On Saturday I am going to Social Dev Camp Chicago. In the spirit of the rules of Bar Camp I have signed up for a slot on Saturday to facilitate an interactive technical retrospective. I confess I wanted to talk in the Business and Culture track and share my story about my business WeaveThePeople.com, however, all the slots were taken so I signed up in the Technical Track and now that I have, I am getting quite excited about my session. Also a little nervous and feeling unprepared but I think that's okay!My plan for the session is to map out on a time-line the most monumental technologies, tools, techniques, books (techie books), programming languages and applications for the attendees. Note to self: bring post-its and a large roll of paper.
My goal is to capture the technical influences of the group, tap into our collective wisdom, look for patterns and hopefully reveal to all of us a glimpse of what is happening right now. I saw Gary Vaynerchuck speak at the Tech Cocktail conference and he said that if this if we are to compare the current state of social technologies to a baseball game, we are in the first verse of the national anthem. This resonates with me, I have a hunch that something very exciting is happening right now and all of us in the technical community are in a great position to be active participants in this revealing.
I am passionate about philosophy, in addition to technology and collective intelligence, and this is one of my motivations behind this session. This blog is named after an essay written by Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology. In this essay he talks about the essence of technology, this took me some time to read - I remember one afternoon on Foster Avenue beach my girlfriend giving me a hard time that I had been reading the same page for an hour! I say this because it is hard for me to summarize Heidegger's writings - so I'm not going to attempt to do it, read the book. I will however share a quote:
“Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e, of truth.”
What I can also do is share with you my own philosophy influenced by Heidegger. I believe that we can choose to be active participants in the unfolding of the world as we know it. By paying attention to what is happening, specifically in the world of technology, we can learn to read the wave (this is what I hope to glimpse as part of this session). We can then partake in this revealing by surfing this wave. We do this by creating new stuff. We do this by not just doing but also by being, being aligned with what is ready to be revealed. Our surfboard can be as simple as a question we don't know the answer to, this will lead us into the unknown. Why do we do this? To have fun, to tap into our passion and live more fully.
A reminder, I write code not philosophy! So I'll leave you with another quote from Heidegger:
“Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of man? We need not look far. We need only apprehend in an unbiased way....Whenever a man opens his eyes and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking, he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed.”
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