serendipitous alignment?

Having met Alan Raynor through Leon (who wrote this post) on an email engagement only a few days ago, and getting a fortuitous recommendation from John Wood of Metadesign to learn about Alan’s Inclusionality theories, Alan kindly shared his ideas on relativity which, as far as I can tell, is an attempt to include consciousness in the frame of reference.

an aside on alan’s article on “place-time”

As I write this, I have got as far as reading Newton’s famous equation, which Alan uses as a natural culmination of Parmenides’s discrete world view:

F = ma

This time when I came across it, my mind simply translated this to terms of money rates as defined by mttp. That is, acceleration, rate of change of distance over a duration, as rate of change of money over a duration, for example, £100-day per week. Think of a bundle of people who are engaged with these different rates of moneyflow, multiply them by the number of people, and you get some notion of the force of a social movement. A relatively simple translation we might be able to mathematise were we to be conducting such experiments.

(Why movement? Because my mind has just got off the back of engaging Indy with respect to Jeremy’s work with Purpose.com, who happens to be co-founder of avaaz. This video is a rather good example of the level of self-disclosure required for our new global “leaders”.)

Of course, the math of real cases is more complex than F=ma, and so is one where eg 50 people were working at different rates. F, in this case, would still give some idea of the “force” or “momentuum” of the movement. So far, the momentuum for ecological economics is around £10-hour per week, and it ends in a season. That’s barely a pulse. We were almost close to £100-day per week for a season, which starts to become reasonable, and ideally, and healthy, when it is five £100-day’s per week — for one individual.

And this is to talk about money. If we shift to subjective enumeration, where people are giving values for each other’s contributions, what kind of calculations can we derive regarding the “force” or “health” of a movement? Will increases and decreases of subjective enumeration derive patterns that we can study with standard mathematical tools? Will new laws emerge that capture how realistic a movement (or a project) is, the required “energy” to manifest results? Undoubtedly, in my mind.

(John, as you can see from his metadesign article based on our event, has been considering the required parameters for synergy to occur, but I feel he is jumping the gun slightly. I need to have more obvious palpable results, like the results that Jeremy has produced. Or, more like action cycles that derive some numbers in terms of moneyflow and subjective enumeration. That is, I would rather base analysis on what works, John having conducted many more social experiments with adults than myself. Nevertheless, may I make my customary call to ensure we have moneyflow while we examine these equations, rather than attempt to derive them sui generis.)

concluding alan’s article

I have now finished reading the article, and it ends with with a rather loud statement:

Space is an intangible presence, with qualities vital to the very possibility of cosmic evolution. SPACE HAS
INFLUENCE, which INDUCES ENERGETIC FORM INTO CIRCULATORY FLOW.

I am looking forward to reading Alan’s rather longer paper written with others, where I hope there are attempts to mathematise his thinking. I expect to find some material which relates to what I have dubbed XQ, observations on how math needs to change to capture the kind of thinking he is demonstrating.

And just in case anyone reading this thinks this is all pie-in-the-sky thinking, Alan has conducted courses at Bath University where the effects on his students have been quite remarkable; here’s a video of some “results”. That is, his engagement with real people is the proof of his thinking, much like my experience with kids has influenced my thinking. It is grounded in inter-subjective reality.

real world application?

The application of this thinking may prove to be substantial in terms of global movements, ala Jeremy’s Avaaz organisation, but I am personally interested in getting proof of process not only in classes (something we have achieved already), but in business. I am specifically interested in getting proof at the bleeding edge of business, in sales, marketing and advertising. I have met with some remarkable people, like Ken Dixon from Newhaven Agency, and if we get proof there, not only will we unlock a source of moneyflow from companies, we will provide companies with a new business methodology which will greatly accelerate all the good work being conducted by theorists, educationalists, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and everyone attempting to avert the very real ecological disaster we are facing.

If I had a wish in my life, right now I’d use it. I wish that all the players mentioned in this post aligned sufficiently strongly to be able to… if we were mountain climbing, it would be putting in the effort to reach the next camp, higher than any of us have so far been. A stable point which may enable others to reach without too much difficulty. A vantage point that allows a clearer view of the terrain around, the socio-economic and historical-political position we are in. And a point from which we may progress onwards. It is as if this point is the first above the cloud-line. What might this mean in the real world? An algorithm? An operational model which enables a group of people to achieve something remarkable, the first manifestation of the “confluence model”? I do not know. This is what my wish might be.

confluence model

The Confluence Model is a social utility defined by a minimal set of simultaneous systems which enables people to collaborate in a non-managed way. It runs on three simultaneous systems: the intentions system, the coupling system and the conditions system. There is a fourth system which runs in the real world in the mind of the user, the realtimeOS.

The Intentions System allows users to write down what they are intending to do with respect to a specific objective. Everything is future orientated, with only 1/3 of a user’s time taken to report on the results, eg of a meeting. Like a flock of birds seen from the perspective of a single member, one can see what neighbours are doing, whether in the same company or friends or notables, and thus it is possible to plan ahead based on what other people are doing without actively contacting them. This makes the entire system more efficient.

The Coupling System enables people to connect with one another in a more substantial manner. That is, if there are 20 people aligned to a particular objective and only a team of 5 is needed, the collective of 20 self-sorts through “value sets” of mutually accepted personality questionnaires. For example, one individual believes the team must consist of a plant, a decider, a finisher, etc, while another person might need to check on specific skill sets, programming language, contact network, etc. People thus choose their teams relative to their own value set, and “ideal” groups are implied by those individuals who fit several such value sets. A prospective team meet, or participate in some single task to see if the team gels, and if this works, the individuals commit to achieving the objective. Multiple teams may be generated, as well as vaguely bounded teams, with a range of 5 to 7 members, depending on who is talked to. What matters is that results will define who the actual team was.

The Conditions System enables individuals to record what they believe to be the contingent factors that are informing their decisions. This might be by sharing information, pointing at various website articles or videos, but minimally it consists of conditional statements describing the conditions the person finds themselves in: IF certain conditions are met THEN the person can do something. This allows participants to overcome other people’s limiting factors, sui generis. Instead of discussing, and asking for help, things which slow down collaboration rather than speed it up, users can just help one another out effortlessly.

The realtimeOS consists of a bunch of heuristics to make best use of the computer system. Most users will be invited in, and hopefully in terms of manifesting a realworld application. The tool is therefore evaluated in situ; users will not judge whether the tool is good or not, but whether their realworld objective is realised. If it is, then the tool works. Period.