Category Archives: Uncategorized

We think of distractions as someone interrupting you as you’re watching a TV show or reading. But really, distractions run at all levels of everyday experience. You distract yourself by breaking focus for fear of missing out (FOMO). You go to the FB postings, turn on the hourly news, you follow stories and people thatContinue reading “Notes on Everyday Life”

When my father was a young farm boy back in the 1920s the family wanted to establish a flock of domestic ducks. Next spring they got a dozen eggs from a nearby farm and switched them with eggs under a nesting chicken hen. She accepted the eggs with no hesitation. They look very similar. TheContinue reading “The Child Is Alive”

Let me know if you see any signs or symptoms of reaching a threshold capacity for managing complexity, disruption, chaos, uncertainty, etc.. Network effects predicts a continuing acceleration of civil complexity and chaos. Psychologists and anthropologists say the human brain has a cognitive surplus. But surely there is a tipping-point at which the way weContinue reading “How Do We Know When We’ve Reached the Limit?”

One of the biggest questions facing the 21st Century civilization is “how are we going to manage the escalating automation of our world so we continue to live safe, prosperous, and fulfilling lives?” In general, naturally, we are going to manage intelligence with intelligence. The intelligence we are going to use will be some combinationContinue reading “A Methodical Approach to Designing our World for Life with AI”

  When we individuals have difficulty managing the complex challenges around us, we have always turned to collective and organizational intelligence for assistance. It’s as ancient as we are. We call it community. And when life seems so busy that we want to retreat from community, we need to reinvent community so it continues toContinue reading “Community as Natural Intelligence”

I came across this article (linked below) in the Toastmasters international magazine and thought I should share it. I believe we can gain better insights into personal and shared worldviews by studying the worldviews from other cultures. This awareness and wisdom then enables us to better understand people of all kinds of backgrounds, including personalityContinue reading “Cultural Intelligence – A Toastmaster Perspective”

Dear Diary: You know I often come to you to help me reflect on world events when no one wants to attend for more than a line or two and a funny picture. This time I wonder about things that go viral. Some people say that people are stacked ten deep like cord-wood on thisContinue reading “Make Empathy and Peace Go Viral”

Birth of A Complex Global Civilization | My grandfather, Ben Garside, died in 1970 when I was 15 years old. Born in 1880, he had lived nearly his entire life in one house or another with no insulation, no furnace, no phone, no electricity or running water. He was a farmer-turned-market-gardener. He didn’t see anContinue reading “A Short HIstory of a Complex Civilization”

The 21st century is overloaded with opportunities and challenges. The fundamental question of our time concerns the management of civil systems which are growing in complexity at a super-exponential rate.  While we experience technology acceleration we are compounding the complexity of each other’s environments. Information overload, fragmentation of disciplinary thought, and distrust of institutions areContinue reading “Civil Science Tripod”