SECOND-STORIES

Federation through Keywords

– I cannot understand how anyone can make use of the frameworks of reference developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in order to understand the transformation into the post-traditional cosmopolitan world we live in today.

(Ulrich Beck, The Risk Society and Beyond, 2000)

To step beyond "risk society" (where existential risks lurk in the dark), we must design how we see and speak; which is what the polyscopic methodology is about: The approach it enables is called scope design; where scopes are what determines what we look at and how we see it.

We can design scopes by crafting keywords.

Because keywords are defined as it's been common in mathematics—by making a convention. When I define for instance "culture" by convention, and turn it into a keyword—I am not saying what culture "really is"; but creating a way of looking at the endlessly complex real thing; and projecting it, as it were, onto a plane—so that we may look at its specific side, and comprehend it precisely; and I'm inviting you, the reader, to see culture as it's been defined. In knowledge federation's technical language, this simplified view of an object or theme as a whole is called its aspect.

Keywords enable us to ascribe to old words like "science" and "religion" a clear new meaning; and give old institutions a function, and a new life.

Keyword creation is a form for linguistic and institutional recycling.

Often but not always, keywords are adopted from the repertoire of a frontier thinker or an academic field; they then enable us to federate what's been comprehended or experienced in some of our culture's dislodged compartments.

Keywords enable us to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' and see further.

Ulrich Beck

Paradigm

Paradigm is the keyword I use to pinpoint the error that is the focal point of this proposal; and explain the way I propose to correct it.

Substituting the lightbulb for the candle symbolizes the paradigm change.

The Modernity ideogram points to remedial information, which enables us to see things whole—all things, and importantly, the systems in which we live and work; it also point to remedial action—which is to make things whole—all things, and most importantly those systems; including our society, or 'bus'.

I use the word paradigm informally, to point to the societal and cultural order of things as a whole; and to highlight that comprehensive change, of the whole paradigm can be natural and easy—even when small and obviously necessary changes may seem impossible; and to explain the strategy for solving "the huge problems now confronting us" that motivates this proposal—which is to enable the paradigm to change.

We see the paradigm that's emerging when we connect the dots.

I use the keyword elephant instead of paradigm when I want to be even more informal—and highlight that in a paradigm everything depends on everything else; as the organs of an elephant do; and that it's useless to try to fit an elephant's ear onto a mouse. And importantly—to point out that a whole new paradigm is ready to emerge and already emerging; and that all we really need to do is to enable this new paradigm to unfold—by restoring our ability to connect the dots.

The elephant was in the room when the 20th century’s giants wrote or spoke; but we failed to see him because the paradigm we are in constitutes the proverbial "box" in which we live and think; and because of the jungleness of our information; and because of disciplinary and cultural fragmentation; and because our thinking and communication are still as the tradition shaped them. We heard the giants talk about a ‘thick snake’, a ‘fan’, a ‘tree-trunk’ and a ‘rope’, often in Greek or Latin; they didn’t make sense and we ignored them. How differently information fares when we understand that it was the ‘trunk’, the ‘ear’, the ‘leg’ and the ‘tail’ of a vast exotic ‘animal’ they were talking about; whose very existence we ignore!

We find paradigms at distinct levels of detail; you may see the candle as a paradigm in illumination and the lightbulb as a different one; this will help you comprehend the design of the process that will bring us from one paradigm in information to the next as a creative challenge of its own right and arguably the creative challenge we need to live up to. I coined a pair of keywords—tradition and design to point to the nature of this challenge, and process. Tradition and design are two ways in which wholeness can result in the human world; tradition relies on spontaneous evolution, where things are improved and adjusted to each other through many generations of use; design relies on comprehension and action. The point of this definition is that when tradition can no longer be relied on—design must be used.

You may now understand the point of the Modernity ideogram more precisely: We are no longer traditional; and we are not yet designing; we live in a (still unconscious, still unstable) transition from one stable way of evolving and being in the world or paradigm, which is no longer functioning—and another one; which is not yet in place.

You may comprehend the knowledge federation proposal as a way to enable this transition, by changing the 'headlights'; and the holotopia vision and initiative as the roadmap to the new social and cultural paradigm that will result.

The purpose of the Liberation book is to choreograph and streamline the paradigm change; by developing an analogy between the times and conditions when Galilei was in house arrest, when a landslide paradigm change was about to take place, and our own time; and by giving you, the reader, a glimpse of the emerging paradigm; and by fostering a process—the dialog—by which the emergence of the new paradigm is made possible; which, needless to say, needs to include a vision; because no matter how hard we try—we just won't produce the lightbulb by improving the candle; or by grappling with all those problems that driving in the dark has produced.

The Liberation book is about our liberation from the paradigm.

I use the keyword paradigm also more formally, as Thomas Kuhn did—to point to

• a different way to conceive a domain of interest, which
• resolves the reported anomalies and
• opens a new frontier for research and development.

Only here the domain of interest is not a conventional academic field, where paradigm changes have been relatively common—but information and knowledge at large; and on a still larger scale—our society-and-culture, and its evolution.

Logos

“Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.”

(René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641)

A reason why a comprehensive or paradigm change is now natural and easy is that the very way we use our minds is ripe for change; just as it was in Descartes' and Galilei's time. So I lifted up the word logos as a banner; and use it to demarcate the most fertile creative frontier I can think of, which is opening up; where we'll engage in comprehensive change by changing the way we think to begin with.

"In the beginning was logos and logos was with God and logos was God." I chose the word "logos" as banner to point to the historicity of the way we think; that it has changed before and will change again. To Hellenic thinkers "logos" was the principle according to which God organized the world; which makes it possible to comprehend the world correctly—provided we align with it the way we use our minds. How exactly we should go about doing that—here the opinions differed; and gave rise to a multitude of philosophical schools and traditions.

But "logos" faired poorly in post-Hellenic world; Latin failed to offer a translation, and the modern languages too. For about a millennium our ancestors believed that logos had been revealed to us humans by God's own son; and considered questioning that to constitute the deadly sin of pride, and a heresy.

Enlightenment liberated and empowered the mind.

And at the same time made a fundamental error—from which the error I am proposing to correct naturally resulted; by assuming that the purpose of information and knowledge is the objective and unchanging truth (which is revealed to the mind as the sensation of absolute certainty); which Descartes immortalized by proclaiming "I think, therefore I am".

The early scientific revolution unfolded as a reaction to earlier "teleological" or "mystical" explanations of natural phenomena; as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his University of Oslo talk titled "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding", its founding fathers conceived it as 'removing the ghost from the machine'—i.e. as explaining the natural phenomena in ways that are completely comprehensible to the mind; as one would explain how a clockwork operates. Which initially led to the great successes of science and technology, which everyone witnessed; and which culturally not yet problematic, because tradition and science coexisted side by side—the former providing the know-what and the latter the know-how; until—right around mid-19th century, when Darwin entered the scene—the way to use the mind that science brought along discredited the mindset of tradition.

The educated masses began to believe that science was the answer.

The final answer to the age-old quest for the correct way to use the mind. But the prospect of unraveling the 'clockwork of nature' retreated every time it appeared to be nearing success; the ("indivisible") atom split into one hundred "subatomic particles"; which—when the scientists examined them—turned out to defy not only causality but even the common sense itself (as J. Robert Oppenheimer pointed out in Uncommon Sense). Our "scientific worldview" is now like Humpty Dumpty—something that nobody can put back together again; and yet it continues to grow only downward—toward increased precision, detail and complexity.

The human world too became forbiddingly complex, owing to this accelerated yet unguided way of evolving; and impossible to comprehend correctly (in a way that points to correct action)—by thinking as we did when we created science and technology.

Also the level of noise and distraction (brought by unenlightened use of technology) made comprehension impossible. Already at the turn of the 19th century Nietzsche warned that the modern man is so overwhelmed by the tempo of change and influx of impressions, that he "instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to ‘digest’ anything"; so that "a kind of adaptation to this flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside". What would Nietzsche say if he saw us today?

As Benjamin Lee Whorf pointed out in Language, Thought and Reality, science assumed its pivotal social role, of "the Grand Revelator of modern Western culture", without intending to; and so science never adjusted itself to its larger-than-life new role. On the contrary—having been conceived as the way to "objective" and unchanging "truth about reality"—the institution of science provides no way for changing the way in which science has been instituted; and more generally, and importantly—the university as institution provides no process for updating the way information is and knowledge are to be pursued; which is, once again, its core social function. On the contrary—one might say that questioning science in its absolute role, of "universal experts" as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann called it in The Social Construction of Reality role became a social taboo; just as questioning the Scripture had been in the earlier paradigm.

And so we got stuck with candle headlights.

The liberation of logos, and the renewal and continuation of this all-important and age-old quest—is our liberation from the the misconception that "logic" is the correct way to think; and that the suffix "logy" of scientific disciplines means that they embody the correct way to knowledge; that they are the final "right" way to use the mind.

Rene Descartes

Design epistemology

“[T]he nineteenth century developed an extremely rigid frame for natural science which formed not only science but also the general outlook of great masses of people."

(Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1958.)

You'll easily comprehend the anomaly this third of holotopia's five insights points to and unravels, if you see the way we use the mind (and go about deciding what's true or false and relevant or irrelevant) as the foundation on which the edifice of our culture has been built; which enables some of its parts or sides to grow big and strong (those that are supported by this foundation), and abandons others to erosion. As Heisenberg pointed out, what we have as foundation—which our general culture imbibed from 19th century science—prevented cultural evolution to continue; being "so narrow and rigid that it was difficult to find a place in it for many concepts of our language that had always belonged to its very substance, for instance, the concepts of mind, of the human soul or of life." Since "the concept of reality applied to the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided", whatever failed to be founded in this way was considered impossible or unreal. This in particular applied to those parts of our culture in which our ethical sensibilities were rooted, such as religion, which "seemed now more or less only imaginary. [...] The confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind."

The experience of modern physics constituted a rigorous disproof of this approach to knowledge, Heisenberg explained; and concluded that "one may say that the most important change brought about by its results consists in the dissolution of this rigid frame of concepts of the nineteenth century." He wrote Physics and Philosophy anticipating that the most valuable gift of modern physics to humanity would be a cultural transformation; which would result from the dissolution of the narrow frame.

As an insight, design eistemology shows how a broad and solid foundation can be developed.

By following the approach that is the subject of this proposal.

The design epistemology originated by federating the state-of-the-art epistemological findings; by systematizing and adapting what the giants of science and philosophy have found out—and writing the result as a convention; such as Einstein's "epistemological credo"—his testament or "obituary", which he left us in Autobiographical Notes:

“I see on the one side the totality of sense experiences and, on the other, the totality of the concepts and propositions that are laid down in books. […] The system of concepts is a creation of man, together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure of the conceptual system. […] All concepts, even those closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen posits, just as is the concept of causality, which was the point of departure for [scientific] inquiry in the first place.”

The design epistemology takes the constructivist credo, which Einstein expressed succinctly (that we are not discovering but constructing a "reality picture") a couple of steps further—by writing it (no longer as a statement about reality, but) as a convention; and by assigning to it a purpose (so that instead of amassing "reality pictures"—we can prioritize those we actually need, or even necessitate).

This foundation is solid or "rigorous".

Because it represents the epistemological state of the art; and because it's a convention. The added purpose can hardly be debated—not only because doing what's necessary to avoid civilizational collapse is hard to argue against; but also because this too is a convention; a different convention, and an altogether different way to knowledge can be created, to suit a different purpose.

A side-effect of this academic update is that it offers us a way to avoid the fragmentation in social sciences; which results when the social scientists disagree whether it's right to see the complex cultural and social reality in one way or in another. Here our explicit aim is to see things whole; which translates into the challenge of seeing things in a way that may best reveal their non-whole sides. The simple point here is that when our task is not producing an accurate description of an infinitely complex "reality", but a way to see it that "works" (in the sense of providing us evolutionary guidance)—then this fragmentation is easily seen as part of the problem, and avoided.

This foundation is also broad.

In the sense that it removes the narrow frame barrier; and lets us build knowledge, and culture, on all forms of human experience. Another philosophical stream of thought that the design epistemology embodies is phenomenology; which Einstein pointed to by talking about "the totality of sense experiences" on the one side, and "the totality of the concepts and propositions" on the other side. The point here that when human experience (and not "objective reality") is considered to be the substance that information can and needs to be founded on, and convey—then we can treat not only the sciences, but indeed all cultural traditions and artifacts as 'data'; which in some way or other embody human experience. By convention, experience does not have any a priori structure; experience is considered to be like the ink blot in a Rorschach test—something to which we freely ascribe interpretation and meaning; as Einstein suggested in his "epistemological credo".

Transdisciplinarity is herewith made academically rigorous.

Appeals to legitimate transdisciplinarity academically—if they were at all considered—were routinely rejected on the account that they lacked "academic rigor". I'm afraid it will turn out that the contemporary academic conception of "rigor" is based on not much more than the sensation of orderliness and clarity we experience when we've followed a certain procedure to the letter—as Stephen Toulmin suggested in his last book Return to Reason. It was logos Toulmin was urging us to return to; and that's what knowledge federation initiative undertakes to enable.

Now you may also comprehend what I told you on the opening page of this website, why there is nothing here to quarrel about; ultimately, what I'm doing here is academic in a new sense of this word—the one the Modernity ideogram points to: I am not giving you "the objective reality picture" and trying to "prove" it; I am initiating a process, as well as I am able, by which we'll substitute the 'lightbulb' for the 'candle'; I am being and acting as part of that process.

Werner Heisenberg

Polyscopic methodology

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

(Abraham Maslow, Psychology of Science, 1966)

You'll comprehend the anomaly this fourth of holotopia's five insights points to, if you see method—the category from which polyscopic methodology 'pillar' stems—as the toolkit with which construct truth and meaning, and our culture at large; and consider that—as Maslow pointed out—this method is now so specialized, that it compels us to be specialized; and choose our themes and set our priorities (not according to whether they are relevant or not, but) according to what this tool enables us to do.

As an insight, the polyscopic methodology points out that a general-purpose methodology (where logos is applied to method), which alleviates this problem, can be created by the proposed approach; by federating the findings of giants of science and the very techniques that have been developed in the sciences; so as to preserve the advantages of science—and alleviate its limitations.

Design epistemology mandates such a step: When we on the one hand acknowledge that (as far as we know) there is no conclusive truth about reality; and on the other hand, that our very existence depends on information and knowledge—we are bound to be accountable for providing knowledge about the most relevant themes (notably the ones that determine our society's evolutionary course) as well as we are able; and to of course continue to improve both our knowledge and our ways to knowledge.

As long as "reality" and its "objective" descriptions constitute our reference system and provide it a foundation—we have no way of evaluating our paradigm critically. The polyscopic methodology empowers us to develop the realm of ideas as an independent reference system; where ideas are founded (not on "correspondence with reality" but) on truth by convention; and then use clearly and rigorously defined ideas to develop clear and rigorous theories—in all walks of life; as it has been common in natural sciences. Suitable theoretical constructs, notably the patterns (defined as "abstract relationships", which have in this generalized science a similar role as mathematical functions do in conventional science) enable us to formulate general results and theories, including the gestalts; suitable justification methods (I use "justification" instead of the more common word "proof", for obvious reasons) can then be developed as social processes; as an up-to-date alternative to "peer reviews" (which have, needless to say, originated in a world where "scientific truth" was believed to be "objective" and ever-lasting).

Here I'll only give you this hint: Once it's been formulated and theorized in the realm of ideas, a pattern can be used to justify a result; since (by convention) the substance of it all is human experience, and since (by convention) experience does not have an a priori "real" structure that can or needs to be "discovered"—a result can be configured as the claim that the dots can be connected in a specific way (as shown by the pattern) and make sense; and its justification of this result can be conceived in a manner that resembles the "repeatable experiment"—which is "repeatable" to the extent that different people can see the pattern in the data. The social process can then further be refined to embody also other desirable characteristics, such as "falsifiability"; I'll come back to this in a moment, and also show you an example.

Abraham Maslow

Convenience paradox

“The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future.”

(Aurelio Peccei, One Hundred Pages for the Future, 1981)

You'll appreciate the importance of the convenience paradox result—the fifth of holotopia's five insights—if you think of the category, "values", it stems from in the context of our contemporary condition: The pursuit of material production and consumption (our society's evolutionary course that the word materialism here designates) needs to be urgently changed; but to what; and in what way? It seems that everyone who has looked into this question a bit more carefully concluded that the pursuit of humanistic or cultural goals and values will have to be the answer; and you may hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

And the anomaly itself you'll see if you think of materialism's way to use the mind—which considers as possible or relevant or "real" only "the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided", as Heisenberg diagnosed; which in the realm of values translates into convenience—whereby those things and only those things that appear attractive to our senses are considered as really worth pursuing (technical science here won't help); and notice that this way ('in the light of a candle') of conceiving the know-what leaves in the dark one whole dimension of physical reality—time; and also an important side or one could say the important 'half' of the three dimensions of space—its inner or embodied side; because while "happiness" or whatever we may choose to "pursue" appears to be "caused" by events in the outer world—it is inside us that our emotions materialize; and it is there that the difference that makes a difference can and needs to be made.

Did you notice, by the way—when you watched the video I've just shared (and if you haven't watched it, do it now; because it's the state of the world diagnosed by the world's foremost expert—who studied and federated this question for more than four decades—condensed in a six-minute trailer)—how Dennis Meadows, while of course pointing in the right direction, was searching for words that would do it justice; and came up with little more than "knowledge, and music"?

This is where Liberation book really takes off!

Its entire first half—its first five chapters—is dedicated to mapping not only specific opportunities, but entire realms where we may dramatically improve our condition through inner development; whereby a roadmap to inner wholeness is drafted, as the book calls it. The Liberation book opens with an amusing little ruse—where a note about freedom and democracy is followed by the observation that we are free to "pursue happiness as we please"; and I imagined the reader would say "Sure—what could possibly be wrong about that?" But what do we really know about "happiness"? The fact of this matter is that "happiness" appears to be a consequence of external events; while it's our propensity to respond emotionally to external events that has by and large the deciding role; which develops only gradually—as a consequence of long-term environmental factors; which, needless to say, constitute the material with which a cultural revival can and needs to be built. Here "love" may be an even better theme to zoom in on; since so much of our culture—both everyday and more refined—revolves around it. The convenience paradox invites you to consider this as an interesting question: What qualify of love are you at all able to experience; or perhaps more importantly—to give? What do we really know about the nature and the outreaches of any of the emotions that are worth experiencing, such as joy, or gratitude? And what can we do to increase our emotional outreach? These questions are taken up in Chapter Three of the book; which has "Liberation of Emotions" as title; where the phenomenological data are drawn from the tradition of Sufism; and we see how the ability to feel all-consuming love develops through a certain kind of practice—which combines attitudes and values on the inner side with poetry and music on the outer side. We see how poetry and music can make us people capable of experiencing far more than we do now; and how—when we are truly able to experience them—poetry and music can become incomparably more valuable to us than they are now.

With "Liberation of Body" as title, Chapter One zooms in on the experience of difficulty or effort; and by federating experiences and insights from the martial art tradition, with the ones reached in the schools that F. M. Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais founded, points out that both the sensation of effort and our ability to move freely can be altered hugely by suitable training; and Chapters Two and Three do similarly with creativity (as the motility of mind) and emotions (as the motility of feeling). Vast ranges of freedom—and obstacles to freedom—are embodied; and it is there, within ourselves, that vast and ignored opportunities to improve our condition reside. Chapter Four offers a general model of inner wholeness; which makes it possible to comprehend the effects of a broad range of human development schools and traditions such as yoga and Rolfing; which is itself created by combining insights from the qigong tradition with the ones reached in the psychotherapy school that Wilhelm Reich founded.

The Liberation book in this way produces an initial map of human inner wholeness; and an initial template for reviving and empowering culture-transformative experiences and insights or memes. The book is conceived (more precisely it can be read) as a case for a single culture-transformative meme—the legacy of Buddhadasa, Thailand's holy man and Buddhism reformer. Chapters Five and Six are dedicated to federating his message. Chapter Five, which has "Liberation from Tension" as title, explores a point of view and a realm of experience according to which "the pursuit of happiness" as materialism conceived it is exactly exactly the way to suffering (more precisely to a specific kind of suffering called dukkha, which is the focal point of Buddhism, as Buddhadasa interpreted it); and in Chapter Six, which has "Liberation from Oneself" as title, we see why also the liberation from self-centeredness (which, roughly, means letting the "What's in it for me?" question decide the know-what), which Buddhadasa saw as the shared essence of the great world religions—is also part and parcel of our wholeness.

You can now see how "a great cultural revival" may realistically happen.

Convenience paradox is the point of a very large information holon—which asserts that convenience is a useless and deceptive "value", behind which a myriad opportunities to improve our lives and condition—through cultural pursuits—await to be uncovered; whose rectangle is populated by a broad range of—curated—ways to improve our condition through cultural pursuits or by human development (which according to Peccei is the most important goal).

Once we've liberated ourselves from "the deception of the senses", and claimed back our know-what from all that advertising—we'll be free to explore the pivotal themes evidence-based. But this is only a new beginning; that single step with which a journey of one thousand miles begins—where we'll rebuild our culture; so that it effortlessly elevates us to the heights whose very existence we ignore; to the condition we call wholeness; which gave holotopia that name. Then and only then will the pursuit of this new evolutionary course—that will elevate our humanness and culture to new heights—be natural and easy.

This explains the Liberation book's subtitle, "Religion beyond Belief"; which invites you to see the history of religion in three phases:

• where in the first, the beliefs and mores of religion compelled people to do (ethically, in an evolutionary sense) the right thing
• and in the second, the beliefs and mores of of materialism made us 'free' to do the wrong thing;
• until we developed knowledge about pivotal themes.

The Liberation book shows that—once this is achieved, once we've learned to federate what's of value in the heritage of religious and other human development traditions (instead of ignoring it, because it failed to fit into the narrow frame)—the resulting improvement of our condition will be truly beyond belief!

Aurelio Peccei

Knowledge federation

“Many years ago, I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems."

(Doug Engelbart, "Dreaming of the Future*, BYTE Magazine, 1995)

You'll comprehend this second of holotopia's five points if you think of communication as the technology-enabled social process by which humanity's experiences and insights are turned into knowledge and action; and to the need and the possibility to thoroughly re-create communication in a manner that the new information technology enabled—and our new condition necessitates; which the Modernity ideogram suggested; and which knowledge federation stands for.

I cannot think of a better way to introduce this need-and-possibility—than by telling you The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart; which is my very favorite of all the stories told in the Liberation book; which I indeed drafted first, intending to make it a book of its own, and later condensed into a very brief version told in the Liberation book's seventh chapter; which has "Liberation of Society" as title.

The point of this "incredible history" is that the "digital technology"—the interactive, network-interconnected digital media, which you and I use to write emails and browse the Web—has been created, by Doug Engelbart and his SRI-based team, to serve as enabling technology for an entirely different paradigm in communication; different, that is, from broadcasting or publishing—which the old technology, the printing press, made possible. You'll see the corresponding anomaly if you consider that we still seem to take it for granted that when something is published it is also known; while this belief itself has a fascinatingly rich and long history of being reported as dangerously and outrageously false (but these reports too got lost in "information glut").

Think of our best, selected, trained and sponsored minds writing countless pages of esoteric and specialized academic texts—which have no way to impact our collective awareness by design (or more precisely because the lack of design of our communication system); think of all the media technology that's being used to compete for our attention—instead of treating it as the critical resource, in an age when the survival of our species depends on our awareness rising to a whole new level—and you'll have no difficulty understanding the knowledge federation as point, and as proposal. Communication is not only the pivotal social process; it is the social process—around which all other social processes are structured.

The fact that Engelbart was unable to communicate the nature of his vision to Silicon Valley's academics and entrepreneurs—regardless of how hard he tried, and even after they recognized him as the giant in residence behind "the revolution in the Valley"—is the most vivid testimony of the core issue I've been telling you about: How much we—including the best of us—are stuck in the "the world" that has been pulled over our eyes; and unable to think conceptually; and see the elephant in the room.

I use collective mind as keyword to pinpoint the gist of Engelbart's vision; which is that the technology that he envisioned and created is the enabling technology for the capability we need—the capability to handle complex and urgent problems; because it constitutes a 'collective nervous system' that enables us develop entirely new processes in communication; and process data and comprehend and act in a similar way in which the cells of an evolutionarily advanced organism co-create meaning and communicate. Imagine if your cells used your nervous system to merely broadcast data—and you'll have no difficulty comprehending the anomaly that knowledge federation undertakes to resolve.

Our 2010 workshop—where we began to self-organize as a transdiscipline—was called "Self-Organizing Collective Mind". Prior to this workshop I spent the school year on sabbatical in San Francisco Bay Area; and strengthened the ties with the R & D community that grew around Engelbart called Program for the Future, which Mei Lin Fung initiated in Palo Alto to continue and complete the work on implementing Engelbart's vision; and of course with Engelbart himself. At the University of Oslo Computer Science Department I later taught a doctoral course about Engelbart's legacy—to research it thoroughly, and develop ways to communicate it.

Knowledge Federation's Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 workshop in Sava Center, Belgrade.

As an insight, knowledge federation stands for the fact that a radically better communication is both necessary and possible; exactly the sort of quantum leap that the Modernity ideogram is pointing to. We made this possibility transparent by developing a portfolio of prototypes—real-life models of socio-technical systems in communication; which I'll here illustrate by our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 prototype as canonical example; where the result of an academic researcher, Dejan Raković of the University of Belgrade, has been federated in three phases; where

• the first phase made the result comprehensible to a larger audience; by turning his highly technical research article into a multimedia object (this was done by knowledge federation's communication design team); where its main points were extracted and made comprehensible by explanatory diagrams or ideograms; and further clarified by (placing on them links to) recorded interviews with the author
• the second phase made the result known and at the same time discussed in space—by staging a televised high-profile dialog at Sava Center Belgrade
• the third phase constituted a social process around the result, by using DebateGraph.

As I explained in Chapter Two of the Liberation book, which has "Liberation of Mind" as title, also the theme of Raković's result was perfectly suited for our purpose: He showed phenomenologically (by recourse to Nikola Tesla's creative process, which Tesla himself described) that creativity (of the "outside the box" kind, which we the people now vitally need in order to step beyond this evolutionary entrapment and evolve further) requires the sort of process or ecology of mind that has become all but impossible to us the people—and then theorized it within the paradigm of quantum physics. Serbian TV anchor hit the nail on the head (while interviewing the knowledge federation's representative and the US Embassy's cultural attache who represented that sponsor) concluded "So you are developing a collective Tesla!". In this time when machines have become capable of doing the "inside the box" thinking for us—it has become all the more important for us to comprehend and develop the kind of creativity that only humans are capable of; on which our future will depend.

Doug Engelbart

Systemic innovation

“The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the ‘joint systems’ of society and technology.”

(Erich Jantsch, Integrative PLanning for the "Joint Systems" of Society and Technology—the Emerging Role of the University, MIT Report,1969)

You'll comprehend the anomaly this first of the five points points to if you imagine the systems (in which we live and work) as gigantic machines comprising people and technology; and acknowledge that they determine how we live and work; and importantly—what the effects of our work will be, whether they'll be problems—or solutions. The importance of this inquiry cannot be overrated, so let me be blunt: : If the systems whose function is to inform us are scandalously nonsensical—what about all others? How suitable are our financial system, our governance, our international corporation and our education for the all-important functions they need to fulfill in (this transition to) post-industrial age? We had a professional photographer at our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 event in Belgrade; and she photographed me showing my smartphone to the people in our dialog; which I did to point to the surreal contrast between the dexterity that went into to creation of the minute little thing I was holding—and the complete negligence of those incomparably larger and equally more important systems we now depend on—to give us vision.

You'll forget the point of this all if you have a look at the flip side of this coin—and see that a radically more effective way to our work will become possible when we adjust our systems to the functions they need to perform in larger systems, including our society or civilization at large; as the Modernity ideogram calls for.

In Chapter Seven of the Liberation book I introduced most briefly Erich Jantsch's legacy and vision (and left the details to Book Two) by qualifying them as the environmental movement's forgotten history; and its ignored theory; which we'll need in order to be able to act instead of only reacting. Then I introduced systemic innovation, the holotopia's first and main point, by sketching briefly my 2013 talk "Toward a Scientific Comprehension and Handling of Problems"; where I drafted a parallel between systemic innovation and scientific medicine—which distinguishes itself by comprehending and handling unwanted symptoms in terms of the anatomy and pathophysiology that underlie them!

Banathy wrote in Designing Social Systems in a Changing World: “I have become increasingly convinced that [people] cannot give direction to their lives, they cannot forge their destiny, they cannot take charge of their future—unless they also develop the competence to take part directly and authentically in the design of the systems in which they live and work, and reclaim their right to do so. This is what true empowerment is about.” For a while I contemplated calling this first insight "The systems, stupid!"; which was a paraphrase of Bill Clinton's 1992 winning electoral slogan "The Economy, stupid!" Well, of course—in a society where the survival of the businesses depends on their ability to sell people things—you have to keep the economy growing if you want to keep the business profitable and the people employed. But economic growth is not "the solution to our problem"! Systemic innovation is—as (by definition) the way to give us the people, and "democracy", the all-important capability to re-create systems; so that we are no longer compelled to do as our systems dictate; until the bitter end.

At knowledge federation's 2011 workshop at Stanford University, within the Triple Helix IX international conference, I introduced systemic innovation as an emerging and necessary or remedial trend; and (the organizational structure developed and represented by) knowledge federation as (an institutional or systemic) enabler of systemic innovation. We work by creating a prototype of a system and organizing a transdiscipline around it—to update it according to the state-of-the-art insights that its members bring from their disciplines; and to change the corresponding real-life system accordingly.

Erich Jantsch

Holoscope

See things whole.

The holoscope principle.

If we, "our species" or global society are fortunate enough to survive this chaotic, unguided, unconscious and risky transition to guided or conscious evolution—the future generations may look back and see the way we handled information (in the "Age of Information"!) in a similar light as we now see how all those poor and innocent women were treated by Inquisition—as an epitaph of an era; and of a paradigm in urgent need of change.

What makes this urgent change also most natural and easy—is the synergy between holotopia's fourth and second point; which is highlighted on the Holotopia ideogram and labeled "information". It is only when we've done our homework on the theory side—and explained to each other and the world what information must be like, to serve us the people in this moment of need—that we'll be able to use the new technology to implement the processes that this information requires. In the holotopia context this larger-than-life opportunity is pointed to by the coined idiom holoscope; and by see things whole as the related vision statement. Indeed—any crazy beliefs can be, and have been throughout history, maintained by taking things out of their context; and by showing things from one side and hiding or ignoring the other. It is only when we are able to see things whole that knowledge will once again be possible.

In the movie The Matrix, "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth" epitomized a situation where people live in a devastated and dying world ruled by machines—and in a falsified "reality" that makes the world appear to them as normal; in the Liberation book it epitomizes the situation where people live without guiding insights or principles; where their only reference system is the world itself and its various descriptions; which compels the people to adapt to the world, instead of comprehending it critically.

You may now begin to see the elephant from this specific angle:

The IT revolution, as it happened, has a radically better alternative.

Which knowledge federation undertakes to set in motion.

Holotopia

Make things whole.

The holotopia principle.

One more horizontal line comes forth to meet the eye in Holotopia ideogram—the one that has "action" as label; because acting in this new way—to consciously make things whole—is what "conscious evolution" and holotopia initiative are really all about!.

Here too the horizontal line points to the larger-than-life effects that are to be achieved through the synergy between two insights: It is only when we've comprehended how vast are the opportunities are to improve our inner or personal wholeness—that we'll be ready to reconfigure our systems, which now make this pursuit impossible; and vice-versa: It is only when through the pursuit of inner wholeness we've reached the level where it's obvious just how destructive is all that busy-ness and competition that goes on—that we'll be compelled to change those systems; to provide us the ecology of mind that the pursuit of our inner wholeness necessitates.

"A way to change course" is now as simple as one-two-three-go; where

• Step One is to update the way we use the mind; we must correct the foundation;
• Step Two is to update our information; we must be able to see things whole—to be able to see and follow a viable new course;
• Step Three is to update the way we act; the new course we need to follow is make things whole.

Power structure

“Modernity did not make people more cruel; it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people. Under the sign of modernity, evil does not need any more evil people. Rational people, men and women well riveted into the impersonal, adiaphorized network of modern organization, will do perfectly.”

(Zygmunt Bauman Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, 1995)

All this was "known" a half-century ago; and yet this simple and obvious "go" remained a no-go!

"Know thyself" has been the battle cry of philosophers through the ages; there is something we the people must urgently get to know about ourselves; which—after having plowed this so field for nearly three decades—I am now ready to offer you as the first step with which the "solutionatique" to (what The Club of Rome called) the "world problematique" must begin; which is the reason why I postponed the Systemic Innovation book to be the second in the series, and decided that Liberation should be the first. It might be best to introduce to you this conclusion by outlining, however briefly, how I reached it.

Before we can take care of "the huge problems now confronting us"—we need to diagnose them correctly; that's the challenge the power structure as keyword points to. While power structure is not one of the five insights, it is one of the core themes of the Liberation book; and it's also been one of the core themes of my work. In the Liberation book I introduce it by talking about Hannah Arendt; who studied Eichman when he was on trial in Israel; and to her surprise found him (not evil but) distinctly ordinary; Eichman did not hate Jews—he followed orders. Hannah Arendt coined "banality of evil" as keyword to pinpoint her insight.

Here on the table in front of me I have Zygmunt Bauman's book Modernity and the Holocaust, which I'm re-reading; where Bauman explained how he reached a similar conclusion—although he expressed it in an entirely different way. The way his fellow sociologists theorized the Holocaust, his point was, contradicts what actually happened—and the historians documented. Bauman wrote this book—as he later explained—"to exort fellow social thinkers to [...] stop viewing the Holocaust as a bizzare and aberrant episode in modern history, and think it through instead as a highly relevant, integral part of that history; 'integral' in the sense of being indispensable for the understanding of what that history was truly about, what it was capable of and why—and the sort of society that has emerged from it, and which we all inhabit." But Bauman did not condense his all-important ideas to a point; it's tempting to think that a suitable methodology has been lacking.

When in 1995 I found myself on this so exquisitely rich realm of creative opportunities, and already making some promising progress, I reconfigured my life and work entirely to be able to dedicate myself fully to its development—knowing that this wold be necessary, if I were to achieve on it anything that might have lasting value. But the reactions to this work that I encounterd—when I were to begin sharing these questions and ideas with my academic colleagues—waere the very opposite from what I anticipated: I expected a spirited conversation; or perhaps disbelief to begin with ("But did you think about..."; or "No, I don't think this can be done in an academic way..."); but what I got was just—silence; and a sense of discomfort! Which I now pinpoint with the formula "You can do anything you like in your own home (office); just don't talk about it here among us normal people (academics)." To remain relatively sane—and be able to complete this project, in my own natural voice, which it necessitates—I withdrew into a virtual quarantine, for several years. I am now preparing to "come out".

And so this conclusion offered itself; which was later confirmed with 100% consistency; you know how mathematical functions have a domain where they are defined (you may divide any real number with any other real number except zero; division with zero is "undefined"):

The domain of application of Logos (presently) excludes systems.

I developed the power structure theory by combining the reported phenomenology I have just outlined with Antonio Damasio's insights in cognitive neuroscience (which he published in a book appropriately called Descartes' Error); and Pierre Bourdieu's "theory of practice" (where he explained how power in society really operates). The overall result was the power structure as an up-to-date model of the all-important notion of "power monger" or "enemy"; as the central subject toward which our all-important pursuit of social justice and freedom are directed; and of course of politics. The point here is to see the enemy (not necessarily as a dictator, or a powerful clique, or "the 1%", but) as a structure—comprising power interests and our beliefs, or information; and also wholeness or the lack of it—both institutional and human. I pointed to insights from technical fields—including stochastic optimization, artificial intelligence and artificial life—to demonstrate that those seemingly distinct entities can not only co-evolve together—but also devise strategies and act as if they were intelligent and alive. And that all this can happen without anyone's conscious intention, or even awareness!

The power structure theory sets the stage for holotopian politics.

Which is no longer "us against them" as it has been through history—but all of us against the power structure.

That the revolution to which I'm inviting you will be pursued (not through confrontation but) through collaboration!

Zygmunt Bauman

Materialism

– The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

(Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix.)

I am prepared that you may consider all this as (not holotopian but) utopian. So let me tell you why it's not: I'll coin "geocide" as keyword and use it to point out that the "banal evil" is in our time reaching grotesque, surreal dimensions: We are not sending someone else's children in overcrowded trains on a journey of no return; unless we wake up—we'll be doing similar or worse to our own children; by doing no more than "our job" (within the systems as they've become). We'll be accomplices in the geocide by doing no more—than being passive; than remaining unengaged.

When the light of awareness has been turned on—it will be crystal-clear that geocide is not in anyone's "interest"; and that the only way we'll be able to change course is by collaborating instead of competing.

I use "the world" as metaphor, and materialism as keyword, to point to the spell that "reality" (as it presents to us by the systems in which we live and work) keeps us in; and the fact that we won't be able to liberate ourselves unless we develop an independent reference system; which is not a mere description of that "reality". <p>It was tempting to turn "idealism" into a keyword and use it as antonym to materialism; and elevate the cultural condition that restores ideas and ideals to their function, and prominence; but I did something else instead. In Chapter Two I created homo ludens and homo sapiens as a pair of antonyms denoting two 'cultural species' and two distinct ways of evolving; where the homo ludens handles the overwhelming noise and complexity by learning his professional and other roles as one would learn the rules of a game; and by acting in them competitively; and where the homo sapiens is the 'cultural species' and the evolutionary course that constitute the gist of this proposal. I didn't say this in the book—but I'll leave it for you here to reflect on—why homo ludens and homo sapiens are indeed two coherent paradigms: Both see themselves as the future of human evolution; and the other one as going extinct; the homo sapiens looks at the data; the homo ludens simply looks around...

Dialog

“As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved.”

(David Bohm, Problem and Paradox.)

When the way we use the mind is the root of our problems—then this is no longer a problem but a paradox; which turns all our "problems" into paradoxes!

The function of the dialog is to dissolve the paradox.

The dialog is an entirely new way to communicate. David Bohm called it "dialogue" and explained that "it [...] may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."

The meaning of this keyword is not "conversation", as the word "dialogue" has been commonly used—but the one that follows from the Greek dialogos (through logos). The function of the dialog is to first of all liberate logos; and to then apply it to rebuild our collective mind, or "public sphere" as Jürgen Habermans and his colleagues have been calling it; and make democracy capable of taking care of its negative trends or "problems"; or just simply possible.

The dialog will recreate the way we use new media. Bohm's dialog has been documented by some distinctly smart and knowledgeable people, including Bohm himself—so all we need is to click and explore.

But that's only the beginning; what remains is to federate all that's relevant to this new way of communicating; and then implement it by using the arts, and the new information technology; and divise an ever-growing collection of prototypes (which we'll have an endless fun creating)—which will engender the cultural revival; which is, of course, holotopia initiative's very purpose.

David Bohm