SoR Research Call - From Users to Sense-Makers: On the Role of Tools-for-Thought in Scaffolding Inner Development - with Ronen Tanari

​Developmental Spaces (DS) are a promising new model for supporting inner development for individuals and groups in service of broader socio-cultural transformation. The DS white paper outlines core curricula across complementary domains of growth (e.g., emotional, spiritual, cognitive) and explores community-oriented practices to support growth within and across domains. Our question is: what roles can technology play in scaffolding inner development? As observed in the DS white paper, modern technology has granted humanity extraordinary power for changing our external reality, “but we still struggle to imagine changing our minds." Is that the nature of technology or a consequence of the way it is deployed in service of the dominant world system? How might technology support (and not erode) the development of cognitive complexity and critical thinking? We will explore these questions with an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from research on embodied cognition, sense-making, collective intelligence, and tools-for-thought (for example note-taking tools like Obsidian). We will also present some early findings from Semble, a social tool-for-thought we are developing on AT Protocol (the decentralized social networking protocol underlying Bluesky). Finally, we will discuss field-building efforts and share some thoughts on how these initiatives could be funded at the scale necessary to effect broad systems change.