Enfascination
From enfascination
I am Seth Frey, I post here, think like notes on my reading and exciting things that are exciting.
I am a student of community and cooperation on the ground, in the ivory tower, and everywhere in between. On the ground I have devoted myself to the cooperative movement, developing member-owned enterprises both locally and nationally. Academically, I study cooperation, group structure, and collective action.
What does it mean for a group's or an organization's structure to reflect the structure of its problems? To explore this question, I started a Ph.D. in Indiana University's Cognitive Science and Informatics programs as a student of Robert L. Goldstone, Elinor Ostrom, Peter M. Todd, and Johan Bollen. Before that, I was a student of Yaneer Bar-Yam at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI). I am receiving interdisciplinary training with the support of the National Science Foundation, incorporating economics, psychology, sociology, and organization theory, with tools from computer science and complex systems.
I also practice what I preach; I am a community organizer, focusing on cooperative business models. I am a founder of Bloomington Cooperative Living, a local member-owned housing co-op. I am an advisor to the Bloomington Cooperative Plots Eco-Village. I serve the cooperative movement nationally on the NASCO Development Services board.
I like to talk about the interactions between cooperative research and lifestyles, like in this recent short talk for the TEDx franchise. I love people’s fascinations (peculiar or not), and fixing things (broken or not).