We’re aware now. The power and the opportunity to be visionary and creative is right before us. We can do our own thinking and have people join us. The most hopeful changes I see have less to do with the tangible technology (great as it is) that is in front of us, and more to do with the underlying structures and philosophies. I can only describe these the same way a mathematician describes a formula as elegant, or the way a musician hears a drum corps, all in a line, bells up, full volume, coming in step towards the screaming crowd. It is triumphant, simple and empowering. I am talking here about bottom-up, emergent behavior. Self-organizing systems. Rather than “executing notes on a page” or top-down spoon feeding of content to students or playing video games that everyone else is playing, we might use video game hours onine to fix real societal problems or, as students, start working on real problems to solve and building businesses or portfolios online.
Distributed Autonomous Organizations now give us the potential to create self-organizing systems which could provide opportunities to creative people and visionaries to be part of larger, like-minded groups. The words that Robin Williams spoke in the movie Dead Poets Society reappear in my head… “that you are here--that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”
Note: I excerpted this from a piece which I wrote for the artist Sebastian Schmieg.
For more on DAOs, I highly recommend this article:
For more on DAOs, I highly recommend this article:
