I've maintained for a few years that the +N Social Commons Sector (SCS) form (my prefered term fwiw) has been emerging for at least 30 years, but is largely invisible to larger society because it currently inhabits the nooks and crannies of networks. Open source software was an early purely digital emergence of the sector, one that enabled the rapid rise of the Internet itself. Its capture & enclosure by +M happened later, but lead to a reactive response with the creation of "pirate" sites containing copywrited software, movies, music, books, and other shareable digital media enclosed by +M. A physical expression of the +N form emerged as "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces" which embodies a physical instanciation of the knowledge sharing and capabilities sharing ethos of the open source movement. In fact, if you look at the organizational structure of a larger one like the Dallas Makerspace, you see a fully expressed TIMN quadriform in minature; a node in the greater network of such commons. During the Covid Pandemic, I noted that such spaces shift emphasis and started producing locally needed medical supplies like PPE and medical devices for free, thus demonstrating the rapid responsiveness and care attributes of the +N Social Commons. These are just a few examples. Others exist such as local cooperatives and similar attempts to create commons forms which share knowledge to promote the welfare of members. The current gap preventing the +N Social Commons Sector from fully emerging is that they are segmented efforts. They are sharing & connected, but only to organizations like themselves: makerspaces to makerspaces, coops to coops, community gardens to community gardens, etc. We need some state change which drives interconnection between unlike nodes. We need a +N catalyst to bring about an emergence
Hey, Tim of TIMN — You term for +N as Social Commons Sector (SCS) is fine with me. I’ve wondered about viewing +N as a “social sector” per old idea by Peter Drucker. I’ve also viewed it as a “commons sector.” Putting the two together like you do sounds catchy.
At same time, if I’m right about TIMN, then we’re talking about a realm, more than a sector. A realm potentially as large as the existing three. Which means seeing T+I+M+N as civil society + government + market economy + social commons. Where whole bunches of actors and activities move out of earlier three and find better home in new one. Yeah, looks like good option to pursue and use.
I took a new look at Dallas Makers. Yes, its actors and activities do look pro +N. But to me, more in a facilitative than constitutive way. Doing things with the proper dispositions and effects, contributing to the energies +M requires. But not, in my view, to +M’s substance in terms of what exactly will constitute +M, what exactly it will consist of. I’ve offered my deduction: care-centric health, education, welfare, and environment stuff. I like to know of other possible clusters that I’m not spotting.
Dallas Makers activities, as well as other activities you mention, go in all sorts of helpful inspired directions. However, too many for me to see a coherent sector emerging amid them. But maybe I see a system-change dynamic at work that I’ve not attended to before.
The people are clearly immersed in the new info tech, and in finding positive ways to apply it. My tentative sense is that this recurs with the rise of each of the info-tech revolutions — first oral, then writing and printing, then the electrical rev, now the digital rev — that have energized TIMN’s take on evolution. These actors and their activities do not themselves amount to core constituents of a next-new realm, but they may be vital as facilitators of its emergence. Something like that. In which case, I or whoever should keep an eye out for counterparts to Dallas Makers who attended the rise of the T and +I and then +M. Does this mae sense? Track okay as an answer to your comment?
BTW, other theorists and activists I’ve exchanged views with over the years point to Sensorica.co as their idea of +N’s emergence. I disagree. Maybe it’s an excellent effort to generate what they seek: a fourth sector of the economy. But I don’t see it amounting to what I think TIMN implies: a fourth realm / sector of society as a whole.
I agree with most of what you say. The +N Social Commons Sector does not exist now. I should have listed the others, like Makerspaces, as what we in the strategic foresight world call “weak signals of change”. The ones I mentioned embrace more of the +N values first, to the extent it helps them exist withing the increasing constraints of our late stage T+I+M Triform. The example I gave about the Dallas Makerspace & others during Covid was another weak signal showing how fast those hybrid forms can transition into a purely +N Social Commons mode. My current thinking is that attempts to push us into a T+I Biform may backfire by encouraging +N organization to shore up the social care areas you’ve identified as it’s primary purpose. I've seen clear signals of this in multiple foresight studies I've worked on since 2018. I think a +N Social Commons could emerge and help shore up a reformed +M markets sector. As I said, we need a catalyst to trigger the full emergence of a +N social commons sector from the +N elements which have been emerging here and there over the past several decades.
All good. I hope to say more in next post about expectation that "attempts to push us into a T+I Biform may backfire by encouraging +N organization to shore up the social care areas." Agree that this could "help shore up a reformed +M markets sector." It'd unburden and help shore up civil society and government too. Onward.
In my mind, the nation state is a creature of the triform model. I’m not sure that it can be expanded to include quadriform. It seems that network effects would by definition cross national boundaries. And it also seems clear that at this point in time, it’s becoming more and more difficult for nation states to exert control. If you can’t control flows of capital, people, and information, what do you control?
Also, it seems that the problems that humanity now face are global in nature. For example, even if every citizen of the United States and Europe were to reduce their carbon footprint to zero, it wouldn’t have significant impact on global warming as long as China, India, Africa, etc., keep burning fossil fuels.
I do not doubt your basic thesis. Quadriform indeed seems like the next step of social development. But for me, the question is how will it exert itself? Personally, I fear that the world is on the cusp of another major cataclysmic reorganization. Something along the lines of what happened a century or so ago.
Excellent questions, affording me an opportunity to broach observations I’ve been waiting to field:
TIMN implies that future societies will develop a fourth realm, +N. It further implies, I’d now add, that this next-new realm will be more global in reach than the preceding three realms. The earliest form and realm to emerge, the T/tribes realm (and its modern expression, the realm we know as civil society) was initially very limited in geographic reach. Early tribes mostly encompassed plains, valleys, hills, and other local geography. Hierarchical institutions, +I in the form of states and armies, could reach farther and claim sovereignty over much greater territories. As for the +M/market form and realm, its rise came partly from the spread of local market towns and connections among them. But a far greater impulse for +M came from the rise of international, interregional and then globe-circling trade and commerce.
Up to this point, my writings have mostly only mentioned that each TIMN form’s rise, in turn, depends (1) the parallel appearance of an enabling information technology revolution (oral, mechanical, electric, digital) at a time when (2) societies are facing mounting challenges, mainly as a result of successful growth, that they can no longer address and resolve using the older TIMN forms. For example, the T/tribal form was not very good at warfare. But as peoples began challenging each other, the ones who developed early +I states and armies, plus a capacity to dispatch written orders, gained advantages.
Now I have a new point to add to all this. Maybe it’s a third precondition for the rise of a new form. Or maybe it’s another of TIMN’s dozen or more recurrent system dynamics. Right now I’m not sure which. But the point is this, and it speaks to your comment: The rise of each form, in turn, involves and may require pushes and pulls of ever greater geographic scope. If so, the emergence of a +N realm will depend on pushes and pulls from local to global scale, more than any preceding form has — it’ll involve “cosmo-localism,” a P2P-network concept from Jose Ramos and Michel Bauwens. So, yes, as you note, +N should be for addressing problems/challenges that are more global in nature than was the case with the rise of the earlier forms.
Education, health, welfare, and the environment — the challenges I’ve deduced for +N — fit this observation. Perhaps a care-focused +N realm will have to emerge in transnational terms before it takes hold within nations.
To a degree, that’s already underway, for there are transnational actors and activities all around the world (like Kahn Academy, Chef Andres World Kitchen) who look like potential candidates — they’re just not mutually connected yet.
The future of nation-states (not to mention empire-states and civilization-states) still looks pretty durable. Nonetheless, I’m open to alternatives. The one getting the most discussion — Balaji’s “network state” —does not appeal to me, as I intend to clarify in a soon-to-be-finished write-up about ideological backsliding among leaders of the American Right toward neo-medieval ideals and practices. Balaji’s book “The Network State” doesn’t even deal with health, education, welfare, and/or environmental matters. Not much of a state, I’d say. More like a privileged platform. But the networked etc. design he discusses, stripped of its anarcho-capitalist state-aspiring ambitions, kinda resembles the design I’ve had in mind for a +N realm based on pro-commons ideas. So I’m wondering about it from that standpoint — a network realm, not a network state.
I’ve more to say, but will refrain for now since this comment is getting too long. Some of what else I could add will appear in an upcoming (next?) post on “Beware The American Right’s Reversion To Biformist Ideals: As tribalism and monarchism increasingly trump market-system values.”
Good to hear from you, Joel. Ask more if I seem too unclear.
I've maintained for a few years that the +N Social Commons Sector (SCS) form (my prefered term fwiw) has been emerging for at least 30 years, but is largely invisible to larger society because it currently inhabits the nooks and crannies of networks. Open source software was an early purely digital emergence of the sector, one that enabled the rapid rise of the Internet itself. Its capture & enclosure by +M happened later, but lead to a reactive response with the creation of "pirate" sites containing copywrited software, movies, music, books, and other shareable digital media enclosed by +M. A physical expression of the +N form emerged as "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces" which embodies a physical instanciation of the knowledge sharing and capabilities sharing ethos of the open source movement. In fact, if you look at the organizational structure of a larger one like the Dallas Makerspace, you see a fully expressed TIMN quadriform in minature; a node in the greater network of such commons. During the Covid Pandemic, I noted that such spaces shift emphasis and started producing locally needed medical supplies like PPE and medical devices for free, thus demonstrating the rapid responsiveness and care attributes of the +N Social Commons. These are just a few examples. Others exist such as local cooperatives and similar attempts to create commons forms which share knowledge to promote the welfare of members. The current gap preventing the +N Social Commons Sector from fully emerging is that they are segmented efforts. They are sharing & connected, but only to organizations like themselves: makerspaces to makerspaces, coops to coops, community gardens to community gardens, etc. We need some state change which drives interconnection between unlike nodes. We need a +N catalyst to bring about an emergence
Hey, Tim of TIMN — You term for +N as Social Commons Sector (SCS) is fine with me. I’ve wondered about viewing +N as a “social sector” per old idea by Peter Drucker. I’ve also viewed it as a “commons sector.” Putting the two together like you do sounds catchy.
At same time, if I’m right about TIMN, then we’re talking about a realm, more than a sector. A realm potentially as large as the existing three. Which means seeing T+I+M+N as civil society + government + market economy + social commons. Where whole bunches of actors and activities move out of earlier three and find better home in new one. Yeah, looks like good option to pursue and use.
I took a new look at Dallas Makers. Yes, its actors and activities do look pro +N. But to me, more in a facilitative than constitutive way. Doing things with the proper dispositions and effects, contributing to the energies +M requires. But not, in my view, to +M’s substance in terms of what exactly will constitute +M, what exactly it will consist of. I’ve offered my deduction: care-centric health, education, welfare, and environment stuff. I like to know of other possible clusters that I’m not spotting.
Dallas Makers activities, as well as other activities you mention, go in all sorts of helpful inspired directions. However, too many for me to see a coherent sector emerging amid them. But maybe I see a system-change dynamic at work that I’ve not attended to before.
The people are clearly immersed in the new info tech, and in finding positive ways to apply it. My tentative sense is that this recurs with the rise of each of the info-tech revolutions — first oral, then writing and printing, then the electrical rev, now the digital rev — that have energized TIMN’s take on evolution. These actors and their activities do not themselves amount to core constituents of a next-new realm, but they may be vital as facilitators of its emergence. Something like that. In which case, I or whoever should keep an eye out for counterparts to Dallas Makers who attended the rise of the T and +I and then +M. Does this mae sense? Track okay as an answer to your comment?
BTW, other theorists and activists I’ve exchanged views with over the years point to Sensorica.co as their idea of +N’s emergence. I disagree. Maybe it’s an excellent effort to generate what they seek: a fourth sector of the economy. But I don’t see it amounting to what I think TIMN implies: a fourth realm / sector of society as a whole.
I agree with most of what you say. The +N Social Commons Sector does not exist now. I should have listed the others, like Makerspaces, as what we in the strategic foresight world call “weak signals of change”. The ones I mentioned embrace more of the +N values first, to the extent it helps them exist withing the increasing constraints of our late stage T+I+M Triform. The example I gave about the Dallas Makerspace & others during Covid was another weak signal showing how fast those hybrid forms can transition into a purely +N Social Commons mode. My current thinking is that attempts to push us into a T+I Biform may backfire by encouraging +N organization to shore up the social care areas you’ve identified as it’s primary purpose. I've seen clear signals of this in multiple foresight studies I've worked on since 2018. I think a +N Social Commons could emerge and help shore up a reformed +M markets sector. As I said, we need a catalyst to trigger the full emergence of a +N social commons sector from the +N elements which have been emerging here and there over the past several decades.
All good. I hope to say more in next post about expectation that "attempts to push us into a T+I Biform may backfire by encouraging +N organization to shore up the social care areas." Agree that this could "help shore up a reformed +M markets sector." It'd unburden and help shore up civil society and government too. Onward.
Helpful good points, Tim. I'll elaborate in couple/few days. Thanks.
In my mind, the nation state is a creature of the triform model. I’m not sure that it can be expanded to include quadriform. It seems that network effects would by definition cross national boundaries. And it also seems clear that at this point in time, it’s becoming more and more difficult for nation states to exert control. If you can’t control flows of capital, people, and information, what do you control?
Also, it seems that the problems that humanity now face are global in nature. For example, even if every citizen of the United States and Europe were to reduce their carbon footprint to zero, it wouldn’t have significant impact on global warming as long as China, India, Africa, etc., keep burning fossil fuels.
I do not doubt your basic thesis. Quadriform indeed seems like the next step of social development. But for me, the question is how will it exert itself? Personally, I fear that the world is on the cusp of another major cataclysmic reorganization. Something along the lines of what happened a century or so ago.
Excellent questions, affording me an opportunity to broach observations I’ve been waiting to field:
TIMN implies that future societies will develop a fourth realm, +N. It further implies, I’d now add, that this next-new realm will be more global in reach than the preceding three realms. The earliest form and realm to emerge, the T/tribes realm (and its modern expression, the realm we know as civil society) was initially very limited in geographic reach. Early tribes mostly encompassed plains, valleys, hills, and other local geography. Hierarchical institutions, +I in the form of states and armies, could reach farther and claim sovereignty over much greater territories. As for the +M/market form and realm, its rise came partly from the spread of local market towns and connections among them. But a far greater impulse for +M came from the rise of international, interregional and then globe-circling trade and commerce.
Up to this point, my writings have mostly only mentioned that each TIMN form’s rise, in turn, depends (1) the parallel appearance of an enabling information technology revolution (oral, mechanical, electric, digital) at a time when (2) societies are facing mounting challenges, mainly as a result of successful growth, that they can no longer address and resolve using the older TIMN forms. For example, the T/tribal form was not very good at warfare. But as peoples began challenging each other, the ones who developed early +I states and armies, plus a capacity to dispatch written orders, gained advantages.
Now I have a new point to add to all this. Maybe it’s a third precondition for the rise of a new form. Or maybe it’s another of TIMN’s dozen or more recurrent system dynamics. Right now I’m not sure which. But the point is this, and it speaks to your comment: The rise of each form, in turn, involves and may require pushes and pulls of ever greater geographic scope. If so, the emergence of a +N realm will depend on pushes and pulls from local to global scale, more than any preceding form has — it’ll involve “cosmo-localism,” a P2P-network concept from Jose Ramos and Michel Bauwens. So, yes, as you note, +N should be for addressing problems/challenges that are more global in nature than was the case with the rise of the earlier forms.
Education, health, welfare, and the environment — the challenges I’ve deduced for +N — fit this observation. Perhaps a care-focused +N realm will have to emerge in transnational terms before it takes hold within nations.
To a degree, that’s already underway, for there are transnational actors and activities all around the world (like Kahn Academy, Chef Andres World Kitchen) who look like potential candidates — they’re just not mutually connected yet.
The future of nation-states (not to mention empire-states and civilization-states) still looks pretty durable. Nonetheless, I’m open to alternatives. The one getting the most discussion — Balaji’s “network state” —does not appeal to me, as I intend to clarify in a soon-to-be-finished write-up about ideological backsliding among leaders of the American Right toward neo-medieval ideals and practices. Balaji’s book “The Network State” doesn’t even deal with health, education, welfare, and/or environmental matters. Not much of a state, I’d say. More like a privileged platform. But the networked etc. design he discusses, stripped of its anarcho-capitalist state-aspiring ambitions, kinda resembles the design I’ve had in mind for a +N realm based on pro-commons ideas. So I’m wondering about it from that standpoint — a network realm, not a network state.
I’ve more to say, but will refrain for now since this comment is getting too long. Some of what else I could add will appear in an upcoming (next?) post on “Beware The American Right’s Reversion To Biformist Ideals: As tribalism and monarchism increasingly trump market-system values.”
Good to hear from you, Joel. Ask more if I seem too unclear.