The Future is Networks.<\/p>\n
This idea has been buzzing in my head for a long time. The first time I wrote it down was over a year ago, not really understanding what that meant, but it was an \u201cintuition.\u201d As time has gone by, this has seemed more and more probable, but I wasn\u2019t sure how it fit together.<\/p>\n
The buzzing has been growing louder, and my mind was saying, \u2018The future of Social Business is networks,\u2019 \u2018The future of education is networks,\u2019 \u2018The future of society is networks.\u2019<\/p>\n
What the hell did this mean?<\/p>\n
I know everyone is busy. Everyone is looking for some solution to how to make their situation better. If you will just bear with me, I\u2019m going to expose you to what I found to be an incredibly powerful idea.<\/p>\n
Insight #2: Where \u201cwe\u2019re at\u201d in History<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re all aware that there\u2019s something going on here. We\u2019re not quite sure what, but it feels like we\u2019re nearing a point where something must change if we\u2019re to move forward.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be honest with you \u2013 I don\u2019t really follow politics. I find it baffling at a national level and I feel impotent to do anything about it at the local level. (I tried volunteering last year on a committee in my town to promote Zero Waste and green energy. Every meeting was just talking and arguing, instead of devising solutions and implementing them. I got bored and resigned.)<\/p>\n Economics also confuses me. I don\u2019t really understand how I paid over $14,000 towards my mortgage in 2009 and only $6 went towards the principal. I also don\u2019t understand how there was just a multi-billion dollar bailout of our financial industry, and yet Wall Street bonuses rose 17% to $20.3 billion last year<\/a>. I don\u2019t think of myself as an idiot, but my mind *literally* can\u2019t conceive how those two things could happen at the same time. It seems like the wealth of the entire nation is being funneled right to a couple thousand fortunate people, and all of us are still working pretty damn hard to make ends meet, yet ultimately supporting that model.<\/p>\n Everything seems really bizarre and nonsensical, and it feels like it\u2019s pointing to something. Lester Brown just wrote a really simple, relatively short, easy to digest post that lays out the situation better than I can \u2013 give it a read: A Civilizational Tipping Point<\/a>.<\/p>\n Insight #3: The Underlying Forces At Work<\/strong><\/p>\n While these things are unfolding at the surface level, something else has been going on underneath. Without really understanding the big picture, I\u2019ve been trying to identify it. I wrote a post a few months ago, called Three Key Trends Shaping the Web and Society<\/a>, where I tried to put my observation into words. The trends are:<\/p>\n * Accelerating change<\/a> I explained what each of those means in the post, and added some nice graphics too. If you\u2019re not familiar with those concepts, you can go check it out. For the sake of flow, I\u2019m going to keep moving here, but essentially it means that the world is now more interconnected than it\u2019s ever been because of social technology.<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s call \u201csocial technology\u201d anything that allows us to communicate information on a global level<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s also frame it in these terms: EVERYTHING is information<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Not just these words on a screen, but also the physical objects we exchange; all the goods that keep the world going \u2013 food, furniture, clothing, toys, tchatchkis, all the \u201cstuff.\u201d It also includes the virtual objects \u2013 the services that we provide each other, the money we exchange, our voices talking to one another over Skype, and every other intangible thing.<\/p>\n Every one of these things is actually a type of communication<\/strong>, a representation for something.<\/p>\n A banana isn\u2019t fruit, it\u2019s nourishment. A couch isn\u2019t furniture, it\u2019s relaxation. A toy isn\u2019t plastic from China, it\u2019s fun. My Toyota isn\u2019t a car, it\u2019s transportation. My husband isn\u2019t a man, he\u2019s support, trust, and love. I could go on forever, but seriously take a look around you, and realize that you\u2019re surrounded by stuff that means something else.<\/p>\n Think of it ALL as a type of information.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, if you can truly imagine every \u201cthing\u201d around you as information, and we\u2019re now a globally interconnected world, all trading goods and services and knowledge, that\u2019s A LOT of information.<\/p>\n That\u2019s complexity.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t that way when we lived in tribes or even villages or even Empires. It\u2019s literally NEVER been fully globally connected, until now.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so complex, that we literally don\u2019t know how to handle it. When we talk about \u201cinformation overload,\u201d it doesn\u2019t just refer to all these activity streams on the web \u2013 it refers to EVERYTHING.<\/p>\n So what do we do about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Luckily, complexity isn\u2019t something that\u2019s never happened before. It may not have happened before for humans as a global civilization, but it happens in Nature all the time.<\/p>\n An ant colony, the biosphere, the brain. All highly complex, yet functional.<\/p>\n Why? How?<\/p>\n If those systems \u201cwork,\u201d shouldn\u2019t we be able to imitate them in order for us to \u201cwork\u201d too?<\/p>\n Well, actually, yes.<\/strong><\/p>\n One of two things happens when a process reaches a certain level of complexity, and we can and have observed this. Over. And over. And over.<\/p>\n a. it compresses into simple patterns So we\u2019re kind of all struggling with avoiding chaos right now. We all still go about our day, go to work, entertain ourselves, have sex. We\u2019re getting by. But we\u2019re also wondering, somewhere in the back of our heads, how much longer things can go on like this, with all this uncertainty. Hopefully someone figures this out so we can go on with our lives and feel secure again about the future.<\/p>\n Enter accelerating change.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t think about this part, because the idea of it doesn\u2019t fit with the way we experience reality. We only live for so many years, and things feel like they unfold at approximately the same pace they always did.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s use \u201ctechnology\u201d as an example.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s first talk about technology as if that means just electronic technology.<\/p>\n OK, we went from telegraph to radio to phone to TV to cell phone to computer to smartphone within about a hundred years, but that feels like it happened at a pretty natural pace, because we\u2019ve lived in it as it happened, and we experience time on a linear scale.<\/p>\n BUT, if you plot those changes on a graph, it actually doesn\u2019t move in a slightly tilted line moving upwards at all.<\/p>\n It swoops like the letter J. It gets faster at a faster rate.<\/p>\n Now if you quickly back up, and understand that \u2018technology\u2019 isn\u2019t actually just digital, but that technology includes all things that humans have used to simplify things when complexity increases, things begin to make A LOT of sense.<\/p>\n Every tool man has made, from the flint arrows to the wheel to civilization to systems of governance have ALL been in response to complexity.<\/strong><\/p>\n Tribes got bigger and more complex and needed to hunt down food more effectively to feed more people, and they realized they needed more than a club. They needed an arrow. This worked.<\/p>\n [quickening]<\/p>\n They got bigger still and couldn\u2019t be chasing after food all the time, so they domesticated animals and developed agriculture. This worked.<\/p>\n [quickening]<\/p>\n They got more complex and different people started doing different things, making stuff, and wanted to trade their stuff for other people\u2019s stuff. The developed a barter system. This worked.<\/p>\n [quickening]<\/p>\n They got more complex and this had to be organized into some kind of structure, so systems of governance were implemented. Different versions emerged all over the world, but they all had something in common: There was a scarcity of resources, and so the systems were competition-based. They had to be, because Nation 1 wanted to retain more resources than Nation 2. It wanted to protect or control its own interests, its physical resources, the intellectual capital of its society. This ultimately exploited a ton of people in order to work, but it worked. At least for the folks on top.<\/p>\n [quickening]<\/p>\n Then it got more complex, more interrelated and interdependent. This brings us to the present.<\/p>\n It\u2019s now become so incredibly complex and enmeshed, that each of us now has access to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET in less than 6 steps. Even with billions of people on the planet, we can reach literally anyone in 6 steps. That means we can access anyone\u2019s resources in 6 steps. Their skills, their knowledge, their capital, their influence. Any resource.<\/p>\n What does this mean?<\/p>\n We\u2019ve transitioned past the point of scarcity.<\/strong><\/p>\n Take a second to let that soak in.<\/p>\n There is no longer such thing as scarcity.<\/p>\n There are only misallocated resources.<\/p>\n It happened right under our noses while we\u2019ve been trying to solve problems that are not just past the point of fixing, but irrelevant.<\/p>\n The only thing we have left is the scarcity mentality. <\/strong>Any actual problem that needs to be addressed is already possible, right now.<\/p>\n The Final Insight: The Future is Networks<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve made it this far, either this<\/p>\n a.) doesn\u2019t make sense to you, Let me share the final pieces that clicked this into place for me:<\/p>\n I never really understood what it meant when people said, \u201cIt\u2019s not what you know, it\u2019s who you know.\u201d<\/p>\n I never really understood what the point of going to a \u2018business mixer event\u2019 and \u201cnetworking\u201d meant.<\/p>\n It all seemed not only intimidating, but damn near impossible. How do you meet people? How do you make a business connection? How do you build trust with strangers so that you\u2019re not strangers anymore, but might help each other. (And help is anything from lending your neighbor a hammer, to making a referral to help someone maybe land a job, to emailing or tweeting a link online to information you think someone might find useful.) Help comes in all shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n I tried getting a job the old-fashioned way, sending out applications and crossing my fingers, hoping somehow my worth would be reflected on that dreaded piece of paper we call the resume.<\/p>\n (Oh, and by the way, I\u2019m not just a recent college grad with no work experience. I used to have a six-figure income as a corporate executive. I quit because it was soul-deadening.)<\/p>\n My other prerequisite for a job was it had to be interesting and meaningful and fulfilling. Tall order. Nothing panned out.<\/p>\n So I started to experiment online. I had this feeling inside that \u201cI\u2019m worth it, and I want people to know.\u201d<\/p>\n But what is it exactly that I\u2019m worth? What is it that I \u201cdo\u201d? Where does the value lie? What am I actually trying to convey?<\/strong><\/p>\n I realized we all have skills that we learn, expertise that we develop, a trade, a craft, an art. Those things are different for all of us, and they develop and grow over time as we learn through experience. But underneath that we have strengths.<\/p>\n Strengths are something we\u2019re born with, and they get better over time too, just like our skills, but strengths \u201ccome naturally.\u201d It\u2019s the stuff that makes us us. Maybe your strength is that you\u2019re super generous and empathetic, or you\u2019re assertive and strategic, or you\u2019re a good storyteller, or a network weaver, or you know what people really mean when they say something, or you can anticipate what people want.<\/p>\n I hope you know what I\u2019m talking about, because we all have these core strengths.<\/p>\n If you have any connection with your strengths, if you have acknowledged and pursued developing them, it\u2019s probably reflected in what you do for a living. For instance, if you\u2019re the generous empathetic type you might work in customer service or a non-profit, if you\u2019re strategic you might be an exec or an entrepreneur, if you\u2019re a storyteller you might be doing video or journalism or painting or music, if you\u2019re a network weaver you might be in sales. If you\u2019re not in touch with your underlying strengths, and therefore not applying them, you\u2019re probably doing a job that\u2019s making you really, really unhappy.<\/p>\n My strength is the ability to see patterns.<\/p>\n It\u2019s what enabled me to write this post. People call me \u201cinsightful.\u201d I have the ability to see stuff that other people don\u2019t see, even when it\u2019s staring them right in the face. (I\u2019ve been calling this process \u201cmetathinking,\u201d and I\u2019m going to try to explain how it works for me in upcoming posts.)<\/p>\n So I figured out my strength and ventured online to share it, because it clearly wasn\u2019t being appreciated in the \u201creal world.\u201d I had no idea how \u2019seeing patterns\u2019 would be an asset that would bring me any type of opportunity, because I\u2019d never been appreciated for it before. Well, maybe I\u2019d been appreciated for it in small ways throughout life, but our memories are short, our egos are weak, and we need constant positive reinforcement to feel any kind of worth in this society. And society isn\u2019t really set up to give it to us, so we all feel kind of impotent most of the time.<\/p>\n Feeling impotent isn\u2019t just depressing, it also makes us frustrated, angry, and fearful, because we feel like we have absolutely no control over what\u2019s happening to us in our lives. Kind of like how we feel when we\u2019re sitting in dead-stop traffic and have someplace to be, or when a corporation fucks us and there\u2019s no one who will punish them for it, or when the government isn\u2019t able to provide us adequate education or healthcare, even though we bust our asses and pay our taxes.<\/p>\n We have no trust in any of it anymore, and we\u2019re pissed.<\/p>\n But all of that seems really big and overwhelming, so I just ventured online to see what I can do about it for me. I can\u2019t single-handedly change the system, I can only change my own situation. So I started this blog. I started writing about the patterns I was seeing. Explaining trends I was seeing in simple language, distilling down big concepts into words that people could \u201cget.\u201d<\/p>\n (By the way, I made the commitment to try this little experiment in September. It\u2019s March now. It\u2019s been just around six months.)<\/p>\n Along with the blog, I started a Twitter account. I opened the account the week that Twitter Lists was introduced. That was in October. I didn\u2019t use Twitter before that for the same reason I don\u2019t attend \u2018networking events\u2019: I had absolutely no idea who I\u2019d want to interact with, or how. No one ever taught me \u201cnetworking.\u201d<\/p>\n The reason that Lists changed everything<\/strong> is because it allows you to identify who people are following in a way that is contextually meaningful<\/strong>. People organize people into categories that are useful for them; either by geographic location (\u201cNY-friends\u201d), by profession (\u201cdesign-thinking\u201d, \u201ccommunity-managers\u201d, \u201csocial-crm\u201d), by power (\u201cmost-influential-in-tech\u201d), by intelligence (\u201cthought-leaders\u201d, \u201cbest-mindcasters-i-know\u201d), and any other number of categories that they see fit.<\/p>\n Whether they realize they\u2019ve done it or not, they\u2019ve provided you with a free resource. They\u2019re publicly exposing you to their network<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s now up to you to determine that person\u2019s credibility and reputation, and how much weight you put in their categories. (If they come across like a moron to you, but have a list called \u2018thought-leaders,\u2019 you might not find their opinion of a thought leader useful. Or maybe it\u2019s really useful, and you\u2019re the moron. That\u2019s for you to figure out. So what do you need to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, it takes a little homework. What I did was go to Listorious.com<\/a>. I looked at all the Top Lists that were interesting to me, and started following every single person who I thought I could learn from. That means I looked through their tweetstream to see if it was filled with potentially useful links to info, and I also clicked through to their personal website.<\/p>\n (On every Twitter bio page the user can link to their website. This is really important. Everyone should have a website. It doesn\u2019t have to be professionally designed, it can be a simple free blog, but you need to have a place where you show off your work, whatever your work may be. And not just a link to your LinkedIn resume. That\u2019s just an assertion of who you are \u2013 you telling everyone who you work for and the tasks you do there. That IS NOT who you are. You need to have some kind of site that SHOWS who you really are. Otherwise, it\u2019s a lot harder to get a feel for what you\u2019re all about just by looking at your tweetstream.)<\/p>\n Not everyone will follow you back. It\u2019s ok. You\u2019ll continue to follow them because what they provide you with is a curated source of information<\/strong>. One example that comes to mind, for me, is Maria Popova\u2019s stream, under the username @brainpicker<\/a>. I follow her, she doesn\u2019t follow me back or engage with me in any way, but her tweets are consistently interesting, so I keep following. You\u2019ll have some of that, and it\u2019s fine, because it provides YOU with cool content to then tweet to the people who follow you. I follow almost 200 people who don\u2019t follow me. No hard feelings.<\/p>\n How many people should I follow?<\/strong><\/p>\n So now you\u2019re starting to build up a network of interesting people to follow. Everyone has a different suggestion of how many people to follow, so it\u2019ll be your call. But in order to be able to start spotting patterns, I\u2019d recommend a minimum of 150. This will take time if you want to do it right. Just start with the most interesting people first.<\/p>\n Then watch.<\/p>\n See what those people are tweeting about and who they retweet. By seeing who they retweet, you start to understand who\u2019s in their network. An excellent tool to aid in this process is mentionmap<\/a>. You just enter in a username, and it shows you exactly who that person talks to the most, and who their closest connections are. I\u2019m consistently surprised when I use this tool, because there is ALWAYS at least one person in a stranger\u2019s network that is either also in my network, or I\u2019ve at least seen their name go through my tweetstream. This is a constant reminder that all of us are connected in under 6 steps.<\/p>\n Then start tweeting.<\/p>\n Hopefully you\u2019ve set up your blog or site where you update information about who you are and what you think about. Start tweeting a mix of retweets of interesting information you find from other people, and links to information about you. Oh. And when I say \u201cinformation about you,\u201d it HAS to be a gift<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What do I mean by \u2018gift\u2019?<\/p>\n It means you\u2019re not selling anything or talking about the company you work for or wasting people\u2019s time with some inane bullshit. People are busy, and won\u2019t waste their attention on you if you\u2019re not providing value.<\/p>\n This gift is something you give for free<\/strong>. That could mean a blog post you wrote that is filled with information someone might find useful, like a \u2018how-to\u2019, or an insight into something in your industry, or a tip that\u2019s helped you be more productive, or a link that shows something you made if you\u2019re an artist or artisan, or anything that shows off one of those inherent natural strengths of yours.<\/p>\n As you observe the people in your network more, and start talking to them, you realize that these are JUST PEOPLE on the other end.<\/p>\n This is going to be very bizarre and mindblowing at first, because we\u2019re not really used to the idea that strangers could be potential allies that would help us. But it\u2019ll get more comfortable over time. And you\u2019ll start to get a feel for their personalities and their interests, and if you pay attention to who they are paying attention to, you get a feel for who they know. And again you\u2019ll notice how closely we\u2019re all connected.<\/p>\n But, there are always holes in networks, and spots where you can make an introduction that could lead to a discovery. You don\u2019t even have to \u201cknow\u201d the person you\u2019re introducing. You might be following a person who tweets stuff similar to @brainpicker<\/a>, but you notice they don\u2019t follow her. So you just tweet to this person: \u201chey, you should check out @brainpicker<\/a>, you might enjoy her tweets.\u201d That\u2019s all. That was a gift, a free offer of a connection.<\/p>\n You just earned a brownie point.<\/p>\n As you get better at this, you\u2019ll start noticing that some people are working on similar projects or ideas, but they don\u2019t know about each other. You realize that they could probably mutually benefit if they exchanged information. So you introduce them. (Again, you don\u2019t have to \u201cknow\u201d either party, all you have to know is that there\u2019s a connection there to be made). I might notice a couple scattered people interested in social change, but realizing they could be more effective if they worked together, instead of repeating the same work in different locations, so I say \u201chey @CDEgger<\/a> @HildyGottlieb<\/a> meet @openworld<\/a> @kengillgren<\/a> @toughloveforX<\/a>\u201c. I\u2019ve never met any of these people in real life, but I think they could benefit from knowing each other.<\/p>\n This takes effort and time. It\u2019s work. And it\u2019s unpaid.<\/p>\n So why on Earth would you waste your time doing this?<\/strong><\/p>\n Because something interesting happens when you start sending people links to information that they can turn around and apply in the real world, and when you introduce people to each other which allows them to collaborate on projects or ideas in the real world.<\/p>\n It builds trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n This was literally a revelation for me.<\/p>\n As I started interacting more with these real life humans in an online space, I couldn\u2019t understand why people were being so nice to me and sharing information with me and providing me with resources.<\/p>\n It\u2019s because I\u2019m earning their trust.<\/p>\n This is the most fundamental, essential, critical thing we need in order to get ourselves out of this whole mess.<\/strong><\/p>\n I now have a network of people, none of who I\u2019ve ever met in real life (yet), with whom I exchange value with on a daily basis and build trust. In under six steps, I have access to anyone on the planet, and if I have access to the person, I have access to their resources. Resources like their expertise, their social connections, and their influence.<\/p>\n Do you know how this makes me feel?<\/p>\n Empowered.<\/strong><\/p>\n Not powerful. Empowered.<\/p>\n Let me give you the book definition of empowerment:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cTo equip or supply with an ability; enable.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/big><\/p>\n This hit me like an absolute ton of bricks.<\/p>\n All of this free giving and sharing actually does something tremendously valuable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It enables us.<\/p>\n It gives us the capacity to access the resources we need to take an action in the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n I went for a walk through NYC this weekend thinking about this, and I passed by a homeless man sitting on the street begging for change.<\/p>\n At that moment, I realized that I was looking at a man without a network.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what happened to him along the way or how he got there, but at some point he lost access to the resources that would empower and enable him to act. He possessed strengths, somewhere inside, but he had absolutely no way to leverage them, develop them, or use them in a beneficial way. He was a lone node, or at the most, a node within a network that possessed no resources that they knew how to use to their benefit.<\/p>\n It\u2019s networks.<\/strong><\/p>\n The answer is networks.<\/strong><\/p>\n Networks solve the problem of complexity.<\/strong><\/p>\n Since my blog\/Twitter experiment started in September, the effort I\u2019ve put in has helped me to begin forming a network of strong and weak ties. At first, I got a few retweets of my tweets; then more comments on my blog; then some people of greater influence started tweeting my posts, giving me more exposure; then a few people asked if I would do guest posts on their blogs; then I was asked to speak at a business conference here in NYC coming up in April; then I was hired by Duke University to teach a Futures course this July; and I literally am just waiting to see what happens next.<\/strong><\/p>\n It feels like magic, but the process has been completely practical, and actually kind of felt like a game.<\/p>\n It turns out, life is EXACTLY like a game. If you can access the right resources, you can win.<\/p>\n Now here\u2019s the kicker.<\/strong><\/p>\n Everyone can win.<\/p>\n By definition<\/a>, a complex system can only function with independently acting agents who collaborate. That means you still have your own personal interests that you\u2019re serving, but in order to serve your interests, your actions have to indirectly serve the whole.<\/p>\n And this is not just theory, there\u2019s proof.<\/p>\n You may not know the name Elinor Ostrom, but she just won the Nobel Prize for her work on cooperation in economics<\/a>. Turns out she did research that showed that the \u201cTragedy of the Commons\u201d wouldn\u2019t be the necessary effect of a globally cooperative society, as we\u2019ve assumed. She showed, in practice, that this could actually work.<\/p>\n So what does all this mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve tried my best to take some incredibly complex topics and distill them down to something that makes sense. I hope the examples are painting the picture of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n This whole online thing is essentially a simulation<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 it mimics the actual world. The relationships you build online and the networks you build online aren\u2019t just made between screennames and avatars, they\u2019re with real life people.<\/strong><\/p>\n Turns out, we\u2019re all actually in this together, all trying to figure out a way that we can all utilize our strengths, connect, collaborate, and survive. If helping each other and building trust is the way to make it work, let\u2019s make it work.<\/p>\n All this time, I was thinking way too big, trying to understand how to change the world. I kept asking myself, \u201cbut how do we leverage networks?\u201d<\/p>\n We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n We ARE the network. Networks self-organize. We only have to leverage ourselves, and the infrastructure gets built.<\/strong><\/p>\n Each one of us has to create our own ecosystem of relationships that will be beneficial to us personally. We\u2019ll all have some relationships that overlap, but none of us will have the exact same set. The point is that we want to build trust so that when we need help we know who we can access to help us.<\/p>\n Now imagine, if you\u2019re a entrepreneur, or an organization, or a non-profit, or a corporation, and you understand this message and spread it to each and every one of your employees. What happens when your entire organization of people, as a unit, is a network in itself, but each person also has their personal networks of relationships to draw on, which extend beyond the organization?<\/p>\n You then have an INCREDIBLE competitive advantage<\/strong>. (Yeah, there can still be \u2018competition\u2019 in a collaborative society, it\u2019s just different, because it\u2019s based on trust.)<\/p>\n Your organization becomes agile. It becomes a learning network, where every person has access to information that can be shared, interpreted, and implemented. You\u2019ll be able to identify weak signals faster, come up with solutions faster, and adapt to change faster.<\/p>\n The world will keep moving. It\u2019s accelerating at an accelerating rate. The ONLY WAY to deal with it is not to cling to the old hierarchies and silos and pride and egos. We have to understand that we can only deal with this as a fully connected system.<\/p>\n And the really crazy part is: we already have everything we need to make this happen. It\u2019s already in place<\/strong>.<\/p>\n All that needs to change is the mindset.<\/p>\n Let me repeat:<\/p>\n All that needs to change is the mindset.<\/strong><\/p>\n So how are we going to fix everything?<\/p>\n I have absolutely no idea. That\u2019s kind of the point. None of us do, individually, or even as groups. The system needs to be interwoven first, and then we\u2019ll collectively know how to figure it out. We\u2019ll be flexible, adaptive, and intelligent, because we\u2019ll be able to quickly and freely allocate resources where they\u2019re needed in order to make change.<\/p>\n The first step is to build our networks.<\/strong><\/p>\n This all hit me like a bolt of lightening, a pattern that emerged out of all the complex information.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an option that seems not only possible, but preferable, and comes with a plan that\u2019s implementable immediately.<\/p>\n I thought that made this an idea worth spreading.<\/p>\n If you think so too, pass it on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend I experienced a snowcrash; a moment where the seemingly disparate pieces of information floating in my head came together. A synapse fired, a new connection was made, and I was brought to a new level of consciousness, a new way of seeing the world. In reading this over, it almost sounds obvious, but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,132],"tags":[155,156,157,158,103,154],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-venessa-miemis","tag-civilization","tag-evolution","tag-social-networks","tag-society","tag-trust","tag-trust-networks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n* Increasing complexity<\/a> of information
\n* Growth of social technology<\/a><\/p>\n
\nb. it expands into chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nb.) is something you already knew,
\nor
\nc. ) your heart is racing because you\u2019re getting it<\/p>\n![\"smiley\"](\"http:\/\/s.wordpress.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_wink.gif\"){kind=icon}
)<\/p>\n