curiosity app specifics

is school enough as it is?

is it too much?

[app/chip update ideas – shorter working page]

Imagine we decide it’s legal to think for ourselves. Imagine we decide to disrupt ourselves. Instead of school as we now know it, we follow intrinsic whimsy by crowdsourcing & facilitating curiosity. The start up of you.

To ground the inevitable and encouraged chaos? Perhaps we create an app available for free on the device of your choice.

app – a designated space for people to talk to themselves.

And then all that talking/typing/texting [presence sensing (Scharmer)] becomes data to create a trail, a mesh network, of intentions/passions/connections. This mesh is then used for ongoing connections, and perhaps even a new type of credentialing. [more on intent (Searls), than on present, honest signals & idcubed (Pentland)]

A match.com or linkedin – ish – but via passion/intention.  if… like tags are found within say 10 nodes from the center, then…. connect these people (or ideas/things even) via [text #, some notification – perhaps meetup.com-ish?]

original prototype was to have the app walk you through detox… option of just talking or picking from notice, dream, connect, do – are you doing what matters

but we’re thinking simplicity is of a better order.. so perhaps we just ask – what are you curious about – [perhaps curiosities are more actionable – and we’re thinking the gathering for action is the placebo effect we are after. the jump start.]

___________________________________________________

So what do we need – for this app aspect of the quiet revolution?

wifi: web access via phone, ipad, laptop, html – wifi bank?

device: low cost/google/raspberry pi/olpc – recycles?

app: perhaps offered as a gift from google or facebook, useable on any device

and then..

spaces: ..to meet up and decide/do what you can’t not do.

people: .. who can’t not do that same thing.

stuff: .. needed to do that thing

_________________________________________

devices and such via Gregory’s vision.

_________________________________________

scenarios:

Joe & Miguel

I notice we waste water every time it rains. The public sprinklers keep running. I would love to fix that.

I noticed the sprinklers in the city run when it’s raining, I’m imagining saving tons of taxpayers money & water by fixing that, I want to connect to city people or whoever to figure out what can be done

How do we get people?

In our district alone, there are 15,000 students, 2000+ adults in school buildings 7 hours a day. Many are there only because it’s compulsory. If we redefine public ed to be: #1 be known by someone #2 talk to your self every day, we think we will find several players.

Whoa, 15,000 even.. you think one app can ground that chaos?

Yes we do. We’re thinking that’s what tech really wants to do, get us back to us. We think we are more capable of this at this point in time, because of what the web can do, what a network means, and what we’ve already seen with tech – take in huge amounts of data and facilitate that in ways we choose. [ie: Everest: http://evr.st/ – is currently the closest example of our dream app, but the phone service, and google, et al, have been using tech for this.. just not always/generally per our choice.

However, we don’t really think it’s about an app or tech. The focus of being known by someone is at the core of what it means to be human. We can go way back in history, or scan the globe to see people practicing that. We see the app as a temporary jolt back to the natural. So say we divide our district out, it’s about 1 adult to 8 kids. Here’s a vision (see the pod starting at 2 min in) of what the current school buildings (or any space) could become to facilitate that at the onset.

How do we get people to talk to the app everyday?

Again, take the 17,000 ish people in school buildings 7 hours a day, that now have permission to play, ie: this app is their ticket out the door, we think people will start talking to themselves. [And with reference to last question, the group each person belongs to would encourage that daily, at least in the beginning.]

And maybe we can’t get people to talk to the app everyday. Maybe this doesn’t work. That’s what we want to know. This is a prototype of an idea. We’ve gyrated through different experiments over the last four years (me-videos, google doc, video recording), ways to journal or log thinking. This may not work, it’s just our next best idea. We would love to get feedback, especially on what might work better.

What if people just go through the motions of talking to themselves?

Say someone says they notice a fly on the wall, every day. Over time they could get bored, which is fine, we’ve found boredom to be a first step to detox. They could see that we are connecting them to entomologists and start wondering what might happen if they talk about what matters. They could (appear to) do nothing, which is fine, we believe there is never nothing going on. We believe that the world could change if people would start talking to themselves, at whatever level, and that the greater risk, is anything that keeps them from that.

How do we fund it?

I have started a kickstarter project to potentially fund this or at least kick it off.

For tech – they do need a prototype, not just a rendering. Their site reads:

Looks like you’re building a Design or Technology project. Cool!

Kickstarter requires additional information from projects in these categories so that backers can make informed decisions about the projects they support. To launch, you must include:

Who you are. Projects are about people. Let backers know who you are, especially your experience and background. The project video, project bio, and project description are good places to highlight this.

A functional prototype. Projects in the back-of-a-napkin or 3D-rendering phase are too early to raise funds on Kickstarter. Have a prototype? Showcase it in your project video and with images in the project description.

A clear plan. How and where will you be making your project? Share the details on how you will complete it. This must be established prior to launch.

We hope to have this in use this fall. The more expertise and/or sharing and/or backing we can get, the sooner we can prototype. We’ve had rough estimates of 300,000 to 500,000 and 3 months.

And we do have this listed in funding via our collaboratory doc – which is written with the idea we would get 20 mill-ish of no strings attached moneys.

How do we keep people safe?

Anyone participating and not already in the public ed system, would have gone through the district’s volunteer screening. These spaces would be within school buildings and/or designated meet up spaces downtown (ie: maker space, writing lab, video/graphic/photo lab, pi lab, etc.) so they would already be populated with other volunteers and/or district employees.

I must add, I don’t see the app as special or even long lasting. I see it simply as a means to bump us out of the classroom and out of the curriculum, without people freaking out about the danger of randomness. I don’t think I even see the app as facilitating our learning how to learn for very long. I do believe that is natural.. if we just stop all the busy-ness, and start talking to ourselves, listening.

I guess I’m thinking if the fear of people dying from the randomness is alleviated, for even just a short period of time, just long enough to see the capabilities of people, we will be blown away and sold out to the naturalness of it. We will be ready to risk more. Every day. For it.

In fact, I think we will realize what a risk we have been taking everyday for many years now, in not encouraging people to think for themselves, to connect per choice. So ironically, I see the app as a means for us to get out of an incredibly unsafe environment. The human spirit is at great risk. No?

It appears all these connections will be from like-minded thinking, what about the possibilities of connecting adjacent or random thinking?

The app is simply to jumpstart connections. We’re thinking people will be blown away by the like-minded thinkers/experts in our own town, and that will allure them to continue talking. If we get people who can also program randomness into the app, super. That is where magic happens.

We do have a local event, via our homeless collective, in November, that is seeking the same goal: being known by someone.  We’re thinking the timing is perfect to play out, face to face and random connections, just to see where they lead.

Do you have an executive summary?

Am working on a short version statement/summary in doc form. Any one want to help with that?.. : )

How can I help?

Offer insight, connect us to people, help with funding (kickstarter when we launch) or donations (recycled devices, donated bandwidth). Help us prototype when we have a prototype app. Help us offer up examples of individual mesh networks, (like i am doing on the brain via Jerry’s brain) by starting today to create your own mesh on whatever works for you. Maybe you already have one and you could send a link. (monk51295@gmail.com) grazie guys.

____________________________________

resources/people/ideas/things that already exist:

people:

_____________________________________________

Thanks to the brilliance, expertise, passion and love coming from Michael & co…

http://beta.iguata.com/

We would love feedback:

what intrigued you about using iguata?

what did you want to be able to do, but weren’t?

what could this do for you over time?

please email feedback to me: monk51295@gmail.com

or Michael: michael@igniter.com

my feedback

and perhaps – a clearer vision of what we’re thinking the app might do

_____________________________________________

_______________

_____________

update end 2024:

root of problem

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

need to try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness..

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

_____________

_____________

____________

___________