If you have the time, the popular articles from the site.   Lots of good information for managing life.

Integral Spirituality is going to be one of the new books released by Ken Wilber, in early 2006.

From the IN site:

This 118-page essay is not to be confused with the 350-page book Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World (to be published by Integral Books/Shambhala in the summer of 2006). This book will also be pre-posted in its entirety at www.IntegralSpiritualCenter.org in January, 2006

I would like to start the analysis of this draft - and then later the book by analyzing the truth claims of the draft (at least to start). 

In the first place, the fundamental thesis that I am positing that Integral Spirituality is - more so than any previous work of Wilber's - at its base, a philosophical work of  a rich, detailed, and inclusive EPISTEMOLOGY - both inividual and collective.

(Here is also the Wikipedia page on epistemology.)

As such, quite separate from substantive and ontological claims by Wilber, this work can be judged on the merits of the epistemological claims.

This multi-part analysis is going to follow the following structure.

Part I:  Brief historical analysis of the development of Wilber's thought.
Part II:  Historical predecessors - some analysis of previous work, that has similar analytic trends and thoughts as Wilber's.
Part III:  You down with the IMP?  Yeah you know me! (and us)
Part IV:  An exercise in Figure Drawing - Quadrants, Cubes, and Octahedrons
Part V:   The Claim of One Direction Complexity- Lines and Levels
Part VI:  Shifting Sands:  Expanding Outward into Science, Psychology, and Spirit.
Part VII:  Further Shifting Sands - or Wilber recapitulates Habermas


That's the plan.  Let me know if there are any thoughts on this. 

This is a good article about Web 2.0. 

A couple of things -

a. I would add to this, that the web 2.0 applications, are, for the most part hosted, and therefore always improving in real-time.  Google Reader is an example - while it's first iteration was blase, it quickly added the necessary features, and continues to get better, as do all the other hosted applications.  Especially given the "lightness" of most of the applications in question, it's not such a big deal to add feature sets.

Also, as discussed here, there is a challenge using Web 2.0 for "softer" applications.  Either those in HR/CRM/ERP, where complicated software is required, or, in those systems where a history and profile has to be maintained over a significant amount of time.

Saw this article about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales thinking of establishing a reputation system, and again, made me think about using some of the established  reputation and review systems to rate various practices.

Here's a couple of examples -

1. Question:  What is the mechanism, right NOW, to rate the I-WET weekend, or any of the Integral Universities weekly seminars?

2. David Deida - I've read his books, and met the man, having picked him up at the airport once (many years ago), and he was a great guy.  But, where would you go to find ratings of David Deida's seminars, and their experiences?

A friend of mine went to a three day workship of Deida's a few years ago, and in his opinion, he pretty much covered what he covered in the books, and not much more. 

And that makes some sense, actually.  Various PARTICULAR psychosexual and partner situations, are just that - particular and invididualized.  It would seem to me the most help one could get from Deida-type work, is working with a counselor trained in some of the Deida "techniques", for lack of a better word.

I don't mean this to detract from Deida, as he was a great guy in my experience.  But again, what is the best way to apply his insights to individuals and groups - and is the way he is applying those insights the best?  Open reviews by those with good reputations (to prevent gaming of the system) would help quite a lot, wouldn't you agree?