An open-ended, free-form collective cognition experiment, simultaneously published here and here.
Today we postulate that, due to dabbling too much with "everyday normal crap," we've lost several key symmetric links with minds that significantly enhanced our interactions within the #cognosphere. Therefore, some version of an individual Full Twitter Reboot has become inevitable. Yes, yes, rumors abound about service-wide quantum changes ahead; we're not talking about that here. Rather, I'm going to take some time to reflect upon the process and perhaps consult with some of the more aggressive experimenters in this domain before executing the reboot. If you consider yourself such an expert, I'd very much appreciate learning your thoughts and experiences in rebooting connections to the #cognosphere by deleting twitter id's (TID's), deleting all Followers/Following, using multiple TID's, or other techniques of which I'm not yet aware.
Disclaimer and Courtesy Notice to the reader: if you believe that Twitter is merely a "micro-blogging service" -- and possibly a fairly pointless and stupid one, at that -- then by all means please let me save you some time. Don't even bother reading any further. Go watch your local news for alerts about lost puppies or something, because this confusing thought Blip will only waste your, um valuable time or worse, possibly disrupt a comfortable existential equilibrium, or crack open the mind to something you formerly considered extremely unlikely, impossible, or just plain crazy. We wouldn't want any of that on our conscience, so please leave now.
In constructing one's interconnection with the Global Cognition Grid (GCG, or just The Grid), and when utilizing that interconnection to explore specific topics, one simply can't think clearly -- or not completely, at least -- without certain linkages intact. I understand that we are each still standard humans, for now; however, we can surely scan the horizon for what collective cognition might be like, moving forward. Even if we can't specifically predict the future, we can always forecast scenarios.
My early explorations in Google Wave developer sandbox further validate impressions about the nature and emergence of this global cognition grid. Right now, there's still a ton of #egosphere pollution and due to lack of Addressable Human Attention in standard human beings, it's going to be persistently important in the short to mid term to NOT FUCK AROUND TOO MUCH or risk losing access to MINDS that dramatically enhance one's own extended cognition.
The Global Cognition Grid is a 100% and 360-degree opt-in construct. By looking over the statistics at FriendorFollow, I've been able to see where I've done well and where I've not done so well in building the most effective #cognosphere possible for exploring the fields of inquiry that most interest me.
As a footnote, I may need to also keep in mind that as specific veins of research are explored, these configurations may change, over time; including different sets and subsets of minds, given the work at hand. The double edge of that sword is the fact that a standard human configuration tends to NOT re-establish a link, once dropped. What signals can be changed to suggest that a dropped connection would now become of mutual benefit once again? Do neurons do this? If so, how? Are there practical analogies or lessons that could be applied from nature to help understand how minds-as-individual-neurons in a GCG might accomplish a similar function (restorative, alternate, optimized interconnection)?
Asking the same questions within the context of an #egosphere (I've offended someone) render entirely different responses than asking within the context of a #cognosphere (I've bored the hell out of someone). In the former, I need to make amends, offer an apology and hope for acceptance of said apology. In the latter, I probably need to accomplish something, synthesize or contribute something new, create an artifact of some kind that regains the lost connection's interest. In the former, I'm repairing a relationship, the latter I'm renewing curiosity.
For now, through such tenuous low-bandwidth #cognosphere connections such as afforded by the likes of Twitter, these two spheres of standard configuration human interaction are still hopelessly entangled. The concept of a binary ON/OFF ... FOLLOW/NOTFOLLOW has been essential to enabling our collective discovery of the next possibilities for The Grid; yet, wholly inadequate to its continued evolution. Friendfeed's ability to keep an open channel to Friends of Friends (including dropped and never-established connections) is surely a step in the right direction, and Google Wave definitely places our presently trailing foot once again in front of the other, helping us to take one step closer toward our pragmatic, imperfect, yet increasingly impressive and capable Global Cognition Grid.
Why should any of this matter? For starters, a fundamental first requirement of The Grid is to help us fix this transitional, increasingly malignant inefficiency:
The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed. - Gibson
Let's figure out how to correct that.
