Who are You?

Collective communication, the Humanity 2001 project and our InterMix BBS software have implications for various groups on the web. If you are a netizen or a Delphi programmer or from L.A., or if you take the big view of Humanity, etc, we want to find you, exchange email, talk or have lunch if that is convenient, and of course we want to list you here on our page of Web links. When our online volunteers knock at your email door, please do ask them in for a chat. Align with us to create an intelligent and believable collective voice for humanity. With your help we will succeed!!!

May we include your link here? It's people-to-people more than website-to-website networking that we want to foster, so we are making it a rule not to list anyone without explicit permission. This way we have to go out there and make contact.

Or better yet, join us. Be an online volunteer or send a tax deductible donation or just say you are with us. Moral support is important. Write to us. Send us a picture or a URL to your homepage. Let us list you on our Who are We? page, not just here on "Who are You?". Here is our postal address:

          Collective Communication, Inc.
          c/o Roger Eaton
          2407  31st St.
          Santa Monica, CA 90405

Areas of Contact:

• Los Angeles
• Non-Violence
• Global Humanity
• Netizenry
• Interfaith and Intrafaith
• Greens
• Software Collaboration
• Collaborative Filtering
• Net as Mind
• Persons we have Noticed
• Other

Los Angeles Contacts

Los Angeles is a city as diverse and fractured yet loaded with money and ability as any on earth. So we have here both the challenge and the resources we need to test collective communication. Success in creating a collective voice for Los Angeles will mean we have a reasonable chance to succeed on a world scale. Moreover, L.A. is one of the world's premiere cities, with world class contacts, so our organizing work here will plug us into the heart of the international networks we need for the next step.
 
Paul Klose has @LA, the best L.A. link site. It's worth a click. 

Flemming Funch,  who originated the New Civilization Network in the first place, is a computer consultant, counselor, futurist, networker, and, amongst many other things, he wrote the Transformational Processing collection. Every month or so, Fleming organizes a "New Civilization Salon" here in Los Angeles. A schedule of Salons is now available online. Flemming is truly making a difference, gradually convincing people by simple example that they have permission to trust each other again within the New Civilization framework.

Max Sandor  is a computer scientist, philosopher, counselor, and student of ancient Buddhist texts. He operates the Internet server newciv.org. Author of the PhiloFi e-mail series 'Logs of JD Flora', he is offering various CD-ROM titles. See the CD-ROM of all Web sites on www.newciv.org. and the 'JD Flora CD-ROM'. He is currently working on a multi-lingual edition of 'CodeWars', a collection of some of his short stories.

John Helion Tibayan of Santa Monica has a free Directory and Calendar of Events for spiritual and humanitarian visionaries at the Global Visions website of his Creative Resources Guild nonprofit. Most intriguingly CRG has plans for internet broadcasting. That is a direction ardently to be pursued. We will be looking for ways to cooperate.

Roger Weir is a dear man, an original thinker, lecturer and author, part showman, all Doctor of Civilization and teacher. Something new, something old. Catch his Saturday 10:00 AM lectures at the Bodhi Tree, 8585 Melrose Ave, L.A.

Nigey Lennon and Lionel Rolfe are fixtures in the radical offbeat publishing scene here in Los Angeles. But Lionel voted for Clinton! See Nigey's Los Angeles Institute of Quantum 'Pataphysics site/homepage.

Danny Krouk is a personable young man who is bound to have a positive impact on the city.  His website at NKLA - Neighborhood Knowlege Los Angeles is a must for anyone interested in L.A. neighborhoods, particularly in housing issues.

Nick Arandes will help you Manifest Your Dreams.  Recognize the immense power that resides deep within you.  Nick is involved in the Season for Nonviolence here in Los Angeles.

Steve Lockwood, pianist -- mp3 here.

Nonviolent Community

Nonviolence is a must for our project, and conversely, we will be vitamins for the nonviolent community. We expect to have volunteers acting on the suggestions of a collective Los Angeles, and eventually of a collective humanity. These volunteers should be trained in nonviolence, partly as a precaution, partly as a natural corollary of their position as representatives of the whole, and partly because the joy engendered among the volunteers by their venture in nonviolence will have such a positive influence upon the online community which is directing them.

A Season for Nonviolence -- Jan 30 through April 4, 1998 -- the 50th and 30th anniversaries of the assassinations of Gandhi and King.  A 64 day national and international educational, media and grassroots campaign to promote the principles and practice of nonviolence.  Lots of big name sponsors.  The L.A. Season Task Force is over 100 strong halfway through December 1997 and growing quickly.  The Agape church in Santa Monica (soon moving to Culver City) has plunged in to sparkplug the L.A. effort -- but make no mistake, this is not an exclusivist movement.  We will be providing an InterMix Hub for the Season.

Global Humanity

The global viewpoint is what we are all about. Collective communication will mean the collective consciousness of humanity. Already the world knows it is one, but it does not know that it knows. That consciousness is the missing ingredient that the sharing of highly rated messages on the internet through collective communication will provide. Through dialogue with world leaders -- the Secretary General, the President of the U.S., the Pope, the Dalai Lama etc -- and between the nations and the world, we will come to our senses! It doesn't make sense to have these horrible local wars, so we will stop. It doesn't make sense to destroy the natural fabric of the world, so we will stop. It does make sense to use our technology to build up the natural base, so we will. It makes sense to give everyone opportunity for education, so we will. It doesn't make sense to lock up huge numbers of our citizens, so we will figure out how to give everyone something more useful and rewarding to do than turn to crime. All these things will really happen. Why not? Consciousness is the missing ingredient.
 
The Club of Budapest we found through a reference to Heiner Benking, a Creative Member of the Club. Heiner Benking has a page of his own, and his latest enterprise is as co-editor with Tom Mandel of a published seminar on wholeness and general systems theory at THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC SEMINAR ON WHOLENESS. See also Heiner's contribution to the Conference on a New Space for Culture and Society in November of 1996. An excellent list of Heiner's works on the web is available at Annette's Links.

The Club's Forum page quotes from the "Manifesto on the Spirit of Planetary Consciousness:"

Individuals endowed with planetary consciousness recognise their role in the evolutionary process and act responsibly in the light of this perception. We must start with ourselves to evolve our consciousness to this planetary dimension. We can then become responsible and effective agents of change and transformation in society. Planetary consciousness is knowing and feeling the vital interdependence and essential oneness of humankind, and the conscious adoption of the ethos that this entails. Its evolution is the new imperative of human survival.
This manifesto has been signed by, among others, the Dalai Lama and Elie Wiesel. We subscribe, too.

Tom Mandel, is co-editor of the Wholeness Seminar and editor of the ISSS Systems Inquiry Primer Project -- a collective essay in systems theory: "Dedicated to the introduction, study, understanding and application of the Systems Sciences -- collectively, the science of Wholeness, expressed in terms of the common language."

Systems theory appears to be part of the answer. How are we going to organize ourselves, us billions? That's the question. Stay tuned.
 

World Transformation. "The overall theme here is to make the world a better place, to see things in a positive light, to stand up for one's rights, to pursue self-improvement and greater freedom, to have fun and to learn new things about life, the universe and everything". See also New Civilization Network.
A Library for Cultural Understanding. A multi-cultural theme for a solid school project in pursuit of the Thinkquest prize.

Gaiamind. Website for a coordinated world wide meditation, January 23, 1997. The links from this site are great, and there is a fascinating essay on global consciousness by Richard Tarnas at The Passion of the Western Mind.

Lois Nicolai at the World Citizen Diplomats site is excited about the potential of the internet to forward the WCD agenda -- organizing citizens and elected officials to connect the nations and cities of the world people to people. WCD is an excellent organization with a thoughtful approach, worthy of your support.

Roan Carratu has developed a strategy for implementing personal "workbots" to make the world a universal delight. If you have never worked with a robot yet, you don't know how wonderful they are. Truly. Robots are an idea whose time has come! Also a bunch of good links there. Visit Roan's Synertec Strategy site. But first we need to link the world, and that's where Roan's strategy looks remarkably similar to our own here at the Collective Communication site.

The Netizenry

A community of concern for the future of the web has spontaneously arisen. Who is going to dominate the net, big money or big government? Or is the net indominable? Could it be? But in that case, how to give some order to the chaos without choking off the potential? Perhaps collective communication is the non-bureaucratic, democratic and open self-government for the web that we need.

Contacts in the Religious Communities

The interfaith community foresees a human unity that respects diversity. So do we. There are whole faiths that work hard to foster understanding between the peoples of the earth. So do we. Also, the Christian, Muslim and Hindu communities, at least, are striving within for their own unity as well as without for connection with the other faiths. We think we can help.

These are momentous times. Christian unity alone: it is hard to imagine what it must mean. And put that within a larger framework of human unity -- well, it boggles the mind! Yet we need only assemble a few thousand persons in a world wide set of electronic forums to represent humanity. Easy as it seems to accomplish, that little unity, open, inclusive, democratic and founded on nonviolence, will be supercharged with glory. No doubt about it, this is a religious transformation we are talking about, and it needs the participation of the world's religions to succeed. We need your help. We are asking for your help. Please hear us!

Bruce Schuman has a multi-faceted site out of Santa Barbara. The two trees symbol is a sign of the United Communities of Spirit: 

"We believe that the spiritual transformation of global culture can arise through a cooperative network system, that brings together into one linked context the highest insights of all religions, and coordinates the participation of millions of people." This is the credo of the UCS, and we think so too. We can link millions in a cooperative network of all peoples and religions.
 

Stephen A. Fuqua is a Physics student at the U of Texas at Austin. His website, Unity, is a great starting spot for links to the Bahai faith. And his essays on the future of humanity are worth a look.
 

Dale Lature is an earnest young man with a dream of community in his heart. See his website, New Media Communication, out of Cincinnati, for links to the Christian Ecumenical movement. A fine essay by John R. Mabry "Cyberspace and the Dream of Tielhard de Chardin" is there, too.

Greens

Those who are concerned for the earth will learn to see collective communication as a powerful ally. A united and conscious humanity must assuredly insist on measures to protect and rebuild the environment. Any other course is suicidal.
 
Harald Agerley is doing us all a service with his practical approach to our environmental problems. See his website RESOURCES and ENVIRONMENT.
Jay Hanson maintains that for the sake of profit, the world machine is sending us off to ecological collapse. The solution: convince the super rich that they will be in trouble, too. Hah! See his energetic website at Brain Food. Footage of dead babies being tossed into a truck is offputting, but here, too, there is a huge amount of information detailing the coming ecological collapse. Who can doubt it?

Steve Kurtz is the U.S. contact of the Gaia Preservation Coalition. The GPC aims for negative population growth. This is not a truly all-popular position! But since we don't know what the earth's human population capacity is, and since when (and if) we go over that line, we probably still won't know it for a decade or two, we should all worry a lot. GPC can't do all the worrying for us, so take a look.

Software Collaboration on the Net

Linux is the premiere example of software collaboration on the net, but there are others. We need to contact persons in the successful collaborations for advice how to make our own collaborative effort with InterMix a success.

Collaborative Filtering

Finding what you want continues to be a problem on the web. Often a search gets too many hits. Which of all those thousands of sites is really the one you want? Banner ads are one way of directing traffic, but not very efficient. so various plots are afoot to better profile the surfer. Collaborative filtering is the sophisticated possibility. The idea is to compare user profiles to find persons whose taste is most like yours. Then we can predict your particular likes and dislikes from theirs. It is not that simple though. There are any number of ways to implement the idea, so we need to stay in touch with the field. It is a fast moving world on the net.

Our Recommender technology promises to be a contender in the arena of collaborative filtering software.

Gregory Wright and Paul Stevens are developing a Global Suggestion Box. This is a database of ideas structured by category with ratings. attractively displayed by colored bar. Greg has posted an idea to have a lottery to be the first person to enter the year 2000 -- if you win, you get to be at the exact South Pole at midnight Dec 31, 1999. Paul Stevens is the programmer, in the Netherlands. Gregory Wright lives here in Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks). He thinks all of us working on this line should find ways to cooperate. Yes indeed, let's!

A Brazilian contact through Gregory Wright: Márcio Bezerra
  http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1887
  Director of Strategy
  World Ideas Network - WIN3
  Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

 Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko has a bright site sparkling with ideas and alternative futures at http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html.  Located in Harvard Square, he was until recently intimately involved in Firefly technology development, and now hangs his hat at MIT Media Lab.

Steve Moyer and Tod Harter are developing NODES.  Nodes is a java navigator for the web.  It will allow the user to rate web items on the spot.  There may be a good fit here between NODES and InterMix.

The Net as a Mind for Humanity

It is an obvious idea: the net as a mental prosthesis for the world. We began this page by saying our philosophy is you and us together. So that is our clue. We are looking to articulate the noosphere, to make it more intelligent and useful for each of us, individually, of course, but also for all of us together, and even more inclusively, for Life on Earth.

Our metaphor is the individual as neuron for the collective mind. If we understand better how the individual mind works, we can use that knowlege to build a more intelligent collective mind. That is our program. If you have thoughts on this line, please let us know.

Persons we have Noticed

Surfing the web we sometimes come across personal sites of great sensibility and intelligence. Instead of blowing past with a wow, we will be taking the time to contact the owner. If some of these people take a return interest in us, great!
 If you have a taste for the arcane, visit gaa at the Greater Arcana Academy. Pass through the maze to find his lynx. An everchanging Rudra/golf site.

Terry Alden has lifted the veil on another world at his Technosophy web site. His essays are thoroughly enjoyable guides to terra incognita from an original mind, touched by McLuhan with esoteric overtones. There is a connection, too, to our own efforts to engineer a collective mind for the world. Here's hoping to hear from Mr. Alden.
 

Bruce Buchanan's address "Human Freedom and Cybernetic Principles" is highly recommended. We also are very pleased to have his "Assessing Human Values" on the function of values in human cybernetic systems. This latter paper was presented at the 10th International Congress on Systems and Cybernetics, held in Bucharest Romania, August 26-31, 1996, where it was well received. The "Human Freedom" address has been prepared for the Gaia Preservation Coalition meeting in Toronto, Spring (1997). And don't miss "Values, Systems and Consciousness (1997)" and "Cybernetic Perspectives on World Order (1997)".  More is posted at http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/buchanan/homepageBB.htm.

The highest values promote freedom of choice for the individual, according to Dr. Buchanan. His is by no means a simple minded laissez faire approach, however. Positive social action when coordinated by value -- e.g. "the well-being of mothers and children, nutrition and education" -- can make sense. Negative feedback has also an important role to play in maintaining an environment.

Dr. Bruce Buchanan is a retired family physician. After postgraduate studies in psychiatry and management sciences he served as a senior policy advisor in the Ontario government for over two decades, a position which gave him opportunity to consider human values from a practical as well as political standpoint.

 
Erik Chia-yi Lee's paper "Thinking Cyber-Subjectivity: Ideology and the Subject" is a fascinating (and congenial) discussion of human identity and the web. Erik Lee is a doctoral student in the graduate school of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, currently (December 1996) studying at the University of Washington, Seattle, as a visiting graduate student. An earlier version of the paper is available at the Inet96 Proceedings.
 Kirby Urner at 4d Solutions is a wide ranging thinker. Alchemy, Buckminster Fuller, general systems theory, Quaker and feminist sensibilities, nonviolence, and a strong concern for the application of intelligence in human affairs -- these are a few of the currents in the Kirby Urner Sea.

Peter Turland is an independent thinker of the sort we need more of. His thesis is worth a look. Chaos as a bridge between religion and science, and the stars as our destiny! Why not? Peter has been helping to list InterMix with the search engines and his artistic friend Julie designed our lovely InterMix logo. Many thanks to her and to Peter. If you would like to engage Julie's artistic services for your own website or publication please get in touch with her thru Peter.
 

John Bapty Oates has developed a theory of the mind, consciousness and truth.  So we know he is very smart.  Is he right?  Well, I can't say no, and I always remember that all those people with all their contraptions thinking they could fly finally came up with hang gliders.  Guess what, we can fly!  Here is the link and an introduction in John Bapty Oates own words:
 

"www.humantruth.org : In two main parts, Humantruth and The Wrong Reality,
this website brings to bear the utmost free and independent intelligence
upon every one of our big questions from all possible angles in order to
bring them to one inevitable overall conclusion.

It sets out to discover the truth about humanity and its world. It does not
attempt the huge and impossible task of uncovering and interrelating all
knowledge in detail. What it does do is to take account of all essential
knowledge and correlate it by way of  clear, unbiased and honest reason,
resulting in humantruth.

This website's chief revelation is this. We confine ourselves and our world
affairs to the sphere of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is limited,
because it is incomplete, and is therefore incapable of encompassing truth.
That is why we and our world are in a chaos of misunderstanding,
disagreement and conflict.

To be completely human we have to submit our conscious selves to our other,
higher, but largely ignored mind, the postconscious, when we shall become
supraconscious and live according to humantruth and in cooperative equality.
At present our only link with the postconscious, the source of our moral
values, is the still small voice of conscience. Truth, humantruth, is the
function of the postconscious, and our true nature is to be supraconscious."

Other Angles

Too many angles to list them all! Non-profits, new age, consumer affairs, catalogs of all kinds, nationalities and ethnicities, Sister Cities, hobbyist collectors, online volunteers, the millennium, world ecology, computer groupware... All of these and many more will be broken out into their own sections sooner or later.