A Little Liminal Update: 18 Months Later
It’s been a year and a half since I first published The Liminal Web: Mapping An Emergent Subculture Of Sensemakers, Meta-Theorists & Systems Poets.
And even though we held a playful death ritual for The Liminal Web with the aim of ensuring it didn't get weird by becoming too much of 'a thing' it remains a useful descriptor and the article is still popular so I figured it was time for an update.
From my perspective (despite still feeling a little cringey to say sometimes) the term Liminal Web hasn't yet crossed into being overly weird in a bad kind of way. So I'm not averse to adding a few extra layers of Liminal mulch every now and again to encourage further growth of communal mycelium throughout the network.
With that said I’ve added some new projects to the graphic and rotated a few others out in the name of sharing around the Liminal limelight. It’s worth noting that this isn't meant to be a complete depiction of the web but rather a visual cross section that attempts to represent the full spectrum of what I see as the ever evolving Liminal vibe.
Since the piece was originally published I’ve noticed a number of Liminal trends unfolding. Some of them include:
That we appear to be gathering much more regularly in person. After discovering each other through platforms and podcasts and then connecting more deeply online during Covid many of us have begun more frequently meeting up and collaborating in the flesh. Meaningful friendships and partnerships are continuing to blossom. This has afforded us all a much fuller appreciation of each others (sometimes marvellously messy) humanity in comparison to the often more curated personas we sometimes encounter and present with online.
There seems to be a common evolutionary journey unfolding where people who started out with platforms or podcasts are now creating whole curriculums or educational institutions.
People seem to be talking a little bit less about embodiment, emergence and sensemaking and a little bit more about egregores, wisdom and how we increase the sagacity of A.I. The Meaning Crisis and Multipolar Traps seem to be getting about the same amount of attention.
Developmental Stage theories appear less of a hot topic these days and seem to be critiqued as much as they are praised.
Newsletters appear to be more central than ever to the distribution of ideas.
People are still coming to terms with the concept of Metamodernism. Some suggest its original academic definition should be honoured and upheld. Others are enthused by Hanzi's developmental repurposing of term. And then there are those who welcome a plethora of meanings for the term. Meanwhile many folks in the web don't think it points to anything new or couldn't care less about the word in the first place.
While originally a few central thinkers and platforms served as coalescing Bat-Signals for people to find each other there is now a continued movement towards more evenly distributed exchange and relationship. Emergent Commons is the clearest example of that and is the closet thing to a bonafide Collective to emerge out of the Liminal Web that I've seen just yet. That being said in certain corners of The Liminal Web the ideas of John Vervaeke and Daniel Schmachtenberger still have a big influence while in other parts of the web these two thinkers are much less relevant.
A number of the projects shown in the new graphic already have links presented in the original article. Here is the list of links to the new ones:
And here is a small and diverse tasting platter of other potent projects from across the wider Liminal Web. Some of these I’d deem as more central to the web and others as more periphery but I believe they all represent high quality Integrative thinking:
Collective Soulmaking (link coming soon)
I’d like to give a friendly shout out to the Intellectual Deep Web and The Wisdom Web (mentioned towards the end of this talk) . I see them as close neighbours in the wider noospheric landscape and believe that both of them share a high degree of Liminal overlap.
I'd also like to thank Cheryl Hsu, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Scout Rainer Wiley, Tucker Walsh and Layman Pascal for providing feedback and insight in relation to the update. May the Liminal Love Light shine brightly in your neck of the woods. And if you’re new to all these names and projects then consider yourself cordially invited to come and join the fun.
Joe Lightfoot is a writer, podcaster and apprentice community weaver. He is the author of A Collective Blooming: The Rise Of The Mutual Aid Community and the host of The Lightfoot Podcast. You can sign up to his newsletter The Lightfoot Letter and find him on Facebook.