Future of the Internet

skipshoe

Paula -
Your first paragraph on Marshall McCluhan`s work (and I confess I haven`t studied him) reminded me of a book written by Steve Vedro called Digital Dharma.  I heard Vedro talk and much of what you discuss in paragraph one is reviewed in his book - and he correlates it to the chakra system.  Interesting read relative to this dialogue.
Ken Wilber is a philosopher/anthropologist/psychologist/systems theorist who has sought to unify the wisdom of humanity into a unified model that he calls A.Q.A.L.  A conversation about him is probably out of scope of this conversation - but his work is informed by all world religions, including Western traditions of Chrisitanity, Islam, Judaism,  - with a strong eastern influence, but that includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sihkism, etc..  He has written a book called "A brief history of everything" and another which is a summary of many of his main works calle "A theory of everything" which seeks to synthesize these traditions - along with Western psychology, economics, systems theory into a map of human experience.  This map can actually be used to place a conversation or person`s perspective in context with specific coordinates (e.g. we could map this dialogue with coordinates in the AQAL model - that would consider each person`s perspective, the topic, the forum being used, etc. etc.)
Again - out of scope for this conversation - email me if you`d like more resources or pointers, but he is definitely not one who considers humans as "separate from the natural order".   His theory rationally and deliberately spells out how we got to where we are as part of the natural order.
Skip

skipshoe

Craig - I`ve been meaning to carve out time to digest your post.  Great insights on the nature of electronic markets in enabling iterative testing of ideas.  I`m interested in finding more sites that take advantage of such testing - and haven`t researched it much, but know of Zoomerang (for surveys and now will recruit - i think - market specific candidates) and Dneero.  
Does anyone know of others that help explore the "wisdom of the crowds" affordably?
On Wilber - nice analysis... I have not read SES yet - but you seemed to have totally absorbed many of key points of Integral from it.  Romanticism vs. Structuralism might also be described as "interior/consciousness focused" and "exterior/systems focused".  As you say, they are both wrong.  But they are both right as well... meaning that they have partial truths to be integrated (hence integral) into a unified model .  Structure & hierarchy give levels - and consciousness unfolds in levels as well. 
Thanks for the riff everyone.  BTW - I`d love to hear of any other "wisdom of crowds" or market testing/focus group-like services/tools to help unravel the "future of the internet" much faster & better!