain free system) matched linking profiles would trigger messages seeing if mutual linking is possible. Mutually consensual linking will certainly reinforce the validity of ideas within common areas of comprehension. Opposing ideas, defined by mutually opposing linking profiles, will very likely never connect, though a daring linking server might try to interrelate opposing ideas in an attempt to seek a resolution between them. This may, instead, result in conflict. Still, within the area of idea comparison, and knowledge construction, idea differences never result in anything illegal. The worst type of Internet conflict is the flame-war, the online trading of insults: hardly something to worry about.

Societal knowledge thus built and tested in the activist context as well as the linking process, including consensual linking, would likely be unassailable by the lies of deliberate disruption and free of corruption--a significant improvement over the arbitrary law-making and enforcement process under which we now labor.

It is only in the journey into unexplored areas that comprehension and empathic understanding may be difficult. This may be because many problems have remained unresolved. The journey into discomfort, pain, and even death (the realm of the activist) is fractured and unsupported. The human mind becomes nearly unable to process successfully, yet activists go there anyway. The new model exists to assure the support of an expansive community in this emotionally dangerous area of situated societal discovery.

Why We Need Linux

In 1989, I recognized that there should be a global free network for all the people to use to communicate. I was a mechanic at the time, and I distinctly remember the moment; I was spitting out a mouthful of antifreeze while pulling a hose off of a corroded radiator.

I was envisioning for myself the Internet; soon after that I pursed a career in computer communication. Today all of you benefit from the work of the Internet engineers.

But, unfortunately, the computer you use right now is licensed to the most controlling and wealthiest organization in the world: Microsoft.

It may be difficult to conceive of how a computer company can be so controlling and dangerous unless you investigate the entire history of humanity and how information technology has been corrupted to implement control and cruelty from the very beginnings of humanity.

The first machine was built from human parts: it was the Egyptian empire's slavery structure created to build edifices to its elite, so the elite could live forever in the after world. They had no machines as we know them today: they rolled blocks on logs; they killed most of their slaves and workers with the effects of rock mining through silicosis poisoning.

This is a theme through humanity to the present-day blue collar worker. Even unions support the concept that the worker is part of the machine, to be used and broken for support of a system owned wholly by the elite. This concept is called human capital.

The military works in a similar way, molding youth to become cannon fodder. At the center of it all, is the same control structure the they Egyptians built. Here in the US, direct descendants of the Egyptian edifice builders provide loyal support for the President and the war in Iraq; they are the Freemasons and the Shriners.

Knowledge is treated exactly the same as real estate property. The globalist information protection organization, WIPO, defines this for us -- World Information Property Organization. They are committed to the acquisition of all technical knowledge and art into corporate portfolios, just as SONY owns the freedom lyrics of John Lennon.

Free and open information, such as GNU or open source, is referred to as being part of the public domain. The public domain originates with the wild lands that were available to everybody. As an example the elite European families created estates by illegally absorbing the public lands to implement a form of slavery called serfdom.

Colonialists in the America's did much the same, genociding the native tribes directly through murder, isolation, forced migration and disease. All the while, the colonialist information technology, as it was, allowed the expansionists to appear civilized and social through lies as they stole all the free land. Today, the acquisition of protected land through the process of eminent domain, allows municipal governments to destroy the last forests, installing the sub-divisions of suburban sprawl filled with the worst possible houses.

At the center of information control today is Microsoft; we are all paying homage and cash to the modern control structure at this very moment while we attempt to undo the authoritarian control that is destroying our planet.

What is the solution ?? Linux is.

Linux is a free operating system designed purely democratically and made available for the public. It is linked to the GNU philosophy and support organization, which is religiously opposed to the criminal control of computers and communication by the same people who are reducing our planet to the needs of corporate stockholders. While resolving the issues of information technology, the free software movement provides ideas which can be extended to all technology, especially in the areas of energy and transportation. A further extension of the philosophy can help us understand our unnecessary dependence on physical property.

The free and open software philosophies are not communist in any way, they supports free enterprise through sharing, through the high synergy and democratic developers of the public domain.

The very opposite of this high synergy, which is the meaningful distribution of resources, is capitalism. Capital is not money, as
much as capitalists want you think it is. Capital purely describes the inefficient centralization of resources, the piling of all wealth in central locations, all of which are controlled by the elite of each nation's dominant cultures.

The term derives from caput in Latin, meaning head. The practice of it derives from the highly damaging slavery-based Roman empire. I barely need to remind you how horrific their animal blood sports were.

Microsoft directly inherits the Roman Empire's diffuse communication and centralization network, as well as its mantel of acquisition and control.

Response from Rex Ballard
(rex.ballard@gmail.com)

Note: My original text is in italics

In 1989, I recognized that there should be a global free network for all the people to use to communicate. I was a mechanic at the time, and I distinctly remember the moment; I was spitting out a mouthful of antifreeze while pulling a hose off of a corroded radiator.

That is a bit funny. I can just imagine the 'aha' moment as you are dousing yourself with radiator fluid.

You certainly weren't the first to have that epiphany. The concept of a 'Free information exchange' actually goes back to a group of students at MIT back in the early 1970s. And even before that, the Civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration had created an environment where technology was freely and agressively shared. In fact, from 1963 to 1969, when we were racing to reach the moon, there were amazing breakthroughs in technology that were shared freely among
the scientific community. Ironically, there were also military projects which were embedded in this technology that were top secret. The flood of freely available information diverted attention from the development of ICBMs, spy satellites, and other technologies often considered 'UFOs' at the time. In 1972, students at MIT wrote 'The hacker's ethic'. They advocated
the publication of technology in source code format. Keep in mind that the patent office had ruled that algorythms could not be patented. They had also ruled that since software programs were merely an expression of an algorythm, software could not be patented. Software couldn't be protected in binary form, nor could it be patented, until 1976.

In 1976, the laws were changed in the united states, taking effect in 1977. The interesting thing is that this was the year that Microsoft used it's "License' to push OEM MITS to purcase 'per processor' licenses. This concept, though expressed in many different ways as a result of court rulings, has been the backbone of Microsoft's financial structure.

I was envisioning for myself the Internet; soon after that I pursed a career in computer communication. Today all of you benefit from the work of the Internet engineers.

My brother had a similar epiphany. He was busting tires and in a moment of clarity during mindless activity, decided to put away his monkey wrench and work on computers. He's retired now, but he eventually wrote some computer programs for the army during Desert Storm, and later got into customer service, providing telephone support.

But, unfortunately, the computer you use right now is licensed to the most controlling and wealthiest organization in the world: Microsoft.

Not by accident. Bill Gates had the vision of 'being to business what heroin is to drug addicts' as far back as the late 1970s. By 1979, several computers were powered by Microsoft BASIC in ROM, including the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, and eventually the IBM PC.

It may be difficult to conceive of how a computer company can be so controlling and dangerous unless you investigate the entire history of humanity and how information technology has been corrupted to implement control and cruelty from the very beginnings of humanity. The first machine was built from human parts: it was the Egyptian empire's slavery structure created to build edifices to its elite, so the elite could live forever in the after world. They had no machines as we know them today: they rolled blocks on logs; they killed most of their slaves and workers with the effects of rock mining through silicosis poisoning.

Microsoft and Apple both established the concept of technology based projects as the domain of the elite. The Open Source community, going back as far as the MIT 'hackers', was more focused on a more 'democratic' use of technology.

On the other hand, technology was very carefully guarded, and it's quite likely that those who were taught the 'sacred sciences', including electricity, chemistry, biology, and architecture, were probably enlisted into lifetime priesthood positions.

The irony is that today, corporations have taken the opposite view, often cutting staffs of highly skilled workers, encouraging them to spread technologies to other companies, as they hired sklled workers from other companies - again adding breath and depth to the technology base of each company.

The byproduct was that more and more technology HAD to be kept in Open Source, simply because there was too much risk in using proprietary technology which had been learned at one company and used at another company.

In general your post is very interesting and really does hit the nail on the head.

Response from Homer (s... @uce.gov)

Note: My original text is in italics

It may be difficult to conceive of how a computer company can be socontrolling and dangerous unless you investigate the entire history of humanity and how information technology has been corrupted to

implement control and cruelty from the very beginnings of humanity.

It's called Corporatism, and through global cooperation with other corporate entities, ultimately leads to Corporate Imperialism. Globalism is the most obvious current manifestation.

Free and open information, such as GNU or open source, is referred to as being part of the public domain. The public domain originates with the wild lands that were available to everybody.

This is Marxism, the purest form of Socialism.

At the center of information control today is Microsoft; we are all paying homage and cash to the modern control structure at this very moment while we attempt to undo the authoritarian control that is destroying our planet.

Microsoft holds the balance of power, not only because of its immense wealth, but also because of the prevalence of it's products in society. They have great influence, and use that influence to further their ideals, which are, by and large, Corporatist.

What is the solution ?? Linux is.

Information Technology is the key area in which Corporatism spreads its influence, and as such, breaking that chain with the introduction of key I.T. frameworks, software, licences, protocols, and policies, based on open standards, may hopefully weaken that influence; preferably destroying it.

I.T. is only one front of the battle however; the influence of Corporatism affects all Industrial Society, and by association, all
society. For as long as there exists the ideology of financial profit, society will be driven by greed, corruption and exploitation.

Linux is a free operating system designed purely democratically and made available for the public. It is linked to the GNU philosophy and support organization, which is religiously opposed to the criminal control of computers and communication by the same people who are reducing our planet to the needs of corporate stockholders.

While resolving the issues of information technology, the free software movement provides ideas which can be extended to all technology, especially in the areas of energy and transportation. A further extension of the philosophy can help us understand our unnecessary dependence on physical property.

I can see that you and I are going to get on *very* well indeed.

The free and open software philosophies are not communist in any way, they supports free enterprise through sharing, through the high synergy and democratic developers of the public domain.

The fundamental principles are very close to Marxism though, and I have no problem at all with that. We are all born into this Global Corporatist society; how we choose to live in it, is a matter of preference. I chose to not oppose it for a long time, due to apathy and ignorance, and indeed profited financially by it. I have Microsoft (and the Bush administration) to thank for drawing my attention to the extent of corruption in our modern society, and I will endeavour to use the tainted resources it has given me, to oppose it.
--
K.
/* values of ß will give rise to dom! */

Why we need Linux, Part 2

I am really glad this got so many responses, albeit some from many who couldn't resist pointing to the possibility of antifreeze poisoning; this is why I don't work in the computer field anymore: too many who don't use the intelligence they were born with.

Please note that the thing that is new here, is that the information technology issue goes so far back in history.

Absolutely nothing has changed, because the exact same types of people are doing the exact same things in the exact same way. Creating a machine out of people with a control structure was the only genius of the early elite. They, like Microsoft, made no substantial technical contributions. We democratic developers do that. The authoritarian technology system that Microsoft now leads simply co-opts the technology, meddling with it until it fails, forcing them to steal more technology.

I find it odd to hear linux users protecting Microsoft, criticizing me for calling MS evil.

Thank you, Homer and Rex Ballard for your support. As I said, you cannot go back far enough, it's like the plot to Stargate.

You would probably agree that every major innovation has been accompanied by a stock swindle, the Internet being the most recent and most painful for many of us.

The swindles precede stocks, though. Watt, inventor of the steam engine got robbed through the patent courts by the mine owners that used it to pump water from their shafts; he barely collected any money at all. The inventor of textile's flying shuttle likewise got robbed despite his patents. Both these inventions were revolutionary and affect us directly today.

While working on Wall Street, I always wondered what manual the creeps all around me were working from. As it turns out, they inherited human systems control information developed during the beginnings of civilization probably from their families. If I had been introduced to these concepts as a child, during freer times, I would have laughed.

Linking Constructs in the Information Society: Push Notes

New Model Push Notes

As I started leading into my New Model ideas for the activist community design, I took a close look at embyonic ideas forming in the minds of bloggists about linking concepts. I simultaneously looked at a little yellow notebook I use for jotting ideas. I call the notebook my push notes, where the idea is to push ideas out of the mind and into the Information Society as quickly as possible: thought pushing.

Little scraps of knowledge-building appear first in notebooks (the computer being too bulky for creativity), then get introduced to the Information Society as a small entry. The entry is modified as the author extends the idea, and finds supporting information. While existing ideas contribute to the original inception, the inception, in reality, springs from the thin air of the author's inspiration.

A idea pushed to a scrap of paper evolves into a expressed idea, collections of pushed ideas can create an aggregates of ideas forming well documented text. As concepts evolve, and the scale upwards into the expanding Information Society, meta-joins of documented concepts can create high level and cohesive virtual repositories of information attributable to no single source. Still recognizable within the joined documents are significant contributors, and the mapping of constructed information can show the evolution of ideas giving a foundation of supporting ideas for the further development of ideas. This describes truly inclusive knowledge building in the Information Society.

Ideas are not spawned by ideas; a person has to form an idea and express it as a concept for an idea to exist, to be recognized, and to become part of constructed knowledge. A leading newly inspired idea combined with its contributing and supporting knowledge gives most, if not all, of the information necessary to create linking constructs useful in attaching this new idea with documents built of similar ideas.

"I have this thought: this is where the thought came from, and these sources contributed to the thought, or support it" --thus the author reflects the thought he just developed; he creates from the reflection linking information so he can allow it attach to other similar ideas.

By adding tags (really keywords) to his knowledge constructs that reflect the ideas within the construct, the author can allow the ideas in his documents to mix with concurrent documents from other authors, or even himself, usually in his immediate environment. Such is linking in a localized information soup such as a web community.

Since no two documents of original ideas will reflect the same impression with which to create linking mechanisms, similar documents, possibly closely linked, will offer differing profiles of linking information.

As documents with similar ideas link to each other they can form a cluster. They can pull to themselves, as a cluster, other text that contains more diverse ideas because of the differences between them. This ongoing linking process can create expanded clusters of ideas that blend, in a multi-dimensional medium, to other clusters likewise built of closely linked ideas, just as colors blend in a spectrum.

Thus form floating clusters of meta-information constructs, and with them, newly freed and joined knowledge-building with no physical limitations.

These floating clusters have to originate from somewhere. They may develop in a discussion environment, for instance, where each idea is proposed in the form of a response to some other idea. Here, the discussion environment provides a scaffolded construction area based on commonly accepted ideas of thought development. The resulting ideas developed in the scaffolded environment can separate from the scaffolding to join conceptual idea clusters, with the benefit of highly reflective linking constructs. The ideas can float away from the scaffolding of the discussion forum into an entirely different, nebulous architecture of gravitationally attracted idea clusters. This architecture is multi-dimensional; it is more like a cytoplasm than a discussion environment or a book shelf; it is more like a mass of floating dandelion seeds than a ship's dry dock that constructed it.

The entry point for a person into the atmosphere in which all the clustered ideas float--the cytoplasm of the Information Society--is really a guiding overlay for the joined concepts: it is a narration. Ideally, a narration successfully joins a sequence of short stories, the clustered concepts, produced as teleplays where the narrator guides a listening person through the many knowledge constructs of linked concepts and ideas.

Listeners join into the Information Society to become contributors as they find areas in which they are comfortable. They then can build knowledge from knowledge. Meditating on concepts, developing inspiration, pushing their ideas, they link their ideas to supporting constructs. As listeners become increasingly recognizable as contributors, their own constructs, complete with open-ended links built from a reflection of their ideas, allow allowing for further connecting ideas to attach to their information; new ideas are drawn to their information, supporting or, ideally extending their ideas. Their newly developed ideas become a foundation for ideas in the purely fluid soup of the Information Society.

The clustering of information, the quality of the supporting information, and the comparison of information allowed by clustering of concepts will build knowledge that comes to the real needs of the world, knowledge useful for the the true aims of activism.

Links and tags can be created externally for a developed document as the document comes to rest somewhere in the cytoplasm of the Information Society, typically as a blog entry or in a forum discussion thread. Information gleaned from the document, such as the originating information the ideas were built on; the physical source it was derived from; the author; his references; and an aggregate of descriptive words chosen from the text can create the basis of linking profile. Sophisticated linking constructs built from these clues can be used by server-based algorithms to make meaningful connections joining differing information sources, creating new and previously unimagined idea relationships leading to potentially valuable discussion and conceptual alliances.

Algorithms have been developed to find key-word matches in the document to create links to other information sources. But, these algorithms presently cannot recognize the distilled ideas behind the developed concept; they are unable to aggregate the links into meaningful joinings of documents. Corporations are uninterested in aggregating information concepts; commercial marketing only justifies the flow of separate unrelated and often inaccurate information presented with no means for comparison, nor meaningful dialog. Corporate developed information links occupy the Information Society, but provide no useful contribution.

These after-the-fact links are formed externally by algorithms, hence they controlled by the algorithms, rather than allowing the author of the ideas to create a meaningful reflection of this thoughts with which to encourage idea-linking. External, after-the-fact, linking of concepts by corporations can be ruthless: algorithms created by the Google search engine, for instance, pull thoughts and insights towards commercial products, often irrelevantly. They are unsophisticated and inaccurate because they cannot be aware of (nor would they care about) the author's original inspiration behind his thoughts.

As original ideas expand further outwards into the cytoplasm of the Information Society, the technology needs to focus inward towards the inspiration process. As people increasingly join as contributors, after having been listeners, their ideas become increasingly sophisticated. As they increase the volume of their information, they improve its quality. As both the quality and the volume increase, more time is necessarily spent in the management of their information constructs. Hence, a pressing need for algorithms at the personal and community levels. Linking algorithms now need to be distributed to all the Information Society contributors, just as the original networking services technology was transferred from the monopolistic corporations to the world's people.

"I have a thought, this is where the thought came from, these sources contributed to the thought, or support it" --this is the author controlled linking.

By adding tags (really keywords) the author can allow the his ideas in this document to mix with concurrent documents, probably from other authors, in the immediate environment: the soup.

Since no two documents reflecting original ideas will have the exact same profile of ideas, similar closely linked documents will have differing linking information; they will pull to them diverse linking documents, creating clusters of ideas that blend, in multi-dimensional space, to other clusters of ideas, just as colors blend in a spectrum.

These floating clusters, meta-information constructs, have to originate from somewhere. They may develop in a discussion environment, for instance, where each idea is proposed in the form of a response to some other idea. Here, the discussion environment provides a scaffolded construction area based on commonly accepted ideas thought development. The resulting ideas developed here in the scaffolded environment can separate from the scaffolded environment to join conceptual idea clusters, with the benefit of sophisticated linking constructs. The ideas can float away from the scaffolding of the discussion forum into an entirely different, nebulous architecture. This architecture is multi-dimensional; it is more like a cytoplasm than a discussion environment or a book shelf; it is more like a mass of floating dandelion seeds than a ship's dry dock.

The entry point into the atmosphere in which all the clustered knowledge floats--really a cytoplasm of the Information Society--is really a guiding overlay for the joined concepts: it is a narration. Ideally, a narration successfully joins a sequence of short stories, the clustered concepts, produced as teleplays where the narrator guides the listeners through the many knowledge constructs of linked concepts and ideas. Listeners join contributors as they find areas in which they are comfortable. They then can build knowledge from knowledge: meditating on concepts, creating inspiration from their pushed ideas, linking their constructs with supporting ideas. As listeners become contributors, they enter their ideas into the cytoplasm of information complete with open-ended links deliberately allowing for further connecting ideas to attach to their information, and ideas to be created extending theirs.

The clustering of information, the quality of the supporting information, and the comparison of information allowed by clustering of concepts will build knowledge that comes to the real needs of the world, knowledge useful for the the true aims of activism.

Links and tags can be created externally, after the developed thought, the concept, comes to rest somewhere in the cytoplasm of the Information Society, typically as a blog entry or in a forum thread. Indicators useful for linking, such as the discussion that the document originally built on; the source, the author; his references; and an aggregate of descriptive words chosen in the text can create the basis of linking information. Sophisticated linking constructs built from these clues can be used to make meaningful connections between information sources, creating new and previously unimagined connections leading to potentially valuable discussion and conceptual alliances.

Algorithms have been developed to find key-word matches in the document to create links to other information sources, but these algorithms presently cannot recognize the distilled ideas behind the developed concept. They are unable to aggregate the links into meaningful joinings of documents. Corporations are uninterested in aggregating information concepts; commercial marketing supports the flow of separate unrelated and often inaccurate information constructs presented with no means for comparison, nor meaningful dialog.

These after-the-fact links are formed externally by algorithms, hence they controlled by the algorithms, rather than the author of the ideas. These algorithms search for key-words to create links, or lists of tags. External, after-the-fact, linking can be ruthless: algorithms created by the Google search engine, for instance, pull thoughts and insights towards commercial products, often irrelevantly. They are unsophisticated and inaccurate because they cannot be aware (nor would they care) of the author's original intent, or the inspiration behind the thought.

The Katrina Hurricane

About the Care2 Discussion Forum which Experienced it

This is the introduction to my discussion about a forum, that became an action group on the Care2.com site.

This group will evolve into an action community, focused on helping those in immediate need.

Here is the link to the paper (Click)

Here is a link to this introduction as a nice web page (Click)

It wasn't the hurricane that flooded New Orleans. It wasn't broken levees, as you might imagine, that flooded New Orleans. Broken walls along some un-used canals flooded the city. These canals, whose structures failed, inexplicably run through centers of the city, a sea-coast city, below sea-level.

But, then, it wasn't the broken walls that actually destroyed New Orleans. There seems to have been the deliberate neglect of the drowning city, that evolved eventually into a blatant attempt by corrupt officials and developers to utilize the disaster to facilitate a real estate land-grab.

The discussion forum that provided all the information was formed by me in the Care.com activist web community when I heard Michael Chertoff, on TV, say that he was withholding rescue support from New Orleans during its most desperate days. From what he said, during an impromptu interview on a roadside, it appeared to me that he was deliberately holding back life-saving aid as if he were holding reinforcements back during a military offensive.

When I heard Michael Chertoff's military-sounding statement, I knew then that there was trouble. The situation, to me, felt like an a tactic in a military offensive; part of a long held struggle to hurt the remarkable African American culture, a culture brought here from Africa in slavery.

The African American, or the Black American culture, is the dominant musical youth culture in the world today. In this group we created knowledge which describes a deliberate neglect by the capital culture for the tens of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black, who were stranded in New Orleans in floodwaters after the Katrina landfall.

As it turns out, we have here an amazing history of an equally amazingly thin slice of time. There were so many stories of heroism and villainy, so much sacrifice, that I feel a personal sadness knowing that the struggle is slowly being forgotten by the general public