Following noble example of Eric Hahn, Executive VP and CTO at Netscape, I also got inspired by Eric Raymond's writing. His article on the Internet hacker gift culture Homesteading the Noosphere seems to have some relevance to the world of NLP in general and to my own life in particular.
According to Raymond, special kind of culture can emerge in populations, that enjoy abundance of survival goods. Gift cultures can be observed in aboriginal societies of mild climate ecozones with abundant food and, in the West, in show business and among the very wealthy. One example of the gift culture is the culture of Internet hackers, developers of so called `free' or open source software.
I am not acquainted yet with multimillionaires and movie stars. The Internet is familiar to all example of fruitful cooperation of creative individuals. Thriving of the Net is giving boost to billion dollar online business in particular and to the high-tech industry in general.
It is not by chance, in my opinion, that NLP was created in the San Francisco area. Is it just a coincidence that the Silicon Valley is in the vicinity of Stanford University?
Historically, classical philosophy thrived in the intellectual atmosphere of ancient Greece. Breakthrough insights into human psychology and physiology were made in the intellectual communities on both sides of the Himalayas.
The key phenomenon here is synergy. Interaction with peer professionals gives inspiration and boosts creativity. This is the root of innovation. See Dr. Win Wenger's Project Renaissance.
One of the arguments in favor of open source software development model is that the complexity of modern software calls for collective approach to its creation and debugging. The approach of "many eyeballs" is supposed to create products that are more stable and effective.
The "software" that we are dealing with in NLP is by no means simpler than Linux operating system. It seems to me that currently we scratch only the tip of the iceberg, we tweak only the interface engine i.e. the mechanism that is able to create handles to control our internal, deep structures and processes. A question inevitably comes to mind: what other kinds of useful stuff is it possible to create with this presumable interface engine? Is it possible to create incoming information channels, for example? Evidently yes. John La Valle mentioned recently an automatic angle judging device. What kind of information could we get, what kind of information sources could we tap in such manner?
Also: is it safe to look under the hood? What methodology do we need if we were to become curious?
Some time ago it was mentioned on NLPTALK that we need a 2-nd order NLP i.e. NLP for NLPlers to give us the ability stand each other. (Please confess, who is the author of this idea). This ability to facilitate creativity in each other and to enjoy NLP in every real life interaction could come in handy.
Also I think that mutual understanding with other gift cultures is possible. For example, cooperation between NLPers and multimillionaires would be financially beneficial. Mutual work with movie stars could be fruitful.
Copyright © 1998 Victor Klimov. All rights reserved.
