Anne Truitt Zelenka

Richard Ogle’s Smart World proposes that the world of ideas thinks for itself. Its not lone geniuses out there coming up with breakthrough innovation but rather networks of people and ideas.

“Networks of people and ideas”: sounds like the web, doesn’t it? Especially in blogging, you feel the truth of what Ogle says, that ideas and innovation don’t come from individuals or even from workgroups or corporations. They arise from the complex interactions on the mesh of interactions, whether online or not.

An idea machine

I feel like a cog in a big idea machine more than a generator of ideas. I’ve said time and again that I don’t create the ideas I come up with — I just take what other people have come up with, combine and recombine it with what yet other people have come up with, and add maybe the tiniest bit of whatever’s in my spice rack to make it more flavorful.

When Luis said recently in relation to some discussion about online friendships, “bit surprised she didn’t make the connection between both blog posts” it made me think of the Smart World. I don’t need to make the connection, because Luis did. Maybe I couldn’t make the connection — what was really obvious to him was not to me.

Living in the future, the curse of knowledge

I’m revising a section on connecting to the web mind for my book manuscript right now and it’s a bit difficult to capture and express in a way that’s practical. I’ve started with the extended mind concept that Ogle starts with. I also had a subsection on the memetic perspective that I will probably cut out entirely because it’s too difficult to make it sensible and accessible.

The hard part about living in the future is trying to time travel back to where most other people are living. Things that resonate for me don’t necessarily with other people. And people like what they’ve been exposed to before — so new ways of thinking about thinking and creativity and productivity aren’t necessarily broadly appealing.

Anyway, I feel pretty strongly that the world of ideas is smart and that the web makes it smarter. I’m excited that we have this platform to accelerate our interaction. Or should I say that the world of ideas has this network of people to accelerate its evolution, because sometimes I think we are in service to ideas not the other way around.