Tesla Coil

I finally started reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, but am already underlining parts that jump out at me. For example:

Collective action… is the hardest kind of group effort, as it requires a group of people to commit themselves to undertaking a particular effort together, and to do so in a way that makes the decision of the group binding on the individual members. All group structures create dilemmas, but these dilemmas are hardest when it comes to collective action, because the cohesion of the group becomes critical to its success.

So I guess we need some cohesion. Time to reach out to the initial networks I mentioned and see if we can find some common ground. We’re planning to run a Network of Networks event later in the year, unconference style, so it’s time to get this particular ball rolling. There was a quick discussion around this at CCC London last week and it seemed a good idea as a first step to get some of the names behind the networks together for some coffee and a conversation around where we can take this.

For some reason I was reminded of the brilliant opening to Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet:

On an April day in 1746 at the grand convent of the Carthusians in Paris, about 200 monks arranged themselves in a long, snaking line. Each monk held one end of a 25-foot iron wire in each hand, connecting him to his neighbour on either side. Together the monks and their connecting wires formed a line over a mile long.

Once the line was complete the Abbe John-Antoine Nollet, noted French scientist, took a primitive electrical battery and, without warning, connected it to the line of monks - giving all of a powerful electric shock.

Nollet did not go around zapping monks with static electricity for fun; his experiment had a serious scientific objective. Like many scientists of the time, he was measuring the properties of electricity to find out how far it could be transmitted along wires, and how fast it travelled. The simultaneous exclamations and contortions of a mile-long line of monks reveled that electricity could be transmitted over great distance; and as far as Nollet could tell, it covered that distance instantly.

That was a big deal.

We’ll be looking for our own big deal, but our first step will be a little less painful and revolve around tea and coffee rather then electrocuting the clergy.

If you’d like to get involved at this early age please drop me an email (mikesizemore @ gmail dot com) or leave a comment.

Photo credit: Tesla Coil by Kent, J (CC license)