Thought Multipliers

There is a term used often in military circles these days, kind of a buzzword really, referred to as "Force Multipliers." The definition generally reads something like this:

"A capability that, when added to and employed by a combat force, significantly increases the combat potential of that force and thus enhances the probability of successful mission accomplishment." The Free Dictionary

I've always felt that this particular term has been a bit misdirected, I like the premise behind it but the military focus seems to have lessened its potential. What the term is trying to address of course is the synergistic effect through combinations of various factors or elements to produce a greater effect or impact than could have been achieved otherwise. Information Technology as an enabling infrastructure framework is often considered to be a Force Multiplier for the Department of Defense.

Force, or armed force is a relatively destructive activity though in this context. There is another way to view synergistic multiplication and that path is inherent within the construct of Philosophy 2.0. One of the interesting aspects of philosophy for me has been the more or less overwhelming focus on Philosophical output as opposed to Philosophical processes. For me at least, the road we take is often as interesting as the final destination if we can even assume there is a such a place. While there are many thinkers over the ages who've felt the same way, the tendency of most educational institutions is to contemplate their works rather than the journeys that led them to their insights.

And then there is the question, whose insights were they anyway? How we can we fairly disentangle the inspirations, influences and relationships that led to any one given revelation - did any one man alone achieve any one insight without the reliance on the works of others?

There is and always has been a good deal of ego associated with Philosophical achievement. Philosophers, at least in Western culture, tend to be viewed as singular intellects - the ultimate individualists, thinking thoughts apart from the crowd - leading them to enlightenment. One reason that we have depended so entirely on personalities over the ages has been the role that key individuals play in conducting and extending dialogs that stretched across many lifetimes. Even today, we can still dialog with Plato or Aristotle if we wish, for there is a community continuum inherent within our management of thoughts and ideas. The difference of course now is the phenomenal level of Democratization that has occurred, knowledge that was once reserved for a precious few has now been made available to all and more importantly than that - the mechanism to respond interactively with that knowledge has been made nearly universially accessible.

Thought Multiplication has always occurred, it's how we built the more complex from the less complex, it's how we collectively expand our cultural knowledgebase, but until this century its velocity was limited by a number of barriers and constraints. The first speed bump was removed when writing was invented, another dropped away with the invention of the printing press - each major technological advance led to further increases in velocity until - the barrier was broken. That barrier was the "Real-Time Collective Thought Barrier." Even though most of the dialog doesn't actually occur in real time (it's still mostly asynchronous) the ability to merge thought and data real time in collaboration has changed the landscape and led us into new territory. A dialog that before took centuries, years or weeks to conduct now can happen instantly with participants across the globe. This is Thought Multiplication empowered - the promise of spontaneously evolving cradles of creativity - the ability to leverage brainpower on scales never before attempted.

Like all things new - we are still stumbling around trying to find our "legs." The major remaining speed bumps are internal. We are still conditioned to absorb and reflect the knowledge of great thinkers rather than express thoughts through our own lens. Education as we know it will need to change in order to fully exploit Thought Multiplication, but when it does what might we expect from the creative force that could be unleashed:

• The ability for humans to solve a series of problems that have seemed impossible on an increasing / exponential scale.

• The ability to redefine our collective self image. Put simply, this refers to us finally escaping the patterns of previous cultural expression (or history).

• The ability to understand the nature of thought and its relationship with reality (the ultimate, oldest philosophical question of them all).
  

Much of what will result may be hard to predict, as it is likely that this application of collective potential will produce many results that we simply can't see from our current perspective.

Copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas