Babel #3 | Clouds Travelers
The beauty of experimentation is the freedom of not being consistent with your previous experiments. As soon as the scientific method is not concerned and we define as experimenting a simple investigation of new paths, that make us discover something more on which we can reflect later on.
What if now I would like to experience the beauty of writing? What if now form and finesse are everything for me? I can decide to call my best neurons to allocate some serious effort into the process of generating and selecting the best words to express a concept. Maybe it is not so precise to talk about neurons, should I use another word?
Communities and organizations are groups of people sailing in a storm of ideas. And if we picture in our head our community as a cloud, there will be individuals closer to the center and individuals closer to the boundaries. All the individuals have relationships with each other, just like the molecules of water during the cloudy days. The closer the pair of water molecules the stronger the relationship between them, and even when they are on completely opposite sides of the cloud, they are still part of the same. On the other hand, the more they are close to the boundaries, the more likely they will be part of more clouds at the same time. The sense of belonging is what brings people together inside a community, where the dynamic position more or less closer to the center contributes to bring in new ideas, stir them and innovate. The world is full of clouds that have at their boundaries other clouds, in all different sizes, shapes and colors. Most of them are unaware of each other existence. Being at the center of the clouds can generate different sensations on the individuals, they might have struggled so much to reach that point that they decide never to leave that position or, they might have been in the center for so long, that the boredom will oblige them to move towards the peripheries. There are individuals that are clouds travelers, they are not so many, but they are growing in number. Every time they go to another cloud they interact with the locals and they exchange information. Every time a local meets a cloud traveler he rarely stays in the same position. He will move closer to the boundaries or closer to the center. If you want to innovate just start to travel from cloud to cloud and if there is a cloud that you feel a particularly sense of belonging to, keep an eye on the individuals at the boundaries, they are to most exposed to other clouds and they bring in the new information. It does not always mean they know how to process them though.
This is one of the way of generating new habits, new beliefs. A behaviour can be predicted from our exposure to other example behaviours of the people we are in contact with. And what if this keeps changing?
As reality is unfortunately or fortunately rather complex, there are several parameters that help to identify cloud travelers. First we have the frequency of their travels, second the distance they perform per unit of time, which multiplied by the time of travel gives the total distance per travel. Third the information quantity/quality ratio exchanged during their travels. If you get to travel only once in a rare time, you better set it right and focus on the information quantity/quality ratio. You should be able to return to your cloud to bring back the information you stored in your database and get some help to process them. They will automatically change in shape and power as you involve other who did not travel with you, but it could be the only choice. Then there are the ones who never go back to their clouds and the ones who will never leave the new home. And then there are the ones who create clouds, or at least are convinced of creating new ones, without realizing that they are simply dissipating them.
4 next.