Two organisations in the U.K. - the Royal Society of Arts and NESTA - are carrying out research in to how people can innovate in networks, rather than either on their own or simply with the person the other side of the waste basket.
In another part of the park, J.D. Stanley at Cisco has been working hard for several years on Digital Swarming: or how to combine inputs from people, machines and other data sources, digitize them and place them on to networks.
All of this work falls in to the category of trying to understand how people can create, collaborate and share new ideas across dispersed places and spaces.
It's exciting, important and without a doubt what matters in a world in which the connectedness of people, information and technology is all-pervasive. But is there something missing?
Sometimes, animals don't relate but share stuff and copy one another.
At other times, states or experiences change by accident or projection.
In other words, some relationships form on the basis of what writer and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry once called sympathetic vibration and saw in the behaviour of a violin:
The A string of a violin is designed to vibrate most readily at about 440 vibrations per second: the note A. If that same note is played loudly not on the violin but near it, the A string may hum in sympathy.
Put another way, what may matter in networked innovation is not just mechanics or structure, but also tone - a tone that's set not just by trust but also momentum, and the design of a stage upon which people feel able and want to perform.
Image of Eliasson installation courtesy of Anna Maria Leon, horses by grandylion, window reflection by lux fecit.
