A Calling: Let Us Leverage the Law of Collaboration

On Monday May 5th, 2008 there was an article in the Edmonton Journal about two NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) graduates who had come up with a way to help the homeless connect to the world. Assuming this goes forward clients, of the Bissell Centre in Edmonton, will be given a contact phone number and an extension number. Whenever a client deals with a doctor, a potential employer, family or someone who might provide them with permanent housing, they give that contact and extension number. Dialling those numbers would put a caller into the client’s individual voice mail box. This simple and cheap solution will bring a dramatic increase to their quality of life.

The article also noted that the system runs on freely available software, developed through open sourcing. Development on such programs is performed by computer enthusiasts throughout the world. The NAIT grads simply linked the appropriate programs with some of their own code and a new collaborative tool was born.

Contemplating such a beautiful idea being so easily and cheaply produced leads to wondrous possibilities. It could easily be argued that mass collaboration in the modern world is evidence of raised consciousness. With the focus on the negatives in the world sometimes one is required to make a conscious effort to dig harder to expose the light. And sometimes strenuous digging reveals a profoundly beautiful Intelligence.

The software this solution was built on has its roots in an event that reaches back to 1991 (a time period approaching ancient history given the pace of technological evolution). Before the World Wide Web had even been invented, a young programmer from Helsinki named Linus Torvalds created a simple version of the Unix operating system. He it called it Linux and shared it with other programmers via an online bulletin board. By revealing his code to the world Torvalds was able to eventually assemble a world-class computer operating system over the Internet. This action was the first of many steps that indirectly empowered these two NAIT grads to create this wonderful new phone system for the homeless.

In 1999 a Canadian mining company, Goldcorp Inc. had pretty much tapped out its reserves and was close to bankruptcy. The CEO took some time out for personal development, went to an MIT conference for presidents and heard about the story of Linux. Upon returning to Canada he concluded that maybe the key to finding more gold would be to open up the exploration process in the same way. Taking all the data they had, going back to 1948, they put it into a file, and shared it with the world as a part of the “Goldcorp Challenge”. With $575,000 in prize money and 55,000 acres of property to analyze the race was on. For the first time ever a company from an extremely secretive industry had bared all.

However, the gambit paid off. Within weeks submissions flooded in from around the world. As expected, geologists got involved. What was not expected was that of the 110 targets identified, 50% had not been previously identified by the company. And over 80% of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. Today Goldcorp is reaping the fruits of its open source approach to exploration, and what was once a failing $100 million company is now a $9 billion juggernaut.

As we move into this 21st century it’s clear to see that mass collaboration is here to stay. Wikipedia, Linux, Facebook, Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and the Human Genome Project are all examples of mass collaboration. In a perfect storm a global platform has appeared, a new generation that grew up collaborating has grown up and a global economy that enables new forms of economic cooperation is driving deep changes in the world. From the first tangible evidence of social cooperation in the cave paintings and primitive tools left behind some sixty to seventy thousand years ago to this new interactive Internet, or Web 2.0, one common theme could be considered a Law: Groups with cooperative habits are more successful than those in isolation. I shall call this the Law of Collaboration.

These examples of mass collaboration all have a common theme yet might be missed in this world of ‘stories’. One might even argue that these stories occurred as a result of forces driving upon them. But if one can accept the profound Intelligence acting in all things it is hardly a leap to consider these series of apparently disconnected events as anything but connected.

And even the business world is noticing. For the first time since commerce started taking serious hold in civilisation the rule of business collaboration is changing. In the coming years those businesses that find ways to tap into multitudes of external knowledge, resources and talent will gain competitive advantage and agility. Those companies that stick to old customs of control, secrecy and fail to learn the rules of this new game will be left behind. In short, those organizations that utilize the Law of Collaboration with integrity will prosper.

With ideas such as working together in the open and strangers cooperating towards common goals, it is easy to imagine that there is a beautiful, virtuous Intelligence at work. As we begin to contemplate the growth of the spiritual awareness a series of new possibilities begin to dawn. The distance from the philosophy of our community to the communities of mass collaboration is not that far. Openness, sharing, cooperation, goals somehow being met without controls, individual choice to support the greater good, amongst other ideas of mass collaboration resonate with this teaching.

The Calling
This is a call to those intrigued or entranced by the potential of the Law of Collaboration. It is time to break the ground on building a new technological vision for spiritual living and awareness. Some of the possibilities that immediately come to mind include; the power of a Wiki being used as a Science of Mind encyclopaedia, published articles from bright minds, discussion forums loosely moderated by students, Practitioners and Ministers, video archives of Services, the blogosphere, podcasts of highlighted material, virtual classes taking our educational program to a global audience through video and audio streaming, all pulled together through a growing online community inspired by something wonderful happening here and now. I know a volunteer driven effort to translate 'The Science of Mind' into many languages through SpiritPedia would crack open this philosophy to a much wider world audience.

Now that's a bigger idea, is it not?

If one can be inspired by the series of events that led to the creation of the telephone system for the homeless through collaboration, for collaboration, just imagine what can be done by a spiritual community consciously applying itself to embrace mass collaboration!

Please comment below if you are interested in exploring this vision with me. If there was ever there was a moment to transcend how we share and build community around this beautiful philosophy this must surely be it.