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Bruce Schuman
Bruce Schuman is a technical analyst and spiritual activist who brings a unique perspective and capability to whole systems community organizing. He is an internet database programmer and web system developer. He has a background in the cognitive science of conceptual structure and in the interpretation of mystical symbolism. He has built many advanced web projects supporting the emergence of the new holistic paradigm.
His most recent article on "The Religion that is to Come" is an interspiritual response to the rising Oneness movement and a vision for unified spiritual guidance in the context of collective global activism.
https://ubiverse.org/posts/the-religion-that-is-to-come
His article on "Our Vast Mosaic" published by the Great Transition Initiative for their "Round Table on the Problem of Action" outlines the design issues that emerge when attempting to translate the emerging new consciousness and holistic paradigm into effective social change activism, and proposes an ambitious and complex technical design for interconnecting the major themes in a comprehensive way.
https://greattransition.org/roundtable/problem-action-bruce-schuman
He has framed the " grand vision" of our current moment and our potential for collective activism on Ubiverse.
https://ubiverse.org/posts/the-grand-vision
His recent article in Kosmos Journal outlines a network design for universal collaboration and democratic governance.
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/a-universal-congress/
THE BRIDGE ACROSS CONSCIOUSNESS
The "Bridge Across Consciousness" is a cognitive science model of the conceptual structure of the human mind organized across levels .
To discuss and explore this subject as it was first emerging, Bruce developed the "BRIDGE-L" listserv network in 1993, which ran on the University of California at Santa Barbara's computer platform until 1997, attracting many academics and graduate students, until the project morphed into United Communities of Spirit.
"The Bridge" sent about 30,000 emails on the subject of the epistemology of religion and the question of whether religions are pointing at the same God.
https://ubiverse.org/posts/the-bridge-across-consciousness
http://originresearch.com/bridge/index.cfm
UNITED COMMUNITIES OF SPIRIT
Bruce developed United Communities of Spirit on the internet beginning in 1996, running on this same origin.org domain. UCS had about 10,000 members until we went offline a few years ago. We have over 200,000 emails in the UCS database. Today, the complete 916-page text of World Scripture which Bruce transcribed by hand into html from 60 floppy disks in 1996 is still running on origin.org
http://origin.org/ucs/ws/ws.cfm
CPWR and URI
Bruce has worked for the Parliament of World Religions (CPWR) and for the United Religions Initiative (URI). He participated in the early formation of the United Religions Initiative, and built their very first "cooperation circle network system". He helped the Parliament of World Religions organize the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona and was an invited delegate to their assembly of world religious leaders in Montserrat. He was also an invited participant in the Goldin Institute interfaith session in Manresa Spain in 2003. The North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) also ran their network on Bruce's "interspirit" database for about 10 years.
INTERSPIRIT AND GLOBAL RESONANCE
In 2002, Bruce created the Interspirit system, following the notion of "interspirituality" originally suggested by Br. Wayne Teasdale. Interspirit is a multi-group network system designed to support the cooperation between many interfaith groups. http://interspirit.net/home.cfm
MANY VOICES - ONE TRUTH
One of the related Interspirit projects was The Global Resonance Network, which we developed in 2002, which ran until about 2008. One of our devoted participants, JoAnn Kite, working by hand with a slow phone connection on AOL, fulfilled her life's dream project, compiling a database of over 11,000 spiritual quotations from 635 books. This searchable and thematically-organized database system is online.
http://interspirit.net/spirit/spirit.cfm
CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION
When Conscious Evolution leader Barbara Marx Hubbard came to Santa Barbara in 1998 and formed her community, Bruce worked with her and the group to set up "The CEN" -- the "Conscious Evolution Network" -- which today runs on Lightpages, another Interspirit application.
http://lightpages.net.
The CEN is at https://lightpages.net/lp/welcome.cfm?login=462819
INTERSPIRIT ALLIANCE
Today, Interspirit supports the Interspirit Alliance, which was developed around the book The Coming Interspiritual Age, by Dr. Kurt Johnson.
http://interspirit.net
POLITICAL ORGANIZING AND SHARED PURPOSE
Bruce began building political organizing web systems in 2008, when he created "USA CAN" for the Obama campaign. In 2009, he worked with transpartisan pioneer Joseph McCormick to help set up the Transpartisan Alliance. In 2010, with the political climate heating up, and political division becoming a critical problem in US politics, Bruce worked with the Coffee Party (in part a response to the Tea Party) to create the Shared Purpose multi-group networking system. Shared Purpose has many tools and methods to support political organizing. The home page for the project is
http://sharedpurpose.net.
One sample network running on Shared Purpose is "Occupy Express", which we built for the Occupy movement here in Santa Barbara.
http://sharedpurpose.net/home/index.cfm?tq=579402
Another group is Evolve Santa Barbara, which we developed as a co-creative "syncon" and town hall for Santa Barbara California, residence of Conscious Evolution pioneer Barbara Marx Hubbard for 20 years.
http://sharedpurpose.net/home/index.cfm?tq=579411
"My Citizenship" is a detailed inquiry into the specifics of belief and agreement for enlightened global citizens.
http://sharedpurpose.net/home/mycitizenship.cfm?tq=579411
NETWORK NATION
http://networknation.net
Collabortive Backbone
RECENT PROJECTS
Recent projects include
TECHNICAL
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
We are experimenting with an emerging new method for co-creatively convening collective insight and decision-making using online polling technology. This method combines email (questionnaires/polls arrive in email with a link to sign in and respond) and shared internet database (responses are stored, can be compared and studied by multiple users).
In the context of co-creation, we must ask: what do we agree on? What do we want to do together? While pursuing other methods of co-creation, polling methods can help convene comprehensive agreement and shared understanding.
This poll is an example. "What is our Movement?"
http://charterforcocreation.net/polling.cfm
Polling methods developed at scale are closely related to traditional concepts of democracy. As everyone knows, we go to "the polls" to vote. We can build a strong and comprehensive global project using these methods.
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