 This is the Thursday OGM weekly call for Thursday, August 20th, August 4th, 2022. I don't know how we made it into August so quickly, but here we are. And our format today is just check-ins sort of round robin. Dave, no intention to put you on the spot, but you're here occasionally and I would love to see if you want to jump in first so we can catch up with you and then maybe we'll go cover the two dogs. And Dave, you might still be setting yourself up. I don't know. I can't see you because there's no video coming yet and we don't hear you. There was a video before so something must have happened. I think Dave has slipped into a different dimension. Okay, let's go Doug B then Doug C and we'll come back to Dave. So actually, OGM was evoked a dozen times over the last week in my world. Wow, that was nice. I hope in good ways. Yeah, all good. You know, there's the, you know, the little kid in the back of the car. Are we there yet? It's either that or we want ice cream. Or I got a pee. Or I got a pee. Good point. Totally. So, you know, there's sort of an adult version of the same thing in OGM like circles. And there are all these, there are these parallel facets that I've been trying to get arms around between doing and sharing and connecting and understanding. And whether we're capable of doing more than one of those at a time at the same time. And when I had somebody, I invoke the word meta as the as, you know, this question. And he sort of turned the tables and said, actually, it's a, that's a proto inquiry. It's actually underneath under all of those dimensions. And why, why is it so challenging to have multiple, those multiple dimensions while converging at the same place, same time in sorting and sifting what the collective will and energy and attention is, is being devoted to. And so that's, that's my share. And that's my wrestle. I don't know whether it's a value add for anybody else, but that's, that's what's living for me these days. Thank you. So, into multitasking, I guess, which is a one generalization of one of the things you put on the table where do you end up, how do you feel about that. Do you feel like single minded attention is important or essential or, or, or even the only possible thing or something Well, as far as I've gotten, which isn't far. I feel a huge sense of importance imperative that there be intentionality and choice and, and how to get to that. The difference between multiple people co creating together is just a really intractable challenge. Because the intentionality the fire, the fire is there. And in the choosing. Each person has their hobby horse. And is it possible to transcend the hobby horse stage and get to a place where everybody sort of resets resets and comes to a collective alignment. And how can that be made to happen or facilitated or catalyzed or supported to figure out what the it is. That's the, that's as far as I've gotten. Thanks. One of us is got a mic open and is typing really close to the microphone we're hearing some typing in the background so if you're not speaking if you wouldn't mind muting and grace, and then Stuart. Yeah, I was in a meeting for a collaborative group this week, which I hadn't been to before and included a lot of the same faces and stuff. I noticed that it wasn't one group that there were a number of different directions that people are going into. And what Doug is pointing to it's like when can we like figure out the collaboration and start doing something together. And I don't think that that is the answer. Because I look at systems from a particular perspective, and you know I'm looking at monetary system. And I'm looking at the underlying interest like the underlying economic infrastructure as the whole world. And only a few people need to do that. And only a few people are interested in that. Thank God. And a lot of people need to walk all ladies across the street and a lot of people need to do local food delivery and a lot of people need to create local communities. And I don't see any imperative and you know I look at what you know like what cloud is doing for example, you know, he's totally into that farming environmental and food thing and I don't know a damn thing about it, but somebody's got to do it I'm so glad I was just doing it right like each one of us is doing the part we need to do I don't seem any imperative to like a line, but I think I see an imperative for us to stop bullshitting ourselves about we're all on the same thing and all doing the same thing and going to these huge meta meetings. You know you guys asked me last week why I come to this meeting it's the one meeting that I do this one of these meta meetings regularly and have been doing for several months, because I like you guys. And I want to hang out with some people like this, but I'm not going to go to two or three of these. I think there are a lot, but we just have to stop pretending that we're all working on the same thing because we're working in the same direction. And I think we need to, and I think that there is a shadow that's undistinguished with a lot of people about not really wanting to get anything done. I know I have that actually I've been doing a little bit of energy work. And I've noticed a lot of pain in my right foot and my teacher said why do you keep stepping on your own foot. And that's been crazy for the month like what is it right, but I do think like a lot of it there's certain people who you see in a lot of these meetings and it's just really clear that they're not committed to getting anything done. And that's okay to look that's okay with me. I'm not going to invite them to my team but it's totally okay with me that there are people like that. Thanks, Grace. And are there subgroups that are that might be trying to align to do something and how do we discover them and nurture them while not making assumptions like you just pointed out that hey, we're all on exactly the same mission and need to sort of align around one thing. So how do we how do we manage the tension of there being a few people with a lot more energy and who are in fact either seeking help from other people on their mission or would like to pour a lot of their energy into someone else's mission that whole thing. How does that come out of the group or how does that form into a group like this. Well, I think that's an individual question like I personally don't hang out with those people. And I have office hours twice a week. And that's how I if you're looking to come and get some information. If you're looking for some advice on your Dow or your organizational structure or whatever people think that I'm expert in I don't know people ask me all kinds of questions last week. Next questions I'm like oh okay single for a really long time. But um, but you know, like I'm here. And I think the answer of how do we as a group like, I don't know like I'm going to, you know, when I do my check in you know I'm going to be starting to hit you guys up the specific people of you that I think can be most useful to me. And that's how we're all responsible for ourselves and what we need. So that's a very individual one on one kind of approach but we're kind of a group here, and I have a feeling that there's more groupie stuff we can do as opposed to each of us drops in and also I'll say that the Thursday calls have a different nature and character than most of the other calls in the week. This is just meant to be like a little heartbeat for the community where we're checking in there's no mission statement around these calls although we changed our format some months ago so that we alternate now between check in and theme, but but these calls are just meant to be like the stir and see who's around so so I think they're very much in the spirit of what you just said grace. But I think that there's in our, in our community of communities are little flotilla of communities. There's a bunch of people trying to stand things up and make things work and make things happen who needs a group organization who need more, more more stick to this and maybe that just means they stand up a different call and attract people to that call and, and the motive power is a bunch of different regular calls which attract different groups of people interested in different projects and maybe that's, maybe that's the whole thing. I think a really useful thing to do with the use case. Talk to, you know, figure out who those people are that you're saying, there are people who, you know, whatever, whatever you said Jerry, and talk to them and say, what is the use case, what would be the ideal thing for you and write down those use cases and see if there is something that's a something, because my sense is that we do these things like mapping and networking and flotilla in and categorizing without having set out okay. Here's whatever Vince is a good example right he wants to do things. Here are the things that he wishes would happen, although, you know, like he just produces stuff maybe he's totally happy producing stuff right. Like, you know, what would you like to happen with it, would you like somebody to take on what you finish would you like it, you know, and then I would interview those specific people and say what is it. And what would be the end result. And then see what those use cases tell us. Cool. Thank you anyone else. Stuart, you had thoughts on this. Yeah, but I realize I didn't hear what the this was when it started I just, I just had a response to something that Doug was saying, and also what what grace was saying. And maybe I'll save those for the check in but unless you can clue me in on what started the conversation and what they were responding to. Give your thought for a second and let me stay on what Grace had raised and see if anybody else would like to jump in. If not, let's just get back to you for what you were holding for Doug B. Anyone else floors your story. Great, so in response to judge Doug B and also about grace I watched this podcast yesterday. Out of a colleague of Eve Shahar portals of perception. And he had a wonderful guest on Julie Crow. And I really got in my body for the first time, because I know Doug and I have been talking about thinking about thinking both dogs, and along with Stacy, the, the, the idea of moving into the opposite of a, of a dualistic world. The fact at a very profound and deep level that we are all in this together. So it's congruent with that what what Doug said about working together and congruent where Grace just said about finding, you know, we don't have to all do something together. There are people who are doing things that you're interested in. But the bottom line is that the behind that all is. And we've been so conditioned to think as individuals, but at this point in time where we are. We're all in this together we're all in this super facing calamity together and we're all either going to get out of it together or we're not the idea of individuality. And that's, that's the point of changing thinking, I think that's that that's the critical piece when we look at massive transformation. And like Grace says, but it starts with walking old old people across the street. Oh, Doug, thank you very much for remembering. Appreciate that. So you mentioned at the start of what you were just commenting on having this podcast with Julie Crow was it Stuart. Yes, K R U L L. Aviv Shahar portals of perception. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Doug C. Yeah, you had me in the queue and then somehow I dropped out. We're not in the queue so you are now reestablishing the queue and thank you. What's been on my mind a lot is how we deal with this problem of getting a conversation that includes more than just a few of us facing global problems that involve everybody. And it seems to be one of the leverage points that actually exists in the world is the algorithms that the major platforms are using to deliver content to people. Since the content they are delivering seems to be if I read the literature right, mostly to raise the level of anger and antagonism, making the situation more negative. What if we could reverse that and switch the algorithm so they would provide everybody with something positive from where they are. That would bias that way and since we're talking about a lot of people that use things like Facebook. Maybe it's one of the few leverage points that exist that could affect a lot of people thinking. A couple thoughts from me and then let's see what other people think. So first, I think it's a relatively, I'm going to say cynical point of view to think that all the algorithms are only out there to fuel us up and make us angry. I think that there are most many of the algorithms from my perspective are built for addiction. And what they really want is user minutes they want us to stay on the platform so it will watch more ads. And it turns out that some discovered that boy when we get people really heated up they stay on longer they get more addicted and that leads directly to where you are. But I think some of these platforms have woken up and are trying very consciously to eliminate bias where they find it to not create sort of addiction but still to serve. And I may be naive in saying so but I think that some are trying really hard to do something different. And what I would say is these algorithms are unfortunately the crown jewels of most of these companies and held very close one of our problems is that the algorithms aren't public in any way. So, if it was just that they were counting some, some knowable set of widgets and then presenting the answer to that. That would be one thing, but also the moment the algorithm is public you get a gaming of the algorithm which is what happened before Google and page rank. The standard standard practice and early web search engines without the VISTA and whatnot was you would take metadata in your web page and you would load it up with search terms you wanted to hit. And you would take micro font type and you would put that in your page all over the place to load up these words and. And we've seen how that's just escalated into a series of industries and sub industries SCO SCM etc, which are all busy, all busy really hard working hard and getting paid well to game the algorithms that you're putting in front of us Doug. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is there, maybe I have four things to say. The third thing is that there are some organizations actually worried about this and trying to work on it in public and I'm forgetting exactly which ones but whether it's Tristan Harris and the human tech human tech stuff or others. There's a bunch of people who really care about this and are doing something whom we might be able to help. And then the fourth thing I'll say is. Okay then so if we want to stand up and do something about the algorithms, do we, what action would you like us to take should we stand up. An initiative on what was the. I'm forgetting which which the movement website was that that used to be really popular anyway. It'll come back to us in a sec. So, so what would you do what what action could we take, should we kidnap the algorithm engineers and and hold them for ransom until the algorithms have changed. I mean there's there's all different kinds of approaches to this kind of thing. The question is kind of the sociology of this group and I don't know the answer. How deep are our relationships and friendships into those organizations where with conversations we can begin to change the atmosphere. The other approach would be from the outside. That is to build a consumer demand to move in that direction. I just don't know the answer, but you are swamping my proposal with a lot of words. Well I'm trying I'm trying to take it seriously and say hey there's a lot of issues around this that are easy to point out. There are some orgs working on this already and let's see where it goes and I think Judy Grace and Michael have a bunch to add to the to this thread so Judy floors yours. I'm going to comment really on Grace's remarks because I totally agree that it's as an individual that each person first engages to identify something that they have personal energy to do. And then I've been looking quite a bit at how it moves from individual to small group to bigger group to movement. And it seems to me that that there's some analytics there but it tends to be that you start locally with individuals you get some things going you expand in your local community. And then it occurs to you that there might be people in other communities from whom you could learn or with whom you could share. And there's a dynamic there that we could pay more attention to and enable and being able to assist at whichever stage. A group is at if we have wisdom to offer. And then that's something I've been interested in as well for a long time. So I agreed on that. Grace and Michael. It's just want to say something quick about the algorithm thread. And I was thinking about these algorithms because they can't explain to you what they're doing their algorithms. So if you said why did you show me that pair of, you know, whatever slacks or boxers or whatever they can't tell you why. They're rule based and sometimes they're not. So, so the ones that are rule based can very much tell you when this word triggers we play this ad or whatever, they're very explicit and then others that are deep learning based are just patterns matching patterns matching, and it's like a big black box with smoke inside. Right. And that's the majority of the very clever ones. Because the ones that are strictly rule based some human thought of them and they're pretty limited but you know what Amazon and Facebook and all those you know those are way too deep for them to actually be able to say something to. And I think of it a little bit like human psychology right like, we have these complexes and whenever I see somebody with a red shirt I get a little bit nervous but until I identify that that's the thing with me right you know it like that's the thing and I think that the but as a human, you can recognize that you have trauma and you can go to trauma therapy, and you can kind of unravel that messed up psychology that you've gotten you can see you're doing harm to other people and unravel that and as an algorithm you don't have any incentive to do that. And so I think it's a little bit like trying to fix the algorithms is almost impossible it really requires to start anew. When I had to say that. Thanks. Thanks, Grace. Judy if you want to put your hand down from earlier, unless you want to jump back in and then Michael. I'm just about to drop a few links in the chat. Just for other points that some of which I mentioned and others of which people would want to know about. And I think Grace is is really right about that the algorithm the algorithm the algorithm is is is not the way to be going at this that you know the idea that we're going to achieve some kind of victory if if we can get somebody else to shift the decisions they are making about what we see versus taking control of what we see. You know, somebody else tweaking algorithms that that we don't control is not a solution. And I mean, it's been a while since I use this metaphor in this group but you know it. If you think about what you feed your mind the way you think about what you feed your body. It's as if right now our food comes to us for free. Every time we open our refrigerator, it just flies at us and we have no control of what it is and we're saying gee couldn't they put some good couldn't those powers that be put some healthier stuff in this refrigerator. Please maybe and maybe they'll get it a little healthier but hey, why don't we close the refrigerator and decide proactively that we are going to let into our homes, the stuff that's healthy for us, and, and keep out the stuff that's bad for us and it's going to involve an algorithm. And so, you know, I also hearkening to something Grace was saying about the meeting that I think we both were in yesterday and the challenges it was a collaborative technology alliance meeting. And I assume that's what you're referring to Grace right the the CTA meeting that you were. So, you know that there's a lot of emphasis on a bunch, you know a bunch of people who are working on different things me with factor, you know, Vincent, other people in this group and not in this group, and how can we interoperate. And I think, you know, I felt, I felt seen in a bad way by what Grace was saying about, I mean, I don't, I don't, I'm not not grace I don't mean, I don't mean you were singling me out at all but I thought, huh, there's an interesting there's something about like the, the kind of everybody sitting around saying how can we do this thing together that ends up blocking any of us from advancing further on our own and is is a little bit of a trap for tinkerers high minded tinkerers. And I, I do, I do feel stuck as somebody who built something that, you know was its own thing, and realize that it has to be part of an ecosystem to really be effective unless, and Grace Grace and I both heard somebody who in the meeting that we were in said, we need a fucking hit. You know, we need something that like whips everybody around to say, Oh, forget about Facebook, it's blah blah blah. And unfortunately, that's something else is, you know, I mean, it was Instagram and they bought that and it was tick tock and it was Snapchat and it was all these other things that are are are sort of out. They're not using Facebook, not out. Ethicaling privatizing, you know, and so the market hit that we want is a market that doesn't really know it exists. And I'm, I'm stumped and Grace, I want to talk to you more about this I'll show up for some office hours. You know, trying to, to, to, well, I was about to say figure out, which I think is is a sort of code for not doing. But, but being humble enough, not to say my way is the best way. And I'm going to go for a hit at the expense of expense of everybody else is I think what's needed to get big. And I, you know, want to want to figure out how we can collaborate and I'm making fun of myself as I say that. So I'll lower my hand. Thanks Michael. And so it occurs to me that one of the things one of the movements that's out there that's trying to feed us the broccoli is the indie web or the D web or other kinds of things. That there are many humans out there trying to get us weenus off the addictive platforms and say hey, here's an alternative platform that is decentralized where you own your own data, where we build our relationships. And the problem is we can't get the hit from the new platforms because they're not as smooth and glossy and full of, you know, be addictive and full of bait and and attractive stuff as as the ones were sort of beefing about here. But, but maybe Doug Carmichael maybe one of the things we do is promote indie web kinds of technologies or under the variety of other movements to try to build sort of independent more reliable platforms like let's just go there and let's let's move on to them. That's possibility. Anyone else with a thought on this. I just want to interject one thing more which is, you know, if you think about all the indie web things that the challenge. The food analogy, the challenge is that when you had when you had like crappy food crappy fast food, you know, addicting people and people started thinking oh maybe we should eat healthier and you had health food markets selling bruised ugly looking produce for, you know, five times what what mass grown produce cost in a supermarket, the market shift that happened from people interacting with those those health food markets and giving way to, you know, whole foods and chains and then ultimately to organic foods being in the 40 styles in the major supermarkets was not from was not from one hit it was from the fact that to be to go to one health food store didn't didn't have a protocol prohibition on patronizing other health food stores. So you could, you know, build up health food stores and build up people who made organic stuff and and use the marketplace to do this. And the problem in the indie web and alternative social network world is we're building all these protocols that don't speak to each other so that you pick one and then you can't pick the others. So the market, the venture market in technology is making so everybody's going for the separate hit as opposed to figuring out a way to interoperate successfully the way health food markets couldn't help but doing. Also, then there's issues behind the issues behind the issues and once you start sort of unpacking things one of my favorite horror stories is the fact that Nixon when he was president told Earl butts the Secretary of Agriculture to go make food cheap. And part of the reason why we have really cheap carbs and why high fructose corn syrup is in everything and why this whole thing has eaten our food chain and why Claus Margaret has a lot of work to do to try to win us out of the system into something that's more local resilience sustainable and healthy is that large scale sort of movement and energy and money was put behind the opposite behind the exact opposite. And so by analogy and this is probably a week analogy over in the world of platforms and advertising and all that kind of stuff. So my journey for the last 35 years started with the word consumer. I hate the fact that we're treated as mere consumers by these platforms I think it's part of the problem that the ad model is their model. It would be kind of cool if they charged admission so if we paid $5 a month for a good platform and then weren't advertised to and weren't dumpster dived, and we're treated as citizens and you know instead wouldn't that be kind of cool, probably wouldn't have 3.2 billion, or as active monthly users Facebook has right now, even as it leaks, you know, as it as it starts to lose lose momentum, but, but there, but there's systemic level problems that are that are deeply troubling that we could maybe pry under in some ways as well because there's a lot of interesting policy stuff happening right now, some of which is deeply frightening. Mr Homer. This one van Jones, many, many years ago before he was really famous said if green becomes white or all screwed, meaning that if only rich white people can afford to buy organic foods then the organic food movement has completely failed. And the other thing I was going to say was, you know, all these algorithms, millions of dollars and millions of person hours were spent on developing them and they are there to make money. They are not there to lift up humanity, they are not there to solve the problems or they're to make money for people, not a very small group of people. So I think that's kind of Grace said something earlier and we need to just start from the ground up. If we're starting from the perspective of how do we make money, we're going to get a really different product than if we're starting from the perspective of how do we solve a social problem here. So, and if you don't have the ability to raise money. It's really hard to build something that has large scale social impact. So it's a, it's a double bind anybody got ideas on how to get out of that. The Chinese finger trap. Yeah. Eliminate capitalism. There is that. Oh, easy. Why didn't I think of that. I think we're seeing some weird hopeful stuff is happening in the Dow space and in the crypto space like I'm not. I'm not ultra hopeful for it. But here's a group of people who started to print money out of thin air. And then they started to like buy back carbon credits and now they're trying to make a bid on the on the Democratic Republic of the Congo rain for us. So it's interesting because it's a movement with some money behind it, even though it's kind of BS money because we don't have like one grain of corn or wheat. So it's a little bit of a problem because we don't really support ourselves physically but there's something really happening in that movement that has money behind it. The money is invented out of thin air but there's also this kind of like young people realizing they don't have a chance in the existing system and being like I'm getting some dogecoin you can do dogecoin. All right, let's get some prima dow let's get some, you know, it's called redeem it's the redeem down and it's like, Oh my Lord have mercy, but there's something happening. So I do have that so that's the answer to Ken question I do have ideas like I'm like skeptical but supportive. I don't know, like they bought a lot of carbon credit so it's. I tend to be skeptical to do like this is really happening but it's sorry. Let's go Kevin and Gil. You know in terms of funding things that need to be funded. You know, we're our marketplace for growth capital for earned income nonprofits is moving forward and nonprofits create earned income because program grants from foundations are oppressive. You know, they give you money for the suit but not the soup bowls, and that's just and they think they're being prudent. And so nonprofits have created earned income things they sell right earned income they don't call it making money, which but anyway, and but nobody gives them growth capital once they figure something out. So we're about to launch a thing with actually some some nonprofit or fiscally sponsored farms here that to solve some of that. And so anyway, I think it has some real potential. Thanks Kevin Stuart and then back to the queue. Okay, I thought you'll want to say something. Oh, I apologize you're completely right I just missed that. Mine is mine is real quick. Alright, I just wanted to comment on on Kevin's use in the word nonprofit. That's where the problem lies that we think of these as thank you grace that we think of these things as nonprofit it's how we're measuring profit and loss and that's the, that's the thinking that that has everything all fucked up. I read over the last couple days a couple of really brilliant articles one was called the theft of the Commons, which I will post in the chat and a link to my brain where how I annotated it because it was just full of wisdom. And one of the problems is that we've not only lost a lot of the beliefs practices and sort of customs of way back before when we had Commons and live together on the Commons. We can't imagine those things ever having been viable or never mind being viable again. We can't even imagine our way into something different from capitalism and the normal. Everybody's got to have money companies need to make a profit and that's the way the whole world works, and grace and others are busy trying to figure out. What's the story we tell what's the platform we create what's the way we wean ourselves from that sort of belief system. It is like crazy, crazy, challenging mission that is that is just a not so wacko mission because it's, we're so deep into them into the model. So let's go Barry grace Rick. I don't have a prepared monologue for this morning. We nobody prepares for these things so don't worry very this is just a check in for what kind of things are happening in our lives that are kind of GM ish like squishy. A lot of these issues are not really new. They, you know, we've been going around the tree, you know, like who going around the tree over and over you see his own footprints and he thinks he's on the right track. The first time I come across an issue, and I have to pause and think about it. If I successfully think about it, I'll write up my thoughts and post them. You know, on my blog or someplace where I could find them later because rethinking them from scratch is usually not very efficient. But the same issues come around, you know, after a certain latency to come around again I go yeah I remember thinking about that once upon a time, and I go pull up my thoughts about it and I share them. And nothing much happens and then, you know, sometimes later the same issue comes around again and I have this feeling like we're stuck in a loop. And we're not, we're not even not even making use of the good ideas that have come out been presented and then sort of dissipated into the wind. It's like good ideas die on the vine because they're being suffocated by a plethora of bad ideas. Thanks very much certainly a circuit of bad ideas out there and arguably our world is being designed and run based on most of the bad ideas based on a whole bunch of bad ideas. And idea combat is what makes the world turn I'm afraid. The amateur version of history is that there's a struggle in the cockpit over the joystick between at different times to sometimes three parties over like where their society is going to go. One of them wins for a while feels like they lost them could lose at any moment so they become paranoid and bad things happen but then you know then we travel, then that vessel travels in that direction for a while until there's another struggle in the cockpit. And mostly in the meantime the humans the citizens get squished or crushed or run over. So let's go. Grace Rick Stacy. This is a check in a. Yeah, it is to check in. I haven't been on a check in call for quite a while, because I've been busy doing I had a workshop that was overlapping this call for six weeks and I was, I can't remember I had so many. I went to so many events and gatherings, but my head is spinning and I'm signed up for some more and my head will continue to spend a while. And what's been coming out of this is, I think I mentioned the last week is not really a religion it is going to be a religion but is this new down which calling price was down. And we're going to be launching on September 22, simultaneously in Kenya and London at some Ethereum events that are going on during those weeks. And we've been looking at contribution based out and the amount of money that they've been raising has been 4050 million dollars. And that sounds fine for us because we could manage with those types of budgets. And it's me and a couple other priceless priceless about that IO, it's not official we're not launching yet we're still working on the technical back end we've been working on the technical back end, which is, it's all these actually they're actually that are supposed to be pretty easy to use. And we've been doing it for about 10 days. The technical mess of blockchain is like, it's so unusable, it's so unusable, and not to mention that there are all these transaction fees so my two co founders one is a Filipino woman, and the other is a Kenyan woman so I have to send them money to be able to even register their name and pay the transaction fees and what completely inaccessible to the developing world, completely. And, and shy can be speaking at East Safari about that like, here's these things and it's like if you haven't got a few hundred dollars, just to set up your account, not even go beyond setting up your account, you're not in and it's pretty crazy. And we're doing some, yeah, still slightly secret. And we've been basing it on Balaji's book that came out and the talented and commenting on it, which was called the network state. So the idea that you could create these online networks of people and then by locations, you know, purchase locations and then become like have this kind of like floating location. I think that this is a naive approach, how to start a new country exactly I think it's a naive we're going to be starting land based. I've been, I mean, I've been focused on food and water and how do we become sustainable I think one of the big issues that the crypto industry has been naive about is that we have no actual resources, we're just a complete drain on the electrical grid on the cloud servers. We don't have independence from those we're not independent. Most of that stuff is supposed to on Amazon or Google and you know like, it's actually completely dependent on the existing economy and we can't pay our rent and crypto and even if we can't. It's just this delusion. And so what we're really out to do is to convert some of this funny invented money out of thin air, back into soil, back into culture, back into human beings, and really look at ways that we can create land based communities that are starting to become sustainable. There's a lot of really interesting work. Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of interesting work that's being done by different people are looking at this problem, for example, I found somebody who's looking at how do we deal, you know, how do we reuse chips, because those are just getting thrown out. And we're going to run out of silicon. And all this stuff that I think there's tremendous potential in create like returning to the soil returning to community returning to living together, returning to community to community sustainable regions. And so that's the kind of experiments that we're going to be doing that you can look on the website that Jerry's leaked. You're under DA. You're under DA. That's worth the paper it's signed on most of which is digital. And so, yeah, we have some really great ideas and one of the ideas that that shy and I came up with was what is around a national park in Kenya, you would have self sustainable So it would functionally kind of expand the land of the national park and really prevent poachers because you've got these communities that are self sustainable around it so a ring of those types of community. And they in a pinch in with the Brixton, sorry Bristol town Bristol pay, looking at how do we create community based recognition rewards that aren't monetarily based so we've got a bunch of really cool stuff that we're really interested in doing and And that's what I've been up to. It's been pulling your tremendous amount of my attention, and it's been, it's one of those things like you really feel like it's been flow. You know, there's these two conferences that we're going to be speaking at she was asked and then I just found one and I said can I speak and they said yes you can see people have been reacting really positively and it just has that sense of going in the right direction so You've got things in motion. It's lovely. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Love that a lot. Let's go rick Stacy Eric. Jerry. I just want to pick on a theme from the last conversation we had and double into something that you've been talking about and where my interests lie. You know, I said last time I'm sort of a lurker on the on the fringes of this of this group and enjoyed the last session. And I was left thinking about well, how can this group and its email correspondence which I find a little overwhelming because I'm not reading it, you know, as a as a regular in the sense of taking it all in. But it's difficult to process when you're trying to pop in and out and I think that creates a barrier for people to learn more about what this group is doing and I can't say fully understanding it either. But that doesn't matter. I'm sufficiently intrigued to come to the meeting. But it actually goes back to something we're talking right at the very beginning, which is, you know, what, you know, if we I think we do need a complete redesign if we're going to do things right if we're going to do things that, you know, can can work more profoundly on the challenges ahead that involves slow thinking out of and deliberate design. You know, how can we create a platform for that and of course there isn't the perfect platform out there and obviously be nice to have a DAO with a crypto or is it was in the comments every everybody participated they had ownership in it they got real community awards for the contributions, and it was a not for profit, but for purpose organization. You know, to me that's, that's where we need to go but given the fact we don't have anything close to that as far as I'm aware, what's the nearest thing to it. And I'd be curious about people's reaction to that. There's one thing that I decided to take a course on, and I don't know whether this is going to pan out to be something more substantive but Margaret at what's holding a course in September. And she's developing a sort of like a crypto for it and it's a group of other people who are working with her and they're using a program called disco. And it's mighty it's like mighty networks, but it's trying to differentiate itself and being an upset upstart to my network so they're trying to integrate slack into it, so that there's much more effective acing for this communication. So my question to you to you Jerry and others, where is the cutting edge of this brave new world platform where we can really. I would say I'm still in favor of the word of alignment. We can do lots of different things but if we're in the line of the same direction we have a vision of what we want to go to means we can operate at a multiplicity of levels and in our little ecosystems collaborating with others and whatever. So, where, where, where is the future. Where is the best hope of having the platform for doing this sort of lifelong learning. Rick, thanks for asking. And is that the right disco the one that I put in the, in the chat. I think it might be just go to go up. Yeah, let me just check. Let me just. Okay. And let me just your screen for a sec because I've put this go here under a bunch of different things including potential GM architecture components which is a big long list of lots of interesting things out there that are mostly open source that would help us. We. So, one of the things that Pete and I were working on and then we stalled out a little bit is we wanted to convene us to sit down and think about what are the, what are the different platforms for accounting for value flows which is something that this organization needs that the you know, all different organs that in our in our circles need. And so here's disco co op. There's one called coordinate. There's co makery open collective which is a group that is actually really close to GM because it's part of the lion's burg umbrella organization is one of them. There's another one called sensorica and this is just my radar scan so I'm sure there's another half dozen that are out there building this stuff right and your question for me Rick fits into two really big important questions that kind of bubble up into this one what are our next two stacks, and I'm borrowing here stacks from the idea of solution stacks like the linux apache my SQL and e gp etc etc. But I think that there's an organizational stack and a societal stack that kind of lie above each other. And right now the organizational stack is well, you get to be either a C corp, or a 501 C three, or some weird little odd hybrid because those things we know how to deal with everything else is really kind of weird. I was part of a group with Christina bowen and others who tried to create a multi stakeholder cooperative like five years ago, four years ago, and we couldn't there wasn't a place to do it. So, so we wound up picking some other organizational structures so so how does that kind of work. And then the present societal stack is capitalism and democracy which we think is liberal democracy and we think it works but actually it's turning into a liberal democracy everywhere and it's under threat. And there's a whole bunch of assumptions are and mechanisms in place like welded in place around money and value and lending and, you know, all the dependent interdependencies are globally. I would argue that both of these stacks are under active renegotiation right this minute and that Web three and crypto and NFTs and all that is an attempt to shift currency into some other sort of thing, and I'm not entirely sure it's the right thing because it's still monetary it's decentralized and look how hackable it is, etc, etc. So, so, so I think these are like genuinely important questions to care about together, and we're trying to figure out how to organize ourselves to be not systematic or methodical but maybe we bit more organized about it. And one of my pet peeves about conversations like ours is we post a whole bunch of articles on our on our Google group mailing list instead of building a shared memory out someplace where it's actually persistent and annotate. And I'm trying to cross that bridge which is like really clunky to cross I mean, I'm trying to get some volunteers to help me annotate an event I'm helping produce this in part my check in for this call. I'm helping produce an event in New York with beta works called render about tools for thinking, and I'd love some people who like to map and annotate to come help do that. I'm hoping it's in your backyard I'm hoping you'll be able to attend. Looking forward to like seeing you in person and shaking your mitt that's going to be really fun. Stacey is close to you. And so how I think that's one of the things that we as a as an as an organization can help with somehow. But there's lots of different angles to this, and it's sort of it's bigger than our, than our time and attention will permit in different ways. So that's a big, big answer to your nice question and grace has also an answer so grace off to you. Yeah, to me this is really like what was interesting about Rick's question is, I was saying that I'm doing this thing that he and his question was where's this thing. And it was directly after I had said, that's the thing I'm building. Something either not clear about my messaging, or something that we've been alluding to here, which is like, how do we help each other become this thing. Like maybe I'm not convincing enough for my message isn't convincing enough, or something that I said didn't strike Rick as like, because he asked the question right after I said like I'm building this big huge thing right. And then we keep asking especially like how do we help the people doing stuff here and then I'm like that it feels like. So I don't have the exact question with the question is like how does what I said, either not fall into what OGM is about or yes fall into it or what would a collaboration around that look like. And it's true that I'm being slightly exclusive based on gender so you know there's definitely something there but I'm, you know that might not be a hard to fast rule that might be something to work on you know it's like there's something. Yeah, there's something there for me that feels like it falls into all of the things we've been asking about like how do we help each other and then what is the big thing and then what is the fact. I agree with that just connected priceless Dow into the distributed accounting and value flows and the rest of those sort of solution communities. Is that a terrible thing or like like that. My problem is the euphemism value. Yes, I agree. But other than that, yes, I belong there. But the question about what is value and what is wealth, and how do we, how do we appreciate those those are central to this quest. Those are deep deeply important questions so I want to put those on the table and see how do how do we communicate that out because like stories what wins like stories are just really huge. I agree with Kevin too because I've also thought that to like why am like why aren't we working more with Kevin and like, you know, he's got a clear project. Yeah, I agree with that. Exactly. And Doug, before you go back to Rick for a second. Yeah, just to quickly respond to you grace let me let me share a perspective that might help you with your reaction. And that is, I'm coming in with a naive perspective. I'm not, you know, inside of the group and sometimes outsiders can shed light on inside as blind spots. And so what I what I'm saying is what I don't have an appreciation of is the exact nature of your work and how does it fit into the emerging ecosystems of what's evolving. So I don't have the big picture or the particular picture to understand. You know what your sort of unique contribution and direction is so I'm quite happy to give you a naive perspective that might or chat offline sometime just to chat about that and how to make it accessible to outsiders. Thank you. Let's go to Doug be and then I'm going to, I'm going to challenge Dave Whistle who also has a community that's sort of a neighbor of ours, etc. to like take a swing at the question Rick just asked. So Doug. Yeah, I just, I just wanted to touch on this value construct. A partner of mine and I landed with creating what we call the values foundation, but we started with a statement called the values manifesto. And it was on the premise that value currently constrained to mapping to fiat currency, like that's the primary association driver. And there is a non economic orientation that says, we're all in the same bucket, we're all part of and connected to a very complex system of flows. And there are contributions of the living things within that ecosystem to the system at large. And there are lots of facets and dimensions forms that value can take in manifestation both tangible and intangible. And I do with fiat currency fiat currency is but one of and and possibilities of types of contribution to the system. And, you know, I was playing with Dave Smith in New Zealand around reforestation and a vision for an ecosystemic values value ecosystem orientation to that. And the idea was that that money contributed as as a value funding and underwriting other moving parts of the vision did not map to ownership. It didn't translate into buying anything. It was simply a particular type of value that helped fuel and serve and facilitate and contribute to the greater grander, but there were the, you know, indigenous tribes and local populations who whose economies could be based in supporting reforestation in areas. And there was the largest reforestation, not for profit in the world to who understood the expert had the expertise and mechanics around doing that. And there were the data dimensions of real time sensing of the state and health of the forest and on and on and on and on and on. It's all it. So the value construct is about am I contributing. Second of all, am I contributing a value at the expense of another value, which is extra the extractive thing or am I contributing in a value we have place, not explicitly at the expense of another value. And so there is a whole contextual way of relating to the word. And I just wanted to toss that in because it's actually orientationally a way of dimensionally expanding significantly how any of these initiatives are related to in terms of how many dimensions and facets are there. The individual attribution accreditation of a contribution to that system is a recognition acknowledgement in the incentivization frame. That doesn't necessarily derive from ownership or old paradigm economic frame. So, just wanted to throw that into the mix. Mr Whitzel, do you care to take a swing at Rick's question earlier. Well, how would you find Rick's question Jerry sorry to Well, it's a piece of what are these communities up to how do they look from the outside. What are shared missions or goals or any of those kinds of pieces and I'm probably forgetting half the question here. Great, yeah. And it's been in Rick's been participating in some of the GRC things so it's been it's been great to see him kind of crossing crossing the threads a little bit. I don't know I mean I I definitely have a piece of. So I come from kind of the framework I've been using around this stuff is kind of the internet and kind of open source right and so that to me is like the scaffolding I'm using to learn from or something. And so one of the things from the conversation is I kind of need the words, you know, I kind of need to use value and I need to use stack, and I need to use network, right. I need to explore what they mean I and I use regeneration right and that words got all kinds of problems with it right. And then I don't even want to get into the arguments about what is a community that we used to have a long time ago you know it's like. So anyway, I feel like we, you know, some sense we, if we didn't have these words I don't know what we would how we could talk right so I feel like we could learn from them but I kind of need the words. One of the things that I've been trying to do with the organizations we've been doing is kind of quit build the network. And to me the key around the network is the flow, right it's not the connection it's the flow, and value is what flows. And so yeah I think poop is value right I mean if it's if it flows, and if it's used right I mean, if it's getting a little gross but I like it. If it sits in, you know, a dairy barn, and it stinks and rots and collect creates pollution then less, you know, negative value or something I don't know. So, so the, then the issue is flowing I think what we've tended to do with the market is see the only thing that we care about flowing is money. And what we need is more things flowing kind of productively but we don't know how to incent that kind of this has been my assumption, and I've been having some conversations recently we're trying to get funding for the regeneration pollination networking events right. It's like in kind of a tiny amount of money we'd like you know I don't know 50,000 a year or something like that to host, you know, dozens and dozens of networking events and they're just networking right they just connect people. And you kind of end up looking in the kind of in the regeneration space for supporters, but nobody in the regeneration space has much money. And then part of that some of the groups in the greater generation space are really still market based right so they, you know it's like let's not talk about money. It's like, well, how am I supposed to survive, you know the person who's running these things how she's supposed to survive. So, I don't know I feel like we're definitely definitely trapped in some of these issues but but if we could create more flow. And some of it doesn't have costs very much I mean it doesn't have the expensive flow, but you know there's still I think some kind of a financial cost involved, at least in our current current. Can I just tell you one more story because I've been thinking about it here and it's about it's around the Commons and it's been like me kind of grokking the comments a little bit more. I'm sitting up at a lake in Vermont where there's a family on cabin and there's like now 13 cousins who own this little beat up cabin on a lake and like the negotiations about maintaining the cabin and the history of the cabin and stuff. They don't have family on properties but they're really fascinating. And there's been a discussion about the lakeside beach is a lovely little, you know, 200 feet of sand that that faces the water and who gets to use the beach, and whether you should have to pay for it. And it's like, pretty clearly to me that beaches are abundant. Right, you can always put another person on the beach, kind of, you know, but, but, but you want, you want scarcity to kind of pay for the cabin. The market relies on scarcity. And if you don't have if you have an abundant thing you have to create scarcity. And so the commons, getting rid of commons is create scarcity. And so the issue to me is scarcity, as much as anything it's like if you want to look for situations where you're artificially creating scarcity and question whether there's another way to do that. Right. Thanks, Dave. And like your last sentence in particular question that there's other ways to do it because sometimes, sometimes scarcity is easily worked around. In management 101 at Wharton, we had a case called the ugly orange case, which I'm going to totally give away to everybody so major plots boiler cover your ears if you don't want to hear it, but classes divided into everybody gets a case. Your group needs to there's a shipment of oranges coming in ugly oranges, which are the last of their kind and you need to buy this shipment because you have a way to cure cancer with the juice of this orange. And you have a million dollar budget would go and the other group has their own their case and you have to negotiate with them. The answer is, you need the juice of the orange, they need the peel of the orange for a buck you can buy the shipment then you can spend your $999,999 on research. But it isn't until you discovered that you that you don't need the same parts of the orange that you figure that out. It's like really stuck on stuck with me it's like very, very often these solutions are small and different. And one of the things from the stuff to the Commons article is that there used to be different kinds of est overs and easements into the forest for example, and you could gather you could gather for fire but not for something else you could widows could forage their pigs in the forest, but nobody else. There were all these sweet little things that allowed for multiple uses of the same sort of territory in different ways that had been figured out over time. And I apologize for the amateur anthropology but songlines aren't just stories of origin stories but they're also maps and they're also easements and rights negotiations and they're also like a blockchain. They're also kind of a transaction history of what happened there they're like the war blockchain. Different cultures around the world have different ways of negotiating small and subtle uses of assets in ways that are durable is really interesting in a perfect order. An anthropologist writes about Bali how the far other 1000 year old Hindu rituals on the island of Bali in the water temples contained an algorithm about who should get how much water off the mountain whose field should be flooded whose field should lie fallow, which was actually better than technologists who came in and tried to use golden rice and fertilizers and etc and almost not only destroyed farming on Bali, but almost wiped out the reefs offshore because all this fertilizer came off the mountain and started like creating algal blooms and God knows what. So it's like that there is abundance where we think there's scarcity and I fear very much when I hear the sentence we must create artificial scarcity because more often than not there's interesting workarounds to that somehow. So how much of that is because money is a real simplifier. It's like, okay, we'll just put a price on everything and then everybody just has to get a dollar and with a buck you can buy anything. And it's not just a great simplifier that that just tears right through society. I don't think that many people would say, oh, we need to create artificial scarcity. Oh, many do though. Well, it's kind of the understood, I mean, I think I feel like we need to recognize when artificial scarcity is being created, but it isn't really that that's what people are saying we need a market, you know, or the market should decide those things like that. That's where the scarcity is implied. And but and also like the libertarian worldview is if only there were perfect markets for everything the world would work perfectly. And if we had, you know, property rights protected and I'm like, Wow, those are exactly the damaging things that that run against everything I just said. We live with libertarians who have some good instincts like hey, government's too big, and figure this thing out together and that that's really hard. And the involuntary renegotiation of a social contract that we're in is heading towards some new stacks that 100 years from now we're going to take for granted. We will either not survive in which case we won't need a stack, or we will have found our way to some new stacks, which may be completely dysfunctional. And I'm hoping that they're completely functional because of the efforts that we're talking about here, because graces Dow is going to suddenly thrive and help a lot of people find their way out of the current mess because these other organizations organizations and entities will make that work. So I'm hoping that's what happens. Anyway, sorry for the long screen. Doug, can you put your hand down unless you wanted to jump back in. I'm going to go to Stacy Eric Julian. And we're getting we're 15 minutes away from the end of our call time so we won't make it through the whole queue. Here's what the whole queue looks like in my, in my chat. Well, I'm going to skip my check in other than I just want to make an observation and connect something that Barry said before he left about good ideas being covered over by bad ideas and tied to something that Grace and an observation that I made from when I first came here is I heard Kevin Jones talking about something he really wanted to have done. And I noticed a lot of like pushback and almost like for me at least whether this was what other people's perception was or not. I felt like he was being told it was a naive approach or couldn't work. And then I watched him go off and do it. And I personally learned a lot from that. So I just wanted to share that. And I'm complete. And I'm looking forward to the think camp as you know. Yay, cool. Thanks Stacy. Eric Julian Judy. You're muted, unfortunately. I think you're on a different call. So let's go. Let's skip him for a sec. And go, Julian Judy, then Eric. All right, so for check in, I'm madly preparing for the SIGGRAPH conference, which starts Monday. The effort I've been putting on most recently is the history of computer graphics. This is a knowledge base I'm defining, which is a reference source about the history of computer graphics and says, but it's also a research framework and as part of my overall initiative, it's intended to provide a base for research into how to manage knowledge. So overall I'm trying to redefine how humans interact with technology and the history is one of the test cases that I'm using for that. So I've pretty much got the abstract and proposal finished and I'm going to be having discussions with other with colleagues next week. And then I'm going to be putting point in trying to develop the big effort, which I call Project Venturi. I also recently got a tilt five system so I'm starting to build that into my overall framework of how, again, how people interact and let's see, with my kids gone I'm now converting the bedroom to a extended reality laboratory. That's funny. Can you describe tilt five for people who don't know what it is? Let's see. So if you imagine there's a special material on the table. So it looks like a game board except it's actually blank, because whatever game or whatever you're doing is virtual. You put on the glasses which are very lightweight and the augmented reality image appears in the glasses. Of course as you move around walk around you have been the view changes according to you looking into this virtual world. The critical part of it is what they call the wand. It's a game controller except it has a, well, an extension and antenna pointing out so that you don't do game controller kinds of interactions which is bullshit that's a throwback to the 70s. The wand is it's a your hand, you move your hand around like this and devices like this have been around for easily 30 years but they're generally really expensive. The best one is the sensible technologies and that's still grand 10 grand, just for the device you still need all the computers and stuff. But it's, it's a really nice system, the, the tilt five system I think is 259 so this is actually affordable, and it gets back to your cognitive abilities. I mean, pretty much everybody here weighs their hands when they talk right and that's how you should be interacting with your system. And you pointed things and the tilt five it doesn't exactly let you point to things like that but it will once I can talk them into changing some of the hardware technology behind the lawn. And their focus is on what they call virtual tabletop games and the CEO is pretty clear that they're building the technology for a gaming company for games, but she's also really open to other uses so I've seen different kinds of business cases being built on top of the tilt five. And then she knows quite well that my interest is in researching in human cognition so looking forward to a good interaction, having some results to show off in a month. Awesome. Thanks Julian, and great thank you for finding the account that's the link to the calendar correct. Awesome. I'm Eric while you were busy engaged in a different conversation I went to you. No big deal. If you'd like to go now now is your time. I'll just quickly say hello everybody. So, I was on vacation for two weeks and now I'm back at work, and that shock of returning is always something that hits me and brings up questions well why do we work. Yeah what's that difference between the mindset with work and vacation and is there a better way. I don't know. But basically this is the system I was born into, and I do it. So, but, I mean, I'm getting back. What was nice like I had a call with Mark Caranza and Jonathan sand this week and he showed me as Fox pro system and I'm understanding it more, the guts behind it and the magic behind it so maybe something will come out of that but just playing it by ear. Thanks. Thanks Eric. Judy are you still looking there you are good. Yeah, my system for some reason. But I guess in terms of what I've been up to. I'm sort of trying to do the same kind of things we're talking about here in terms of recognition of courses of action toward bigger sustainable goals for multiple different organizations. I'm finding that it's quite interesting to get groups that have not really thought beyond the immediate to think about the bigger picture of what it is that they're contributing to the organization of the world, and how they might go about doing that differently, because they're very much down in the grass and weeds of the day to day tasks and initiatives. That's helping me refine with a number of different groups, big and small, how we introduce the topics of foresight, longer range thinking analysis of threats and things like that. It seems as though people see the big trends in the world but they don't actually think about how that impacts what they're doing today, or could impact them in six months, because this this or this is changing in the local or national community. So, that's kind of where my interests and energies lie right now. Thanks Judy. Ken Michael Dave. Hello everybody. I am coping with another round of plantar fasciitis. And so my world has gotten really small. After two years of lockdown and I'm just like I really am antsy, going a little stir crazy because I can't go out and walk. I can basically make it to the store and the farmers market and that's about the extent of my ability to be on my feet so I will say that I got these really jazzy hoka slides that when I'm wearing them around the house prevent me from feeling like I'm in pain, but as soon as take them off it's really painful. So, my world's very small at the moment consists of being on zoom calls reading and being in my patio. So there's not a lot going on there. I do want to thank your friend for coming over for lunch the other day we had a really good time spent a couple hours together. My work's a little slow at the moment I have things coming up in the fall so I'm just kind of enjoying being not in productive mode, since that's a theme in this call here. I spent an hour the other day just staring at the clouds it was the most productive hour of my week. How they recommend it. That's lovely. Thanks Ken I hope your, I hope your feet feeling better soon. Michael Dave kill. I'm going to speak a little bit earlier so I'm going to skip way and further in this round. Forward to learn from others view. Thanks Michael Dave do you want to jump back in. Yeah, I got to rant already to, I guess the one thing that I am working on still and I mentioned this a few weeks ago or months ago I guess is the trying to figure out if it helps to do. If storytelling is important to creating a movement of an idea like regeneration, and there's a bunch of people telling these stories to podcasts and stuff. It helps to somehow aggregate them together and cross promote and advertise them as a as an entity. And if anybody has experience with that kind of thing or anybody doing podcasting and wants to talk about this kind of stuff I'd be really curious but it feels like we have a bunch of kind of sparsely listened to podcasts and other kinds of media, but we'd like that to be lots of people listening and is there some way that we can kind of cooperate to to make everybody more successful. So just to grow the common audience for a series of podcasts you're saying. Yeah, I'm kind of what I guess what I'm imagining is that we had we create a worker owned co op a media creator owned co op of people who produce content around the regeneration and that co op then helps market and create sponsorship money and maybe do back end efficiency kinds of things I don't know training or something like that that that makes the storytelling better makes it more popular more widely distributed things like that. But I'd love to have models or experiences for that if anybody does the thing. Yeah. This, I'm not exactly a model but April was just invited to become part of the Silicon Guild, which is limited to 50 authors who consider themselves humanists. So it was started by Adam Grant and Dan pink and a few others I think Adam Grant is no longer in the group because you spend a couple sort of years in there and then you kind of wander out and then they bring other people in. There's a very interesting group that isn't about promoting one another's books it's not that at all, but it is about creating a focal spot for attention on humanist approaches toward solving the world's problems. So it does that a bunch. There's also the big ideas club there's a bunch of other kind of book summary things there's a bunch of other places that have made their their sort of business to try to to you know summarize and put things in. Sort of there, and then I'm, I'm trying to take a complimentary but different approach this entirely which is, how do we weave these things into each other so that we can see the common threads across the conversations and podcasts and so forth and find the ideas and the wisdom, and make them easier to use. So it's not about how do we get more podcasts out but rather, how do we note that hey Jim rut did this interview with Tyson younger portal which is just kick ass and it's full of all these insights, which you can then follow through to these other kinds of threads and follow back to what is the next stack. What is the next social stack going to be for kind of thing. And so I'm, I'm interested in not the multitude of conversations but the relationships and linkages and nuggets in the conversations in some way. I don't know if that helps. That's really interesting. Well then we've talked about things like. Clearly you need like a Cisco and Eber or something like that I mean I've been kind of assuming it's a, it's a broad, it's a broad net and you bring in lots of people so you wouldn't be trying to run a trade pick the top 50 or something like that, but maybe that's not a good idea. And, you know, I'm still troubled I don't know what you guys think about this like how important is the power curve around human capacity I mean we spend so much of our energy, trying to make the elite more elite right we have all these universities and fancy classes and you know sports programs or whatever right is does is that really critical to society what if what if we just spent the money on the average would we be okay or would we collapse into some kind of an rendy and you know dystopia or something so Oh God, that was I was I think I would take anybody who's producing content, not only the top, you know, but I agree. One of the one of the magic things that appeared when crowdsourcing got hot some decade ago was that this thorny problem of adhesive technology would be solved by a math teacher in Bolivia, or something like that it was people who were not qualified, not even often in the domain in question, who were finding elegant and creative solutions to stuff everywhere and just just opening the doors and making that possible, had caused a lot of really, I think great motion in the world I don't know how. Yo was it true. I mean it was I bet that is in hypothetical idea but do we know I'm good at work. So those things actually were happening I mean people were people were winning contests who were not qualified like like these are not. These are not just sort of make believe stories these were actually things that were started happening. And it turns out that the highly paid person you put in charge of solving a problem is necessarily that person is going to be able to solve the problem they may in fact be too close to the problem to solve it. And there's a lot of that. And, and the problem, one of the conceptual problems with this approach is that it is combinatorially explosive and the volume you suddenly take for granted of possible applicants and interesting things to read and do those. And it's very hard for an individual to make their way through that mass of ideas and content so how to, how to how to how to handle that as a community. Again I think comes back to a piece of what GM is is in some sense about. Yeah. I don't have a mic. If we have a few minutes left but I will start. I'll try to go quick so I think I think Dave the answer to your question is yes. Is there value in doing that sort of thing yes and Jerry's add on feels like a good thing to add on to it not necessary but a good you know good sidebar enhancement. Excuse me that the word stack got thrown around a lot in this conversation I'm wary of stack coming from a complex adaptive systems or living systems point of view I don't think we see stacks in the living world in the same way we talk about stacks in the tech world since it may be a dangerous mean to grab on to too tightly. Check in check in. I'm doing more myself management on paper not on computer these days I've gone from the, my computer tracking systems allow me to generate enormous lists of to do is that are totally overwhelming and impossible I've reverted the planner pad, which lets me list only a few items per day. So I'm calmer and I'm getting more accomplished in terms in relation to what I'm trying to get accomplished that's kind of just an interesting thing along the side. I can about loneliness I love the visit I recommend go see Ken he's got a nice scene he's fun to hang out with so and he and he got on his orange shoes he has orange other stuff too. So recommended there. Jane and I are at the extreme end of the covert management curve because they're hurting you know compromised situation so we're lonely. And I'm watching the conference worlds crank back up again and a lot of my younger colleagues are flying around going places and we're not doing that it feels very weird, and don't know that's going to end very soon basically, you know indoors without masks off the table for me. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Well, I'm holding personally responsible chair mckalski so there you go. Excellent. Great. Just keep something else on my shoulders go I don't you. You step right into it so one thing sec second part of the check in. For the first time in a while I'm actually in a good mood about American democracy or whatever we call this mess coming partly off the Kansas election. I've been running around everywhere I can saying look if you know what if the Democrats actually ran hard on the issues people really cared about they might actually win elections might actually take the house rather than, you know, rather than hope to hold on by fingernails. You know, what if you actually looked at where there are super majorities in this country on half a dozen critical issues and ran hard on them so that'll be interesting to watch and see if that happens. In terms of in terms of work focused. We're moving forward on critical path capital we're in interesting conversations with a couple of investor groups that are mission aligned, as well as talent aligned. I've mentioned to you previously that we're looking for some private equity people with chops and heart because that's missing on our core team. And there are conversations happening that are heartening about that. And in parallel to that we're diving into the nuts and bolts of taking this general idea of acquiring small and mid-sized companies and making the mechologically grounded and employee owned and community rooted to saying okay well like what does that mean what would that look like in a particular factor in say the northern California market. And so we're diving in and looking at databases and looking at companies and trying to figure out if this idea actually makes sense. And then we will start talking with with business owners who are near retirement or thinking about retirement and thinking about an exit. And not only not only are half the business or half the, half the jobs in the country are in the small and medium sized businesses. Something like half of those are owned by boomers near retirement, and half of folks don't have exit plants. Yeah, it's amazing and succession. And often doesn't happen, and that has an enormous potential economic development implications for the communities these businesses are in, because a lot of jobs could just go away. And then that ripples so this is a very interesting blend for me of the kind of this strategic private equity focus with big social and environmental ripples potential, we can pull it off. So, I'm having a blast, but I'm going from the part which is lots of fun to talk about to roll up, you know, deep elbows deep into the shit of the detailed work of, you know, figuring it out and testing ideas to see if they were. That's lovely. And thanks for inspiring me to put up a web photograph as well. Stacy. If I could just mention something really important to what Gil said about Kansas and our political system. I don't remember where I read it where I heard it whatever but the important part to that when is that it happened because of can be saying Republicans and independence. And I think that's really key. Absolutely. There's a lot of common ground out there if we actually just have the conversations date to your comment eSops eSops co ops, perpetual employee trust various approaches to have to having more shared ownership. I mean the point back to the value conversation of earlier is how do we enable people who generate value to share in more of the value that they create. And I'm happy to have the value conversation with grace or anybody else wants to have it I've been playing in that sandbox for a long time looking at value value streams and value networks and value leakage and value enhancement and the subjectivity of value. There's also invisible invisible value is a mixed topic as well. Daniel Daniel Aaronson talks about in terms of submerged value has a book coming out next year called the value of values, which is partly high level concept but very nuts and bolts nitty gritty about case examples throughout business of massive massive value that just people don't see and don't pay attention to. Cool, thank you. Mike if you're around and want to jump in we can kind of complete the loop. Thank you very much. Your timing is perfect I just got out of the car and I'm now safe to talk. Awesome. Very happy news. I just got back from incredible vacation in Oregon and Washington and one of the high points was seen Jerry in April and an Andean restaurant in Portland. So good to see family and it was good to see just the, the world outside the Beltway and the very different world views that you see in a place like Portland and Seattle and particularly Olympia. The capital of Washington state but it's also this really odd ball collection of different cultures jammed into a city of about 100,000 people. So that was that was delightful and again very nice to see old friends including some all the way back to high school. A couple of professional things like can I'm also dealing with foot pain, probably from too much running in barefoot shoes. But I have one answer to these problems which is long bicycle rides tends to, at least for the Achilles tendonitis I'm dealing with it seems to work pretty well. I have a new book coming out in about two weeks on how the Koreans and the Indians are developing new models for data management and data governance. We worked with some colleagues in both countries and came up with some interesting stories to tell on how to process data. And we're starting a next project on Korea and India, and how those two countries and other countries influence digital standard me. And if anybody knows people they respect to have written interesting things about this topic, please let me know. A lot of the classic works on digital standard setting we're done back in 1990s. Not a lot of people go into this it's kind of a boring topic for many people. And it's very hard to understand the process without living it so anyway, that's what I'm up to very thank you Jerry very much again for making time for me and also for a great dinner with you in April. It was lovely to see you both thank you. That's just great. Yeah, I highly recommend this in person thing it's. I think massively underrated. I understand humans used to do it a lot. But it's right now an endangered practice so really old fashioned here. Yeah, exactly exactly feeling it. Hey everybody thank you this has been really, really fun. Next week is a topic week, and I think I'm I think I'm going to. I think there's a topic brewing anyway that I know I want to stir the pot on which is like OGM's mission objectives and activities less. I think it's a blend of the more abstract mission he kind of stuff and the much more pragmatic so wait what are we doing and why, and how are we doing it together kind of part so let's let's dive into that next week. It's already over do you want to just go ahead and do a quick check in since you're the last one. Oh for me. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, so I'm helping organize this event in New York in a couple weeks on August 16. It's kind of a warm up event for a camp that beta works is running around tools for thinking. The camp is an accelerator that startups would apply to, and they will they will process applications and accept probably seven eight or nine of them. And the camp would run 10 weeks and help accelerate those little companies into the space. Normally, these can and they've done six camps in the past around audio around synthetic media around other kinds of stuff I'm forgetting, forgetting exactly what. So they're trying to sort of help boot boost a particular little domain of activity in this case tools for thinking which is a squishy space to to define. Normally, they are looking for startup the kind of models where there'd be like a for profit typical model, but here there's a lot of good conversation about the Commons about shared memory about not just individual tools for thinking by yourself or for yourself, but rather tools for thinking together. I don't know exactly yet anybody with good ideas about this let me know how exactly to describe promote and assure that that part of this whole mission thrives. But it's a really important thing obviously for me because oh GM because all these other sorts of things. There's an opportunity here to, I hope everybody can tune in it's the session on the 16th is 1130 Eastern through 7pm, we're going to try to live stream, all of it that we can. I think I think one of the sessions now is going to be me interviewing Esther. I was in New York and like we contacted her for a different thing and we suddenly were like, Hey, wait a minute, why don't we have Esther in. So I'll be interviewing her. I'm actually also on a couple of the panels sort of explaining my use of the brain and other sorts of stuff. But that's one of one of a few things that are brewing that I love to put in the group. Thanks for asking. Have you sent out the information about that meeting Jerry. I put in the chat earlier and it's in the plex that Pete just sent out a link to the August 16 session. So, so that's there. The rest of it is kind of materializing and I will be putting on the GM list and also in the matter most. Basically, you know, more, more links and more materials, and then I will be I will be in Manhattan for a couple days around the 16th so I will totally be there. Thanks. Cool. Awesome. Meet up with Mike and Stacy I highly recommend it and get Wendy in there too. Are you going to do that in person thingy. Yeah, I know I'm just not used to it so. Thanks everybody. Let's be careful out there. Just to mix messages. So.