There are now a number of gift circles happening in different towns and cities across the USA. The project has reached a stage where we begin to activate the power of networks.

If you connect a set of neurons with each other to form a neural network they will emerge new behaviors, like thought and memor. If you connect a bunch of individual computers with each other they will form a network they will emerge new forms of interacting – like the internet. If we begin to connect the gift circles with each other they will begin to emerge new social behavior.

One example of what can happen is that it allows the easier emergence of new forms and innovations for the gift circle. So say the Ashland gift circle comes up with an innovation of what to do, if they were in contact the Chicago gift circle might try it out. And the Chicago gift circle can pass it onto the New Haven gift circle. Each gift circle trying out and adapting the innovation. At the same time the San Jose gift circle may have come up with an innovation it passes onto the Marin gift circle, which then passes it onto the Berkeley gift circle. And there are all these ideas and memes colliding and forming new ideas/ structures/ formats and usages for the gift circles.

This collision of ideas is like that of molecules in the primordial soup. They collide sometimes to form more complex molecules. Over time more and more advanced complex molecules begin to form.