Just as the Renaissance had le botteghe , scenius more broadly requires a home. As it turns out, a surprising amount of innovation happens in bars.

Scenia do not start fully-formed. Instead, they evolve through three stages: communities, micro-scenia, and scenia. 

Community: a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common; a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Examples: early personal

To understand how historical ingredients apply to today’s communities and micro-scenia, I sought out potential emergent scenia from the present day.  

I found them in theInterIntellectandWrite of Passage. Both Anna Gát’s InterIntellect and David Perell’s Write of Passage are transitioning from communities to micro-scenia, and each has the potential

In 1997, historian David Banks argued in “The Problem of Excess Genius” that, “The most important question we can ask of historians is ‘Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest?’" 

The purpose of the II community is the II community. It’s an infinite game. Your goal is that people want to keep wanting to play with you.... I think if you do good work, it’s natural that you will become influential. Like good work is really rare. We want to have a better public discourse and a higher level of intellectual engagement. But it’s

Although many have tried many times, it is not really possible to command scenius into being... The best you can do is NOT KILL IT. When it pops up, don’t crush it. When it starts rolling, don’t formalize it. When it sparks, fan it. But don’t move the scenius to better quarters. Try to keep accountants and architects and police and do-gooders away

These burgeoning efforts offer hope that scenius can indeed be created online, but must also be strengthened and punctuated by real-world interaction; that competition will always drive humans to push themselves further, but that competition need not be zero-sum; that the scale of the internet can mean bolder, more ambitious missions.  

Thirteen of history’s most productive and influential scenia and their contributions to humanity.

Kevin Kelly provided us with four ingredients for scenius: 

• Mutual appreciation 


• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques 


• Network effects of success 


• Local tolerance for the novelties