W6 2024

It was Week 6 of 2024 here Last Week at Near Future Laboratory Global HQ and this week is all about Collaboration, Coordination, and Amplification.

I’m curious about the cohesion that is declared to be ‘community’.
To that end, I do what I do.
Actually, the real ‘end’ is to ignite a renaissance of creativity, and the ‘community’ is a bulwark in defense of the creative consciousness.
In Defense of the Creative Consciousness.
To create the network that feels itself moving towards a sense of purpose beyond the self-interests, you operate like all greatness operates: collaboratively, coordinated, and amplifying each other.
How do you ground something like that?
As Will says, ‘Cool. What do I do on Monday?’
Everyday in Week 6 has been ‘Monday’.
I created a very simple sort of Collaboration, Coordination, and Amplification 2U Rack: an old-fashioned, self-propellling, semi-autonomous Amplifier I call the Token Ring Web Ring.
It takes in simple communications in a structured format:

import { z } from 'zod';

const email = z.string().email();
const url = z.string().url();
const date = z.string().refine((val) => !isNaN(Date.parse(val)), {
  message: "Invalid date format, should be 'YYYY-MM-DD'.",
});

const imageSchema = z.object({
  imageUrl: z.string(),
  altText: z.string(),
});

const contentSchema = z.object({
  linkURL: z.string(),
  title: z.string(),
  mainText: z.string(),
  subText: z.string(),
  link: url,
  image: imageSchema,
});

const contentItemSchema = z.object({
  client: z.string(),
  client_email: email,
  startDate: date,
  expiryDate: date,
  content: contentSchema,
});
export const contentsSchema = z.array(contentItemSchema);

Then you get something like this 👇🏽

Or this 👇🏽

These will appear in my blog posts, and as soon as I can figure out the 1980s sensibilities of ‘modern email’ — in the newsletters.
This is a grounded way to play around with Collaboration. By that I mean actually collaborating and not theorizing about a world with more collaboration. It’s also grounded in the present because the more we can cooperatively promote the beautiful work we all are doing, the more we’ll feel engaged in something that is bigger than ourselves. And the world is bigger than you.
Grounded. Less yammering, less grousing, less doom-and-gloom about present state.
This is one way to be of service to each other: more Coordination, Collaboration, Amplification.
Even as we all (futures/foresight-oriented studios and practices and units within larger organizations) do the same kinds of things, we needn’t operate like we’re playing a zero-sum game.
Oftentimes it feels that way. Leastways, to me. We struggle to play together. We operate according to the models of business we sometimes bemoan, even as we behave in the ways we bemoan.
Let’s work toegether.
The more futures work happens, the more there is to celebrate, and amplify. I think that’s a good thing. The larger project is more important than your one little project, that larger project being to amplify the value of a futures-oriented mindset. To ignite a renaissance of imagining more habitable near future worlds.
Web rings, networked collaboration that actually is collaboration. Taking the time to see the value in others work, and amplifying it (click.the.like.button — that’s what it’s there for!)
If I sound frustrated, I’m less frustrated than sometimes bewildered that I can’t even get my own collaborators to do these things. It’s a mystery.
Let’s get over ourselves and our disdain for the algorithm, particularly when we can deploy it to the advantage of helping us do the work we need to do in order to grow ‘the practices’ that oriented consciousness towards imagining more vigorously into better futures.
Time to imagine harder — and by that I mean, start actually building the worlds we want to inhabit, on the ground.
Want to participate in the Token Ring Web Ring?

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