Thingk.com will be a free community product; however, we are looking to encourage a revenue stream by offering premium tools for crafting the representation of the Thingks on the site and for patternsmithing them into the world.  I have neither the delusion that this company will be capable of inventing all of the possible ways of expressing or creating representations into the world nor the desire to corner that, so we will be looking to offer partners the ability to sell their tools on this site.  Now that brings up a few questions and all of them relate to if the site will immediately become littered with commercialism and the answer is a firm no.  That means the following things outright:

• The desire to give the web community an incredible free basic toolset for persisting, discovering, and using thingks will be fully realized — this base functionality will always be available for free.
• Opportunities to buy more powerful tools will be non-intrusive – the screen real estate will not be littered with it.  It will only be available when you really seek it out, tucked away neatly in the user interface.  Also there won’t be annoying intrusions on experience, trying to prod a user into upgrading – people are quite intelligent enough to seek out things they want.  This is not to imply that it will be difficult to find what you want or that there won’t be a good user interface once you begin seeking out premium tools.
• Users with premium tools will not have an obvious advantage over others, its just a matter of preference.  As a physical analogy, think of an art community where everyone is given a sketchpad, a basic set of pencils, brushes, and paint – the refined artist may choose to purchase an easel, premium paper, brushes, oil paint, etc; however, this doesn’t imply that either will produce better art – it is up to the artist to use the tools given or purchases along with their creativity.

The intention for DreamSpawn is to give the clients who use this service the full array of premium tools as they are made available — which brings up another point: companies and individuals who choose to do so may purchase the full array of tools available (with royalties paid to each of the partners who are represented as well).  This will be done for DreamSpawn for a reason that is explained below:

DreamSpawn is a concept I’ve been trying to tackle for years – probably since I was a teenager.  I wanted people to unlock their full potential but it would take me a long time to see the pieces of the puzzle and even more time to put them together.  I believe that once people reorient their mind toward viewing their larger dreams (which might span a large problem/solution domain) as a set of ThingKs, or thoughts on their way to becoming things, they have a whole new way of tackling the problem — this is typical analysis; however, there is a new spin on it:  By giving the dream itself (and thingks in general) value once persisted, people will begin to move forward with bringing their dreams about.

The other pieces of the puzzle attempt to solve three other problems:

• Dreams and thingks are often kept internal – and often get buried or forgotten.
• People don’t always find the right connections with other individuals and concepts – when this ‘serindipitous event’ happens in life we usually witness the great events (company foundings, product launches, etc) that we all have come to celebrate.
• We all constantly work on skills to complete our vocational work, but all too often we don’t have the general skills or specific schools to create the dreams (set of thingks) that inspire us from time to time.

These needs are addressed by thingk.com, fluxpoints.com, and patternsmithing.com – not respectively or exclusively, but overlapping in interesting ways.  DreamSpawn brings all of this together by flipping it around to one individual – giving incredible attention to that client (and forcing them in turn to give attention to their dreams) to ensure no impedances keep that from happening.  As individuals choose to invest in time, attention, and money into their dreams, I want to give them a literal arsenal of tools to obliterate potential impedances.  I want their creativity to flow and want a full support network to wipe those three bullet points above off the table for reasons why they may look back and regret not creating this or that dream.

This blog entry is not a sales pitch to get you to sign up as a dreamspawn client – in fact, we’re not ready for you – that’s why this is an announcement of the “launch” of the sister site.  This is meant to only give a larger perspective of what’s going on behind the scenes, and I’m choosing to do what future users of this site may or may not choose to do – I am persisting out publicly a set of Thingks I am actively working on to bring about as a reality.  That is, I am releasing the concepts out there to spark interest, keep myself accountable, and get the dream in front of myself and others.  Collaborators, angel investors, future partners, volunteers, and future employees, as always, are always welcome.  Contact me at http://xri.net/=joel.kotarski or on the contact form on DreamSpawn if interested (also, feedback in general is welcome).

Finally, the PatternSmithing alliance — anyone interested in joining this alliance or learning more, contact me as well.

jdk

A thingk, quite simply, is both an idea that someone passionately pursued/is pursuing and the thing which it was/is becoming when manifested.  Since someone (we will call them the creator of the idea) is passionate about the idea, we can’t just call it a thought, but instead borrow a present-tense term from David Bohm and call it a think.  Since it existed/exists/will exist somewhere, we also call it a thing.  Combining the two words into a portmanteau, we call it a Thingk.

In order to qualify as a thingk, the following must happen to a person’s creation (whether it starts as a thought or a thing in the beginning is irrelevant) in any order:

• A burst of inspiration or a careful design process must bring a thing into the world* whose existence can be confirmed by a resource identifier.
• A thought or thoughts become so activated in the person’s consciousness so as to be qualified as a think or thinks.
• The intention to create something from an activated think or thinks or the intention to express the thinks behind a created thing must be present.

* The thing can exist physically or virtually but must have a computer-accessible and verifiable international resource identifier.

Thus, once the intention, the thing (whether existent or not), and the activated thought (whether expressed or not) come together we have a Thingk.   Stated another way:

think(s) + intention to create something= thingk

or

thing + intention to express underlying think(s) = thingk

When the think- or thing- component(s) of the thingk is partially or fully intention it is a Thingk-in-formation; once intention becomes reality, and there exists both thinks and a thing, it is now considered a Thingk.

The purpose of this site will be as follows:

• By providing a framework to organize the creative process (with associated tools, privacy mechanisms, and attribution), it is believed that the site will increase the quality of all participants’ creative endeavours.
• By allowing someone to release their work to selected individual(s), group(s), or the public at large, valuable feedback mechanisms will increase the quality of work as well as inspire others to new work.
• Both technology and community are expected to further enhance and encourage the creative process for all participants.
• By getting to the kernel of the creative process, it is desired that things we see in the world are matched with the thinks that inspired them or the thinks we hear in the world are seen manifesting into actual things.
• By allowing individuals to catalog the creative process in (hopefully) painless ways with minimal effort, new interconnections can be found between ideas (thinks), creations (things), people (creators), and the thingks which inspired it all.  In other words, we expect lots of new discoveries in terms of collaborations, career paths, and systems effects we were not even aware of.
• Finally, this site intends to lead all users into deeper exploration with their created Thingks, the Thingks that inspire them, and the resonances they imply.  This is meant to span the lifetime of both Thingk(s) and their creator(s).  It is envisioned that initial thingk(s) [prototypes are encouraged] may expand far beyond the scope originally envisioned.

This site is an application of Static Pattern Engineering technology as well as a member of the PatternSmithing Alliance.  It will be based on Semantic Web technology.

I am actively seeking collaborators, founders, research associates, future users, and future employees.  All feedback is welcome.  Contact me at =Joel.Kotarski.