On making ideas useful

This website is an experiment, an experiment in the organization of ideas.  The world is full of ideas: some exciting, some boring; some good, some evil.  No one could ever hope to know of or understand every idea.  But the intentional organization of ideas can help us find the ideas that matter, the ideas that have traction beyond the mind–and into the realm of action.

There are ideas that help us do the things we wish to do.  They rise not just from individuals, but from collections of individuals who work in institutions (formal or informal).  Society’s great institutions are factories of ideas, regularly churning out new frameworks, insights, and understanding.  But even as the world hurdles toward interconnection, ideas bleed from one institution to the next with painful slowness.

Three institutions–business, science, politics–have, over time, built ideas that work in their respective fields.  This site will explore how to generalize ideas out of institutional sils–so that they may be used by anyone hoping to make their mark in the world.

A world in flux

The world is in flux.  We face an immediate crisis in the global economic system and a looming one in the global climate system.   Advances in information technology are radically shifting culture and commerce.  Demography and geopolitics evolve quickly and with unpredictable consequences.

The rights and responsibilities of our institutions must evolve in the face of this flux.  It is time for the citizens of the world to begin a conversation about what I call here the new social contract.

This conversation will not be quick, nor will it be easy.  But over the next several years, we need a framework to understand three basic questions: What? Which? How?  What are the rights of our institutions?  Which institutions are responsible for which components of society?  How must our institutions behave?

social contract 2 (15 May 09)