Ken Homer's List: Mind Amplifiers Course

I’ve been following Kevin Kelly’s work for a long time, and his thoughts for his next book about the meaning of technology since he started chronicling them in 2004. So it was with much anticipation and a good amount of context that I, and many others, received the book that finally emerged, What Technology Wants. In this ambitious endeavor to elucidate the intention of technology, Kelly contextualizes the evolution of technology within the evolution of life and consciousness. It is strangely beautiful poetry for technophiles and technophobes alike; instead of contrasting or conflating life and technology, he tells a convincing tale in which they are two thrusts of a self-organizing and increasingly self-conscious universe. But as exhibited by the notes I scribbled on almost every one of the book’s 406 pages, my critiques are many. What follows are five pointed questions and, based on the fifth one, a more extended critique of the book. In this critique, I make claims as audacious as Kelly’s, but unlike him, without duly defending them, and I willingly leave myself open to criticism. I struggled with my reaction to this book and wholeheartedly encourage your comments. Here goes, starting with five questions:

are technologists and designers here to enable people to do meaningful things in their lives in community with their fellow human beings or are they here as an elaborate dopamine delivery system, basically drug dealers for users? If it is the latter, I’m really not interested. We should embrace the former: because although it is rough and ready, there’s something much more noble about helping our fellow humans do something meaningful than simply seeing them as characters in a video game.

Let me just start by saying I understand that Twitter is a communication channel that can be used in a variety of ways. Though there's no 'right' way to use it, there may be 'more effective' ways, depending on your goal. This post is just intended to be an overview of ideas that have led me to change my own habits on Twitter, which has increased its value as a resource for me.

Is it possible to self-organize action in a crowd without leaders? I have been wondering about this question a long time and now I found some answers in a seminar of a Finnish project SOMUS. It has published a final report of many small projects to activate people in different areas. The orientation to self organisation comes here from sociology and social self-organisation is understood on a general level: it is a form of collective action without formal leaderships or roles of hierarchy between the participants.

"WE ARE at a moment where computers and computer technology now have approached humans." That was the grand claim made by John Kelly, head of research at IBM, an American technology giant, a few weeks ago on the eve of a major test of his firm's computing prowess. Watson, the firm's latest super-duper computer, was ready to take on the world's best contestants at "Jeopardy!", an American television quiz show known for its use of clever wordplay. In the event, Watson handily won the contest.

Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters. The inside and outside of infotention work best together:

Honing the mental ability to deploy the form of attention appropriate for each moment is an essential internal skill for people who want to find, direct, and manage streams of relevant information by using online media knowledgeably.

Knowing how to put together intelligence dashboards, news radars, and information filters from online tools like persistent search and RSS is the external technical component of information literacy.