Ants have no (or little) problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly every other species. Humans are bogged down by anxieties over food and shelter. With minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead, not trailing fractions behind ants?

"Inventions themselves are not revolutions; neither are they the cause of revolutions. Their powers for change lie in the hands of those who have the imagination and insight to see that the new invention has offered them new liberties of action, that old constraints have been removed, that their political will, or their sheer greed, are no longer frustrated, and that they can act in new ways. New social behaviour patterns and new social institutions are created which in turn become the commonplace experience of future generations."

Colin Cherry, "The Telephone System: Creator of Mobility and Social Change", in Ithiel de Sola Pool, The Social Impact of the Telephone (Cambridge MA, 1977): 112-26.

Q: What does Bala Pillai do?

A: Some make the world happen, more watch the world happen, most wonder what happened. He makes the world happen. He synthesises, articulates and drives foresight. He's an inventor, producer, entrepreneur, agent provocateur, philosopher, networker and activist. He evolves and invents Knowledge Economy Brands -- self-sustaining halls without walls. These are also known as telebusiness ecosystems or mind ecosystems or mind colonies or autopoietic social networks. Think of business = a social process of trust-building, risk-taking, problem solving and complementing. Akin to a cross-media evolution of the non-violent warrior and violent pacifist Gandhi (including some of Gandhi's money man, then Birla), Bala is a feeling-of-connectedness, perceptiveness, self-reliance, self-esteem, Open Source (strategy, philosophy, standards connections, processes, content and software) and communityness activist. [Make a living with acumen, whatever form it takes]. He advises organisations on change leadership, virtual organisations and those that need fast ins into Asia through co-cognitive, co-responsive, "same page" minds as the conduit.

Since Asia minus Japan has not produced a single quantum invention since the times of Admiral Zheng He, in 1400 AD, though it was responsible for the majority of them before that, he is determined to reverse this unethical poverty-causing, anti-inventiveness mental climate -- a mental climate that does not allow quantum invention ideas and their not-so-quantum invention cousin ideas to germinate. [He sees anti-inventiveness as parallel to killing seedlings before they sprout, squishing buds before they flower and aborting every baby before it develops.] He accelerates ethics at meta-levels in Asia by accelerating mental bridges between inventiveness-friendly Silicon Valley/Europe and Asia.

Though born in a semi-rural village, population 1500, in Malaysia, because of his nomadic inclination, he's been online since 1982. Since 1995, he's been inventing mind colonies, especially for shared-ethos groups of Asian and Asia-friendly minds. He has done this off online-orchestrated offline communities, mailing lists, forums, print/TV and ground locations. Pioneering and leading mindcosms in their space, like Malaysia.Net, Tamil.Net, Asian Internet Marketing Community are amongst those led by Bala. At earlier formative stages in their lifecycle are Teleindia.Com, Singapore.Net, Indonesia.Net, Pinoydom.Com and Apec.Net

Q: What are mind colonies?

A: Equivalents of ant colonies for dispersed connectedness seeking humans. Ryze is a social network. Ant colonies are social networks plus plus. Reflect on this question: what are the topmost functionality differences between Ryze and ant colonies? Self-sustenance for inhabitants is one. Mind colonies bridge the functionality gap between social networks and ant colonies. They address the characteristics that are missing.

Imagine you are looking at Planet Earth from the Moon. Imagine nerves running all over spherical Earth. Notice human minds like dots pulsating and sending signals between them. Some nerve connections are bold , some are dotted. Some minds are emitting a lot, some nothing, some in-between. Some nerves have lots of noise/resistance/signal loss, some are flowing smoothly and rapidly like cholesterol-free arteries, some in-between.

Can you dissect "mind colonies" for me?

A: Mind colonies are trust and spirit-rich, self-sustaining, blended-media networked mind exchanges for shared-ethos groups. Energetic full-time hosts catalyse minds in a mind grid to learn, work, play and complement each other. The catalysing currency is a colony equivalent of Diners Card (alternative currency).

What are the most important imperatives in making mind colonies work?

A: (a) Shared-ethos (Common Purpose is *not* enough). Spirit. Intuition. Energy. Common Sense. Perceptiveness. Passionate Catalysts. Risk-taking. Legitimacy/transparency. Trust. Speech Acts. Customer Intimacy. Inner-strength (courage). Chutzpah. A Complementing Mindset. Commitment. Strategic Change Management Acumen. Process Savvy. Innovation Climate. Open-Mindedness.

(b) Grasping that 90% of the value of a person today is the sum of:-

i) how she uses her mind *plus*

ii) how great she is at building actionable relationships

Notice none of these appear in the balance sheets of companies -- does that give you a clue for why the telco+hardware+software+accountants driven dot com bomb happened and can recur unless the underlying metrics are perceived and fixed? And therefore greater opportunities for the earlier foresightful birds who can see where the value in an Acumen/Knowledge/Networked Minds era springs from? The opportunities from organising bankable social capital valuation metrics? You may ask what is the root cause of this gross misvaluation. It is the mislanguage thus the miscognition of resourcing. The language of resourcing, of finance, is accounting. Accounting values ends and tangibles rather than processes, climates and values. Accounting values the end, the golden egg more than the process, the golden goose. It values the product of a mind more than that mind. That which is under-signified is under-recognised. That which is under-recognised is under-measured. That which is under-measured is under-valued. That which is under-valued is under-resourced. Thus the misallocation of resources. Retrofitting of the mislanguage, accounting, is not enough. A fundamental shift in line with Nature's common sense is required

What's blended-media?

A: First take the mind as the pivot. Be mind-centric and mindcosm-centric (as contrasted with being tools, medium or protocol-centric). For example, be story-telling-centric. Realise that *complementing* is the game that all folks are doing with the plethora of F2F (face-to-face), email, email groups, instant messaging, web, POTS phones, VOIP, mobile voice, SMS/MMS, WiFi, broadband, television, video-conferencing, radio, P2P, streaming, books, photos, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, call centres, IVR, interactive television and movies. Get better and better at coming up with the right cocktail mix of these for given shared-ethos groups, for categories of purposes. Always bearing foremost in mind that you are dealing with human minds that want simplicity and fun in complementing. That they put up with dissected complexity only as much as they are not aware of better alternatives in an overly-cluttered world.

Is it hard to sell mind colonies to prospective members?

A: No. Because they create jobs and income opportunities. They bring an A-Z of small and medium service and product providors, who are first of all human minds (eg Ryzers) together. For example, they bring those who want jobs and income opportunities in the Knowledge/Acumen/Networked Era with those who can train or apprentice them into them in a congenial way. They develop societies. They are easy to sell because they are self-sustaining.

How do mind colonies make money?

A: (a) Similar to how credit card companies do. just more, because a deeper set of services are provided and underutilised capacity is unleashed. Prospective members go through psychometrics and credit evaluation, and based on that amounts averaging US$2000 is put into their account with the cooperative. This "free" money reduces the customer acquisition cost and the costs of incentiving folks to self-change. They *must* use the money to buy products or services from the network. And they repay this by providing products or services to the network. When someone buys a product or service from a fellow mind for $100, they are charged $110 in their account with the cooperative, and the seller gets $90. The $20 goes towards all the trust, matching, clearing, camaraderie building, consensus climate, standards leadership, role models provision and digital-era societal/cultural services the cooperative conceives, organises and provides mostly through third party service providors or by member firms.

(b) after introductory periods, membership fees and selected user-pay services to members.

(c) fees from larger companies for providing targetted audiences to them - these are companies that satisfy a strict criteria pre-approved by the membership and applied by a task force for this purpose (an evolution of how the Olympics business model works. The nexus for the Olympics is the attentiondom from love of sports; the nexus for mind colonies is the attentiondom from the love of culture/ethos/societal longevity)

What's the biggest challenge then?

A: (a) Buying. You would think common sense is common right? Wrong! You would think that if ants have no problems with food and shelter, Mankind with minds should have less problems with food and shelter right? Wrong! Getting the attention of service providors to grasp this, in a "30 seconds of CNN attention mesmerised" world and to sequence and synchronize them together is the biggest challenge. So if you can complement me in speeding up our buying of these services, by referring service vendors who have attention spans and who are interested in ongoing revenue streams for ongoingly providing ever-improving services in their space, rather than a quick immediate sale tomorrow , we can launch full-fledged mind colonies (given the acumen and wisdom gathered since 1995 and before and the viral marketing extendible beach-heads of minds in our existing colonies) in no time.

(b) Communicating common sense. For example, (i) that one man's income is another's expense; that we can increase income in a network by incentiving expense; that we can fund expense incentiving by liquidityising and unleashing underutilised and undervalued social capital. That, that which is undervalued is under-resourced and that which is under-resourced is where woes pus. (ii) that as bad as hope (aka optimism) is, hopelessness (aka pessimism) is no better. Pessimism is a shameful waste of mindtime. Mindtime that is better spent on precise diagnosis given ambiguity, and prioritised/sequenced greater good/lesser evil of available solutions. We should tax the cancer that pessimism is!

Why is Common Sense so Uncommon?

The main and root cause is ditheism - the unnatural belief in two opposite forces. Humans have drifted too far from Nature and Naturalism. Ditheism has bred viewing the world with binary either-or (opposites) lenses. Consider the following examples:

Is not light more complementary to darkness than opposite? What use is a lightbulb, if not for darkness?

Are not males more complementary to females than opposite?

Are not plugs more complementary to sockets than opposite?

Is not pretty complementary with ugly? If every flowering plant were a rose plant, would you like roses as much? Doesn't the diverse ecovariety of plants play a role in roses being special?

Is it possible that good -- opportunities are complementary to bad -- problems? Is it not true that problems = opportunities and no problems = no opportunities? That as bad as problems are, you would not have a job if not for the problems you've been hired to solve? </P

Is not war more complementary to peace than opposite? Is it not true that it is those who have first-hand weary experience of the pains of war who provide the greatest energy for peace efforts? Is it not true, that prolonged peace-time leads to apathy, denial, complacence (excuses become reasons) and lack of imagination? Which in turn leads to ignoring the plight of sections of the population? Which in turn leads to providing fertile soil for opponents to gather strength? And for the strength of opponents to be under-estimated? Which in turn leads to Martin Luther King's "riots are the language of the unheard". And which John F Kennedy remarks with "those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable"? And war is the last straw of spasming brewing tension? The mere cascading eruption of a volcano that has long been gestating? Gestating because as Catherine Schroeder says "some people change their ways when they see the light, most when they feel the heat". That it takes a bunsen burner on our butt to change us?

Take any pair that are said to be opposites and see it as a process, and you will sense a complementary circle of life. Similar to waves, mountain ranges and the spinning orbiting Earth.

Default viewing things as opposites has lots of ripple effects. Ignoring corollaries (aka Law of Natural Unintended Consequences) is one.  For example when someone says "Oh it is expensive". We ought to be asking "expensive compared to what?" and "can I afford to have the problem continue? -- can we  afford *not* to spend in solving the problem? What are the costs of *not* buying?". And the best answer would come from balancing the obvious with the corollary.

Another ripple effect is defensiveness and hypocrisy (lying) because of  focus on the superlatives rather than the infinitives. Emphasis on the "what should be" rather than "what is" that causes indecision thus mind waste. For example, for sound reason, most Eastern languages are designed such that we ask "how age are you?" not "how old are you?". Age = infinitive. Old = superlative. With "how age are you?" the question is asking for state information. It does not allow for emotive loadings upon "young" and "old" to curdle as easily. When we ask "how old are you?" we immediately put lots of people on the defensive. We also encourage folks to lie (by rationalisation) if the answer is not an "acceptable" answer. Isn't language meant to bridge human beings not cause trillions of dollars worth of misunderstandings?

Viewing the world as default opposites obscures one's ability to abstract. Combined with defensiveness which feeds fear, this oppositism has many to exaggerate the exception and downplay the rule. And to not perceive that which one is less comfortable with - denial.  This is the gravest effect of  ditheism. It dulls one's perception of reality. It weakens one's ability to act on ambiguity. When a population cannot distill observations, when they behave akin to those who insisted that the Earth is flat because it is uncomfortable to admit it is spherical, they cannot become smarter. They are puppets of groupthink which entrenches pervasive inferiority complex. They become prey to incumbents with power. 99% of us are synthesising-handicapped -- unable to readily sense child, parent and sibling relationships between notions. Like in the Dark Ages of Europe. And no amount of KM tools are going to change this.

What's the solution? Try viewing the world naturally for 7 days -- see corollaries. Sense the isomorphism in Nature. Feel the curves beyond the squares. Feel the fluidity. Make the invisible, visible. Sense the dialectic. See that side of the moon that your eyes can't see. Ask why weeds and pests are needed -- might they be Nature's benchmarks of adaptiveness? Feel the world, as default full of complementaries, apparent or not. For example when someone asks "how's your day?", consider answering "roses, thorns and in-betweens". This probably is more accurate than "good" or "bad" :-). If it helps your perception of ambiguity, great. If not revert back to status ante.

Do you have a vision for mind colonies? And where they will head?

A: Yes. Lots and lots of detail that needs to be compiled better. The essay "Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems" below essences it.

How can I complement?

A: Complement by making this message lots easier and faster to grasp. Complement by spreading the word. Complement by meeting up with like minds. Complement by becoming a Mind Ecosystems activist. Complement by mind ecosystems-enabling your services for mind grids -- become aware of plugising/socketising them.

If you want to complement more, consider this: Any enterprise is the sum of strategists and tacticians comprising leadership minds, resourcing (human or financial) minds, magneting minds, closing minds, making minds, delivering minds, collecting minds and consuming minds. The acronym LRMC MDCC.Recall it by imprinting this mnemonic image into your mind -- Little Red Monkeys Climbing Mountains and Dancing on Collapsing Carpets. Imagine the the mountains and valleys being an unsettled carpet that is collapsing.

The enterprise has these minds in-house or it outsources them. The minds organise everything else. Minds can and do fall in more than one category. So decide which mind you are -- what is closest to your calling, and let me/my team know.Complement by making your actionable relationships and chain-of-trust extension capability available to us. Complement by providing your service to our members. Complement by grasping, communicating, organising and structuring. Get usual returns and by learning, relationship building and from the cooperative (shares/income). Or get returns by being part of a consortium that provides turnkey mind colony establishment and operation services to mind colony promoters. Just as turnkey township contractors provide services to township promoters. Or one of the many sub-responsibilities there are in any self-sustaining organisation, be it Genghiz Khan's army, Gandhi's movement or The East India Company. Only committeds at this stage, please.

Ecosystems Thinking For Mind Ecosystems

By Bala Pillai
Sydney, Australia

"Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be."

-Kahlil Gibran, "A Handful of Sand on the Shore"

Imagine a world where enough of us can telepathically find and match with our complements instantly. Any moment we have a want or a have.

Call that point downstream, in the flowing river of our and our childrens' lives, "N".

What stands in the way of super-conductivity between minds for frictionless synchronization? What are the problems (for which there are rewards to those who solve them), that we have to address to reach N-5? Insentience? Awareness of Memetics? Readiness to reveal our complementaries? Knowing what it is that we really want and have? Hierarchy of values dissonance? Semantic dissonance? Cognition dissonance? Valuation (of our respective traits and talents) dissonance? Distrust? Commitment (Unconditional love) dissonance? Ethos dissonance? Interfacing our minds with the tools, protocols and processes that find, search and bridge us with our complements?

How do we swim with the current more, in finding the metrics for the answers, as we head towards N-5?

If we have put Man on the Moon, can't we make it to N-5?

Can we try Ecosystems Thinking? Can we try "reverse engineering" Nature for clues?

Each of us can see only up to a certain big picture cause-effect level. To see cause-effect beyond that big picture level, one has to think and reflect deeply or be attentive and be able to ask questions of one who does. As well, one has to interact with unlike minds, for the very existence of greater pictures to be sparked.

Ecosystems thinking has us to look at some of the biggest pictures possible. The small picture-big picture continuum is best imagined by its representation, nested concentric spheres.

Concentric spheres in turn are best recalled by their two-dimensional equivalents, nested concentric circles -- yes, those reverberating circles you see when you throw a stone into a pond. You may see 20 concentric circles.

Average man only sees with his eyes and he tends to believe that his eyes cannot belie him. He is wrong. What you see is *not* the truth, though it may be. For example, if you understood a tree by what you see, you will understand wrongly, because you cannot see the photosynthesis process. Neither can you see the crown roots. The most important parts of the tree, are hidden to the naked eye.

Perhaps the single biggest reason for average man's misperception is him thinking that he is aware of his environment. To paraphrase mind and media genius, Marshall McLuhan, a fish is not aware of water. A man who loses his legs is more aware of steps than one with legs. We are *not* aware of our environment. We only become aware of our *last* environment, when either the environment or we change. And by environment we mean the whole range of our environments including relationships, family, societal, cultural, social, physical - the works.

If you trust your eyes fully, you are seeing the smallest concentric sphere. It will not occur to you that much of what happens in this concentric sphere, is caused by a sphere one size larger. And much of what happens in the one size larger sphere was caused by a sphere yet another size larger. This goes on and on.

Why is ecosystems thinking crucial today?

Let us take the Internet. It is really an emerging ecosystem of online-orchestrated offline humans.

It is working best where minds share a similar ethos -- where minds have comfortable references to build trust and relationships off on the path towards becoming aware of and acting on complementaries.

When the ecosystem is more complete, it will thrive lots more than it is thriving today. Some questions you may ask are:-

(a) Why is the ecosystem of minds on the Internet not working perfectly?

(b) What components are missing?

(c) What processes are missing?

(d) What components or processes are already there, but are not understood well or not accorded the priority they deserve?

The answers to these are best found in paralleling Nature's ecosystem to that of what the ecosystem of minds should have viz (a) to (d) when it is much closer to the completeness of Nature's ecosystem, than it is now.

For example, let us for argument sake, say that there are (i) 300 components and (ii) 200 processes in Nature's ecosystem. We know that one of the topmost processes in Nature is photosynthesis. Other topmost ones are symbiosis, osmosis and catalysis.

Question: What are the equivalents of these processes in the minds ecosystem? What are the hurdles to them forming? What returns are there if these hurdles are removed? Remember, the harder the problem, the greater the reward to they who solve it. Problems = opportunities. No problems = no opportunities. The easier the problem, the more the competition. What ingredients are needed to remove these hurdles and to forge these processes?

Why is photosynthesis important? It is at the bottom of the food chain. It is the process by which trees and plants obtain resources to start the whole food chain.

Now ask, what is the equivalent of photosynthesis in the ecosystem of minds on the Internet? What is the most significant source of resources for significant new Internet ventures? In the West, it is passionbits including Open Source and venture capital. How about your ethos' space?

What are the parallels to the other 300 components and 198 processes in Nature's ecosystem, in your mind ecosystem?

Would trust between participants be one? Would more intensive networking between minds be another? Would networking between complementary folks, as in Nature, make it more worthwhile? How can complementariness be revealed easier? Would a database of profiles that is shared by participants be a way?

Would a rating on each of the 7Rs & 3Ss be one?

[7Rs = risk-taking,resourcefulness, responsibility, responsiveness, reliability, rapport-building,resolve; 3Ss= sentience,synchrony,stamina]

How do we rate the 7Rs & 3Ss? Can we experiment with some of the models currently used in psychological testing, while we find better ways?

Is interaction a precursor to trust building? How do we increase interaction? What are the key ingredients of interaction, that make it a precursor to trust building? Would the sense of "presence" when we see each other face-to-face, be one? How do we recreate this in the minds ecosystem? Can we go some way through the sense of presence in Instant Messaging and Webcams?

Of these which is of a higher priority than another? Why?

The prioritised and sequenced solving of all these needs are income opportunities for minds in your ethos space.

The unearthing of other whitespace, unfilled space in your mind ecosystem, will show up all the other opportunities.

And that comes from ecosystems thinking. That is why ecosystems thinking is important.

'Ants have no (or little) problems with food and shelter. Ditto with birds and nearly every other species. With minds shouldn't humans be thousands of times ahead, not trailing fractions behind ants?'

And ants do not have government, NGOs, universities, religion, media or bank accounts to pass the buck to.

(This message is released for use, redistribution, or modification under the OpenContent License . In plain English, the license relieves the author of any liability or implication of warranty, grants others permission to use the Content in whole or in part, and ensures that the original author will be properly credited when the Content is used. It also grants others permission to modify and redistribute the Content if they clearly mark what changes have been made, when they were made, and who made them. Finally, the license ensures that if someone else bases a work on OpenContent, the resultant work will be made available as OpenContent as well. Please send comments, suggestions or edits to the author, Bala Pillai at bala@apic.net Thanks)

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