The deeper Meaning of the Translation Project

Dear Team:

We have heard so much about IT: information technology. It's coming out of our ears. But the digital revolution is more than that. It's the age of NI: networked intelligence. Yes, and we are all part of this dramatic process....

NI: the networking of humans through technology. The binding of humans through digital networks and thus the magical combining of their intelligence, knowledge, and creativity for breakthroughs in the creation of wealth and social development. That's what we've been doing in a nutshell these past three years. All of us in our own little way...we attempted to network our human ingenuity. This has made me really proud.

The human network now becomes the computer which is infinitely more powerful than a single machine or a single human. Networked human intelligence can--in theory be applied to just about any problem. Thus creating a higher order of thinking, of knowledge and of inter-networked consciousness....super-synergy when it really works right. It's the group mind concept at its very best.

Networking can change the very intelligence of an organization by bringing collective know-how to bear on any kind of problem soving and innovation. This is so important. We have been really struggling, but by opening up dramatically the channels of human communication, consciousness can then be extended from individuals to any organization.

Unconscious organizations like people CANNOT really learn. Conscious organizations can learn and thus survive. This insight is so deeply profound. Networked intelligence is the missing link in organizational learning and the conscious organization maybe the foundation for the illusive learning organization--trapped until now by that insidious division of labor plaguing it.

Perhaps, networked intelligence can be EXTENDED BEYOND organizations to create a broader awakening, a broadening social consciousness--in communities, nations, and BEYOND. Harvest really strains towards pointing in this direction.

We are in the age of networked intelligence and it's a perilous age as well. For those who fall behind the punishment can be SWIFT. The digital frontier can be a place of recklessness, confusion, uncertainy, calamity, and danger. We've had a few of these close brushes in our own project.

In the bigger picture beyond our little group-mind; wealth is potentially being concentrated even more so in ever fewer hands. Privacy is being endangered and NOISE is hounding us everywhere....basic securities and freedoms maybe endangered. Today's basic social fabric is now rapidly disintegrating while not being replaced by anything substantial as change zooms upwards exponentially.

Will our smaller, wired world be a better one? We are in the era of the extended group-mind....we are reaching a cross-roads where digital questions unavoidably spiritual ones.

Michael