Monday, August 29, 2011

Future trajectory for our species?

I just contributed to the Human Project on Kickstarter, but I'd also like to open an inquiry here about the direction of our species that doesn't sound like it's included in their plans.

It has to do with the rapid evolution we are undergoing which is creating a capacity shift for humanity that changes all the rules we currently take for granted in our industrial age economy and completes our shift into completely different information age dynamics.

We have an anthropocentric notion of intelligence. Consider, for a moment, the cells in our body. They communicate, collaborate, share scarce resources, work together to build, maintain and manage extremely complex systems, and each one carries a copy of the agreements (DNA) that they use to cooperate. Cells do all those things better than we do, yet we don't recognize that as intelligence.

But what would happen if humanity had a breakthrough in our capacities to do these kinds things together because of the advent of new kinds of "Social DNA?" Social DNA which enables rapid self-organization, organizational adaptation, resource allocation, communication, decision-making and new patterns of collective governance...

What if these breakthroughs freed us from the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, the inequities of centralized financial instruments and computing architectures, and the ineffectiveness of representational hierarchies?

What would the "Human Project" look like then?

This is actually happening. And it's a game changer. We're building it now.

What kind of futures do you see possible with this and other new capacities?