Some good stuff in my whoisi stream today. Enough of a pattern in order to draw some interesting lines between different posts.
Fred Wilson posts some excerpts from an essay on what comes after post-modernism (tiny link). A little bit thick, but an interesting idea. That our next era will be defined by participation instead of what others tell us is real. A reality defined by our actions and what we take part in.
Bruce Sterling links to an interesting article on “Communal Genius” (tiny link). Sometimes I think that the Mozilla community is like this. We’ve managed to attract some very interesting people and it feels like we’re growing from doing something really great to doing something really amazing. I’m not sure what that is, or what form it will take, but it feels like it’s there, just out of reach.
And both of these make me think of Ze Frank‘s talk at TED a few years ago. (You should watch this no matter what you think of those two links above. No, seriously, go watch it.) At the end he talks about creating these interesting places for normal people to do amazing things. Where their small, low-barrier participation creates something greater than the sum of its parts. I love that he’s thinking about these things methodically and understands what he’s doing.
And I totally get Ze’s 80% comment. I love that feeling. It’s why I have a hard time opening Christmas presents.