Intro Post - Ryan Markwart

Welcome
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Hi everyone,

Here’s my journey in a nutshell.

Through my search for purpose, I’ve found myself drawn to the meta-crisis and effective altruism. With a passion for coming up with bold, unconventional ideas, I initially approached climate change as a problem that can have fresh & exciting solutions. I realized some time later that meaningful social change needs to be at the core of addressing it.

Merging my passion for both live music and tackling the climate crisis, I envisioned a world where live music on every street corner could bring neighbors together, fostering stronger connections and a greater sense of community. When people spend more time together, they tend to care more about each other—leading to better communication, deeper conversations, and more collective problem-solving.

Not wanting to simply organize events myself, I decided to create a local event map—a tool that helps people discover and attend more events near them, using technology to make community engagement easier. After building a simple prototype, I explored ways to expand the concept, considering how platform profits could be used to create a community fund, where locals vote on how funds are allocated based on collective needs.

This thought-journey led me eventually to knowledge sharing and open data—the idea that human progress accelerates when we openly collaborate. I imagined a global platform that presents real-world examples, historical insights, and emerging ideas, supported by 24/7 multilingual VR discussions and live debates to challenge and refine what we consider “truth.” However, I soon ran into a fundamental challenge: human ego. Many knowledge-sharing platforms exist, yet their creators often work in silos, reluctant to collaborate—even when their mission is to break down those very silos.

Now, I’m rethinking knowledge sharing as a social movement rather than just a platform. What if industries led by example, gradually opening up their data and being recognized for doing so? Could this trigger a ripple effect, leading to a future where all knowledge is continuously merged until there’s a single, accessible source?

These are the ideas my reasoning has led me to so far, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is community-building and collective sense-making truly the best way to solve our biggest challenges? I’m still in the early stages of exploring these concepts, so I’d really appreciate your insights and advice.

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I love that vision of live music on street corners bringing neighbours together! :star_struck: nice to read your intro, Ryan :smiley:

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Hi Ryan, I was just going to suggest that when you’re looking for answers (solutions, insights…) - you try looking for less rather than more. Sometimes focusing on a single word or a seemingly abstract poem gives more of a context than an elaborate essay…

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Hi Ryan, that’s a great story, thanks for sharing. As you may know a number of us here are interested in open data and knowledge sharing platforms too and I think they’re definitely part of the solution - our Wiki project, though still in early stages, is an expression of this.

Not sure if you’ve checked out our white papers but these are some of our more well-developed takes on the best way to respond to today’s polycrisis. Would be very interested to hear your thoughts on these.

Your point about human ego is very much to the point though - a core idea here is that inner development (drawing on adult development theory we can include ego-development, relational development and moral development among others) is a necessary complement to purely technical solutions.

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Hey Ryan, I heard you’re meeting up with Naryan? Reading your intro here, I can’t wait for you to get connected with Cohere Toronto and the post-EA post-rat network in that area!

As for community-building and collective sense-making, I’m a yes-and adding “inner development” to the relational trifecta that relates across I/we/world scopes fractally.

Also offering: Would be happy to connect and share my own story/path through these ideas. cheers

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Thank you Jonah! I’d love to learn about how the Wiki project comes along. It’s always interesting to experiment on how data should be organized/visualized.

Yes I’ve looked through the white papers and strong agree with a cultural paradigm shift being necessary for a sustained future. And yes both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ changes are important in societal transformations.

I believe “New Tools” create cultural shifts such as printing press have helped in spreading religion globally. While religious texts were being spread around the world, so too was the idea of the printing press. In this case, the tool and the idea had a feedback loop until most of the developed world was printing & religious. So whether an internal shift leads to deep collaboration or deep collaboration leads to an internal shift, I believe deep collaboration needs a tool so that the idea can spread (on the scale and speed we need to save everyone).

These technologies can be informed by the inner development frameworks from ‘adult development theory’ (which is very exciting), then spread widely. I’m truly looking forward to a future of collective prosperity.

Again thank you Jonah for the words.

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Hi James,

Thank you for the kind words and wishes. I’ve already reached out to those local people and hope to get deeply woven.

Yes, I’d love to connect and share stories. My email is [email protected]

Thank you!

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