You’re answering the question in a different way from my intention. My intention was almost personal -- not personal-personal, but personal. You’re talking about assistance.

I didn’t hear what you said. I’m sorry.

I don’t mind doing that. I’m not sure that is the thing that I would choose. What I am more drawn to is a very different level of question. I want to ask you, Audrey, is there any place where you’re challenged and need support?

The conversation we are having?

Which video are you talking about?

A little impossible.

The driving would be very complicated, because I’m in Israel at that time.

Audrey is coming to the US?

Who?

This is at a governmental level, so it is less emergent than whoever shows up.

That’s what came to me. I’m curious, Audrey, if that appeals.

You can’t, I can’t, Audrey can’t, but if we open a conversation and think about, "What is the next, immediate step?" It seems to me always important to have the most unrestrained, largest vision and the most concrete next step. Those are the two things most important.

I am exactly applying the principle to what we have. The question that you asking, Tom, you feel like you’re treading water, because you are single, individually trying to solve the problem of, "What of this can be transported where, in what form? Who would support it? Who would be ...

The first conversation is three people. The second conversation, maybe those same three people and two others that they bring, the third conversation, the first three may not even be there. I’m just taking the...

That was the thing that I was bubbling with. Not every week, but maybe you define a once-a-week or roving time. If you want to do it global, it wouldn’t be able to be the same time each time, and not the same people. You rove the time, and you ...

It’s only important to recognize that there is something that is an intersection of our interests, purposes, personal predilections, and all of that, and here we are. Might this be the seeds of something virtual that is like the space that you have in the Social Innovation Lab?

I’m thinking, here we are. The three of us are talking. You are in Taiwan. You are doing this thing. Tom and I are each doing our thing in a variety of ways, contexts, and purposes. What unites us is something that we could conceivably try to define, but may ...

The thing that Tom was accurate that I’m bubbling with is I learned this concept that I really like. I don’t know who invented it or where it came from, but I’m sure you know of it. It’s called adjacent possible. You know this?

In modern capitalist culture, it has been flattened into only one dimension of linear time. The concept of efficiency has been emptied of content. In the same way, cost has been emptied of content and is now one-dimensional about money. That’s all.

It felt important to name it. How do you define cost? If you go back to basic science, the definition of efficiency is the relationship between input and useful output. You want to maximize the ratio.

...was not the most cost effective. I want to challenge that. I think that it is the most cost effective, if you factor in the right costs.

I have a little, tiny loop that I want to close about something from before, really tiny. We were talking about this hospital. You were saying that the hospital is not the most cost benefit...

Go ahead.

Relationship and capitalizing on local strengths and local sensibilities is paramount if this thing is going to be extrapolated. It can’t be replicated, can’t be exported. It can only be extrapolated, packaged into principles and building blocks, and then, redeployed in some other place based on the capacities that are ...

Yes, it’s like a mobile. There’s certain mobiles that only operate in one way. There’s certain other mobiles that, if you pick this piece and you hang it from this piece, it looks a certain way. If you pick this other piece and you hang it from there, it looks ...

If you apply that meta-principle of what are the strengths of the local culture and the local people, not what did they do in Taiwan and how can you do it here, but how did they go about figuring out what they could do? How can we replicate the process ...

In some other place, the same principle might result in a design that will be semi-top-down. In some other place, it might result in a design that is very organized, where there are local circles that then send representatives to something else.

A core design principle that I am gleaning from this is use the natural and emergent strengths of the culture and the people that are involved.

I like to think in terms of building blocks and principles. I have a sense that the building blocks here are specific platforms, specific, cumulative experience of different things that work in different contexts that you can then generalize and get little bits. Then, there is design principles. I’m talking ...

I have a question, if it’s OK. Is it, Tom?

I want to see if I understand the answer. What I’m hearing is that when there is any reason to believe, either because of the source of the petition or because of the nature of the issue, that there are specific populations that would be necessary to involve, then the ...

I completely understand that it doesn’t matter to have representative sample. All that matters is that the issues and perspectives are on the table, but if there is a perspective that is wholly rural, how will it ever make it here?

I have, again, a clarifying question, which is suppose there is an issue that has a very sharp divide between urban and rural people. I’m making it up. The way that you describe everything, when I imagine the typical participant, they don’t look very rural to me.

It can absorb and eject things. If something absorbs and stays there, then it starts participating in the process of shaping, like a recursive shaping.

The culture is very porous, malleable.

Like an emergent incubator. It’s a place where relationship, platform, and ideas mutually influence.

I have a clarifying question. The way that I’m understanding it, the people that you’re talking about are the people who maintain, sustain, design, and expand the platform, not the process of citizen participation. Correct?

Tom, do you have something of yours?

Yeah. If this is a successful meeting, what will you each have gotten from it?

I still want to repeat my question, because this is what is proposed to do. The purpose is what is the hope that doing these things will accomplish?

I would like to interject something small, which is I find it usually helps to define a purpose for a call at the beginning. It helps navigate it. I am not going to define the purpose. I am riding along, but if the two of you could get to a ...

...if it’s your Zoom line.