CONVERSATIONS
Contents
Federation through Conversations
A systemic intervention
The medium is the message
Don't be deceived by this seemingly innocent word, "conversations". The conversations that will now extend and continue our initiative are where the real action begins; and the real fun.
The first thing that must be understood is that when we say "conversations", we don't mean "only talking". On the contrary! Here the medium truly is the message. By developing these conversations, we want to develop a way for us to put the themes that matter into the focus of our shared attention. We want to engage our collective knowledge and ingenuity to bear upon understanding, and handling, those issues. And above all – we want to create a manner of conversing, and sharing, and co-creating that brings us the people into the drivers seat – and our society's 'vehicles' once again into a safe and governable condition.
Every era has its challenges and its opportunities, which are often seen only from a historical distance. The 19th century changed beyond recognition our industry, our family, and our values. The 20th century accelerated those changes, and with them also the growth of our important variables. The 20th century created also the knowledge by which the nature of our new situation could be understood and handled in a new way. But we remained caught up in the paradigm that the 19th century left us in, tangled up in its subtle power relationships and institutionalized practices, unable to see beyond. Recall once again the image of Galilei in prison. Today no Inquisition, no imprisonment and even no censorship is required. As Italo Calvino observed decades ago, while it was still only the pages of printed text that competed for our attention – the jungleness of our information will do just as well. And probably better. But this disturbing trend can be reversed – and that's our core goal.
These conversations will not be only a medium of communication, but also – and in a truest sense – the message. They will be strategically placed events through which the themes we touched upon in the prototype will be brought into the focus of the public eye and elaborated further. Through the conversations, the prototype will evolve and grow in content – by tapping into our collective intelligence.
These conversations will build the public sphere, or the collective mind, which is capable of putting the themes of our time into focus; enrich our conversations with the insights of giant, help us build upon their insights, instead of ignoring them.
While some of the themes we will be taking up are ubiquitous or perennial (how to resolve large contemporary issues; how to make academic research more useful and more creative; and many others) – having a prototype will make them entirely different. We will no longer be talking about how to improve the candle. We will be talking about creating a light bulb!
Conversations that matter
If you consider, as we do, the news about Donald Trump or about some terrorist to be nothing really new, then you might be thirsting for some real and good news. And anyhow – why use the media to spread their messages? The conversations we are planning will create true spectacles, true reality shows – and about the themes that matter!
When in Federation through Images we talked about the mirror existing at every university, we may have made it seem like an entrance to something – to an academic underground perhaps, or to an underworld. You may now perceive the mirror as an exit – from an academic and more generally creative reality where our creativity is confined to updating an outdated paradigm, to an incomparably freer yet more responsible and responsive one – where we are empowered to perceive and change this paradigm. Where we are helping our society and culture evolve in a new way, and in a new direction.
This new good news will bring to the forefront entirely new heroes. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, whose talents brought him from a village in the Pyrenees to the forefront of French intelligentsia. Bourdieu became a leading sociologist by understanding, in a new way, how the society functions and evolves. And how this evolution is shaped by the subtle power relationships that are woven into our communication. Buddhadasa, Thailand's enlightened monk and scholar, will help us understand that at the core of the teachings of the Buddha – and of all world religions as well – is a deep insight about ourselves, from which an entirely different way of evolving culturally and socially – liberated from those power relationships – naturally follows. Bourdieu's "theory of practice" will then help us see how and why the institutionalized religion grew to be an instrument of that very renegade power, instead of liberating us from it. And how our other institutions suffered from that same tendency, including our academic institutions notwithstanding. We will then more easily appreciate Erich Jantsch's efforts to bring our work on contemporary issues beyond fixing problems within the narrow limits of our present-day institutions, and institutionalized routines and values. And to bring the university institution to adapt to and assume the leadership role in this transition. We will then also understand and appreciate the value of Douglas Engelbart's work on showing us how to use "digital technology" to develop "a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms" – which will vastly enhance this evolution. And why Jantsch and Engelbart – and so incredibly many other 20th century giants – remained ignored.
The nature of our conversations
Knowledge federation in practice
When you look at the work we've done putting this prototype together, you may naturally wonder – "OK, but what now?" What could be more natural than to create a conversation about it. And when we say "conversation", what we mean is really a whole network of conversations. They can be as simple as two people talking. But if they record their conversation – then other people can hear it, and continue it! And so, ideally – or asymptotically – our conversations about any specific theme merge into a single conversation, through which our understanding of this theme is enriched by our – and our ancestors' – best insights. But isn't that what knowledge federation is really all about?
Dialog not debate
Another thing that must be said is that this in the truest sense re-evolution will be nonviolent not only in action, but also in its manner of speaking. The technical word is dialog. The dialog is to the emerging paradigm as the debate is to the old one. The dialog too might have an icon giant, physicist David Bohm.
While the choice of themes for our dialogs is of course virtually endless, we have three concrete themes in mind to get us started.
Knowledge federation dialogs
Conversation about the prototype
Prototype becomes complete when there's a feedback loop that updates it continuously. And when it lives in the community, acting upon how we think and what we do. This conversation will serve both ends.
The prototype, as we have seen, was carefully designed to serve as a paradigm proposal, and as a proof of concept. We motivated our proposal by pointing to three sweeping changes and trends, and to the need to adapt what we do with knowledge to those trends. We then showed how substantial, qualitative, quantum-leap improvements can be achieved within the order of things or paradigm modeled by knowledge federation:
- Regarding the foundations for truth and meaning: We saw how in the new paradigm a foundation can be created that is triply solid: (1) it is a convention – and a convention is true by definition (2) it reflects the epistemological state of the art in science and philosophy; (3) it is a prototype – hence ready to be changed when new insights are reached
- Regarding the pragmatic side, making knowledge responsive to new needs of people and society: The prototype has that as an explicit goal. The improvements that are possible within it cannot be overstated – and we pointed to them by using various framings such as "the largest contribution to human knowledge", as what we must do to make our civilization sustainable, and as "evolutionary guidance", necessary for meaningfully continuing our cultural and social evolution.
- Regarding the IT side – we have seen that this technology offers a whole new principle of communication – and hence a new principle of operation to our knowledge work and our institutions. We have seen that this technology was created with that very purpose in mind, with Douglas Engelbart and his lab, and demonstrated in 1968. We have seen that (was it because it did not fit into the prevailing paradigm?) their proposal was not yet even heard.
Thomas Kuhn's view of new paradigms points to "anomalies" and to new possibilities for creative work as distinguishing characteristics. And so, by telling stories or vignettes, we could point to large anomalies that were reported a half-century ago by Werner Heisenberg, Vannevar Bush, Norbert Wiener, Douglas Engelbart, Erich Jantsch and very many other giants – without meeting the kind of response that might reasonably be expected. On the side of the new achievements, we showed a large collection of prototypes, each pointing to creative challenges and opportunities, and vast possibilities for improvement and achievement, in their specific areas.
Is there room for this new academic species at the university? What action should follow?
Conversation about transdisciplinarity
Knowledge federation defines itself as a transdiscipline. Norbert Wiener began his 1948 Cybernetics by describing a pre-war transdisciplinary group of scientists in the MIT and Harvard, discussing the issues of the method. Cybernetics emerged, from Mas as a common language and methodology through which the sciences can share their results across their disciplinary dialects. Mathematica biologist / philosopher Ludwig von Bertalanffy developed the general system theory for a similar purpose. In 1954, at Stanford University, von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James G. Miller and Anatol Rapoport initiated what later became the International Society for the Systems Sciences. What we've added to these most worthwhile efforts is "the dot on the i", the capacity to turn this into something we the people can understand and be guided by.
All these efforts to melt the disciplinary silos and make knowledge freely flowing and accessible to all were by their nature transdisciplinary, of course. Was that reason why they never really met with the kind of response, at our universities, that would give them universal visibility and impact? Similarly, as we have seen, Douglas Engelbart and Erich Jantsch – whom we credit as "founding fathers" of knowledge federation and systemic innovation respectively – found no response at major universities for their ideas. Engelbart liked to tell the story how he left U.C. Berkeley where he worked for a while after completing his doctorate, when a colleague told him "if you don't stop dreaming, and don't start publishing peer-reviewed articles, you will remain an adjunct assistant professor forever."
"The individual players are compelled by their own cupidity to form coalitions", Wiener observed in Cybernetics, commenting on the kind of social dynamics that develop in a competitive environment, that was diagnosed by von Neumann's results in game theory. Is the academic discipline such a coalition? Can we evolve the university in a collaborative way, and make it more humane and more useful to our society?
Let's begin by acknowledging that this theme could not be more interesting and relevant than it is. To say this more technically, what we are talking about is arguably the "systemic leverage point" with highest potential impact. Every society has a number of especially creative individuals, who are capable of doing what may seem impossible. The question now is about the ecology by which creative people are empowered to contribute to the core issues of our time – or not.
In the conventional order of things, when strengthening the university's usefulness and responsibility or responsiveness to the society is on the agenda, there are essentially two strong voices that are heard: (1) Tighten the funding and the publish or perish, and force the researchers to prove themselves (or rove the value of their work) on the academic market; let them "publish or perish"; (2) Tighten the funding and make the academic researchers prove themselves on the real-world market; let them survive if they can secure their own funding. We however champion a third possibility – where creative human beings are given the freedom to pursue socially relevant causes. The university that is marked by dialog and collaboration, not strife and competition. While our initiative was largely self-funded (by the enthusiasm and savings of our inspired members), it must also be said that it would have been impossible without at least some of us being on tenured academic positions – and in places such as Japan and Norway where the academic freedom is still valued and carefully protected. We would like to submit to this conversation that more freedom not less is what our general conditions are calling from. The academic "publish or perish" is so obviously "Industrial-age" that we really don't need to say more about that. On the other hand, the university can now take the leadership in the transformation of our society to the extent that it is capable of first of all transforming its own culture and values. It is noteworthy that some of the giants that initiated knowledge federation and systemic innovation did not find support for their work at the leading universities. Can we do better now?
Conversation about knowledge federation / systemic innovation
There are several themes and questions here. Can we give the university the capability of evolving its own system? Can we direct innovation, or creative work, in a systemic way, and help direct our society's evolution?
Another pivotal issue – how do we use the 'muscles' of our technology? In what direction is our capability to create and induce change taking us the people, and our civilization? Can we refine our steering of this centrally important activity?
Essentially this is what Erich Jantsch tried to do. And what Wiener started. And what Engelbart struggled with. The issue is – shall we let uninformed selfishness and competition, streamlined by "the market" or "the survival of the fittest", guide the way we steer and build our systems? And how we use our capability to create? Or do we need freedom, responsibility, information, and knowledge? And if this latter is the case (which we should be able to show beyond reasonable doubt – but leave it open to conversations which will build something even more important – our capability to talk through this important matter) – then what should this information be like? Who will do systemic innovation? In what way? Jantsch's proposal is of course a starting point. Our various prototypes are another. There is infrastructure being built up at the ISSS and the ITBA. Can we build on those?
Paradigm strategy dialogs
Conversation about the poster
Point: Federates knowledge across disciplines. Threads... whole methodology. POINT: How to handle issues. RHS – prototypes.
POINT: invitation to bootstrap together. Created for RSD6. Invitation. An intervention. Central point.
Conversation about socio-cultural evolution
This is a simplified version of the power structure theory, still rich enough to strike a good conversation. The point is the de-volution. The unguided evolution. What do we do when we don't have knowledge? A careful indeed snapshot of our evolutionary moment. We have been evolving destructive systems from the beginning of time. The more aggressive ones prevailed. Further, they create our awareness. FAAAAR from being "free to choose", we become our own worst enemy. ...
Key point: We look left, look right, and we adjust what we do according to "interests". The result feels safe... but the systems we create can be arbitrarily meaningless, making us work, compete... Can we do better than that?
Conversation about strategy
POINT: There's a better way to do it! Excerpt from the abstract...
Even the environmental movement seems to have forgotten its own history! How should we direct our efforts so that they do have an effect?
Liberation dialogs
Conversation about the book
The book breaks the ice – offers a theme that cannot be refused
Conversation abut science
Heisenberg – 19th cent. science damaged culture. Can we, in 21st century, do the opposite – and empower culture. Even do the kind of things that were NOT done in the past?
Conversation about religion
Enlightenment liberated us from... Can it be again? Really conversation about pursuit of happiness...
See
The dialog
David Bohm saw the "dialogue" as simply what we must do in order to shift our present paradigm (or put even more simply "what we must do") – see On dialogue. Two volumes edited by Banathy and Jenlink deepened and refined our understanding – download a copy of one of them here. Bohm's dialogue is a slow and completely unguided process. We experimented with turning Bohm's dialog into a 'cyclotron' by increasing vastly its energy – see the project's web site.
Issue Based Information Systems were conceived in the 1960s by Horst Rittel and others to enable collective understanding of complex or "wicked" issues – see this Wikipedia page. Dialog mapping tools such as the IBIS / Compendium, and Debategraph have been conceived to empower people and communities to tackle "wicked problems" of people to co-create knowledge – and even to turn the usual debate into a genuine dialog. See Jeff Conklin's Dialog Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems.
The Paradigm Strategy
The Liberation
Book introduction; background in blog posts Garden of Liberation and Science and Religion