Part I: The Collective Unconscious

There are a couple of moments when I know the collective unconscious is at work:

1. I have an 'a-ha!' moment instantly when someone tells me an idea. I don't have to think to hard about it. It's been sitting in my brain stem, waiting for someone much smarter than me to come along and iterate it.
   
   
2. I have what I think is a brilliant, original thought, then I do a search and find out that there are people all over the world having that very same brilliant, original thought.

We are all 'on the same page', even though our experiences are very different in getting to those thoughts. It's actually kind of eerie.

What I love about communications technology (internet, cell, etc.) is that it allows us to realize that collective unconscious when it bubbles up to full-fledged public space idea.

Some examples of how this collective unconscious is manifesting right now:

Barcamp - sure, it had to start somewhere, but there was a definite need for it. And...in some cases, it seems that the same sort of thing was being planned concurrently without even knowing about Barcamp. To me, this is mind-blowing.

Tagging - Once again, started somewhere, but something about it made sense to a great number of people. And now, through tagging, other collectives are being formed...memes, groups, etc. Either way, it seems to be the basis for most new companies springing up. Why? Because it makes sense. Because alot of people are having 'a-ha' moments when they see it.

Web 2.0 - I know I'll get flack on this one, but why did the term explode then become such a bone of contention with people? I believe everyone felt it was happening and when Web 2.0 was uttered, everyone went "that's it!". It wasn't just a conference to people for a good reason...

Coworking - Chris is working on this right now. Funny thing is, he's finding people all over the world that are working on the very same thing. Wild.

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People write books about this all of the time. Books about secrets to success: successful products, campaigns and how they found the secret sauce. I don't buy it. Nobody can know that until they see it happening. You can sometimes 'feel' if something is a good idea, but you can't be the originator...then you are biased. I believe that things become successful because they have, somehow, tapped into the collective unconscious. You can't put a formula on that. It's all intuition.

Who would have thought the Cabbage Patch Kids would have exploded? (totally dating myself) Then died? How do you predict that? The X-Box, I can understand. Tickle Me Elmo? Not so much. Neopets? Erm... Even MySpace...really, have you tried to use it? Slow, terrible UI (I could not figure out how to set up my own profile - pure research, really - for the life of me). Now, it's defining an entire generation. Ugg boots? Yech. Who says the collective has taste? ;)

Anyway, how this fits into everything is that these concurrent a-ha moments can connect more easily than ever. And connection is key to the next step...the power of the community.

technorati tags: collectiveunconscious, web2.0, techonolgy, socialsoftware