Where is the Evolutionary Movement?

There's something that is struggling to come out of me. I've been trying so long, to figure out how to say it. So, it's time's up: It's going to have to tolerate a direct telling.

(1) We aren't the leaders of the Evolutionary Movement. (2) You are following in the footsteps of others. (3) The organization is atomized. (4) Some people want control. (5) The Internet diet. (6) Feel the Network. (7) What the Evolutionary Salon can do. (8) Conclusion.

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1. We aren't the leaders of the Evolutionary Movement.

This movement has been ages in the meaning. You didn't make it, none of us made it. I don't know even if anybody made it; It is just something that "the Times" have made.

I look through papers written long before we convened to meet, and I see the threads of it. They are there. I can even track them back, and see that they run even deeper.

There is an Evolutionary Movement right now because it is something that lives inside the world right now.

I'll be a little more specific: If we were all to die, tomorrow, midday, at once, the world would continue the movement. It would come slower- It would be delayed- I'm not saying that the future is pre-determined, and that we don't have influence over it- but I am saying, that these threads and these needs run so deep, and these truths that we are discovering are so core, that we can all be recreated from the energy in and on this planet right now.

2. You are following in the footsteps of others.

The Wikipedia, the collective intelligence of the bloggers, the Open Source movement, all these radical new ideas that are shaping our world right now, they all stem from openness and technology. The technology has made it possible to be open in ways that weren't possible, and to cooperate in ways that weren't possible.

There are techniques that the open source world uses to organize, that work. This is how things happen now. This is the standard for organizing. Any other way, and it's like someone who's used to Open Space being stuck in a lecture series.

It's very strange, about the Evolutionary Salon: The salon recognizes the value of the Open Space system. But then, externally, to the world at large, it presents itself as a closed system. It presents itself as yet another teacher & lecture tour circuit. We have experienced that, those of us in the Open Source world, which now includes most of the younger generation that is net savvy, and we have thoroughly rejected it.

If the Evolutionary Salon group is going to stay in step with the times, you will have to understand how this works. It is not what you're doing right now. It is not just having a website, and email, and things like that.

I take a step back, for a moment- I realize I have to actually explain how things work for us.

3.  The organization is atomized.

In the past, the 60's, the 70's, the 80's, things were different.

In order for people to work together, they needed to communicate together.

The only way they could practically do that, was get everyone to drive or bus to some location in town, and have a meeting. A few had the luxury of having telephone conferences. The best organizing happened where people lived together.

You had to be really dedicated, and you had to make those meetings. You had to have money, in order to support a meeting place. You had to have a mailing list distribution, a "Zine," a newspaper, something costly and expensive to put together and send out, in order to have an organization.

Realize this:

Whoever controlled the communication system, controlled the organization. 

Basically, the organization was the communication system. 

The communication system could be the mailing list, the organization could be the weekly meetings, whatever. But the org was the communication system.

This is very costly.

Discipline was the rule. 

The people who kept the mailing lists,  sent out the mail, convened the spaces, were some of the most critical people to the organization. If you've boxed those, you're good. Anyone who wants to take part in the system, (and these systems were hard to set up,) has to be on the lists, and partake in the channels.

This was, (from what I understand of the historical literature,) an intensely political field. There were intense struggles over what the organization says, what the organization says to do, etc., etc.,.

Because people would sign up to be peons, and the decision making process determined what they were going to do. This was power, and most agendas needed the power.

There were literal infiltrations and attacks, network on network, (from what I understand,) in the effort (frequently successful) to control other organizations.

Whoever controls the communication system, controls the organization.

The power struggle is alive. It is alive in the Evolutionary Salon. I saw it, you saw it, we all saw it. "What are we going to do? What's our plan? We need to conceed things, so that the group can go forward with a few points." If you didn't see it, maybe you are of a kinder nature than me, or something. Maybe I'm just really really confused. But I saw it, I saw the struggle.

Now. Let's go back.

Let's look at hackers.

Who controls the communication system?

Who, indeed?

The question is near rediculous to us. "Who controls the Internet?" Why, nobody controls the Internet. It's a series of peering agreements, from company to company to company.  (note: This is actually under attack, but, that's a separate issue. I'm not going to go into it right now. I don't think it'll actually be harmed.)

Anyone can start a mailing list. A person with mild technical skills can put together a collaborative web site.

Open Source systems allow people to copy the content out, and make their own variant. (This is evolutionary! Letting people copy and manipulate: This is evolution at work!) 

Nobody controls the communication system. Everything is set up, even intentionally so, such that anybody or any group can revolt and leave.

The communication system used to be the primary bargaining chip that the organization had. 

Look at ourselves. How do we operate? We are so concerned about the meeting space. Would we be so concerned if it were trivially easy to check out a space, anywhere, to gather?

Let's imagine that for a second. Imagine we have a website. You can go to it, click a few buttons, and there you are: You have a Whidbey.

Would the people who hold the conference have nearly as much power as they hold?

Of course not.

This is not to criticize the people who convened our gathering. I am merely demonstrating a point about communication systems and the shape of organizations.

The contribution of the space is, presently, a huge chip in the pile, and it shapes expectations and sense of obligation.

I have a prediction for you.

One day, you will have that programmatic access to a physical gathering space. One day, you'll click a few mouse buttons, and a space will be convened for your gathering. Some time in 10-20 years, you better believe it.

You might now know about it, since you might be stuck in some sort of Amish -like organization that doesn't know about the Internet and how people work on the Internet, but it'll be there.

We're already seeing the beginnings of it, in the geek world.

And these things flow out, from the geek world, to the larger world. I hope you've noticed this general principle of technology.

 Now, we ask ourselves: What happens when the communication system is "free?" Or "very very cheap?" When nobody owns the mailing list, and it's all just "hanging out there?"

The power dynamics become very different.

Imagine a traditional hierarchical organization. It is shaped like a tree. 

At the top, you have the most dedicated, the planners, the political winners, the positions of power, the hard workers, yadda yadda yadda.

You go down a bit, and you have all these little subtrees. A regional division here, a regional division there, etc., etc., etc.,.

The lines of communication are mainly controlled by the organization.

Now, let's look at the hacker / open-source circles. What does it look like?

Some times you see these enormous trees. (Wikipedia is something like an example, though it's very different, and far more democratic, than most trees. I predict it will fragment.)

But more commonly, you see hoards and hoard and hoards of these little itty bitty tiny trees. 

These are 4 person projects. "Action teams," you might call them, in org-speak.

Except, who's directing all the teams? 

Who indeed!

It turns out that the answer to that is very interesting: Only influence is directing the teams. By influence, I mean: Persuasive papers, the Times, political events, and so on, and so forth.

There are no orders. There are no "do this, or you're out of this organization!" The concept is preposterous.

There is no "global Free Software organization." 

None. You can't be kicked out. There is no organization to be kicked out of.

This, everybody, is the Evolution.

This, is, the future.

If you're going to do something, you're going to do it in a small team.

You can collaborate with other people. You can voluntarily participate in some larger network. But the ground rules are that the network is copyable. The only thing that's not copyable are the people. No coersion, no control, only influence.

Now, there are exceptions. But I need to exaggerate things, so you can get a sense of how we work, and why it works this way.

Nobody owns our communication systems. It is easy enough to copy them.

 "Pandemonium! Chaos! How can you get anything done?"

The way things get done, is by the network. 

And I'm not talking about the Internet, TCP/IP, or any of those things.

I am talking about the constant background fuzz of people moving in and out of spaces, leaving visible trackable trails behind them, everywhere they go.

The lack of privacy is our greatest strength.

I hope you have noticed something that happened when the forums were first set online: Outcry that they were closed. Perhaps not all of us are expert at articulating why we want it that way- about why that's important to us.

It is no accident, nor is it a strange fad fetish for transparency. No: It is necessary. It is for the Internet Concentration to work. It's so that the network of people that I talked about can see itself, and work together.

Suppose you want to do a project. You want to make "Foo"s. A "foo" is some object, some artifact, that'd be really valuable to whatever movement you belong to.

It could be a movie, it could be a book, a drawing, a diagram, a piece of software, whatever. "Foo."

So what you do is you go find the community where people talk about Foo type ideas. It makes sense that the community be public, right? And you go there, and you find all those people who are interested in your idea, "Foo." And you repeat this. You go all over the Internet, finding these people. And you all make a website together, to talk on, to collaborate over.

There's very rarely a lack of people interested in Foo, you have the entire world to work with. Imagine that the Evolutionary Salon, on Whidby island, had 1 million people in it. Okay: There are more than that online in the world, right now, as you are working.

Some percent of them would be happy to work on the project with you.

In fact, I would be surprised, in a great many (most?!) cases, if there were not already projects underway to do whatever it is you want to do.

The hacker community has learned, over and over and over again: Do not start projects! Join them, first. Only if you've looked on the net for a day or two, and haven't found anything, do you start a project.

The non-programmer groups who are class of 2003-2005 are learning this concept. People will be learning this concept for a while. It's all part of adjusting to the cybernetic economy that exists online.

The network of people makes this possible, the network of ideas. Ignore the actual cables sticking out of the backs of the computers, and the wireless connections for a moment. See the network of projects, the network of ideas.

You find a similar project, and you sniff around. Likelihood is, they've connected with related projects. Just follow the hyperlinks, sniffing your way "home."

Found a group that's sympathetic, working on the same sort of thing? Bam, you're set: You're a perfect match. Join their small action team. 

Well, that's how we put together operating systems and desktops and so on, at least, for the most part. You just find whatever team is doing what you think should be done, and you join it. Done.

Now, let's look at this in terms of the orgnization's tree. Let's look at that big tall tree that the large historic tree org had. What happened to it?

Did we just chop off the top? No, we didn't. (We didn't kill them, we didn't put their heads on pikes, nothing like that.)

What happened was: All the parts of the organization, became network services. 

 For example, there was a part that convened yearly gatherings. Now, it's a network service, open to whomever can find a way to make use of it. What does that mean in practical terms? It means that they hold gatherings, that everybody interested in the general field, is invited to attend.

The projects recognize that the gathering is held according to code, (that is, without agenda, without instruction, without obligation,) and then they get together, and they cross polinate, and the cross-inform, and they share what they're doing, and they share their services. And you know what? This is intensely effective.

What about the top of the org? What about the big movers and shakers, the big shots who call the shots? What about them? Are they gone? Did they not provide a useful service, by providing strategy?

The did indeed provide a useful service, by providing strategy. 

The networked version of this is that they provide theory, direction, consideration, leadership, ideas. They write papers, and influence people. But they do not control them.

The leaders exist only by assent, and the willingness of people to follow along with them. When people perceive the leader isn't so interesting any more, they just go off in another direction. The leaders power exists only as long as they are interesting. The network does not depend on them.

4. Some people want control.

Realize, that many people look to an organization, and see a lever.

They want to maximize the effectiveness of whatever it is they are doing. The way they can do it, is to control another organization at a critical point.

You infiltrate in the formation process, you figure out the rules to the game, you scratch the right backs, and now you've got an org, held together by various trusts and interests, and you can direct people's imaginations in the way you want. People are held together by the cohesion of the org, and you can basically give them your good ideas, which they will readily take in.

Recognize it!

Many people are scared. They see immanent environmental collapse. Or cultural collapse. Or whatever collapse. They ask themselves, "What can I do?!" Several come to the conclusion: "I can leverage an organization."

Be cautious.

On the Internet, we just atomized the orgs. Unconsciously; I doubt anybody made a conscious decision out of it. Just: The "market forces" of the Internet made it intuitively clear: "Just start your own damn project." 

Everyone realizes it, sooner or later.

The Internet is a very large Open Space.

It is Out of Control. And healthy that way. Doubters, let me just direct you to Wikipedia, and show you the various (intensely complicated!) operating systems that are constructed this way.

 http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/

There was a general sentiment at the Evolutionary Salon: "If we don't do these projects, who will?! We gotta do something!" 

And in my head, I'm thinking: "Open your eyes, folk!" You're not the first people at this territory. You're not the second people at this territory. You're not ever the third, fourth, or fifth. You guys are way behind!

This is well traveled territory!

Who will do these projects, if not you? Why, the people who are already doing them!

Your eyes are shut, because you don't see well into Cyberspace. You have not trained your Internet vision. You don't know how to do the research, to see the network.

Part of this is because, many of the tools are not there yet, for the non-geek space. Or if it is there, I just haven't tracked it much, because I operate in the geek-space. But there's many more tools than I think most of you know about, or think about.

Again: Who will do these projects, if not you? Why, the people who are already doing them!

Why wouldn't you join them? Because you're an Evolutionary Salon person, and they're not? That's not right.

Participate in other groups' projects. Say: "My name is so-and-so, and I come from the Evolutionary Salon, where I report on our doings." 

There you are. The network in action.

This is called "emergence," this is called "collective intelligence," this is called "bottom up," and on the Internet, this is called "how it works."

5. The Internet Diet

If I were Zeus wielding lightning bolts, and could somehow force the Evolutionary Salon group to operate differently online, here is what I would do. 

This is a "training set" of rules, like training wheels, while learning online culture. 

• Everything happens online, by rule. No phone calls. Everything is logged.
• E-mail is forbidden. Instant Messaging as well- the only communication permissible is public web-based communication.
• No private areas! No "member only" areas!
  

The goal of these rules are to make sure that everyone can see everything that everyone else is doing. E-mail is a back-channel, as is instant messaging.

Now, Internet groups in network culture use email, and they use IM, but they have practices to compensate, and they know how to use them responsibly. Sense this group doesn't quite "get it" yet, the training wheels apply.

• Wiki practices follow the methods known by the younger crowd.
• A wiki that does not split content from talk for these methods.
  

I've seen two wiki efforts here so far, and they're both doing poorly. They both treat the web as a pamphlet, rather than as a conversational space for the development of ideas.

Pamphlets on the web are fine, actually, but they are better made as static web pages, not editable. Which, ... ...we already have, elsewhere.

What we really need is a conversational space that uses the idea building power of wiki. This is where you get your intensity, and this is where you get your collective intelligence.

The method is soft technology. The wiki itself is just a hard technology. By itself, it's not getting you where you want to go.

I've started to think that the MediaWiki form affords "pamphlet creation." By dividing talk from page, it says, "Ah, here's this nice thing we're collaborating on for the public, and in private, we're going to do these particular things." The MediaWiki (which is the software behind the Wikipedia) is one of the only wiki engines that does this. I suspect that this is no accident; It is the only wiki made to host encyclopedic content.

So, I think I made a mistake in recommending the WikiCities. If we were to make a wiki again, intended for conversation and idea-building, then I would make it out of a different wiki engine. 

• Everyone uses the Firefox web browser.
• Personal blogs are kept on LiveJournal, or wherever. But not here.
• Wikipedia is used for anything aspiring to be encyclopedic. (And there should be some Wikipedia work.)
• Evo salon wiki for what is not encyclopic.

 "Why?"

If we are serious about the Evolutionary movement, then we should align ourselves with it. Yes, it already exists: It existed before we gathered.

We also need to get used to the "services" model.

Further, personal blogs in particular- they need to be our personal blogs.

Remember the network I was telling you about? Our moms dads brothers sisters daughters sons friends relatives are not going to follow our evolutionary salon blog. They are going to follow our personal blogs.

How do you reach these people? By communicating with them personally, not in your "Evo Salon" personal. 

Everyone here should have a personal blog. That's yours, not the Evolutionary Salon's. Your friends read it. We should have a page that aggregates  them all together, and presents them here, but they should be yours first.

Strangely, to the non network-accustomed mind, that will do far more for the Evolutionary Salon, then having them here! Because when people write about the Evolutionary Salon, their personal area of the network will see it, and learn about it, and know it.

Just watch Ashley: She posts to her personal blog, and then links to it from here. "See what I wrote on my blog," she says. (I'm paraphrasing.)

That's the way it works.

LJ will give you a blog for free. So will blogger. I'm sure there are various people, hosts, activists, (activists providing a service, I might add, without telling you what you must do with your blog, because they believe in the network,) what not, just handing out the blogs. They're cheap and easy.

6. Feel the network.

The reason I mention all these services, and, with my non-existant Zeus-like powers, everyone everyone use them, is so that you can understand and see and intuit and feel and breath how the network mindset works.

So that you realize: "Oh, I'm not sustained by the Evolutionary Salon. I am sustained... ...by the network."

Let me tell you: This network is huge. It contains contradiction, and yet it moves forward. This network is the Thing.

People talk about, "Oh, look what the network did." But it's not the computers. It's the people. They are hiding inside your CPU, you can imagine, but they are there. You see a monitor, but it's got millions of people behind it.

Further:

There is no persistant life beyond the network. 

Actually, today there is. But tomorrow, no: The network is growing, the network is becoming more and more powerful. The network is like a business method that is just taking off, and trumping all others. Given a choice, a sensible person chooses the more efficient way, over the less efficient way. That is the story here.

"I could join an organization that cuts itself off from people, won't cooperate with anyone else unless they go through some big long process, that won't accept me unless I go through whatever number of channels it sets for itself. Or, I can just plug into the network, and start working immediately." That's the choice.

The things that work outside the network basically just disappear. We call it the Large Organizations Delimma on CW. It's not exactly a secret.

7. What the Evolutionary Salon can do.

So, what could the evolutionary salon do?

If all this stuff I'm talking about were true, what would be the role of the Evolutionary Salon in the world?

Well, let's do this network style.

First, you separate the gathering process, from everything else.

So now, Evolutionary Salon gatherings are places that people go to talk about Evolutionary Salon things.

There is organization that the Evolutionary Salon is the backbone for.

That is, the Evolutionary Salon, as a group, does not engage in any particular action plan. It does not pull people together on an agenda. It does not deal with interests. There is no question of: "What are we doing."

If you're there, it's to either learn, or to teach. It's actually Open Space. Whether you're doing World Cafe, Open Space, or any of the other wonderful process arts soft technologies what have you, it's there so you can learn or teach.

It's there so that people can organize themselves. Someone learns about some project someone's working on, and realizes: "This is the project for me. These are the people I'm going to sit and learn with, and figure out action steps with. This is what I'm doing."

It is there so that people can, without trying to trick others into coming, say: "This is what my group is doing, I am here to report on it."

Do people need ideas? Hold a brainstorming session, and dissemenate the results. Do people need an overview of what's going on, and what people are doing? Hold a team that just asks people what they're doing, what groups they belong to, what their projects are, and how they relate to other people and groups and projects.

There is a name for this, we call it: Collective Intelligence.

The action is in the people and the small groups, not in the large organization. The large organization is an enabler, not a bottleneck, for the small teams. It is a service provider, not a constraint, not a "seal of authority," not any of those things.

If there is some project that the space organizers find particularly aggrevious, then it can be barred from coming. But the space is not used as a tool to buy influence: Attendence should be in sympathy in some way, but not controlled by attendence.

This is the network way. This is why there are dozens of Bar Camps formed in the last 6 months in the geek world. (Seattle's next will be a couple months away.)

So first, you separate the space gathering from the other stuff. 

Second, you play to your strengths. This is "the other stuff."

One of the primary strengths here is Evolutionary Spirituality.

There should have been more of it, at the Evolutionary Salon! There were too few sessions about evolutionary spirituality! There should have been more. There should have been teaching about what it is, why it is important, what the goal is, questions and answers, all that stuff.

Evolutionary spirituality is a core pillar, if not the core pillar, of this gathering.
 But there was more focus put on: "What are we going to be, as a collective group." Baaad. That's messed up.

Other strengths: Collective Intelligence. There were so many conversations I wanted to have.

I could easily see teams of collective intelligence activists chewing on the hard problems of collective intelligence, and constructing a theory and an explanation that melds nicely with the other threads. It'd be awesome. 

Other strengths: Paganism. Green organizing. The technical gathering.

We meet so rarely. This is a great opportunity.

So, you run all these programs, self-select, within the space.

And it's valuable. Or at least, it was very valuable for me: It changed my direection dramatically.

Maybe if you found it wasn't valuable: Were you teaching? Were you learning? Were you organizing? Because if you did those things, I would think you would have found it valuable.

But if you were seeking power, ... ...maybe you have your doubts.

Well, I've already covered that. That model doesn't work for me.

If you are lonely, if your project doesn't have much support, if it's something like that, then I encourage you: Understand the Internet. Get online, and find the people who already agree with you. Better yet, find the people who are already doing something.

There's this great essay: The Inner Ring. It's by CS Lewis. I highly recommend reading it. The conclusion is: If you set to work on stuff that you really believe in, and you just find your crowd, then everything will work out, and all the right people will gravitate to you. It will work. It should bring you encouragement.

8. Okay. I'm done.

I don't know what more I have to say.

All I can do is polish this up, make it clearer, decompose it into a hypertext on the wiki.

Perhaps I failed in explaining how things work on the Internet, here, but I can succeed again in the future elsewhere, if that's the case.

Anyways; I hope that this isn't blasphemous, or considered outrageous. It may well be the case that this makes no sense to you, and sounds like I'm proposing the End of the Evolutionary Salon. No, no, no, that's not the case at all. Just a "restructuring," and proposing some clarity to the structure.

This is what I can see, speaking authentically, from my point in the world. I know for a fact that there are other "under-30's" that see things this way as well. Most, I think, actually. Most just aren't saying what they think, perhaps because they think it's of no use to write about it here, in this way. Perhaps they're right. I don't know.

We're so used to "network" organizing, it's just like the air. I try, we try, to explain it to over-30's, and they just look at us like we're talking about idealistic ghosts. And yet, there is Linux. There is Wikipedia. There is the Free Software world. There is KDE, there is GNOME. There is the WTO protest, in Seattle. There is the substance. Look, people are making companies out of it, even. It's the market, applied to the gift culture. It's all there, ready for download. Free music, free art, free games; It's all there. It's not a fantasy.

This is the Evolutionary Movement you are reading about, in the newspapers. This is the decade. This is what's happening. It's all around us. We should participate.