Major update of the Co-Intelligence website + Tom Atlee blogs Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 23:58:49 -0500 (CDT) Dear friends, For the last two years while I have been busy doing such projects as organizing the story field conference and researching evolutionary dynamics that can guide systemic social change, I have not kept up our main co-intelligence website. That era is over. I've been reading Clay Shirky's HERE COMES EVERYBODY -- which I highly recommend -- about the whole new array of content- sharing and collaborative Web (and mobile) technologies, how they combine in powerful ways, and how they are impacting society. I am becoming increasingly aware that sending mailings to my list is simply not enough for today's internet ecology. I'm not sure I'm able to upshift to a full-scale web 2.0 psychology and lifestyle, but at least I'm starting. For the last several weeks I've been giving renewed attention to my blogs and the co- intelligence website, and I'd like to brief you on what's newly available. MY BLOGS I have three blogs active right now. EVOLVING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE is my main co-intelligence and wise democracy blog, covering the full range of topics covered on the co-intelligence.org website. EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS EXPLORATION includes materials arising out of my and Peggy Holman's inquiry about evolutionary dynamics that can be used to transform social systems. JOURNEY REFLECTIONS is a more personal blog, where I share some of my random inquiries, realizations, thoughts about current events, etc. I expect to post something on each of these blogs several times a month, sometimes several times a week. Blogging is not hard, but it requires a different sort of awareness and engagement with my work, with you, and with the Web. Feel free to post comments on these blogs. CO-INTELLIGENCE.ORG Although our main website, has been revised and added to a number of times over the last several years, these changes had not been announced in the What's New page. It looked as if no changes had been made since mid-2005! So I have updated the What's New page (see below) and added a major new section. The new section, which I want to highlight, is about Conscious Evolutionary Agentry, Evolutionary Systemic Intervention, and Evolutionary Philanthropy . It links to more than 20 articles that address the question of how we can act in our nonlinear world to positively affect the survival, transformation, and evolutionary capacity of our civilization. These articles have profound implications for all forms of activism, citizenship, philanthropy, and other efforts to make this world a better place. Many of these articles have only been seen by a handful of people before this, as part of our behind-the-scenes work, and many have been newly revised and expanded. To my knowledge there isn't anything quite like this collection anywhere else on the Web. Among the previous updates to our website, I want to alert you to several special additions: * A fabulous manual for Dynamic Facilitation -- one of the most powerful processes around -- by Rosa Zubizarreta, a master facilitator and theoretician, who was also a critical companion in completing my book The Tao of Democracy. * An updated version of Pat & Pat , my imagineering short story looking back from 2020, describing how to run an election campaign and a city using co-intelligent politics. I wish I could get this story into the hands of Obama, Kucinich, Ron Paul, and other transformation-oriented politicians... * The articles associated with the Story Field Conference -- particularly the ones on Story Fields and Imagineering . I just finished watching the Pangea Day global event. We are entering an era of story activism. * The page of articles on Conscious Evolution -- especially the recently added Evolutionary Worldview , which gives a very brief and coherent description of this powerful emerging perspective. If you would like to get more of a feel for it, explore evolutionary news and views in the four issues of Evolutionary Life newsletter that have been created in the last two years, posted on the co-intelligence website. MAILINGS FROM ME I will continue to do occassional mailings to you on my email lists. I certainly have a lot of material stacked up that I really want to share with you soon. My new focus on the web will change things, though. First of all, every mailing I send will show up on my blogs and/or on the co-intelligence website, so it will have a much more current and permanent web presence than it has had before. AND much more material will show up on my blogs and the co-intelligence.org website than will go out to my list. So if you want to track all the articles I put out and the public comments I make, subscribe to my blogs and/or my website updates. There's much more coming. We are living in intersting times. Blessings on the Journey. Coheartedly, Tom PS: Those of you who subscribe to both the main mailing list and the website update will be getting two copies of this mailing. Please forgive the duplication. I hope I won't have occasion for such a major update action again. ============= Here is the full list of additions and revisions to the co- intelligence.org website. Links to all of them are on the What's New webpage May 9, 2008 Created (and added to our main index page) a page for Conscious Evolutionary Agentry and Philanthropy with the following articles: * The Evolutionary Worldview * Learning to Be Evolution * Becoming Evolution's Conscious Weavers * Learning from Our Evolutionary Past Into Our Evolutionary Future * The Evolutionary Role of Conversation * Evolution, Process, and Conversation: A Foundation for Conscious Evolutionary Agentry by Peggy Holman * Transformational leverage * Building a Wise Democracy as Crises Emerge * Democracy and the evolution of societal intelligence * Evolutionary Dynamics and Social Systems by Tom Atlee and Peggy Holman, published in the Integral Leadership Review * Consciousness takes us beyond avoidable force, waste, and risk * A Movement for the Conscious Evolution of Social Systems * Does Compassion Need to Evolve? * Feedback, Social Power, and the Evolution of Social Systems * The Evolutionary Role of Citizen Deliberation * Crisis and Evolutionary Leverage in Philanthropy (doc) - an evolutionary philanthropy paper * An Evolutionary Funding Network - an evolutionary philanthropy paper * Reframing Wealth as an Evolutionary Calling - an evolutionary philanthropy paper * the 2006 Evolutionary Philanthropy Salon - an evolutionary philanthropy resource Added Varieties of Transformational Politics and Transformational leverage to the Co-Intelligence and Activism page, as well as an annotated link to Conscious Evolutionary Agentry: "Co-intelligent activism naturally blends into conscious evolutionary agentry where the focus is on increasing the ability of human systems to make wise choices and take wise actions as they transform themselves. Conscious evolutionary agents seek to use the life energy and situational dynamics they find in and around them -- including problems, possibilities, and crises -- to align the interests of the parts with the well-being of the whole." Added Can Political Will become Collectively Wise? to the Comments by Tom Atlee on current events page and the Co-Intelligent Political Theory page. Combined the duplicate listings for Conscious Evolution on our main index page. 2008 (pre-May 6) Added The Evolutionary Worldview to the Conscious Evolution page, offering a 1-page description of the Great Story of evolution, some guidances for evolutionary action, and description of how the sacred evolutionary perspective relates to other religious traditions Added Rosa Zubizarreta's Dynamic Facilitation manual to the Dynamic Facilitation page Added two of Tom Atlee's other blogs to the home page: "Evolutionary Dynamics Exploration" and "Journey Reflections" Revised Pat & Pat, Tom Atlee's short story looking back from 2020, describing how to run a campaign and a city using co-intelligent politics. Created a page of co-intelligence-oriented comments by Tom Atlee on current events, beginning with Varieties of Transformational Politics and Obama and public engagement Published the fourth issue of the Evolutionary Life newsletter: **** March 2008 - Our Amazing World Our Ever-Mysterious Cosmos The Changing Story of Humanity's Past The Evolving Field of Genetics Humanity Faces Evolution Now Varieties of Transformational Politics Co-Evolving Our Story Field Special 7- Article Section: Who are We Humans? Paleolithic Diet How Baboons Think Does Time Exist? Swarm Theory Fractal Evolution 2 Poems Films and Videos Initiatives Books Evolutionary Art Websites Photography Visit with Michael Dowd First Evolutionary Revival New Great Story Materials Evolutionary Evangelists' Itinerary Evolutionary Quotes A Touch of Humor 2007 Many pages were posted on this site for the Story Field Conference, all of which were moved to the Story Field Conference's own webpage. It was held in August 2007 and a wiki was set up for reports by participants, which is accessible to you. Among the significant theoretical articles about story were the following (which were linked on various story-related pages on this site, along with the conference link): * Who is a "Storyteller"? -- and why such a Conference for them? * The Story Field Evolutionary Salon Vision * Story Fields * Imagineering * The Power of Story: The Story Paradigm (Summary) * The Power of Story - a more extended article on this topic * Examples of Cultural Metanarratives and Story Fields Added new board member John Abbe to the CII Board member page, replacing Elliot Shuford, who has gone on to co-lead a campaign for a Citizen Initiative Review with Healthy Democracy Oregon Published the third issue of the Evolutionary Life newsletter: *** June 2007 - Conscious Evolution News Evolutionary and Cosmic News in the Mainstream Media News from Our Favorite Evolutionary Evangelists - especially about Michael Dowd's new book Thank God for Evolution! Powerful articles like "Are Human's Naturally Good or Bad" "Welcoming Disturbance" "The Common Ground of Peace and Democracy" "Imagineering and the View from the Future" "Planet of the Apes" (about a real earthlike planet, and a planet like it that's right here) "The World's Greatest, Most Powerful Non- Movement" and an interview with Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson 3 poems Videos Awesome Evolutionary/Cosmic Images Evolutionary and Cosmic Games New Book and Film Announcements Evolutionary Response to Crises Story Podcasts for Kids An Ecological Footprint Quiz Book Reviews Opportunities to Participate, including exciting evolutionary volunteer opportunities Online Resources that "Pull It All Together" Reader Participation Questions Evolutionary Events Calendar Evolutionary Quotes An Amazing Cosmic / Evolutionary Factoid.(the evolution of so many eyes!) and A Touch of Humor 2006 Posted Donald Michael's article Some Observations Regarding a Missing Elephant about our relationship with the unknown, along with commentaries on it by Tom Atlee Waking Up into Wholeness, Dialogue and Mystery and Paul Ray The Elephant is in the Living Room, Not Under the Street Light Posted Collective Intelligence and Human Choice: An Online Invitational Convergence to Define and Advance the Field of Collective Intelligence (which includes a vision of the field, a founding document "Convening the Field of Collective Intelligence", and a list of practitioners and researchers and their websites). The event did not come off as planned,but it evolved into an interesting website. In association with this event, we posted an article by Tom Atlee entitled Collective intelligence, as a field of study and practice, is taking off. Created (and added to our main index page) a page on Conscious Evolution with the following articles * Something is Emerging - brief notes on conscious evolution * Learning to Be Evolution - includes 8 examples of evolutionary guidance * The Evolutionary Role of Conversation * Four Dimensions of Change, and One Integration * Becoming Evolution's Conscious Weavers * Feedback, Social Power, and the Evolution of Social Systems * Democracy and the evolution of societal intelligence * Building a Wise Democracy as Crises Emerge * Crisis and Evolutionary Leverage in Philanthropy (doc) * The Evolutionary Role of Citizen Deliberation * The Evolution of Genes and Meaning * A Movement for the Conscious Evolution of Social Systems Created a page for the June 2006 Evolutionary Philanthropy Salon that includes the final report and many documents contributed by participants including Tom Atlee, Peggy Holman, Duane Elgin, and others The Metaphor Project, whose first web presence was on this site in 2000, moved to its own website, so we set up a redirect page. Published the first two issues of the Evolutionary Life newsletter: *** July - Aug 2006 -- "On Being Evolution" Poetry Fascinating Cosmic and Evolutionary Facts Evolutionary Topics in the Mainstream News Conscious Evolution News News from Our Favorite Evolutionary Evangelists Evolutionary Ritual Evolutionary Process Arts Evolutionary Quotes Reader Participation Question Book Reviews Questions of Scale (and a touch of humor) A New Evolutionary Group Evolutionary Events Calendar *** December 2006 - Conscious Evolution News Evolutionary Topics in the Mainstream News Editorial on the heated science/ religion debate News from Our Favorite Evolutionary Evangelists Barbara Marx Hubbard's story of discovering Conscious Evolution "The Dark Side of Immortality and the Gifts of Death" "Evolution, Process and Conversation" "Evolution of the Scientific Method" 3 poems Awesome Evolutionary/Cosmic Images Evolutionary Games New Book and Film Announcements Book Reviews Opportunities to Participate An Emerging Evolutionary Spirituality Project: Evolutionary Revivals! Revising "The Pluto Parable" Coming up with Universal Transformative Practices, Exercises, and Meditations Reader Participation Questions Evolutionary Events Calendar Evolutionary Quotes An Amazing Cosmic / Evolutionary Factoid. (Diamonds in the Sky!) and A Touch of Humor