Galen Radtke

About Me

Hi there. My name is Galen. I am married to a wonderful German woman, I am the Business manager and co-coordinator at the Cooper Point Journal, and I make boardgames in my spare time.

But I suppose what's relevant today is how I ended up in this class.

About four years ago a was a bit of a philosopher vagabond. Much to the teasing of my girlfriend (who is my wife today) I had been doing a thought experiment where I was trying to imagine a shape that couldn't possibly exist in reality. I wasn't having much success until a party on 4th of July. When the thought came, it literally felt like a punch to the brain. This thought, awkwardly described in english, was a sphere where every point on it's surface was connected to every other point on it's surface without any distance between points. Something that theoretically would endlessly collapse in upon itself toward a single point.

I wanted to translate this idea to reality in a way that was applicable to human life and over the next few years I pondered this on and off. What took shape was a mass brainstorming pattern that resulted in many ideas from many participants, being reduced down into select ideas that were communicated or "amplified" to everyone involved.

While I had no idea what to do with this idea, it became large director in what I took interest in, namely, crowd intelligence and how it can be harnessed for positive social change. So, when I saw the description for this class, it resonated with me greatly and here I am.

Interests

Photography, Board Games, Interface Design, Psychology, Sociology, Crowd Sourcing...

Thoughts in Class

Possible characteristics of an emergent situation
a. Fire, "Virginal" Ground, or Little to No Internal (unconstructive) Resistance
b. A shared or universal need in a community.
c. An opportunity for community inquiry (so actions will be of,
by, and for the people).
d. During Mid-Emergence, awareness and support from an external
group, that somehow benefits from what is emerging.
e. Leadership and Organization.
f. Documentation and symbolic reminders.
g. A pair
h. An outside pressure

Aspects of a sustaining emergence
a. Sustainability as thought loop
b. Manifested in a physical space or form
c. Initially protected brew space (primordial mind soup)

-Global data is revealing universal themes within all of mankind. In a theoretical global society, service to these theme should be the foundation of global government.

-GPS app to tell you when someone (a stranger) in proximity to you shares an interest with you (invention). It's like moble social networking!

Did you know about the army combat tank simulations? Where soldiers are put in replica landscapes and fight simulated tanks run by other solders? Guess what they did in real combat... They kicked the asses of the local veteran forces and said it was easier than the game world.

The notion "of saving the world" is BS. The world is a manifestation of the most amplified/communicated ideas and thoughts. By this reasoning, a mass exodus to gaming will have a similar effect. If ideas to solve real world simulations within games become amplified, they will naturally cross over and manifest in the real world.

Is it possible to end world hunger? I would ask to that, is world hunger being solved already? They very fact that the sentence "end world hunger" has been presented as a problem to solve and is in the awareness of many, means that it is somehow already in process of being solved.

When a group splits up to do specific tasks after a meeting, when does the effect of group intelligence wear off?

Just as you can have IQ, EQ (emotional), or g; can it be established that each person has a CI (civic intelligence) score that acts as a contributor to Group IQ.