ben knight
intro’d to Ben via Michel Bauwens sharing this talk (Ben is co-founder of loomio with Richard Bartlett) – or was intro via ttt and paul?
Self-Organizing Community Democracy for the Internet Age | Bioneers
6 min – when people think about the human species as a species among other species… humans as animals among other animals.. there can be something really powerfully transformative in that..
7 min – all these things going horribly wrong in the world.. urgency to these challenges
8 min – if we’re really getting more intelligent why are the institutions getting dumber…
the organizational structures: centralized power/wealth in tiny number of people and those people are expected to make decisions on behalf of everyone else.. crazy.. what else do we expect..
9 min – academic institution as this floating brain.. acquiring knowledge for the sake of acquiring knowledge..
10 min – academic industrial complex… trace the funding/value… really is a part of a very dark mechanical system..
11 min – the realization that my work was legitimizing that level of suffering was really difficult… so i got out of it..
perpetuate\ing not-us ness
12 min – desire to work with real people in real environments on real problems…
13 min – this institutional insanity has got to stop.. this wave of social movements.. and then landing in wall street.. then to more than 800 cities.. around the world. i have never seen this movements of movements… totally transformative for me.. the need to do something..
15 min – 3 features of those movements:
1\ intersectionality… all oppression is connected..
2\ transformation change –
systemic.. global system change – deep/simple/open enough
3\ prefigurative – in coherence w/ change we want to make.. we need to organize in sustainable/equitable ways..
self-organizing ness… stigmergy ness
tyranny of structurelessness…
graeber on what was missed…
19 min – top down and bottom up… both with problems… so a group of us came together during occupy… around this communications infrastructure…. how to do collective decision making… networked..
20 min – came in contact with community called – en spiral
came to be known as loomio.. weaving to whole, lumination.. an online space for purpose driven people to come together and build agreement around clear courses of action..
31 min – i feel like at this real tipping point.. there could be this huge force.. and also could be most terrifying… it’s up to us which way we go on that..
the need to go deep enough.. for (blank)’s sake
_________
loomio – progress 2015
we were thinking whether there would be a 3rd way… turn communication into real world action…
a tool that only did one thing.. gave people a space to talk things through and make a decision together.. a pie graph and 4 buttons…
used in podemos…
more than 20000 decisions made w/0 marketing…
challenge – prefigurative politics.. notion of organizing ourselves…
_________
ted 2013
How technology can enable everyday democracy : TEDxTeAro
email – we still don’t know how to achieve.. dreams into action..
how is this happening…
transformative rather than revolutionary (taking power from some and giving to other) …
5 min – the question is now.. what happens after protests have died down.. for sustained collective action for viable alternatives..
9 min – when everyone heard.. decision are spot on.. bad side – when meetings go on forever.. only one can talk at once.. and loud wins..
10 min – shifting this process online.. opens it all up… global possibilities are endless..
as long as we get rid of irrelevant s… no?
people realizing that to make a good decision need to involve those most close to it..
a nother way
as the day.. every day.. rev in reverse…
_________
find/follow Ben: