Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and one of the NextNow Collaboratory’s info viz gurus is facilitating the first Stanford University’s Media X Vanguard Visualization Collaboratory, “Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence:  Structured Data, Synthetic Minds–Visualizing the Dynamics of Knowledge” at Stanford this week.

Below is a description of the event.  We plan to post some key insights from the meeting after its conclusion. You can also visit Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic, and the Spaces and Places exhibit, created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale, at Stanford’s Wallenberg Hall until December 31, 2009.

“I agree with Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann that the synthesizing mind will be the most valued mind in our century.”
Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future

Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner

The communication technologies we are creating today will be driven by a new generation of multidisciplinary thinkers, knowledge workers, global problem solvers and a more mobile, distributed workforce than ever before.  Our new generation has been raised on the Internet, game technologies, mobile landscapes, and new forms of social media as we progress into a knowledge economy that is altering our institutional and organizational practices.  The profusion of data and digital information at our fingertips requires new ways to support communication and collaborative sensemaking. In this emergent landscape, the role of visualization technologies to support synthetic perspectives is becoming increasingly valuable. Deep mapping of emergent science paradigms offer satellite views of humanity’s knowledge.  Lightweight visual knowledge systems for public data sharing have evolved to support access to the broader range of information we need to collectively address the world’s most pressing problems.  Open data hubs now support the social construction of knowledge in our digital and physical environments. At the same time, cyberinfrastructures offer us new tools for policy making and decision support in the academic, business and public sector.

This experience will bring together visualization vanguards from the leading edge of science mapping, collaborative visual sensemaking, social network analysis and the emerging semantic web.  Surrounded by the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Exhibition at Wallenberg Hall and dynamic maps from Stanford’s Spatial History Project and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, visual thinkers from four departments on campus, designers and special guests will share a series of case studies of their work to gain a synthetic perspective on the future of visualization for connective intelligence. New cyberinfrastructures of scholarly data, network analysis and visualization tools will be presented along with novel approaches to data sharing from the social semantic web. The Shape of Thought mural process will support visual brainstorming and documentation throughout the workshop to create a realtime “map” to the new territories presented.  Discussions will center around:

• the optimum user interface design approaches for collaboration and access between institutions, disciplines, academia and the general public
• richer visualization approaches to navigate and synthesize large bodies of networked data

The goal is to catalyze multi-institutional research projects that activate the convergence of new visualization approaches and design tools for distributed knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Facilitated by Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner and assisted by others.

NextNow Collaboratory and “Summer of Peace” Initiative: Attend “Cities of Peace” June 10

NextNow Collab is exploring collaboration with Summer of Peace, a 501(c)3 project of the Tides Foundation.  (I’m leading the collaboration with sponsor organization Global Coherence Initiative and part of the science team).  This is a comprehensive initiative that will start in San Francisco as the first city/first summer of peace in 2010, and Cities of Peace is the first event of several leading up to that summer.  It’s a free event with opportunity to make a voluntary contribution.  From the website:

Imagine… gathering the most inspirational peacemakers and the most effective peace-building programs from around the world to light up the San Francisco Bay Area for a celebratory summer that creates measurable reductions in crime and violence.

Imagine… whole cities making a commitment to peace that addresses the root causes of violence, harnesses the creativity of citizens, and strengthens cross-sector alliances.

Imagine… the passion of activism married with the pragmatism of science and the wisdom of spiritual practice, working in concert with proven educational and grassroots programs to create lasting change.

In the city that birthed the United Nations, helped launch the International Day of Peace, and was named for the peaceful St. Francis, we invite you to an important new event that addresses how the Bay Area can lead the way in reducing rates of violence in our nation. We’ll explore creating a movement in which citizens, non-profits, government and business can work together to create a powerful shift to a more creative and collaborative culture of peace.

Get involved in making the Bay Area a pioneer in peace-building and a shining
example of collaborative community!

Co-sponsors: The Peace Alliance, Urban Peace Movement, Change SF, Pathways to Peace, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Global Coherence Initiative.

Host Committee: Josh Becker, Krishanti Dharmaraj, Urusa Fahim, James Hanusa, Dorka Keehn, Regina Kulik Scully, Avon Mattison, Bonny Meyer, Devaa Haley Mitchell, Lora O’Connor, Rachel Pfeffer, Adrienne Pon, Sudeep Motupalli Rao, Lateefah Simon, Maya Dillard Smith, Claudia Welss.

RSVP: The main public event is free, but you will need to RSVP in order to guarantee your seat. We expect a full house.  RSVP at www.sopjune.eventbrite.com Everyone who attends will be invited (and hopefully inspired!) to make a financial contribution but it is not required.

Brower Center Community Event: The Economics of Happiness

In an earlier post we announced that NextNow Collab is part of the Sustainable Enterprise Cluster at the new David Brower Center in Berkeley.

Part of the Brower Center’s mission is to foster community and collaboration including through the offering of informative and inspiring events on site.  On June 3 Helena Nordberg-Hodge will be presenting a free talk, screening and reception based on her new documentary film, “The Economics of Happiness.”  I know some of our NextNowers support the Dalai Lama Foundation’s Project Happiness (including Jim Schuyler, who is the their CTO–his latest blog post features the Study Guide for Ethics for the New Millenium).  Please come.

You can follow the schedule of upcoming programs here.

NextNow Collab Visualization Expert Bonnie DeVarco at Stanford Media X May 18, 2009

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and the collaboratory’s visualization technology guru has worked with Dr. Katy Börner, Elisha F. Hardy and others to co-create an experience at Stanford that inspires cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. The exhibit tour and discussion will be at Stanford’s Media X on May 18; the exhibit remains until December 31, 2009.

The Stanford Press Release and a description of Bonnie’s discussion follows.  Also see Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic.

Click to enlarge. Science Related Wikipedian Activity map featured in the Third Iteration of Places & Spaces by Bruce W. Herr II, Todd Holloway, Katy Börner, Elisha F. Hardy, Kevin Boyack (2007). Image courtesy www.abeautifulwww.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 8, 2009
Contact: Martha Russell, Associate Director, Media X at Stanford University: 650-723-1616.  martha.russell@stanford.edu

Art And Technology Of Science Visualizations Celebrated On May 18th At Wallenberg Hall By Media X At Stanford University

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA, May 8, 2009 — Media X at Stanford University is pleased to announce that the broadly praised international exhibition, Places & Spaces – Mapping Science, will be exhibited in Wallenberg Hall from April 20 to December 31, 2009 with a seminar, an opening reception, discussion and tour on Monday May 18th from 4 pm to 6:30 pm.

Places & Spaces highlights the rapidly growing genre of science maps based on large scale data sets. “The art, science and understanding of visualization technologies and their application have enabled new insights about complex issues to be shared with broad communities,” states Media X Executive Director Charles House.  “This new exhibit has turned Wallenberg Hall into a gallery setting that complements the world class visualization work on the Stanford campus in campus labs such as the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCI) and the Spatial History Project.” http://hci.stanford.edu/people/  http://spatialhistory.stanford.edu/

Curated by Dr. Katy Börner, director of the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University and her colleague, Elisha F. Hardy, Places & Spaces was created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale.  According to Börner “This exhibit introduces people to the power of maps to navigate physical spaces as well as abstract spaces of our collective scholarly knowledge.”

The exhibition has two components. The physical component allows close visual inspection through high-quality prints. The online counterpart at http://scimaps.org/ provides links to a selected series of maps and their makers along with detailed explanations of why these maps work.

Each year 10 new maps are added, which will result in 100 maps total by 2014. Marking its fifth year traveling around the world, the 40 maps will be joined by the “Fifth Iteration” of the Places & Spaces exhibit. Media X at Stanford University is proud to sponsor and debut 10 new maps based on this year’s theme, “Science Maps for Science Policy Makers,” on May 18.

Media X will host a reception and tour of the Places & Spaces exhibition in Wallenberg Hall from 5 pm to 6:30 pm, immediately following a seminar on Visualization Convergence for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence by Bonnie DeVarco, Media X Distinguished Visiting Scholar.  The seminar is part of the 2009 Media X Sun Microsystems Spring Seminar Series, http://mediax.stanford.edu/spring09_seminar_series.html.  Both the seminar and the reception are open to the Stanford academic community and the general public.

The reception will include a description by Stanford Computer Science Assistant Professor Jeffrey Heer of new visualization initiatives underway at Stanford, and his graduate students will present excerpts of their exciting new work in data visualization in a featured poster session.

Live teleconferences with Dr. Börner and several of the mapmakers themselves will introduce the new iteration, “Science Maps for Science Policy Makers.” The physical exhibit is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:00 am until 8:00 pm. The full schedule of Media X Spring Seminars and workshops offered in the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall can be seen here:
http://mediax.stanford.edu/WSI/schedule.html

Relevant Web URLs:
•    Media X http://mediax.stanford.edu
•    Places & Spaces Exhibition http://www.scimaps.org

About Media X
Media X is a membership program of the HSTAR Institute – Human Sciences Technology Advanced Research – at Stanford University. Programs and activities of Media X bridge academic and industrial research at the intersection of people and information technologies. The Wallenberg Learning Center is the premiere international teaching facility on the Stanford campus. Housed in the Main Quad, it is equipped with multiple high-tech classrooms and lecture halls.

Directions to Wallenberg Hall: http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/top/location.html

Visualization Convergence for Collective, Connective, and Distributed  Intelligence
Bonnie DeVarco

Today’s leading edge information and  geographic visualization technologies are rapidly becoming  instruments for connective intelligence on the World Wide Web.  People can now easily travel around Earth and through space on their  computers and mobile devices with the ubiquitous tool Google Earth.  At the same time, new data visualization tools allow us  to travel through the patterns of shared knowledge and scholarship using new mapping methods that are both pragmatic and  illuminating.  Whether tracking and predicting epidemics,  making national policy decisions, or identifying emerging scientific  paradigms, these new maps and visualization methodologies are  effective tools for clear thinking and collective action.   Bonnie will survey the recent history of these tools, their networks  of users, and their current state-of-practice.  She will also  present and discuss new trends, showing how these technologies are  converging and amplifying their importance for global communication  and collaboration.

Cosmometry: The Art of Modeling and Mapping the Cosmos (4/16 Event)

Aligned with our emphasis on supporting information visualization projects, NextNow Collaboratory was an early supporter of Cosmometry, and Thursday, 4/16 is a rare opportunity to hear about the project.  This presentation will be hosted by the Kalliopeia Foundation in San Rafael where we will get “a breathtaking look at the patterns and shapes hidden within our universe.  To see these emerge and become aware of them is a magical and awe-inspiring experience.  Cosmometry is both an ancient field and a newly emerging one.  It is ancient in that human beings have been discerning  and describing the fundamental nature of cosmic design for centuries; and new in that we are now at the threshold of understanding and applying this essential knowledge at an entirely new level of comprehension.  Most commonly known as Sacred Geometry, the breadth and depth of this field has now exceeded the scope of this term and therefore has a risen the need for a new name:  Cosmometry.

Cosmometry is the art of modeling and visually mapping the many dimensions of the universe.  At every scale, from macro-galactic to micro-atomic, the same patterns, structures, processes and principles can be found constructing, sustaining and transforming all aspects of manifestation.  Whether physical (material) or metaphysical (energetic), we are beginning to be able to make visible the cosmic patterning that is present, discernible and comprehensively integral within all expressions arising from the unified field of pure potential.

This presentation will introduce the fundamental aspects of Cosmometry and the field as a whole, as well as showcase examples of how understanding of this knowledge is being applied within various fields of human endeavor.  This is a very visual presentation with numerous images showing these patterns, structures, and processes in nature.  It is not technical or deeply scientific, yet it is grounded in observable “fact” and logical scientific premise that have been corroborated by many contemporary researchers as the leading edge of the field.”

We’re so excited to see the progress the Cosmometry team has made over the last year.  It’s fascinating to imagine how this emerging field could interact with and inform an application like Sky (which enables Google Earth users to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies).

The host organization, Kalliopeia Foundation, supports work that contributes to the evolution of communites and cultures that honor the unity at the heart of life’s rich diversity.

RSVP’s are requested due to limited capacity.

Kalliopeia Foundation, 1623 5th Avenue, Bulding D, San Rafael, CA

events@kalliopeia.org

NNC and 2009 State of the World Forum in Washington, D.C. Nov. 12-14

“Gaia’s main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, over-population, or resource depletion. Gaia’s main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement … about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot reign in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons.” – Ken Wilber

NextNow Collab is collaborating with The 2009 State of the World Forum to inspire a global network of people and organizations committed to transforming the way we live.  Global challenges are both too systemic and too personal to be left to government and business alone; it really is time for each of us to “be the change.”  (Sorry; it’s well-worn but nothing says it better.)

The 2009 State of the World Forum will vision and launch a 10-year plan to make more sustainable both our economies and our lives by 2020, including through

• Using Ken Wilber’s Integral Framework as our “operating system,” allowing for organizing knowledge and action plans that recognize personal and cultural values, resulting in truly empowered action
• Debuting Version 4.0 of Lester Brown’s Plan B
• Drawing inspiration from action-oriented, forward-thinking organizations such as the Presidential Climate Action Project, Apollo Alliance (who gave a powerful presentation at Social Venture Network conference in October), Friends of the Earth, Global Urban Development and many others
• Leveraging the concept of “social artistry,” as embraced by the United Nations Development Programme, towards creating real leadership for social change
• Releasing the latest data supporting the rise of the “new progressives,” a culturally creative worldwide demographic reflecting global values
• Demonstrating new technologies that enable us to envision, and participate in, sustainable systems.

NextNower’s that will be in the Washington, D.C. area and wish to collaborate please contact NextNow Collab.

Ken Wilber's Integral Framework

Featured speakers include:

Ray Anderson, Founder and CEO, Interface Inc. www.interfaceglobal.com Esperide Ananas, International Coordinator, Federation of Damanhur, Italy, founded in 1975. Damanhur  is a U.N. agency award-winning sustainable society numbering 1,000 citizens; it is a member of G.E.N.; and an active supporter of the Earth Charter Initiative.   www.damanhur.org Bill Becker, Executive Director, Presidential Climate Action Project; Project Director and Senior Consultant, National Leadership Summits for a Sustainable America; and former Director, Department of Energy, Central Regional Office. www.natcapsolutions.org Barrett C. Brown, Co-Director, Integral Sustainability Center, organizational consultant, author, and specialist in leadership development for global environmental and social sustainability. www.integrallife.com Lester Brown, Founder, Earth Policy Institute, World Watch Institute, author of numerous books, including Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. www.earth-policy.org Brian Castelli, Executive Vice President for Programs and Development, Alliance to Save Energy. www.ase.org Michael Cox, Chair, Executive Committee, California Student Sustainability Coalition. www.sustainabilitycoalition.org Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Chair, Integral Theory Department, John F. Kennedy University; Executive Editor, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice; co-author, Integral Ecology. www.integralinstitute.org Morel Fourman, Founder, Gaiasoft; author Managing in the New Economy – Performance Management Habits; and The Book of Personal and Global Transformation. www.mindofmany.com Vasilis M. Fthenakis, Senior Scientist, Head, National Photovoltaic Environmental Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Director, Center for Life Cycle Analysis, Earth and Environmental Engineering Department, Columbia University www.bnl.gov Jim Garrison, President and Chairman of Wisdom University, a graduate academic institution that explores both ancient wisdom traditions and the wisdom culture shaping our future today. He is also founder and president of State of the World Forum, a San Francisco based non-profit institution with a global network of leaders dedicated to developing a more sustainable global civilization. Richard Hames, Distinguished University Professor, Founding Director, Asian Foresight Institute, Dhurakij Pundit University, Bangkok, Thailand www.richardhames.com Marilyn Hamilton, Founder, Integral City Meshworks Inc.; author, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligence for the Human Hive. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Adjunct Professor, Department of Earth and Earth Sciences Division, Columbia University. www.giss.nasa.gov Johannes Heimrath, Executive Director, Club of Budapest. www.johannesheimrath.de Jean Houston, mythologist, philosopher and researcher in human capacities, long regarded as one of the principal founders of the human potential movement; author of 19 published books, including The Possible Human, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story, The Passion of Isis and Osiris, and Jump Time. www.jeanhouston.org Ross Jackson, Founder and Chairman, Gaia Trust, a Danish foundation which since 1987 has supported over 300 sustainability products in over 40 countries, especially in the ecovillage movement. He is also a major shareholder in the Urtekram International, the largest organic wholesaler in Scandinavia. Jurriaan Kamp, President, Editor-in-Chief, Ode Magazine www.odemagazine.com Chuck Kutscher, Principal Engineer/Group Manager, Thermal Systems Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration, National Renewable Energy Laboratory www.nrel.gov Osprey Orielle Lake, Founder/artist of the International Cheemah and Mari Monument Projects, which are dedicated to environmental sustainability, cultural diversity and societal transformation. www.ospreyoriellelake.com Ervin Laszlo, President, The Club of Budapest; Founder and University Chancellor, The Institute at GlobalShift University. www.clubofbudapest.org Pierre-Yves Longaretti, Theoretical astrophysicist, Astrophysics Laboratory of Grenoble, France. http://www-laog.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/~pyl/ Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; focuses on transforming the hydrocarbon, automobile, real estate, electricity, water, semiconductor, and several other sectors toward advanced resource productivity. He has authored or co-authored twenty-nine books and hundreds of papers, and consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide. www.rmi.org Hunter Lovins, President and Founder, Natural Capitalism Solutions. She is currently a founding Professor of Business at Presidio School of Management, one of the first accredited programs offering an MBA in Sustainable Management. www.hunterlovins.com David Martin, Executive Chairman, M∙CAM, Fellow, Batten Institute, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia. www.m-cam.com Peter Merry, Founding partner of Engage! InterAct; Chair of the Board of the Center for Human Emergence; author, Evolutionary Leadership. www.engage.nl Caroline Myss, Author of five New York Times bestselling books, including Sacred Contracts, The Interior Castle, The Anatomy of the Spirit; founder, Caroline Myss Education Institute. www.myss.com Karen O’Brien, Chair, Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project Professor, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo  http://www.iss.uio.no/instituttet/ansatte/karenob.xml Mary Otto-Chang, Consultant, UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Children and Climate Change; UN Secretariat for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2003-2007); UN Development Program, Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (2000-2003).  UNICEF and UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean Rajendra Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2007); Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Director, Tata Energy Research Institute; author of over twenty books and numerous articles on ecology, climate change and technology.  www.climatescience.gov Sandra Postel, Director, Global Water Policy Project and Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College.  www.globalwaterpolicy.org James Quilligan, Economic development policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand, Jimmy Carter, Edward Heath, Julius Nyerere, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Tony Blair, and His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal.  www.global-negotiations.org Sally Ranney, CEO, StillWater Preservation LLC. www.stillwaterpreservation.com Paul Ray, Sociologist; Director, Institute of the Emerging Wisdom Culture, Wisdom University; author, The Cultural Creatives.  www.wisdomuniversity.org Jerome Ringo, Chairman, Apollo Alliance; Associate Research Scholar “ Yale University; former Chairman, World Wildlife Fund.  www.jeromeringo.com Rustum Roy, Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State Emeritus; Professor of Science Technology and Society Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University www.rustumroy.com Robb Smith, CEO, Integral Institute; Chairman, CEO and co-founder, Integral Life. www.integrallife.com Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche; Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. www.cosmosandpsyche.com Marc Weiss, Founder and CEO of Global Urban Development. www.globalurban.org Herman Wijffels, Member, Office of the Executive Director, World Bank, representing Armenia, Bosnia and Herzengovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Israel, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Romania and Ukraine; former Chairman of Rabobank; Chairman, Economic and Social Council of the Netherlands. www.clubofbudapest.org Ken Wilber, Author of 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, he is the most widely translated academic writer in the United States. Ken is the internationally acknowledged originator of Integral Theory and co-founder of Integral Life.  www.kenwilber.com Michael Zimmerman, Director, Center for Humanities and the Arts, and Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder; co-author, Integral Ecology.  www.colorado.edu Ken Zweibel, former Program Leader for the Thin Film Photovoltaic Partnership Program, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and is often credited with the success of thin film photovoltaics in the U.S. Zweibel also cofounded a thin film CdTe PV start-up, PrimeStar Solar and became the founding Director of the Institute for Analysis of Solar Energy at George Washington University. He has written two books on photovoltaics and co-authored a Scientific American article (January 2008) on solar energy as a solution to climate change. solar.gwu.edu

HeartMath emWave Wins 2009 CES Show Award; Special Offer for NextNow

(The Institute of HeartMath is offering all NextNowNetwork and Collab members a 10% discount on emWaves.  A coupon code will be sent to members via email.)

The Institute of HeartMath (IHM)–the organization behind NNCollab’s collaboration project Global Coherence Initiative–just announced that the emWave Personal Stress Reliever WON the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show Last Gadget Standing People’s Choice Award, and came in second in the CES auditorium award.  From PRWeb:  Prior to the People’s Choice Competition, expert judges, including tech expert and Last Gadget Standing host Robin Raskin, and eight editors from NetShelter Technology Media network partner sites, such as Geek.com, Slashgear.com, MobileBurn.com, PhoneArena.com, FixYa.com, I4U.com, TechEBlog.com, and TGDaily.com, reviewed more than a hundred products. The experts narrowed the list to the top ten world-changing technologies of today that are sure to stand the test of time. Judges selected products most relevant to consumers’ lives, as well as those that fit the direction that the consumer electronics industry is headed. emWave PSR was selected by the judges as one of these top ten technologies and was then voted on by consumers.

The emWave will be a featured technology at the NextNowNetwork and Collab meeting in late February in Santa Cruz on Vizualizing EcoSentience (details TBA).

An earlier NNCollab post, Collective Heart Intelligence, introduced IHM’s De-Stress Kit as a resource for managing personal stress, a critical step in having access to our own highest intelligence.  Stress inhibits cortical activity.  When this happens, the higher capacities of the brain (i.e., creativity) are less available to us.  To be individually intelligent (and create opportunity to be collectively intelligent), we need access to the higher capacities of the brain.  The emWave is a bio-feedback technology that helps create this condition by focusing on heart rhythms, since the heart communicates with the brain.  In fact, both Rollin McCraty at IHM and Dean Radin, a colleague at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, have shared with me that the heart sends more information to the brain than it receives—and it’s the only organ where that’s true.  The emWave teaches us to bring ourselves into a coherent state where higher order functioning of the brain is possible.  From the IHM website:

Stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms. However, when we are in a state of high heart rhythm coherence the nervous system, heart, hormonal and immune systems are working efficiently and we feel good emotionally. emWave Personal Stress Reliever helps you reduce your emotional stress by displaying your level of heart rhythm coherence in real time. But emWave does more than just display coherence levels. It guides you toward stress relief by training you to shift into a coherent, high performance state.”

View the CES Video:

Press Release can be seen on PRWeb or BusinessWire.  For another NNCollab post on IHM, see Why Wait for Earth Day?

Issue Mapping Member Event: CogNexus Institute

NextNow Collaboratory has special interest in member projects that use information visualization technologies to elucidate/illuminate complex issues with social relevance.  NextNower Jeff Conklin’s CogNexus Institute is about to begin their next Issue Mapping Webinar Series, scheduled for January 14, 2009. There is a $100 Early Bird Discount that ends January 5th; here’s where you can register.

From the CogNexus website:

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. Laurence J. Peter

What is Issue Mapping?

An issue map makes critical thinking visible; it is a visual display that integrates ideas, issues, points of view, arguments, evidence and documents. Different from other mapping techniques, Issue Mapping is scalable and exposes the deep structure of an issue. Issue Mapping combines two components: a language called IBIS and the free software called Compendium. When applying the skill of Issue Mapping, working on projects with both technical and social complexity becomes easier, more manageable and more effective.

Issue Mapping (as well as Dialogue Mapping) are some of the few tools that were designed specifically to work with Wicked Problems, problems that have a high level of social and technical complexity and are so complicated that stakeholders often can’t even agree on what the problem is, let alone the solution. Global examples of Wicked Problems are issues like climate change and starvation, but most companies and organizations have their own set of Wicked Problems as well. Issue and Dialogue Mapping help people take the idea of Wicked Problems out of the theoretical and into a space of decision making, collaboration and action.

Our Issue Mapping Webinar Series gives participants the opportunity to learn and apply this powerful tool.  We are excited to be offering this course because it gives participants a tool they can use immediately in their work and their lives to address highly complex and Wicked Problems. The course is also the prerequisite for our Dialogue Mapping Workshop, scheduled for March 17th and 18th in Washington, DC.

WIRED Blog Network Post on Program for the Future

For those who haven’t seen it already, here’s a great post on Monday’s PFTF activities.  The mural, of course, is by NextNow’s own Eileen Clegg and Valerie Landau.  The Beta Version of the book they wrote with Doug Engelbart, “Evolving Collective Intelligence,” recently sold out.  Watch for V.1.0 and a new downloadable .pdf version that will help create the greatest access to content.

Silicon Valley Conference Aims to Raise Planetary IQ

By Dylan Tweney December 08, 2008 | 3:44:04 PMCategories: Future

Forty years ago Tuesday, a Silicon Valley engineer named Douglas Engelbart made a presentation so influential that computer scientists now call it “the mother of all demos.” More than a mere product demo, it was a down payment on an ambitious idea: that networked computers could help groups of people work together more effectively, raising the collective intelligence of the human race and making it possible to solve some of our most pressing problems, including pollution, famine, disease, and war.

More than 100 hopeful believers in Engelbart’s vision gathered Monday at San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation, in the heart of Silicon Valley, to talk about the ways that they can help foster greater collective intelligence.

The conference, called Program for the Future, features Engelbart himself as well as tech industry luminaries such as Google’s director of research Peter Norvig, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, computer scientist Alan Kay and MIT professors Thomas Malone and Hiroshi Ishii.

Engelbart, now 83, is a stately, if quiet, presence at the conference. But his ideas and his personality loom large over the crowd. Ishii, for instance, called Engelbart his “god” and his “hero,” citing the latter’s inspirational effects on his own career and on the development of the computer industry.

Google’s Peter Norvig was a bit more cautious. “A lot of what we do follows from him, but not everyone who works at Google necessarily recognizes that history,” Norvig told Wired.com, referring to Engelbart’s 1968 demo. That might have something to do with the relative youth of Google’s workforce: With an average age of 29, most Google employees weren’t even alive in 1968.

Program for the Future organizer Mei Lin Fung called the event a “changing of the guard,” a handoff from an older generation of computer engineers to a younger generation of students and entrepreneurs. Indeed, the audience demographics (as revealed by real-time wireless polls) showed a broad range of attendees, young and old, nonprofit and business, academic and industrial.

Hiroshi Ishii’s presentation showed one way that handoff might happen. While the sounds of laughing children visiting the museum filtered into the conference room, Ishii screened videos of some of the work that he and students at the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group have been working on, including one called the I/O Brush: a video camera hidden inside a large calligraphy brush and connected to a drawing program running on a big, white screen. Users touch the brush to an object, and can then paint on the screen with the image that they “picked up,” just like the eyedropper tool in PhotoShop. It even works for video, prompting cries of delight from the children who were shown in the video, who pointed it at their eyes and then painted with a series of blinking eyes.

Ishii’s lab’s work has also led to a truly Minority Report-style interface called G-Speak, which lets users interact with large datasets on wall-mounted screens and tabletop displays by waving their arms and “grabbing” virtual objects with their hands.

What many attendees had in common was an earnest belief in the power of collective intelligence to improve the world, a deep appreciation for Engelbart the man, and a level of comfort with the jargon of collective intelligence. A long mural illustrated the significance of the 1968 demo on a 20-foot “co-evolution” timeline (4.4-MB image file, part of which is shown at top of this page) that paralleled Engelbart’s life and stretched past 2008 into the future. On the timeline, significant events and inventions were marked with icons, while “The Demo” took the shape of a huge, blue tidal wave of ideas: email, networked computing, online publishing, video conference, hyperlinks and — of course — the mouse.

Attendees were invited to add their own ideas to the timeline with Post-it notes. After doing so, the organizers asked for a minute of silence while everyone contemplated the ideas being discussed, and some members of the crowd bowed their heads prayerfully. Afterwards, people shouted out their best ideas: “World 2.0,” one man said, to answering cheers, and “Life in an integrated domain,” yelled another one, prompting whoops from the crowd.

It wasn’t all jargon and hopeful visions. “One-to-many” presentations were intermixed with more collaborative sessions, in which participants were asked to come up with ideas for advancing the collective intelligence program.

But in the end, the conference came down to a fundamental belief that technology could help people get better at solving real and pressing problems.

Engelbart boiled his theory down to the single principle of continuous improvement, Norvig said. “If you continuously improve, everything else will take care of itself.”

“But really you also need to be improving in the right direction,” Norvig continued. “The reason Doug passed over this is that he had such moral clarity he knew what direction he wanted to move in.”

The rest of us, it seems, are still trying to catch up.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/silicon-valley.html

Collective Intelligence Book and Global Competition

For those unable to make the Program for the Future events next week (and you will be missed!), here’s an opportunity to purchase a Limited BETA edition, signed and numbered copy of the book Evolving Collective Intelligence by NextNower’s Valerie Landau, Eileen Clegg, and Doug Engelbart.  As Doug says in the preface, the book is intended to be the beginning of a dialogue with all who read it.

Join the conversation, enter the Global Challenge for Collective Intelligence Tools (launching at the event–selected interactive tools will be built as permanent exhibits at The Tech and the MIT museums, and submissions may come from any field, including politics, the arts, economics, medicine and philanthropy), and add your co-creative genius to addressing the world’s complex challenges and opportunities!

Beta Version SOLD OUT! Watch for V.1.0 and new downloadable PDF coming soon.