What is the difference of "scenius" to "two heads are better than one"? I think in essence none at all.

Basically it shifts the focus into the social sphere, rather than the individual sphere - the scene rather than the individual. The fact that we apparently have 'times of genius' and, as at the moment, times of stupidity - both depend on the scene.

There is also a likely difference between two people talking and three or four people talking.

scenius is more pretentious.

You use the term 'pretentious' to dismiss discourse. Dismissiveness is true pretentiousness, if you ask me.

Not every idea is worth discussion.

Thank you so much for this new word. I love it!

We can't command it, but we can certainly try to invite it out, experimenting with the conditions where it might emerge.This article made me think about these 14 principles for permaculture... and what it looks like to apply those in social systems http://permaculture-media-d...

Have you had any other scenius sitings since you posted this last year?

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Freedom from interference isn’t license to use/abuse public resources for free.
For example, I wonder how many climbers at Camp4 were medivac’d out?
Their contribution to the future of their particular tribe isn’t a public service per se.
I get that a flow of creative energy does not require institutional regulation and that guard rails can discourage progress. We all have some amount of latent anarchy in us. Yet we cannot become a social problem either. The corrective action is usually far more caustic than the original problem.

Best to be inconspicuous.

IMHO.
-jgp

Great example of scenius is Nicolas Bourbaki, a group of prominent (mainly French) mathematicians that greatly developed modern mathematics

Can a Scenius germinate in purely virtual space? Can scenius exist purely on the web without a physical place to promote interaction?  If not, then can virtual learning environments replace physical schools and universities?

I think you know your answer. Look for example here where we all are reading and commenting, does it perfectly replace the need to gather at night under moonlight just to talk? Yes, even better right... cos through this medium we can and as such we have avidly democratized the teaching-leaning process forever. Distances dwarfed and scalability made easy!

"If not..."
I think you mean "If so . . ."

I know EnlightenNext and you are right Mo, there is scenius, a real place to check out. www.enlightennext.org.

You wrote:
“Although many have tried many times, it is not really possible to command scenius into being.”
In my experience over the last 25 years there are indeed new emerging cultural forms which can indeed “command” or better “intend” into being. Check out EnlightenNext as just one example of a few.

In biology we know that in each living system a self-destructing power is inhereted. So to live means to damp this power. Recently a german-writing internet forum about the wearing of long stockings heavily hurt itself (may be to death) by not being careful enough with the contributions, not damping exaggerations. May be a question of style.

I suppose the greatest challenge in protecting such communities and environments is to recognize them as such. What could be seen as a place for communal acceptance and growth could be nothing more than a cult, while a seemingly pretentious gathering of intellectual friends could turn out to be the generations great thinkers. We must be willing to examine the whole to determine if Scenius is present.

This is an interesting concept that you’ve brought up. I think that great ideas can be brought through a diffusion of a variety of ideas drawn from different sources. This kind of inspiration can come about in a number of different situations, whether its writing a book, or coming up with creative ideas for a cigarette lighter.

Every start up company, or university would like their offices to be an example of scenius. The number of cities in the world hoping to recreate the server racks scenius of Silicon Valley is endless, but very few have achieved anything close. Innumerable art scenes begin and vanish quickly. The serendipitous ingredients for scenius are hard to control. They depend on the presence of the right early pioneers. A place that is open, but not too open.

An example where someone perhaps did conjure scenius into being was T.E. Lawrence’s role in instigating and leading the Arab revolt during WWI. Lawrence’s biographer, John Mack, identified Lawrence’s key quality as a “power of enablement” - the power to expand what people around him thought they could accomplish. A friend of Lawrence’s, the noted author John Buchan, captured some of this sense: “I am not a very tractable person or much of a hero-worshipper, but I could have followed Lawrence over the edge of the world. I loved him for himself, and also because there seemed to be reborn in him all the lost friends of my youth.”

as well with The Well as a striking example in my view. And what about the different web 2.0 successes around at this moment in time Leibniz, Spinoza et al on the Continent worked together bedroom furniture and in competition and communicated extensively.

My nickname for it has been The Pit. A scene where anyone interested in excellence is welcome, despite or even because of unconventionalisms. Making nice-nice and authoritarism are expendable. Merit and discovery is currency although the ability to recognize such can be substituted, given sufficient social skills.

I too was noticing that theme when watching the climber documentary, probably because it was so similar to the Dogtown version (a skateboard documentary (as a kid I was a huge fan of Stecyk)). Even Anakin’s fictional childhood (pod racing) could be considered sceniusy.

My favorite example is in Ellington’s autobiography, where I first understood the long range impact of a scenius master at work, an MC of MCs. If you are familiar with jazz then your initial reaction to his account is likely to be “Who DIDN’T Duke know?”. His story about Tatum and New York is classic. But for me the most scenius moment was the tiny musicians club. You had to be hip just to know it existed, if you really wanted to cut then that was where you wanted to play (and learn). They started instrument nights. When they held a tuba night only a few tubas at a time could fit inside the club itself, so there were a bunch of tuba players sitting out on the curb, waiting for their shot. I can’t think of a more comical instance of excessive excellence.

Kevin,

Again a great post ! Very useful for the team Mobile Monday Amsterdam which I am part of, especially the ways of nurturing the core values.

Your post reminded me of the books written by Richard Florida. The Creative Class and Who’s Your City seem to have similar drivers for success for cities. Tolerance, openness and emergence.

Similarly, your post might be relevant for online communities as well with The Well as a striking example in my view. And what about the different web 2.0 successes around at this moment in time ? How to ‘build’ a successful community ?

Thanks, Yuri. Building a community is a challenge, but it is a different challenge than building a scenius.

The corresponding question for online collaborative communities is interesting - what produces scenius in such communities? Which communities already have it? One place such communities are emerging is on FriendFeed - see e.g., http://friendfeed.com/rooms/the-life-scientists.

The late 1600s has got to be the ultimate example of “scenius”. Newton, Hooke, Wren et al in London and Huygens, Leibniz, Spinoza et al on the Continent worked together and in competition and communicated extensively.

They basically created the foundations for all modern science, mathematics and architecture in about 20 years.

Amazing stuff and a great concept but the name doesn’t seem “sticky”. It’s much better than “emergence” though, so we’ll see.

Sigh…I’ve been part of far too many scenes with scenius that have been killed, often with my help.

Thank you for the last paragraph of this post especially. I need the reminder often.

Check out the Skunkworks story — Lockheed Martin’s development program during the second half of the 20th century. Basically a small group of engineers who designed the most innovative, advanced and record-breaking aircrafts anywhere in the world… and did it over and over again for almost 50 years.

I meant to mention the Skunkworks story. I fixed the “lose” typo, and mention of radar. Thanks all.

Bad guys use these techniques too, with spectacular success. See John Robb at: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com

‘Cities in Civilization’ by Peter Hall is good on this kind of stuff at a city-wide level. It looks at cities that have proved to be crucibles of different kinds of creativity for specific periods in their history. Each chapter focuses on a different city, from Rome and Athens through to Silicon Valley.

I was slightly disappointed that it doesn’t analyse more closely exactly why these places were the right place at the right time, or see what they had in common, but it was still a good overview of a wide variety of amazing places and times.

http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Civilization-Peter-Hall/dp/0394587324/

Thanks, Phil. I’ll check out ‘Cities in Civilization’.

Malcolm Gladwell had a good article on this phenomena where he talks about t-shirts, fashion, and the birth of American Apparel in LA.

http://www.gladwell.com/2000/20000424atshirt.htm

There’s already a word for this - it’s called Emergence. Stephen Johnson wrote a book about it.

Actually I wrote a book about it (emergence), tens years before Stephen. It’s call Out of Control. Go to my name and click on books for a free online version.

Paul Dirac once commented that in the mid-1920s, as quantum mechanics was being invented, even a second rate physicist could do first-rate work.

Just let it be.
No rules.
Right?

The question is whether we can produce a scenius consciously.

Another example of a scenius would be the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project.

Yes, I meant to mention Los Alamos, which certainly qualifies.

I think this same notion could be assigned to many different serendipitous gatherings of greatness - from the basement of Big Pink to the locker room of the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s.

You’re probably right, it can’t be wished into being, but surely there are things that will kill scenius outright. Trying to increase efficiency and/or eliminate plain good fun would seem to be the worst of those…