Fortunately, there are encouraging signs -- and just in time. For years people have been rediscovering how to work with rather than against the limits of the Earth's richly complex and nurturing ecosystem. Some are exploring lifestyles that are outwardly simple and inwardly rich (Elgin, 1981). We are even beginning to learn how to reconcile generations of deep distrust and hostility, although we have a long way to go. Taken together, these sketch an outline of emerging humane and sustainable culture.

We are going through a global transition at least as profound as that from hunting and gathering to agriculture, or the scientific revolution that ushered in the industrial age. While some refer to this post-industrial period as the information or communications era, we prefer more value-centered names like the Compassionate Era (Theobald, 1993) and the Era of Reconciliation (Elgin, 1993). The key is how we relate to each other, not the channel or technology that supports it.

During the scientific revolution we developed our analytic intelligence which is now embodied in the incredible machines we call computers. Today we are discovering two other kinds of intelligence -- one ancient and one new -- that extend our capacity to relate in new ways. One is access in the present moment to our essential connection with each other and all life, something we "forgot" in order to capitalize on the mechanistic worldview.¹ The other is the capacity to hold in our minds the complex dynamics and inherent paradoxes of whole, living systems. These related ways of knowing are necessary complements to mechanistic/analytic thought. Integrating them gives us the capacity to use our technologies wisely.

The complexity and dynamics of change are greater than any one person can hold. Group/team learning is a key. The emerging task for leaders is to help others learn and adapt creatively to change (Heifetz, 1992). We are becoming a learning society. To thrive in the rapids of change, companies are becoming learning organizations (Senge, 1990). We are learning how to use our differences creatively (Johnson-Lenz, 1992c), and learn our way into a sustainable culture (Milbraith, 1989). Consistent with living within environmental limits, the primary purpose of work is beginning to shift from ever-increasing production and consumption of goods to lifelong learning (Harman and Hormann, 1990). Managing open-ended change requires relying on real-time learning and self-organizing political interaction in groups (Stacey, 1992) within business and society at large. Institutions already rely heavily on information technologies. But groupware is the enabling technology of the learning organization (Opper and Fersko-Weiss, 1991) and the learning society.

When the two of us coined the term groupware in 1978, our whole-systems definition was "intentionally chosen group processes + the software to support them" (Johnson-Lenz, 1980). Groupware includes software in the computer and in the minds and hearts of those using it -- a shared mental model of what the group is doing (purpose) and how it is doing it (process). More recently we have written that groupware is computer-mediated culture (Johnson-Lenz, 1991). It is an electronic embodiment of social organization, partly in the computer and partly in us.

Technology serves best when tailored in support of human values, meaning, and purpose. Groupware that helps us create a sustainable culture will be shaped to embody the principles of that culture, augment our new and ancient ways of knowing, and facilitate our learning and collaborating together more effectively than ever before.

Groupware for Learning Teams

Tahomish, April 10, 2003 -- From the telework center² at FoxHedge, the co-housing³ community she'd joined three years before, Laurel Li could see the Tahomish eco-village⁴ silhouetted against the dawn sky. Nearby were other housing clusters, green spaces, and the companies and factories in the industrial ecology⁵ park.

Laurel felt content. While electronic networks hummed around the clock, she had found her own ways of tuning into the deeper rhythms of the planet. She paused a moment more to breathe deeply, center herself, and open her mind, heart, and spirit to the new day, silently giving thanks once again for the awesome majesty of creation.

As Earth Community Relations⁶ director for Industrial Metabolism Ltd., Laurel had her choice of company-sponsored community service projects. Today she was working with the Resourceful Cascadia Learning Team on bioregional water management issues. Like most companies, IM was organized around cross-functional teams and quality circles, but widespread support for citizen governance teams was a recent innovation.

The Cascadia Team used the WEB (Worldwide Electronic Brain), a global groupware and knowledge system, for its on-line work. Laurel had to chuckle over the name. In 1996 when the WEB was created, people were still using the metaphor of the brain as the location of intelligence!

She touched the Team icon on the flat panel wall display. The facilitator's software agent checked her status in the group's workflow and gave her dynamically updated instructions, delivered in the facilitator's voice.

Good morning, Laurel!

Since Monday, team members around the region have been evaluating the questions we've generated to frame the issue of dynamic and sustainable management of Cascadia's scarce water resources. You're one of three people who have yet to complete this part. We've taken last week's 53 questions and comments and organized them into nine clusters. You'll note we're using several different rating scales this time — centrality, immediacy, comprehensiveness, and inclusiveness. Please use the hypertext buttons next to each cluster to get additional background information and a range of participant comments.

As soon as you've rated the clusters, you'll see the results to date and get more instructions for the dialogue that's to come. Next we'll be considering why each of the highly rated questions is essential and whether any critical pieces are missing from our multi-perspective framing of this issue. Thanks for your thoughtful participation!

As she rated the question clusters, Laurel realized again how complex this was. The Team was still wrestling with how to frame the problem sufficiently. Water is life, and this difficult and "wicked"⁷ issue was at the very heart of resource management in the new millennium. Almost everything needs water!

The oil wars of the late '90s had brought everybody up against the bankruptcy of special-interest lobbying and single-issue negotiations. Computer-augmented learning teams had developed out of the living democracy⁸ and community-based change movement, but this was the first time one had been officially charged with developing issue maps and recommendations on such an essential issue. The Team represented the interests of all stakeholders, including future generations and nonhuman members of the bioregion. Eventually they would create a multi-media hypertext of their recommendations, issue maps, agreements and disagreements, how they thought about and reached their conclusions, and other supporting materials including dynamic models of regional resource flows.

Laurel's Reflections Last update: Friday, April 25, 2003, 11:23 am PDT Subject: group learning, learning environments, facilitation
issues are so complex, interrelated, and dynamic that multiple perspectives are essential; how does groupware help people integrate and reconcile conflicts into collective learning? group learning requires high trust, willingness to make mistakes, being vulnerable in front of others. Ralph Stacey: real-time group learning depends on effective group dynamics, how well the group works together.9 Ron Heifetz: deep learning is embarrassing.10	P+T
active listening11 helps people understand each other, even when they don't agree; but how to get them (me!) to really examine assumptions, to import other frames of reference into their own? it's hard to let go of being "right" in order to learn (ugh)	P+T
how are on-line learning environments designed to both support and challenge, to teach people through experience how to work creatively with conflict and diversity??? i want to learn much more about this facilitator: an "expert learner" who teaches by example how to use groupware effectively, sets context for group learning, challenges ideas not person, is open to other viewpoints, uses mistakes as sources of learning has to keep doing own inner work to have capacity to stay centered, flexible, creative in midst of group energy and conflict >>>>> what's the groupware architecture of societal memory and group learning on the WEB? maybe the WEB holds the answer!	P+T

The Power of Presence

Toronto, June 29, 2003 -- Industrial Metabolism's annual corporate renewal meeting still brought key employees together face to face. For most of their work, they used all modes of telecommunication, but it was considered important to meet in person to celebrate successes, renew their common vision, and share food and stories. For all the industry hoopla, telepresence¹² just wasn't the same. But as fossil fuel supplies dwindled, non-essential travel was increasingly expensive and socially frowned upon -- not good for IM's earth community relations! They would have to find a better way.

Laurel was still fired up from the afternoon session. They had used an electronic meeting system¹³ to brainstorm and evaluate ways that IM could be more socially and environmentally responsible in the coming year. One manager who couldn't fly in participated from San Francisco via computer and audio links and made very creative contributions, particularly in the area of social accounting.¹⁴

That evening in the garden of the inn, Laurel used her Nexus¹⁵ to check in with Sanctuary,¹⁶ her on-line support circle. Now living on three continents, its members saw each other infrequently but stayed in contact almost daily through the WEB. They used groupware for simple rituals and dream sharing, celebrated the seasons of their lives, helped each other through crises, and were the very best of friends.

She meditated a moment, moving her attention to her heart center. Her Nexus displayed the familiar rose-window mandala opening into the virtual circle process.¹⁷ Bach was this week's musical theme, playing softly in the background. On the screen, beginning in the east she touched the four directions, opening the sacred space -- Father Sun, Mother Earth, Grandmother Ocean, Grandfather Sky. She kythed¹⁸ with each member of the circle as their images appeared on the screen, one by one.

The current round in the circle was about everyone's experience of presence, what pushed them beyond their capacity to stay present, how they regained their balance, and what the group could do to support them. After viewing responses from several other people, Laurel began to write...

Sanctuary Circle: Round 33, Item 4 Friday, June 29, 2003, 8:52 pm EDT From: Laurel Li Subject: Presence!

Being present to myself, this circle, people I'm with, and my surroundings is increasingly vital. In fact it's very stressful when I'm not. It's being highly aware of my own experience as well as what's happening around me. I know deeply wonderful things have happened in this circle when we're really listening to each other and speaking from the heart, even in writing.19 But it's hard to stay grounded in the present reality with the constant barrage of conflicting and contradictory images, ideas, information, communication, and messages from the WEB and other media, to say nothing of handling my personal relationships, work issues, community work, and all the rest. I get overwhelmed by overchoice. This "information at your fingertips, anytime/anyplace meeting, hypernetwork society" drives me crazy! I'm learning to care for my attention just like my body -- choosing what I feed it, how I exercise it, what nurtures me. When I bring my attention to the present, I connect with the current of life flowing through me and so with all of you. It's still a challenge to be present in a group where there's lots of conflict. Sometimes I lose myself in the group field and the intensity of the energy. I'm practicing moving my attention between inside and outside, listening to my inner signals so I can be more present with what is. I need all your support and suggestions in getting better at this.

P+T

Later Laurel wondered how she might translate some of her experiences of on-line presence with the Circle into more of the electronic group work at Industrial Metabolism. Conventional wisdom held that the orientation, trust-building, and renewal stages of team performance were best done in a same-time/same-place environment.²⁰ But she had developed deep trust with several Sanctuary members she had only met once, as a result of their intention and willingness to be present and authentic with each other on line. IM already had extensive training for collaboration via computer, including coaching in taking the time to read/listen and reflect before responding, but she knew more could be done.

Evolution of the WEB

Tahomish, July 23, 2003 -- After almost four months of intense work, the Resourceful Cascadia Learning Team had developed its frameworks and issue maps for bioregional water management. The dynamic computer models developed around 1999 of resource flows into and out of the region really helped. The prolonged recessionary adjustment toward a sustainable economy tempted some team members into short-term thinking, but Laurel continued to stand for a whole-systems, long-term approach.

The Learning Team facilitator was impressed with Laurel's growing capacity to be "big enough" to appreciate the diversity of viewpoints, bring them out in the group, and keep asking questions to help the group think in more encompassing ways, even in the midst of strong disagreements. Laurel listened with care and compassion, expressed her own thoughts, feelings, and desires clearly,²¹ and kept searching for integrative approaches and solutions.

When asked if she'd like to train to be a facilitator, Laurel jumped at the chance. It was a great honor and responsibility. She also knew it would take study, practice, and continued self-development. She was eager to know more about the evolution of these Learning Teams and their groupware processes. So with the help of a knowbot,²² she began to explore the WEB.

WEB Culture [Item 695.18.44] Last update: Monday, January 15, 2001, 10:30 am GMT By: Aziz Abdul-Wahhab, WEB Weaver Keys/Links: evolutionary learning, civility, ethics, chaos, commitment, purpose, design, facilitation, training, dynamics, teams, deliberative democracy
[Touch or click on the buttons for audio/video clips, supporting documents, and references.] A compelling yet elusive vision of global transformation through computer networking catalyzed many social experiments during the '80s and '90s. The evolutionary learning process taught us valuable lessons, even though many mistakes were made.	P+T
Civility and Ethics Early public computer networks created unrestricted spaces that sometimes worked, but often broke into "flaming" (verbal abuse), polarized debate, unfocused ramblings, unreliable information, and other dysfunctional patterns. To counter this, tighter sanctions and controls were imposed, but they hampered creative interaction. Eventually people realized that time-honored patterns of civility (Peck, 1993) and ethical behavior like honesty and mutual respect were necessary for team learning, collaboration (Senge, 1990), and effective use of groupware (Opper and Fersko-Weiss, 1991). On-line facilitators learned to write guidelines, model effective behaviors, guide a variety of processes, handle asynchronous23 group dynamics, and work with contentious people, teaching by example how to embody our essential interconnectedness.	P+T
Creative Chaos The emerging science of chaos was widely misunderstood to be saying that order always came from disorder. We confused the scientific meaning of "chaos" with the popular one. Many unstructured "open space" computer conferences were created in the almost magical belief that people would "self-organize" within them. After many years, our limited successes taught us the real message of chaos theory. Creative chaos is not anarchy. The endlessly creative patterns of life emerge in unpredictable, "chaotic" ways not from limitless disorder, but from bounded disorder (Stacey, 1992). We began to design systems with a dynamic balance between disorder and pattern, emptiness and form, openness and structure.	P+T
Commitment and Purpose Many early public computer conferences allowed people to come and go as they wished -- to read and write whenever they felt moved to. While everyone enjoyed this freedom, nobody knew who was in a group, nor what its purpose was. Converging on agreements was nearly impossible since new people could come in at any time and nobody ever knew if everyone had expressed herself. Eventually we learned that effective groups have a clear list of members committed to participate for a specific period of time around a mutually agreed upon purpose.	P+T
Design and Facilitation Many thought that merely getting connected via computer network would be enough to trigger self-organizing patterns of collaboration. While that sometimes happened, we soon discovered that effective group work via computer is as labor intensive as any good face-to-face meeting, and time spent designing and facilitating the process always paid off. We now know that self-organization emerges and is maintained only through complex interactions of many forces working to shape a living system (Kelly, 1992). A group creates and re-creates itself and its processes through a continuous, conscious cycle of design, facilitation, action, reflection on feedback, and redesign....	P+T
Teaming Dynamics Many thought that universal access to electronic mail and bulletin board systems was enough. But overstuffed mailboxes and proliferating newsgroups gridlocked the networks. No one could cope with hundreds and hundreds of daily communications. Even artificial intelligence "digesters" couldn't transform the glut into effective patterns of group intelligence. Access is essential, but only a first step. The individuating dynamics of early groupware weren't enough. We learned that we need to arrange ourselves into effective patterns for collaboration through a process of conscious, disciplined choice (Johnson-Lenz, 1992b). Brain cells differentiate during the first phase of brain development and integrate into purposive patterns during the second phase, reaching out to a very small number of specific other cells. Societal intelligence depends on groupware with teaming dynamics that connects people into purpose-centered groups, fosters relationship, embodies commitment, and supports multi-perspective group learning.	P+T
Team-Oriented Culture We thought using appropriately designed and facilitated groupware would surely catalyze organizational transformation. This happened in some cases, and it backfired in others. Just as word processing software doesn't automatically make us good writers, groupware doesn't make us effective collaborators. Groupware systems that were successful during pilot projects were sometimes later rejected by organizations like an immune system casts out a virus. We learned the hard way that a receptive, team-based, learning-oriented culture is necessary to support and make effective use of groupware. This brought us to the sobering realization that while groupware technology is necessary, it's not sufficient; global transformation requires us to fundamentally change our ways of relating to each other.	P+T
Deliberative Democracy Most of the innovations in groupware for learning teams were spawned within corporations. The process of diffusing those democratic forms throughout society is taking a little longer. Early systems for connecting citizens and government included electronic mail access to officials and electronic town meetings with automated opinion gathering. These backfired when people realized they weren't getting any more influence over policy or decisions, and the systems actually increased the tendency to trivialize and manipulate citizen input. Gradually, public systems emerged with sufficient resources for adequate groupware tools and the full range of design, training, and facilitation necessary for deliberative electronic democracy (Johnson-Lenz, 1993). These enabled citizens to identify, frame, develop, and deliberate issues, and then make policy recommendations. Slowly, through a natural process of social evolution, citizen learning teams are beginning to act with sufficient knowledge and wisdom that their power and influence over critical societal directions is growing.	P+T

Capacitance and Other Facilitation Skills

At home/Tahomish, September 29, 2003 -- Laurel had apprenticed to a master on-line facilitator to learn some of the personal skills and disciplines essential to serving a group, as well as the subtleties of asynchronous group dynamics. These could only be learned experientially, since they depended on knowing in one's body/mind how group energy is flowing, where it's blocked, what's hidden and needs amplifying, and what moves might make the group more "alive" and creative.

Laurel was good at extending her empathic attention to sense and keep track of where each group member was in the process, conceptually as well as emotionally. She was still having some difficulty learning how to work effectively with the "rolling present,"²⁴ speeding it up or slowing it down as appropriate. That took some practice.

She also began to see that an essential skill was helping the group hold multiple and conflicting perceptions in creative rather than destructive ways. That required her own capacitance²⁵ as well as encouraging others to move between positions and bridge both inner and outer polarities.²⁶ Groupware tools and processes helped, but self-development was also necessary.

Laurel's Reflections Last update: Monday, September 29, 2003, 2:11 pm PDT Subject: notes on learning facilitator roles and responsibilities
learning team facilitator works with groupware team to design appropriate processes; may also tailor the groupware uses groupware processes and tools to: focus group energy and attention, manage workflows, create and maintain group memory, develop shared models and frameworks, evoke group intelligence, and weave knowledge weaver = a person who sees patterns and makes connections; weavers organize serendipity and contribute significantly to the sum of personal and social creativity in the world (Smith and Wagner)27 group intelligence is the capacity to respond creatively to complex issues; we need multiple views to see fully enough and creative dialogue to understand each other; weaving brings it together learning facilitator can also play leadership role of raising issues, asking questions that disturb people and force them to come to terms with points of view or problems they would rather not consider (Heifetz)28	P+T
responsibilities: learning facilitator -- combination of process/content facilitator maintains environment of open exploration, curiosity, reflection protects boundaries of group "container" models learning behaviors by commenting on learning process itself guides the group through chosen processes to achieve its goals suggests possible directions for topic exploration poses issues or questions for consideration asks for other ways to frame topic, issues breaks frame of group's focus when necessary to stimulate reflection/deeper thinking probes to get participants to expand on or build on responses asks questions, raises issues based on inconsistencies, gaps holds space open to live with the questions rather than reach for easy answers orchestrates competing factions learning from each other provides additional information, ideas as appropriate integrates and synthesizes key points and themes	P+T
moving between positions and roles: each of us often holds within ourselves many of the points of view in a dialogue, even when we have a strong opinion; people are not positions or points of view, but rather they stand in positions or see from points of view and can move between them	P+T
key facilitator skills: amplifying hidden roles in a group and moving fluidly between positions (Mindell),29 standing in "third space" (Johnston)30 that's big enough to hold various positions; supporting the expression of all roles/voices in the group levels of creative dialogue/interaction: common ground, mutual understanding, bridging polarities, integral learning (Johnson-Lenz)31 groupware tools support all these levels, but process design and learning facilitation are essential	P+T

The WEB, October 15, 2003 -- As Laurel navigated through the WEB, continuing her apprenticeship, observing other learning team processes, and reviewing community memories of issue framing, deliberation, and resolution, she came to appreciate the power of tailorable groupware.³²

"Groupware is more than just software," she thought. "It's really the capacity to create and adapt forms³³ that hold evolving group life in effective patterns."

Powerful, graphically based tools allow facilitators (and interested members) to see a group's living process unfold within the form that contains it, according to its own rhythms, defined by appropriately permeable boundaries. Laurel learned to sketch shared images of the group's process to help plan appropriate next steps. In response, the computer suggested useful patterns and tools. With a few mouse clicks, she could open new containers, rearrange activities, summarize results, create agents to act on her behalf, put an important event in the group's flow where they would be sure to encounter it, and much more.

The tools were powerful all right, but to serve the group, she had to summon all her skills of presence, listening, empathy, and capacitance to know which to use, when, and how. Facilitators who got carried away with their favorite groupware designs didn't last too long, at least around citizen governance learning teams.

The Bootstrap

The WEB, November 25, 2003 -- As she learned more about the WEB's groupware tools and processes, Laurel began exchanging messages with Aluna Paz, one of the WEB's senior weavers. Laurel wanted to try some new approaches to working creatively with differences, but the tools didn't quite fit. She asked Aluna how new groupware tools were designed, developed, and evaluated. That's when she found out about the Bootstrap.

Aluna had joined the Bootstrap Team two years ago, bringing her extensive expertise in software architecture, group dynamics, and knowledge structuring to the learning team at the core of the WEB. Aluna shared some of the Bootstrap documents with Laurel and promised to take her groupware ideas and concerns to the Team.

WEB Bootstrap [Item 635.10.15.45] Last updated: Thursday, May 18, 2002, 6:35 am GMT By: Bootstrap Team Keys/Links: bootstrap team, purpose, inquiry team, policy team .

Bootstrap Purpose and Process The WEB Bootstrap is a learning team whose purpose is to design the next generation of WEB groupware by using the current generation to support its learning process. It's called Bootstrap in honor of groupware pioneer Douglas Engelbart who named and identified this particularly potent form of self-referential group intelligence — a team using groupware to continuously improve its capacity to learn and to evolve groupware that it and other groups use (Engelbart, 1988). The Bootstrap inquiry team is open to anyone who demonstrates strong interest and competence in groupware design. Its members include business, education, government, and community people. A representative selection of members sits on the policy team that determines the next version.

P+T

Laurel remembered last April's note to herself to find out more about the groupware architecture of societal memory and group learning on the WEB. She followed the network of hypertext links to this item.

WEB Architecture [Item 516.18.95.90] Last updated: Monday, October 7, 2002, 8:29 pm GMT By: Bootstrap Team Keys/Links: architecture for learning, control system, inquiry teams, policy teams, learning democracy
Architecture for Learning The WEB's two-tiered architecture evokes societal learning through the birth, evolution, and death of ad hoc, self-organizing learning (action-reflection) teams within a control system that manages chaos to support a process of continuous identification, framing, and resolution of issues. The outer tier is a permanent society-wide, open space infrastructure -- a creative context and support system for learning teams to emerge, act, and dissolve. Its individuating/differentiating dynamics allow individuals with similar or complementary interests and knowledge to connect. It includes flexible tailoring tools for creating virtual forms to hold and focus group energy, adapt them to changing group patterns, and disappear when a group's purpose is complete. These tools reflect the metaphor of a living cell -- a containing vessel holding diverse elements in creative relationship, with smart boundaries governing self-organizing cellular metabolism, and with rhythms that give duration to group life (Johnson-Lenz, 1991).	P+T
Complementing the open space outer tier is an inner tier of group process patterns and software tools supporting continuous group learning. Its teaming/integrating dynamics hold diverse, potentially conflicting perspectives in patterns for creative interaction. It includes tools for: group coordination -- managing tasks and workflow group intelligence -- generating, organizing, and evaluating ideas group knowledge -- creating shared multi-media knowledge webs and organizational memories and using them as a source of ongoing navigational guidance special-purpose group processes like circles	P+T
Control System This architecture holds the polar opposites of order and disorder, control and spontaneity in creative, dynamic relationship, reflecting ancient Taoist wisdom (Walker, 1992) and the generative principles of modern chaos theory. Disorder between groups is bounded by existing societal policy and the formal dynamics of the policy-making process itself, and within groups by the need for effective group dynamics, yielding a process of creative, unpredictable (chaotic) discovery, innovation, and learning. Chaos doesn't govern. Society is not out of control. It learns its way into the future with managed chaos nested in a control system keeping it on course. The WEB provides strategic guidance while formal governing institutions make policy and manage operations.	P+T
Inquiry and Policy Teams Self-selected inquiry teams emerge in response to crises and opportunities, sometimes by citizens acting on their own and sometimes at the request of government officials or agencies. They are supported by groupware for framing and developing multi-perspective, open-ended knowledge webs on issues. Anyone can start an inquiry team at any time. The most effective ones involve members from diverse cultures who can see beyond each other's blind spots. Once an issue has sufficient attention, a random sample of citizens representing all stakeholders is selected for a policy team that makes recommendations34 to formal governing bodies after exploring issues from knowledge webs developed by inquiry teams. The WEB has developed to the point where most governments welcome these recommendations for the wisdom they hold and the political support they carry.	P+T
Learning Democracy35 The WEB learning system complements formal government. The official government runs the ship, while the dynamic flux of learning teams charts its course. Most decisions are made by elected officials and representatives after careful consideration of WEB policy team recommendations. In some smaller local governments, where trust is high and budgets limited, WEB policy teams are beginning to make less controversial decisions directly. A WEB learning team is currently framing the question of whether and how its learning system of inquiry and policy teams can replace existing official policy making procedures. A policy team will be selected soon to make a recommendation on this matter.	P+T

The more Laurel learned about the WEB and the ways that computer-supported citizen inquiry teams had developed, the more impressed she became. Diverse groups of ordinary people were actively involved in identifying and framing emergent issues, deliberating difficult tradeoffs with the aid of skilled facilitators and groupware tools, and making well-informed, well-considered recommendations for steering through the rapids of change into the future.

Laurel thought back to her experience with the Resourceful Cascadia Learning Team and all she'd learned about the personal disciplines of presence and capacitance. They had done a fine job on a very challenging issue, even though the resolution required increased cut-backs and extremely creative conservation. But the priorities were clear and took all needs into account, including future generations. She felt a deep sense of fulfillment knowing she was playing her part in this vitally important process.

To ease this transition, many, many people must be involved in learning and leading, rethinking and restructuring, considering tough tradeoffs, and making dramatic changes as compassionately as possible. We believe that groupware can play a critical role in the communications, learning, and knowledge systems to support this great work.

Our future depends on a creative, ethical, compassionate global mind supported by the planetwide reach of our electronic global brain. Groupware for a small planet begins with us.

1. See Johnston, 1986 for an explanation of the evolutionary necessity of such "forgetting."

2. Telework center: a place where people telecommunicate or work at a distance; usually located in neighborhoods or communities, often with child care nearby; a way to balance the need to work in a social environment while reducing the need for commuting.

3. Co-housing: begun in Denmark, an innovative approach to housing design that retains the benefits of private homes while fostering a truly cooperative community (Fromm, 1991).

4. Eco-village: a community living in balanced harmony with itself as well as nature (Gilman, 1991).

5. Industrial ecology: industrial infrastructures designed as a series of interlocking "ecosystems" where waste and other by-products from one company serve as raw materials for another (Tibbs, 1992).

6. Earth community: the community of all living things on Earth including the natural world (Berry, 1988).

7. Wicked issues: issues so complex that they are dilemmas with no single "right" answer (Rittel and Webber, 1973).

8. See Lappé and Du Bois, 1994.

9. See Stacey, 1992.

10. See Heifetz, 1992.

11. Active Listening: listening with empathy; paraphrasing what has been said well enough so the other person feels heard (Gordon, 1970).

12. Telepresence: the use of technology to establish a sense of shared presence or shared space among geographically separated members of a group (Buxton, 1991).

13. Electronic meeting system: groupware originally developed for same-time/same-place meetings; group intelligence tools for idea generation, organization, and evaluation, often used in a room where everyone has a computer and the results are displayed on a group screen; also called group support systems; see Jessup and Valacich, 1993 and Bostrom, Watson, and Kinney, 1992.

14. Social accounting: a method for accounting for the resources invested, benefits, costs, net return, and return on resources of all stakeholder groups in a corporation, including investors, employees, customers, associated firms, and the public (Halal, 1978).

15. Nexus: a bond or link between members of a group; the brand name of Laurel's palmtop, solar-powered, wireless, gesture- and voice-sensitive, multi-media workstation; its trademark slogan: "We put the whole group in your hand."

16. Sanctuary: a safe and sacred space for practicing "forgotten" ways of knowing and new ways of being in community.

17. See Johnson-Lenz, 1992a for a description of a virtual circle groupware process based on a native ritual of "passing a talking stick" and taking turns to tell one's truth from the heart.

18. Kything: the art of being spiritually present with another (Savary and Berne, 1990). Telepresence is the attempt to connect people through cyberspace (technologically created "space" where we met by telephone, computer, videoconference, etc.), while kything is presence in hyperspace (imaginal "space" were we meet mind-to-mind, essence-to-essence). See Johnson-Lenz, 1989 and 1992a for discussions of the difference between cyberspace and hyperspace.

19. See Johnson-Lenz, 1992a for accounts of the impact of presence on personal/spiritual growth work via computer network.

20. See Johansen, et al., 1991.

21. See Short, 1991 for more on leadership through self-differentiation, bringing whatever one is experiencing into a group, thereby increasing group intelligence and learning.

22. Knowbot: a software agent programmed to search knowledge networks; a knowledge robot.

23. Asynchronous: not at the same time; people using groupware at times of their own choosing, rather than being on line at the same time.

24. Rolling present: the moving "window" of group attention in asynchronous virtual meetings; what the group is currently focused on; "now" is larger than a single moment and may range from several hours to several weeks, depending on the flow of interactions (Henry, 1985).

25. Capacitance: the amount of "aliveness" one is able to embody; one's ability to hold multiple conflicting points of view in creative relationship (Johnston, 1986).

26. Inner and outer polarities: (1) a polarity within oneself, such as work and play, masculine and feminine, success and failure; (2) a polarity in an issue or domain, such as labor and management, economy and environment, liberal and conservative; bridging polarities involves understanding the larger whole of which the poles are a part (Johnston, 1991).

27. See Smith and Wagner, 1984.

28. See Heifetz, 1988.

29. See Mindell, 1992.

30. See Johnston, 1991.

31. See Johnson-Lenz, 1992c.

32. Tailorable groupware: flexible groupware which can be shaped to support a group's purpose and process, ideally by those using it. We first encountered the term tailoring in the work of Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz on EIES®, the Electronic Information Exchange System (Turoff, 1971; Hiltz and Turoff, 1978). The high-level programming language in which EIES could be tailored was unique and powerful, but too complex for nonprogrammers. More recently, Malone and colleagues have come closer with Object Lens whose goal is "to be 'radically tailorable;' that is, nonprogrammers can customize the system for a wide variety of applications" (Malone and Lai, 1992).

33. See Johnson-Lenz, 1991.

34. The Jefferson Center (Minneapolis) has been conducting Citizen Jury panels since 1976; randomly selected members participate in several days of hearings before voting on recommendations announced to the public; for example, a 1992 panel made recommendations on US federal budget cuts.

35. Learning Democracy: we first heard this term in early 1993 from Ron Thomas, Community Design Exchange, Seattle, Washington.

References

Berry, Thomas (1988). The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

Buxton, William (1991). "Telepresence: Integrating Shared Task and Personal Spaces." In Hendricks, P. R. H., ed., Groupware 1991: The Potential of Team and Organizational Computing. SERC, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Bostrom, Robert, Watson, Richard, and Kinney, Susan, eds. (1992). Computer Augmented Teamwork: A Guided Tour. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

Elgin, Duane (1981). Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich. William Morrow, New York.

Elgin, Duane (1993). Awakening Earth: Exploring the Dimensions of Human Evolution. William Morrow, New York.

Engelbart, Douglas (1988). "Bootstrapping and the Handbook Cycle." Presented at CSCW '88, Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Portland, Oregon.

Fromm, Dorit (1991). Collaborative Communities, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

Gilman, Robert (1991). "The Eco-Village Challenge." In Context, No. 29, Summer 1991, pp. 10-14.

Gordon, Thomas (1970). P.E.T. Parent Effectiveness Training: The Tested New Way to Raise Responsible Children. Peter H. Wyden, New York.

Halal, William (1978). "Beyond the Profit Motive: The Post-Industrial Corporation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 1978.

Harman, Willis and Hormann, John (1990). Creative Work: The Constructive Role of Business in Transforming Society. Knowledge Systems, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Heifetz, Ronald (1988). Interview in INC., October 1988, pp. 37-48.

Heifetz, Ronald (1992). Leadership With and Without Authority. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Henry, William (1985). In EIES conference C374, "The Social Dynamics of Teleconferencing." Electronic Information Exchange System, Computer Conferencing and Communications Center, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey.

Hiltz, Starr Roxanne and Turoff, Murray (1978). The Network Nation: Human Communication Via Computer. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

Jessup, Leonard and Valacich, Joseph, eds. (1993). Group Support Systems: New Perspectives. Macmillan, New York.

Johansen, Robert, et al. (1991). Leading Business Teams. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1980). "Groupware: The Emerging Art of Orchestrating Collective Intelligence." Presented at the World Future Society's First Global Conference on the Future, Toronto, Ontario.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1989). "Humanizing Hyperspace." In Context, No. 23, Fall 1989, pp. 52-57.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1991). "Post-Mechanistic Groupware Primitives: Rhythms, Boundaries, and Containers." In Greenburg, S., ed., Computer-supported Cooperative Work and Groupware. Academic Press, New York.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1992a). "Writing and Wholeness: Online Islands of Safety." In Mason, R., ed., Computer Conferencing — The Last Word. Beach Holme Publishing Ltd., Victoria, BC.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1992b). "The Imperative to Choose." Dentsu Institute for Human Studies By-LINE Journal, Special Issue on Information-based Civilization, Center for Global Communications, International University of Japan, Tokyo.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1992c). Using Our Differences Creatively: Computer-Augmented Dialogues on Tough Societal Issues. Institute for Awakening Technology, Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Johnson-Lenz, Peter and Trudy (1993). "Deliberative Electronic Democracy." Conference on Designing the Next Generation of Electronic Town Meetings, Meridian Institute, San Francisco.

Johnston, Charles (1986). The Creative Imperative: A Four-Dimensional Theory of Human Growth and Planetary Evolution. Celestial Arts, Berkeley.

Johnston, Charles (1991). Necessary Wisdom: Meeting the Challenge of a New Cultural Maturity. Institute for Creative Development, Seattle.

Kelly, Kevin (1992). "Deep Evolution: The Emergence of Postdarwinism." Whole Earth Review, Fall 1992, pp. 4-20.

Lappé, Frances Moore and Du Bois, Paul (1994). Doing Democracy. Institute for the Arts of Democracy, San Raphael, California. Forthcoming.

Malone, Thomas and Lai, Kum-Yew (1992). "Toward Intelligent Tools for Information Sharing and Collaboration." In Bostrom, R., Watson, R., and Kinney, S., eds., Computer Augmented Teamwork: A Guided Tour. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

Meadows, Donella, Meadows, Dennis, and Randers, Jorgen (1992). Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future. Chelsea Green Press, Post Mills, Vermont.

Milbraith, Lester (1989). Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out. SUNY Press, Albany, New York.

Mindell, Arnold (1992). The Leader as Martial Artist: An Introduction to Deep Democracy. Harper SF, San Francisco.

Opper, Susanna and Fersko-Weiss, Henry (1991). Technology for Teams: Enhancing Productivity in Networked Organizations. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

Peck, Scott (1993). A World Waiting to Be Born: Rediscovering Civility. Forthcoming.

Rittell, H. W. J. and Webber, M. M. (1973). "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning." Policy Science, Vol. 4, pp. 155-169.

Savary, Louis and Berne, Patricia (1990). Kything: The Art of Spiritual Presence. Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey.

Senge, Peter (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. Doubleday Currency, New York.

Short, Ronald (1991). A Special Kind of Leadership: The Key to Learning Organizations. The Leadership Group, Seattle.

Smith, Leif and Wagner, Pat (1984). Manual for Using the Office for Open Network. Pattern Research, Denver.

Stacey, Ralph (1992). Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Theobald, Robert (1993). Turning the Century: Personal and Organizational Strategies For Your Changed World. Knowledge Systems, Indianapolis.

Tibbs, Hardin (1992). "Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry." Whole Earth Review, Winter 1992, pp. 4-19.

Turoff, Murray (1971). "Delphi and Its Potential Impact on Information Systems." In AFIPS '71 Conference Proceedings. AFIPS Press, Montvale, New Jersey.

Walker, Brian (1992). Hua Hu Ching: The Teaching of Lao Tzu. Clark City Press, Livingston, Montana.