On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Bill Seitz wrote: (01)
> A sudden thought - is SharedIntensity actually "generated", or does it
> "emerge"? (02)
Uh oh -- significant metaness about to ensue. :-) (03)
What's the difference between "generated" and "emergent"? I'm
guessing by the former you mean that there is some conscious foresight
directing the process, and by the latter you mean that things just
happens. (04)
If you agree with these definitions, I'll cite my favorite answer to
these types of questions: both. (05)
SharedIntensity starts with individual intensity. Someone gets
jazzed, and that jazzes others, whether by design or by accident. (06)
You can most definitely psyche people up by design. I read an article
way back when about Conan O'Brien, who was talking about how his show
sucked in the early days. He noted that back then, he was ignorant
about basic talk show techniques such as prepping the audience with a
standup comic. That riles up the audience, and makes them more lively
for the actual taping of the show. (07)
That SharedIntensity can happen accidentally is an important
motivation in the design of these collaboratories. If someone in this
group posts an idea, and nobody cares, that's okay. However, somebody
in the world might care, even if it's the person who came up with the
idea in the first place. In those situations, I want the people who
care to be able to find that idea. (08)
I often cite the Bootstrap Alliance lists as an example of how great
ideas can get lost. In my two-and-a-half years of participation on
those lists, there were _tons_ of great ideas. Those lists are
archived, and so the minimum requirement of retrievability is
satisfied. However, the reality is, unless someone feels like taking
a month off to read those archives, the vast majority of those ideas
are lost. (09)
That's why we -- at minimum -- have a search engine on our lists.
That's why we encourage citation and cross-linking, both within our
list discussions and also on our Wiki. That's why we did the
summaries -- something I'd like to bring back, but am not sure how.
That's why I'd like to continue to explore and experiment with ideas
for converting our discussions into a Dynamic Knowledge Repository,
ideas like Peter's recent OpenThemicMaps proposal. (010)
-Eugene (011)
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