Assembly required - RSA Comment

In the civic sphere, we know there’s a massive tension between the appetite for more participatory democracy and the systems and roadblocks in place. In a world where multiplayer mode was the true norm, collective decision-making would become the cornerstone of our political process, with citizens much more actively involved in shaping policies and... See more

And while each of us needs to cultivate those skills, we cannot do it alone. As Vervaeke pointed out in a recent lecture, we need a self-reflective community, a Sangha. Jordan Hall puts it somewhat more mechanistically; we have to learn how to come together in a decentralised collective intelligence. The first step of that is to come into sovereign... See more

Alongside technical tools, we need ways of defining and explaining social norms and expectations about contribution and value sharing. We need collective mechanisms for decision-making about shared assets, that make people feel heard while recognising the limitations, constraints and realities of their maintenance. We need people and organisations ... See more

So what we have to do, in my view, is to make the participation of the digital sphere more active, more empowering. There are many ways you could do that, but I’m thinking of a site that’s a bit more formal and inclusive of everyone, discussing issues affecting the community.

And when we come together with the intention of having honest, open and compassionate conversations, we often create something truly special. A kind of collective intelligence which is more than the sum of its parts.

Linking these thoughts back to DAOs, I suspect we are now living in an age where decentralised internet communities that figure out how to organise themselves as an interdependent complex collective of diverse individuals will end up converging on better decisions. This is the next stage of social evolution. And as a consequence, these sorts of org... See more

- "As an activist on the left, I long assumed that my role consisted entirely of raising awareness, sounding alarms, and deploying arguments; it took me years to realize that I needed to help build and defend spaces in which listening could happen, too. As citizens, we understand that the right to speak has to be facilitated, bolstered by instituti... See more