A great history of how an eight year old grassroots global network has evolved - through its founding, crisis, rebirth and rebranding - The Impact Hub Network as told by Michel Bachman. Upon seeing this I re-discovered a post I made here six years ago called "a social singularity." One great thing about blogs is that you record thoughts and later rediscover them.
It is my hypothesis that the reason the Impact Hub network, while making amazing strides as a self-organizing entity, has not yet reached its full potential is that it does not have a visual realtime feedback mechanism showing the activities of what its members are doing and how this view changes "the overall shape" of the network. I believe a mechanism like this could allow networks like this one to evolve and adapt to the environment much more rapidly. Perhaps the most recognizable example of such a mechanism is the stock ticker.
Stock tickers give real time information about the stock market's individual "members" while providing an overall picture or shape of the whole.
"This concept of a community constantly reinterpreting how it should act in the world in synch with a constantly evolving shared horizon is an important one.
This is consistent with research on termites by Pierre-Paul Grasse in the 1950s that suggests, by analogy and reflection, a connection in the way cooperative networks of people operate: that the regulation and coordination of the building and maintaining of a nest (i.e. the planet) was dependent upon stimulation provided by the nest, as opposed to an inherent knowledge of nest building on the individual termite’s part.”
Like a termites nest, the collective action that emerges within the network is strongly influenced and inspired by the activities of what other members are doing and the overall shape of the network.
In the face of what many view as earth's darkest hours of violence, repression and climate change somehow the human species seems poised to act collectively to alter its course. There is no one directing this shift, it is the intelligence of the swarm reacting to a new image of its nest - the planet. This is truly mysterious. A higher level of intelligence is seemingly acting autonomously."
At Catapulta the week of April 7-13 we intend to take these ideas and others to another level with the help of Purpose.org, an accelerator of movements. Here we will convene many networks, including the Impact Hub Network, and look to discover the nature of the broader social innovation movement happening right now. Part of a social singularity perhaps? In any case, higher levels of intelligence seemingly acting autonomously.
Paz
Mark