A Celebration Society

Tag: simulation

  • Your Oar in the Water

    Your Oar in the Water

    Those of us who appreciate the potential of a Celebration Society can also see that there’s a lot to be done between here and there. It will require many talents; many perspectives–and much energy. But, as the Vikings proved in traveling to North America, even an ocean can be crossed in a well-crafted vessel through steady rowing.

    I invite you to dip your oar into the water. The more of us who row, the faster we’ll arrive. The realization of a Celebration Society depends on a large number of people coming together who want to help build it and perhaps even live there.

    I’ve developed a scaffolding, but it assuredly has rickety features and probably places where important things are missing or wrong. It can unquestionably be improved. One of my many weaknesses is that I’ve got wide knowledge of technology, but it’s generally shallow. Fortunately, there’s a proven way to take care of this.

    We cannot (and should not) depend on individuals, but rather on collected wisdom derived from scientific research. We can build and test systems based on this wisdom. We can gather advice from a cohort of experts in the relevant disciplines. (I ideally see these as being not individuals but panels of experts in architecture, transportation, permaculture, food production, education, healthcare, etc.)

    In my view, a simulation is the most rational bridge between here and an actual, functioning city-state. It would be risk-free for participants, and fun. The basic tools, including customizable “worlds”, already exist. Millions spend hours each week in Second Life, a simulation where they have no hope of ever actually living there. How much more attractive would they find a, “Second Life that could become your real life”?

    A simulation will give us the chance to quickly test all manner of ideas before committing physical resources and money. It will both be the primary advertisement for and attractor to make the concept “sticky”. This will help us to build a community and a movement of people, many of whom will decide that they want to live in a Celebration Society, and some of whom will have expertise that we need.

    While it could be a single simulation, I envision instead a competitive set of simulations, developed and tested in parallel, each backed by a team. There would be a rigorous comparison process, based on established quality of life metrics, and then the “winner” would be further explored and refined by ALL of the players until there’s a consensus that it’s “ready to implement”. Perhaps the winning team would win a prize, or prizes.

    For all that to happen properly, as I see it, we will need:

    • Large numbers of participants (“The Second Life You Can Make Real!”)
    • A business plan, including a budget
    • An advisory board, including all necessary disciplines, guiding the simulation contestants to stay within reality and make use of best practices.

    One way to get a lot of participants would be to do a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to build the simulation, and request every member of the Society to invite their own lists to visit that campaign. There could be some interesting prizes for backers. For instance, perhaps we could allocate 1/10% of the possible 100,000 condominium interests (100 total) for prizes. In this case, those putting up $500 or more could be entered into a drawing to win such an interest.

    Prior to such a simulation happening, we’ll need a significant number of aligned people. Toward this end, would you do me a small favor? If you haven’t already joined, please join the Society, and post a brief bio, including whatever special skills and expertise you bring to the party? (Or, should I say, the forthcoming celebration!)

    I’m trying to move this discussion of a Celebration Society (which is just now entering some surprising circles) from being primarily about my ideas to a wider discussion of how these starting ideas can be corrected/improved/implemented. Toward that end, I’m inviting people with expertise to offer guest blogs for the website. Everyone is invited to participate on the Forum!

    That’s how we’ll make all of this happen; as a network of people with complementary strengths and weaknesses. People who are mature enough to know and then acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses, sharing a vision and serving it together, can together accomplish anything.

     

  • This Must Become a Collaboration

    This Must Become a Collaboration

    So far, nearly all of the postings at this website have been my own. However, I do not want this to continue. I have invited Society members with whom I correspond; men and women of accomplishment, to write guest blogs. None has yet found the time. They are busy people who, unlike me, are not focused on this, so that is no surprise. But it will come.

    More importantly, as I see it, the next two major projects should be a simulation and developing a plan for building a Celebration Society. The two would appear to support each other. (Ideally, there will be a virtuous cycle of mutual feedback and improvement.) The key difference between them is that the simulation will be a co-participative process involving large numbers of regular people, while the planning process will be a co-participative process involving experts in all of the relevant disciplines.

    In neither of these do I see myself as running the process. I have no expertise as a planner, nor with simulations. A Celebration Society will not happen in a hierarchical fashion. It will happen as a network of people, with deference granted based on the ability to articulate a persuasive argument. As I said in the book, “Leadership will not be based on hierarchical power structures of how many people are obligated to follow your orders, but rather on a collaborative model of how many people are willing to follow your vision.”

    It needs to go beyond even that. Mature people recognize both their competencies and their limitations. A project of this magnitude will require one of the widest sets of expertise of any project in history. What we will need, then, are mature people whose strengths and weaknesses overlap. If I am strong where you are weak, and you are strong where I am weak, we complement each other. If we both recognize this, and defer to each other (not blindly, but based on evidence), we can be stronger together than apart.

    Extend this thinking to dozens of people, and you have the basis for a project. If each domain of expertise goes further, creating its own collaborative team, then we will avoid many of the mistakes that inevitably happen when an individual (however gifted) is solely responsible for such a domain.

    The book is a very high level overview. It offers a scaffolding upon which many different ideas can be hung and tested. It doesn’t go deeper than that, because I lack the expertise to do so. Even if I did have relevant expertise in some of the domains, it would be imprudent for me to go into such depth.

    If this isn’t a collaborative process of definition, testing, and refinement, we will fail before we begin. For that reason, I am deliberately limiting my role to those things I do well: articulating a vision, enrolling people into that vision, speaking and writing.

    Already, our allies include experts in transportation, architecture, software security, organizational development, education, and certain other disciplines. I am excited to see how this is unfolding!