Jacobo Martín

Software writer

TMM: Team Mind Merging

What do you think the most valuable asset of a company is?

Knowledge, without a doubt.

And what ways of attaining knowledge can a company have?

Confucious used to talk of three possible ways of learning:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second is by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

Aren’t there any other ways of learning?

Well, I think that every other way is a branch of those three.

And what about machines? Couldn’t we learn from machines a new way of learning faster?

What do you mean?

In times of Confucius, I bet the available technology was nothing compared with today’s computers. Perhaps there’s a fourth way, like a fourth dimensional way of learning?

What do you mean? Could you be more specific?

Take a versioning control system, for instance: how does one revision of the code gains knowledge of what it’s placed at another revision of the same original source? By merging knowledge! Wouldn’t it be great if we humans found a way of Human Versioning Control? Something as Mind Merging?

Yeah, it would be cool. Although I’m afraid that, until telepathy becomes reliable enough, we won’t be able to achieve something similar… Besides, wouldn’t that be just a branch of the second way Confucius was talking about: learning by imitation?

Imitation?

Yeah, what is a merge but a copy of the new stuff from somewhere to somewhere else?

The problem when you’re dealing with people is that you rarely begin with two identical people to be able to merge the knowledge from one to the other.

True, but it would only take to consider the mind as being the main branch, the trunk…

Could you elaborate on that?

Sure, the mechanics of understanding are, if not identical, very similar for people.

So more than knowledge itself, you would be minds sharing a view on the same knowledge? Is that so?

You got it!

And how would you achieve that?

Companies have a lot of people. Imagine, at least on every team, each person would be some kind of revision of the same branch. Imagine a system that would be able to update the knowledge of each of the members up to a head version, so all the members of the team would be synchronized. The member with the most experience would be the main branch and the rest of the members would be branches stemming from the former. Frecuently enough, there would be team merges, in which all the members would do a mind merging about a topic. All conflicts would be resolved and the definitive commit would be merged and updated in every branch-member of the team. Of course it would be slower than a VCS in machines, but the human one would be even more productive.

How come?

Everyone would get used to sharing up to a point in which it would become so natural that everyone in the team would have a sense of belonging to and knowing the project as a whole. There would be a team way of playing. Instead of competing one with each other, there would be a common denominator in which even the best player could rely on the worst one in case of emergency, since everyone would share a sufficient base so that there wouldn’t be neither silos of information nor temptations to retain information to gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the colleagues.

Mmm, sounds interesting. How would you coin that system?

Let me think… How about ‘TMM’?

TMM?

Yes! Team Mind Merging.

The end?

And that’s how a concept went from someone’s head to another’s and lived there happily ever after. At least until the next commit outgrew the previous ones…