THE MISSION
Nanquanu’s desires are complemented by a unique mission statement. This mission turns them into an effective and fruitful approach to stimulate the growth of collective intelligence, and reads as follows:
“Build, nurture and sustain a world-wide, inclusive and diverse network of contributors who help, or learn how to help creating Nanquanu’s collective intelligence systems for the purpose of
1) integral growth of collective intelligence within Nanquanu: applying the collective-intelligence-systems to Nanquanu’s inner process to enhance the pursuit of its mission in a recursive way.
2) integral growth of collective intelligence around Nanquanu: applying the collective-intelligence-systems around Nanquanu to contribute to a more creative, eco-aware and fair world.”
Integral growth: integral in this context means ‘doing justice to the whole’. Integral growth is growth that does justice to the whole of all aspects involved in that growth. For example, a society focussing on economical growth only, is far from pursuing integral growth. A society that focusses on societal growth that balances economical, ecological and social concerns is pursuing a more integral form of growth.
Recursive growth: recursion means that a process is defined in terms of itself, enabling a positive snowball effect. In this case this means that Nanquanu and its contributors develop 1 st generation collective-intelligence-systems
that are applied to the growth of Nanquanu and its contributors’ capability to build, nurture and sustain a network of contributors, accelerating the development of more mature 2nd generation collective-intelligence-systems that are applied to the
further growth of Nanquanu’s capability to build, nurture and sustain a network of contributors, accelerating the development of even more mature 3rd generation collective-intelligence-systems that are applied to the further growth of... and so
forth.
Apprentices: Learning is an integral aspect of collective intelligence. Apprentices are therefore explicitly included in the term ‘contributor’. Apprentices are contributors in the role of learning new skills
to help collective-intelligence-system construction. Hence, the words ‘build’ and ‘nurture’ in the mission statement also apply to pursuing an ever more refined learning environment for apprentices. An essential part of Nanquanu’s collective-intelligence-systems will be applied to improve its internal learning environment. Note that any person within Nanquanu can take both roles, and any gradation in between, being an apprentice in one area, while being (more or fully) professional in another. Continuous, cyclic learning is encouraged.
Inclusive: Inclusive means that Nanquanu pursues and facilitates the inclusion of anyone that can positively contribute to its mission, also those for whom the threshold to participate is – normally – high.
This includes people who are underprivileged in any way. Examples are people with limited financial means or disabilities.
MEET THE FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR
OTEONU
“As a teenager I observed that a lot of talent of my peers was not noticed, let alone supported, by school. Moreover, I saw the beauty of and the synergy between all subjects, and was appealed by the notion “homo universalis”.
As a student (engineering and math) I was blessed with several 1-to-1 relations with professors, even visiting them at home. The university as institution, however, was quite inefficient. Mostly things were explained too
slowly or quickly. Students were not facilitated to share and refine learning insights or to participate in real R&D research. Subjects were hardly related to each other, society and the broader sense of life.
I hardly attended lectures. Nevertheless, I graduated cum laude, following my own approach. (Collaborative) learning and creating can be organised so much better! This inspired me to devote myself to lecturing, developing
and research related to collective-intelligence-systems at several institutes for many years.”
Collective-intelligence-systems together are integral. Note that an individual collective-intelligence-system may be quite specialistic and only target a single aspect of collective intelligence. For example, a collective-intelligence-system may target second language acquisition. It is in the way and the combination in which Nanquanu applies these systems that they are contributing to integral growth.
MODERN COLLECTIVE-INTELLIGENCE-SYSTEMS
Examples of modern collective-intelligence-systems are Wikipedia, Mastodon (similar to Twitter/X) and Cryptpad (similar to Google Docs and Office 365). Collective intelligence is present whenever the intelligence of a human group is greater than the sum of the members’ intelligences. A collective-intelligence-system fosters the collective intelligence of a group in a certain respect. These systems are as old as humanity. However, modern collective-intelligence-systems use the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, revolutionising collective-intelligence-system design. Using the Internet allows forms of collective intelligence that were impossible before. For example, Wikipedia allows encyclopedic information to be developed and kept up-to-date at an unprecedented rate, by allowing anyone in the World to edit the encyclopedia, while, with its cleverly designed organisational structure, it still is qualitatively on par with premium encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The two aspects of Nanquanu’s mission illustrated: (1) growth within Nanquanu, by the growing arrow-loop that shows that Nanquanu creates collective-intelligence-systems that ‘feed’ its inner process recursively, and (2) growth around Nanquanu, by the arrow leading to the forest, which symbolises its systems also feed the world around it.