Lend me your mind, imagine. Imagine yourself in a foreign country, in a huge city, in distress. Imagine you pull out your smartphone, fire up that app, and make your choices. You sway its camera at the hundreds of passersby. There, it highlights that gal, highlights her because out of the hundreds of people around you she is the one you chose. She is trustworthy, kind, helpful, speaks your language and knows what it takes to get you out of your calamity. “Excuse me miss?” You are right on your way out of your dire straights.
Imagine you are in a room full of the strangers you called upon to help with this new project. Right when you get up to commence this start up meeting the door opens. Your phone gives off a tiny sound. Its asshole alarm. No problem, nothing to worry about. Maybe you’ll read up on what caused people to label this latecomer so unfavorably. You may talk to him about it and tell him what you expect of him. Or you’ll just have an eye on him throughout the project.
Imagine you lived in a world pervaded by an ubiquitous network. Imagine a globe spanning web of people, linking you, me, everyone. Cliquism, nepotism, cronyism, favoritism … these are all solutions to a fundamental problem in the organization of human society – the problem of finding people who you can trust to rise to the challenges you set them. We will not need these superannuated solutions. We may not even need hierarchies.
All we need is to know about each other. We need to know about our capabilities and characters. Or rather, we just need a way to find out, a way that is considerably easier than what we have. The good news is, we already have that knowledge. We just need to share it. With this knowledge at our fingertips there is nothing that the web of people cannot do. We can change our lifes and the organization of the world by sharing this knowledge.
This is what Ki is Who Wi is about – sharing that kind of knowledge. The original article about this idea is here. The project is currently under development here. KiIsWhoWi the Who is Who Wiki matters because the Key is who we are.