How is it that Scenius manage to coordinate disparate people without "governments or companies"? Alan Kay believes it's captured in the 'power of context'.
I agree.
Scenius is capable of unique coordination because collectively they create and play unique games.
Finding a new game is a natural thing to do for curious, dedicated people. They naturally want to find a "creative frontier that is large". Large enough to play for a long time. (h/t @michaelnielso
The Royal Society is a great example — they basically formed around the new social "game" of science. Science was such a niche pursuit at the time, that only a few geeks would center around "doing science" for fun.
Once a new game is formed, groups want to recruit, so they often make legible pathways for new participation in the frontier. They document discoveries, share interesting problems, and evangelize "the thing". The Royal Society wanted to spread the gospel of science.
When the game is exciting enough, word spreads, and an entire scene develops around it. There is a new frontier to explore. The "rules" for this new space are mostly social — the Hackers had their "hacker ethic", the Inklings had their "mythopoetic vision"
Sometimes you don't know the rules for the new game yet. Moments like this are exciting. You can feel a new game forming that you want to play -- that you might want to play for years -- and you've got a shot at greatness. https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1326823134503161857?s=20
Sometimes the game is crashed. A corporate interest takes notice, the powers that be are brought to bear on the problem. It's amazing AND tragic. You did it! You convinced the world to play. But now it's over, you need to move on to the next game. https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1399600658097926144?s=20
It's hard to know which "new, exciting game" will turn out to be tremendously valuable. The Royal Society was 12 dudes who loved the game of science. The Hackers cared more about the game of "neat hacks" than impressing anyone else. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1433678357539930112?s=20
Economic incentives need to keep people together, AND the social economy needs to reward innovation. When a scene's social incentives converge with "something brilliant", they can't help being brilliant. https://twitter.com/TylerAlterman/status/1340677941592776704?s=20
Peter Thiel is famous for denouncing competition. Scenius seems to agree: by playing a new game, you create a new incentive landscape. A new status hierarchy. One scene gets "a monopoly" on exploring "The New Thing", and impressing your peers becomes all that matters, more than money.
Conjecture: any successful new science basically starts as a new game that a group of people love to play with one another. The incentives of that game shape the field.
https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1424111483001135107?s=20
The social incentive landscapes of new games can be observed through the flow of social capital throughout the scene. What contributions earn social capital in this scene?
https://twitter.com/kevinakwok/status/1306402892983619585?s=20
A "new game" is also commonly referred to as a "frontier", and it's common for groups to build an "innovation commons" around these new frontiers
https://twitter.com/samhbarton/status/1447080801791725568?s=20
“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.” ― Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions