The Invisible College fascinates me.  Short of being a nerd for history, the idea of actually collaborating with others for mutual learning is incredibly interesting.

Shirky writes, “Culture — not tools or insights — animated the Invisible College and transmuted alchemy into chemistry.  The members accumulated facts more quickly, and were able to combine existing facts into new experiments and new insights.  By insisting on accuracy and transparency, and by sharing their assumptions and working methods with one another, the collegians had access to the group’s collective knowledge and constituted a collaborative circle” (139).

This is just….so cool.  It makes me want to drink tea (more than usual), read books (more than usual) and write letters to everyone to discuss them.  It makes me realize that there are so many amazing ways to use spare time.  (Granted, I already knew that, but I still love the idea of the Invisible College.)

It makes me wonder (even more than usual) how much people could change the world if they did more things like this.  What could we figure out and discover?

This just makes me realize for the umpteen millionth time that I was born a few hundred years too late.