Hi Mark, I can't imagine the volume of information flows you must be managing in this role. Thank you for the ginormous work.
I joined this group back when I first heard from Robert by email and wish I could somehow contribute to (cooperate in?) synthesizing an effective Shot In The Arm to help nudge things forward. I've only kept one glancing eye on digests from the group, which isn't all that cooperative, admittedly. I do have some very rough ideas, derived from recent everyday observations, at http://convergence08.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/ From my perspective, there are interesting things happening with the advent of video conversations, overlapping social networking web sites, and what my friend //de calls "digital immediacy" that tend to draw me into such conversations. I too must fess up that my interests can be rather unconventional and radically interdisciplinary. One of my favorite extracurricular events of the year was the recent chat between Searle and Fields over at Tolman Hall a couple of weeks ago. So I see something wonderful happening that spans disciplines, including but perhaps not limited to, Interpersonal Human Relations, Social Anthropology, Functional Neuroanatomy (including HTM models, etc), Augmented Social Cognition, and now Cooperation Studies; the latter of which could possibly tie many of these together in novel and useful ways. Parenthetically, I can't go so far as some of Bruce Lipton's "wisdom" conjectures at the cellular level; however, there are clearly processes that behave computationally and cooperatively in the cell wall. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that we seem to see cooperation at work as a fundamental influence (stigmergic organizing force?) upward from the intra-cellular level (possibly even deeper). Observing these phenomena lead me to suspect overlaps or interdependencies between what we call intelligence and what we call cooperation. Or, at the very least, cooperation seems to be a fundamental function of what we consider intelligence: to observe cooperation is to observe fledgling intelligence, perhaps. If this is the case, then Cooperation Studies could have a fairly interesting role to play in the renewed pursuit of what I prefer to call synthetic general intelligence. I understand the inertia of AGI, but I still like SGI, even if it invites confusion with our faithful old friend, Silicon Graphics, Inc. :-) This completely inconsequential nomenclature bias is derived from the fact that when I think about artificial, I think, "contrived by art rather than nature." When I think synthetic, I think "man-made, often by chemical or biochemical means." Increasingly, I suspect that we'll find the most efficient initial substrate for synthesizing Generally Intelligent (in the SIAI sense, for example) computing devices or entities will include biochemical components. Hence, Cooperation between our Silicon-computing and Cellular-computing communities may be essential to achieving mutually beneficial objectives. Attention is, of course, one of the scarcest of all resources in all such vibrant information economies. Productive Attention, even more precious. Add economic angst over such basics as food, shelter, and healthcare into the mess (all of which can be threatened as a function of reputation) and I suspect this helps to define a fundamental challenge for many of us in deciding when and where to employ our individual attention; without which aggregation, there can be no effective cooperation between humans. So I get flung back into that tangled web of the Attention Economy. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CooperationCommons" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CooperationCommons?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
