Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<div class="page-header" ><h1>Holotopia</h1></div>
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<div class="page-header" ><h1>HOLOTOPIA</h1><br><br><h2>An Actionable Strategy</h2></div>
  
 
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<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
  
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>In a nutshell</h3>
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<div class="col-md-6">
 
 
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
 
The core of our [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
 
The core of our [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
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"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
 
"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
 
</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
<p>The objective of our proposal is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>In detail</h3>
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<div class="col-md-7">
<p>What would it take to <em>reconnect</em> information with action? </p>  
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<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated them as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted them to the purposes that need to be served? </p>  
<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated information as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served? </p>  
 
<p>What would our <em>world</em> be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"; if they attended to the other half of this picture, the use and usefulness of information, with thoroughness and rigor that distinguish academic technical work? </p>
 
 
 
<p>What would the academic field that develops this approach to information be like? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>
 
 
 
  
<blockquote>The substance of our proposal is a <em>complete</em> [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], by which those and other related questions are answered. </blockquote>  
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<p>By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>  
  
<p><em>Knowledge federation</em> is a [[Holotopia:Paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. Not in a specific field of science, where new paradigms are relatively common, but in "creation, integration and application of knowledge" at large.</p>  
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<blockquote>The substance of our proposal is a <em>complete</em> [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], where initial answers to relevant questions are proposed, and in part implemented in practice. </blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as real-life <em>praxis</em>.</blockquote>  
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<blockquote>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em> (informed practice).</blockquote>
  
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<blockquote>Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote> 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A proof of concept application</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-6">
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<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test.</p>
  
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<p>Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—[[Aurelio Peccei]] issued the following call to action: </p>
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>An application</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>The situation we are in</h3>
 
<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test. Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—[[Aurelio Peccei]] issued the following call to action:  
 
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
 
"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
 
"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
 
</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
</p>
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<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
 
<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
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<div class="col-md-7">
<p>This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". </p>  
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<p>This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". In what follows we shall assume that this conclusion has been <em>federated</em>—and focus on the more interesting questions, such as <em>how</em> to "change course"; and in what ways may the new course be different.</p>  
 
<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:</p>
 
<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:</p>
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
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The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".</p>  
 
The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".</p>  
  
<h3>Can the proposed 'headlights' help us "find a way to change course"?</h3>  
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<blockquote>Could the change of 'headlights' we are proposing be "a way to change course"?</blockquote>  
  
<p>Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's regular institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?</p>
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</div> </div>  
  
<p>If we used <em>knowledge federation</em> to 'illuminate the way'—what difference would that make? </p>
 
  
<blockquote>The Holotopia project is conceived as a <em>knowledge federation</em>-based response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action.</blockquote>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
<p>We coined the keyword [[Holotopia:Holotopia|<em>holotopia</em>]] to point to the cultural and social order of things that will result.</p>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> is a vision of a possible future that emerges when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.</blockquote>
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<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
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<p>As the optimism regarding our future waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>
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<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is a <em>more</em> attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily actionable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>  
  
<p>To begin the Holotopia project, we are developing an initial <em>prototype</em>. It includes a vision, and a collection of strategic and tactical assets—that will make the vision clear, and our pursuit of it actionable. </p>  
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<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</blockquote>
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A principle</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>holotopia</em> is not a utopia</h3>
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<div class="col-md-7">
<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
 
<p>As the optimism regarding our future faded, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>
 
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is a <em>more</em> attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily realizable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>
 
 
 
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</p>  
 
  
<h3>Making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]</h3>
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<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to "change course" toward <em>holotopia</em>?</p>  
<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to change course toward the <em>holotopia</em>?</p>  
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<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> point to a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</blockquote>
<blockquote> From a collection of insights from which the <em>holotopia</em> emerges as a future worth aiming for, we have distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</blockquote>
 
 
<p>This principle is suggested by the <em>holotopia</em>'s very name. And also by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>. Instead of <em>reifying</em> our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the [[Wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]] of it all. </p>
 
<p>This principle is suggested by the <em>holotopia</em>'s very name. And also by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>. Instead of <em>reifying</em> our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the [[Wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]] of it all. </p>
  
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</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A method</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<p>"The arguments posed in the preceding pages", Peccei summarized in One Hundred Pages for the Future, "point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost <em>the sense of the whole</em>." </p>
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<blockquote>To make things [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]—<em>we must be able to see them whole</em>! </blockquote>
  
 +
<p>To highlight that the <em>knowledge federation</em> methodology described and implemented in the proposed <em>prototype</em> affords that very capability, to <em>see things whole</em>, in the context of the <em>holotopia</em> we refer to it by the pseudonym <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
  
 +
<p>While the characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.</p>
  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A method</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We see things whole</h3>
 
<p>"The arguments posed in the preceding pages", Peccei summarized in One Hundred Pages for the Future, "point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost <em>the sense of the whole</em>." </p>
 
<blockquote>To make things whole—<em>we must be able to see them whole</em>! </blockquote>
 
<p>To highlight that the <em>knowledge federation</em> methodology described in the mentioned <em>prototype</em> affords that very capability, to <em>see things whole</em>, in the context of the <em>holotopia</em> we refer to it by the pseudonym <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
 
<p>The characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation. One characteristic, however, must be made clear from the start.</p>
 
  
<h3>We look at all sides</h3>
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
 
[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
 
<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
 
<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
 
</p>   
 
</p>   
<p>If our goal would be to put a new "piece of information" into an existing "reality picture", then whatever challenges that reality picture would be considered "controversial". But when  our goal is to see whether something is <em>whole</em> or 'cracked', then our attitude must be different.</p>
+
 
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
<p>The views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to relax and enjoy this presentation, if you consider that the communication we invite you to engage in with us  <em>is</em> academically rigorous—but with a different <em>idea</em> of rigor. In the <em>holoscope</em> we take no recourse to "reality". Coexistence of multiple ways of looking at any theme or issues (which in the <em>holoscope</em> are called <em>scopes</em>) is axiomatic. And so is the assumption that we <em>must</em> overcome our habits and resistances and look in new ways, if we should see things whole and finding a new course.</p>
 
  
<blockquote>We invite you to be with us in the manner of the <em>dialog</em>—to <em>genuinely</em> share, listen and co-create.</blockquote>  
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<p>The <em>holoscope</em> distinguishes itself by allowing for <em>multiple</em> ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called <em>scopes</em>. The <em>scopes</em> and the resulting <em>views</em> have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing. The <em>views</em> that show the <em>whole</em> from a certain angle are called <em>aspects</em>.</p>
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<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed <em>creation</em> of the ways in which we look at any theme or issue—has become <em>necessary</em> in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with our conventional ones.</p>
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<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>
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<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or need to (also) be perceived as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scopes</em>); and to do that collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>  
  
<h3>We modified science</h3>
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<p>To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>  
<p>To liberate our thinking from the inherited concepts and methods, and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>  
 
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
 
Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em> is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
 
Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em> is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
 
</blockquote>  
 
</blockquote>  
  
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<p>A discovery of a new way of looking—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct general assessment of an object of study or a situation as a whole (see if 'the cup is broken or whole') is a new <em>kind of result</em> that is made possible by the general-purpose science that is modeled by the <em>holoscope</em></p>
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<p>To see more, we take recourse to the vision of others. The <em>holoscope</em> combines scientific and other insights to enable us to see what we ignored, to 'see the other side'. This allows us to detect structural defects ('cracks') in core elements of everyday reality—which appear to us as just normal, when we look at them in our habitual way ('in the light of a candle'). </p>
  
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<p>All elements in our proposal are deliberately left unfinished, rendered as a collection of <em>prototypes</em>. Think of them as composing a 'cardboard model of a city', and a 'construction site'.  By sharing them we are not making a case for a specific 'city'—but for 'architecture' as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em>. </p>
  
 
</div> </div>
 
</div> </div>
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<div class="page-header" ><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
 
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
 
  
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Scope</em></h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
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<blockquote>What is wrong with our present "course"? In what ways does it need to be changed? What benefits will result?</blockquote>
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<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
 
[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
 
<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
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<p>We use the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes, which <em>determine</em> the "course":</p>
  
<h3>Before we begin</h3>
 
<p>What theme, what evidence, what "new discovery" might have the force commensurate with the momentum with which our civilization is rushing onward—and have a <em>realistic</em> chance to make it "change course"?</p>
 
<p>We offer these [[Holotopia:Five insights|<em>five insights</em>]] as a <em>prototype</em> answer. </p>
 
<p>They result when we apply the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five pivotal themes:
 
 
<ul>  
 
<ul>  
<li>Innovation (how we use our ability to create, and induce change)</li>  
+
<li><b>Innovation</b>—the way we use our ability to create, and induce change</li>  
<li>Communication (how information technology is being used)</li>  
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<li><b>Communication</b>—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled</li>  
<li>Epistemology (fundamental premises on which our handling of information is based)</li>  
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<li><b>Epistemology</b>—the fundamental assumptions we use to create truth and meaning; or "the relationship we have with information"</li>  
<li>Method (how truth and meaning are created)</li>  
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<li><b>Method</b>—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life, or "the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it"</li>  
<li>Values (how we "pursue happiness")</li>  
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<li><b>Values</b>—the way we "pursue happiness", which in the modern society <em>directly</em> determines the course</li>  
</ul> </p>
+
</ul>  
<p>For each of these five themes, we show that our conventional way of looking made us ignore a principle or a rule of thumb, which readily emerges when we 'connect the dots'—when we <em>combine</em> published insights. We see that by ignoring those principles, we have created deep <em>structural</em> problems ('crack in the cup')—which are causing problems, and "global issues" in particular.</p>  
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<p>In each case, we see a structural defect, which led to perceived problems. We demonstrate practical ways, partly implemented as <em>prototypes</em>, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We see that their removal naturally leads to improvements that are well beyond the removal of symptoms.</p>
  
<p>A 'scientific' approach to problems is this way made possible, where instead of focusing on symptoms, we understand and treat their deeper, structural causes—which <em>can</em> be remedied. </p>  
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<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision results.</blockquote>
  
<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we only summarize each of the <em>five insights</em>—and provide evidence and details separately.</p>
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<p>The key to comprehensive change turns out to be the same as it was in Galilei's time—a new approach to knowledge, which allows for creation of general principles and insights. As the case was then, the development of this new approach to knowledge is shown to follow from the state of the art of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—and hence as an <em>academic</em> task.</p>  
</div> </div>  
 
  
 +
<blockquote>A case for our proposal is thereby also made.</blockquote>
  
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<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we here only summarize the <em>five insights</em>—and provide evidence and details separately.</p>
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</div> </div>
  
  
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<h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
 
<h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
  
<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. We look at the <em>way</em> in which man uses his  power to <em>innovate</em> (create, and induce change). </p>  
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<blockquote><b>What</b> might constitute "a way to change course"?</blockquote>
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 +
<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. Imagine if some malevolent entity, perhaps an insane dictator, took control over that power. </p>
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 +
<blockquote>The [[Power structure|<em>power structure</em>]] insight allows us to see why no dictator is needed.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>We look at the way our civilization follows in its evolution; or metaphorically, at 'the itinerary' of our 'bus'. </blockquote>  
+
<p>While the nature of the <em>power structure</em> will become clear as we go along, imagine it, to begin with, as our institutions; or more accurately, as <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> (which we simply call <em>systems</em>).</p>  
  
<p>We readily observe that we use competition or "survival of the fittest" to orient innovation, not information and "making things whole". The popular belief that "the free competition" or "the free market" will serve us better, also makes our "democracies" elect the "leaders" who represent that view. But is that view warranted?</p>  
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<p>Notice that <em>systems</em> have an <em>immense</em> power—<em>over us</em>, because <em>we have to adapt to them</em> to be able to live and work; and <em>over our environment</em>, because by organizing us and using us in certain specific ways, <em>they decide what the effects of our work will be</em>. </p>  
  
<blockquote>Genuine revolutions include new ways to see freedom and power; <em>holotopia</em> is no exception. </blockquote>
+
<blockquote>The <em>power structure</em> determines whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions. </blockquote>   
<p>We offer this [[Keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]], as a means to that end. Think of the <em>power structure</em> as a new way to conceive of the intuitive notion "power holder", who might take away our freedom, or be our "enemy". </p>
 
<p>While the nature of <em>power structures</em> will become clear as we go along, imagine them, to begin with, as institutions; or more accurately, as <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> (we'll here call them simply <em>systems</em>).</p>
 
<p>Notice that <em>systems</em> have an <em>immense</em> power—<em>over us</em>, because <em>we have to adapt to them</em> to be able to live and work; and <em>over our environment</em>, because by organizing us and using us in a specific ways, <em>they determine what the effects of our work will be</em>.</p>
 
<blockquote>The <em>power structures</em> determine whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions. </blockquote>   
 
  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
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<p>How suitable are <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> for their all-important role?</p>  
 
<p>How suitable are <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> for their all-important role?</p>  
  
<p>Evidence, circumstantial <em>and</em> theoretical, shows that they waste a lion's share of our resources. And that they <em>cause</em> problems, or make us incapable of solving them.</p>
+
<blockquote>Evidence shows that the <em>power structure</em> wastes a lion's share of our resources. And that it either <em>causes</em> problems, or make us incapable of solving them.</blockquote>  
 
 
<p>The reason is the intrinsic nature of evolution, as Richard Dawkins explained it in "The Selfish Gene". </p>
 
 
 
<blockquote>"Survival of the fittest" favors the <em>systems</em> that are by nature predatory, not the ones that are useful. </blockquote>
 
 
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg?t=920 This excerpt]  from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as law professor created to <em>federate</em> an insight he considered essential) explains how the corporation, the most powerful institution on the planet, evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, such as the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect "killing machine".  [https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?t=2780 This scene] from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how our <em>systems</em> affect <em>our own</em> condition.</p>
 
 
 
<blockquote>Why do we put up with such <em>systems</em>? Why don't we treat them as we treat other human-made things—by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served?</blockquote>
 
  
<p>The reasons are interesting, and in <em>holotopia</em> they'll be a recurring theme. </p>
+
<p>The root cause of this malady is in the way <em>systems</em> evolve. </p>  
<p>One of them we have already seen: We do not <em>see things whole</em>. When we look in conventional ways, the <em>systems</em> remain invisible for similar reasons as a mountain on which we might be walking.</p>  
 
  
<p>A reason why we ignore the possibility of adapting <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> to the functions they have in our society, is that they perform for us a <em>different</em> function—of providing structure to power battles and turf strifes. Within a <em>system</em>, they provide us "objective" and "fair" criteria to compete;  and in the world outside, they give us as system <em>system</em> "competitive edge".</p>  
+
<blockquote>Survival of the fittest favors the <em>systems</em> that are predatory, not those that are useful. </blockquote>  
  
<p>Why don't media corporations <em>combine</em> their resources to give us the awareness we need? Because they must <em>compete</em> with one another for our attention—and use only "cost-effective" means.</p>
+
<p>[https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg?t=920 This excerpt]  from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as a law professor created to <em>federate</em> an insight he considered essential) explains how the most powerful institution on our planet evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, notably the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect predator.  [https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?t=2780 This scene] from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how the <em>power structure</em> affects <em>our own</em> condition.</p>  
  
<p>The most interesting reason, however, is that the <em>power structures</em> have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> interests. Through <em>socialization</em>, they can adapt to their interests both our culture <em>and</em> our "human quality".</p>  
+
<p>The <em>systems</em> provide an ecology, which in the long run shapes our values and "human quality". They have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> needs. "The business of business is business"—and if our business is to succeed in competition, we <em>must</em> act in ways that lead to that effect. We either bend and comply—or get replaced. The effect on the <em>system</em> of both options will be the same.</p>  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>A result is that bad intentions are no longer needed for cruelty and evil to result. The <em>power structures</em> can co-opt our sense of duty and commitment, and even our heroism and honor.</p>  
+
<p>A consequence, Zygmunt Bauman diagnosed, is that bad intentions are no longer needed for bad things to happen. Through <em>socialization</em>, the <em>power structure</em> can co-opt our duty and commitment, and even heroism and honor.</p>  
<p>Zygmunt Bauman's key insight, that the concentration camp was only a special case, however extreme, of (what we are calling) the <em>power structure</em>, needs to be carefully digested and internalized: While our ethical sensibilities are focused on the <em>power structures</em> of yesterday, we are committing the greatest  [https://youtu.be/d1x7lDxHd-o massive crime] in human history (in all innocence, by only "doing our job" within the <em>systems</em> we belong to).</p>  
+
<p>Bauman's insight that even the holocaust was a consequence and a special case, however extreme, of the <em>power structure</em>, calls for careful contemplation: Even the concentration camp  employees, Bauman argued, were only "doing their job"—in a <em>system</em> whose character and purpose was beyond their field of vision, and power to change. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>While our ethical sense is tuned to the <em>power structures</em> of the past, we are committing (in all innocence, by acting only through <em>power structures</em> that bind us together) the greatest  [https://youtu.be/d1x7lDxHd-o massive crime] in history.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>Our children may not have a livable planet to live on.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>Our civilization is not "on the collision course with nature" because someone violated the rules—but <em>because we follow them</em>.</blockquote>  
+
<p>Not because someone broke the rules—<em>but because we follow them</em>.</p>  
  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
<p>The fact that we will not "solve our problems" unless we learned to collaborate and adapt our <em>systems</em> to their contemporary roles and our contemporary challenges  has not remained unnoticed. Alredy in 1948, in his seminal Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener explained why competition cannot replace 'headlights and steering'. Cybernetics was envisioned as a <em>transdisciplinary</em> academic effort to help us understand <em>systems</em>, so that we may adapt their structure to the functions they need to perform. </p>  
+
<p>The fact that we will not solve our problems unless we develop the capability to update our <em>systems</em> has not remained unnoticed. </p>  
  
 
<p>
 
<p>
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</p>
 
</p>
  
<p>The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome did after its inception in 1968 was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adopted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>  
+
<p>The very first step that the The Club of Rome's founders did after its inception, in 1968, was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave making things whole on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adapted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The work and the conclusions of this team were based on results in the systems sciences. In the year 2000, in "Guided Evolution of society", systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy surveyed relevant research, and concluded in a true <em>holotopian</em> tone:</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We are the <em>first generation of our species</em> that has the privilege, the opportunity and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed <em>chosen people</em>. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These two are core requirements, because <em>what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.</em></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>In 2010 Knowledge Federation began to self-organize to make further headway on this creative frontier. The procedure we developed is simple: We create a [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of a system, and a <em>transdisciplinary</em> community and project around it to update it continuously. The insights in participating disciplines can in this way have real or <em>systemic</em> effects.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Our very first <em>prototype</em>, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism in 2011, was of a public informing that identifies systemic causes and proposes corresponding solutions (by involving academic and other experts) of perceived problems (reported by people directly, through citizen journalism). </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A year later we created The Game-Changing Game as a generic way to change <em>systems</em>—and hence as a "practical way to craft the future"; and based on it The Club of Zagreb, as an update to The Club of Rome.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Each of about forty [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] in our portfolio illustrates [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] in a specific domain.  Each of them is composed in terms of [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—problem-solution pairs, ready to be adapted for other applications and domains.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Collaborology <em>prototype</em>, in education, will highlight some of the advantages of this approach.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p> An education that prepares us for yesterday's professions, and only in a certain stage of life, is obviously an obstacle to <em>systemic</em> change. Collaborology implements an education that is in every sense flexible (self-guided, life-long...), and in an <em>emerging</em> area of interest (collaborative knowledge work, as enabled by new technology). By being collaboratively created itself (Collaborology is created and taught by a network of international experts, and offered to learners world-wide), the economies of scale result that <em>dramatically</em> reduce effort. This in addition provides a sustainable business model for developing and disseminating up-to-date knowledge in <em>any</em> domain of interest. By conceiving the course as a design project, where everyone collaborates on co-creating the learning resources, the students get a chance to exercise their "human quality". This in addition gives the students an essential role in the resulting 'knowledge-work ecosystem' (as 'bacteria', extracting 'nutrients') .</p>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
  
Line 248: Line 263:
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Scope</h3>  
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Scope</h3>  
  
 +
<p>We have just seen that our evolutionary challenge and opportunity is to develop the capability to update our institutions or <em>systems</em>, to learn how to make them <em>whole</em>.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote><b>Where</b>—with what system—shall we begin?</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. </p>
 +
 +
<p>One of them is obvious: If we should use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>
  
<p>If our next evolutionary task is to make institutions or <em>systems</em> <em>whole</em>—<b>where</b> should we begin?</p>
+
<p>In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. Wiener made that point by talking about ants and bees. It is the nature of the communication that determines a social system's properties, and behavior.  Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", but let us here use this more contemporary one) the <em>sustainability</em> of a system. The full title of Wiener's book was  "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>  
<p>Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>
 
<p>Norbert Wiener contributed another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> individuals into a system. The nature of communication <em>determines</em> what a system will be like. <em>The</em> basic insight of cybernetics is that to to be able to correct its course (or to maintain "homeostasis", Wiener would have preferred to say, which we may interpret as "sustainability"), the system's "control" must be based on <em>suitable</em> communication or "feedback". </p>  
 
  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
  
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed;  it must be restored, for sustainability to be possible. </blockquote>  
+
<p>That is presently <em>not</em> the case with our core systems; and with our civilization as a whole.</p>
  
 +
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>
 +
<p>Our society's communication-and-control is broken; it needs to be restored.</p>
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their own</em> system their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>  
+
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>These calls to action remained, however, without effect.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm. <em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his insight to the communication whose tie with action had been severed.</p>  
  
<p>Why hasn't this been done?</p>  
+
<p>We have assembled a formidable collection of academic results that shared the same fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. The link between communication and action having been broken—the academic results will tend to be ignored <em>whenever they challenge the present "course"</em> and point to a new one!</p>
  
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm.</p>  
+
<p>To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds remained ignored.</p>  
  
<blockquote><em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his results to the communication whose tie with action had been severed!</blockquote>  
+
<p>This sentiment is transformed into <em>holotopian</em> optimism when we look at 'the other side of the coin'—the creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed <em>obliged</em> to reinvent <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>, by recreating the very communication that holds them together. Including, of course, our own, academic system, and the way in which it interoperates with other systems—<em>or fails</em> to interoperate. </p>
  
<p>We assembled a considerable collection of academic results that shared a similar fate, as evidence of an underlying anomaly we are calling the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]].</p>
+
<p>Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> widely ignored fact:</p>  
  
<p>It may be disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see that so many best ideas of our best minds are unable to benefit our society. But this sentiment quickly changes to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier that is opening up—where we are called upon to reinvent the very <em>system</em> by which we do our work; as the founding fathers of science did centuries ago. </p>  
+
<blockquote>The information technology we now use to communicate with the world was <em>created</em> to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Optimism turns into enthusiasm, when we understand the role that the new information technology will have in that undertaking.</p>  
+
<p>'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have already been created—<em>for the purpose of</em> giving our society the 'headlights' it needs.</p>  
  
<blockquote> Core parts of contemporary information technology were created to enable <em>fundamentally different</em> systemic solutions in knowledge work, compared to the ones we have inherited from the past.</blockquote>  
+
<p>Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that—given the vast volumes of our information—our knowledge work must be organized <em>in a way that enables us to benefit from each other's thinking</em>. Bush's point was that technology and processes must be devised to enable us to in effect "connect the dots" or think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>  
  
<p>"Fundamentally different" here means that their very principle of operation will be different—in the manner and in the degree in which electrical light is different from the light that a burning candle would produce.</p>  
+
<p>Douglas Engelbart, however, took Bush's idea significantly further than Bush himself envisioned, and indeed in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. </p>  
  
<p>It is not completely true that Vannevar Bush's call to action was ignored. Douglas Engelbart heard it, and with his SRI team developed a solution that was well beyond what Bush envisioned. They showed this solution—really the technology we all now use to connect with each other and to communicate—in their famous 1968 demo.</p>  
+
<p>All earlier innovations in this area—the clay tablets <em>and</em> the printing press—required that a physical object with a message be <em>physically transported</em>.</p>  
  
<blockquote>But the vision that guided Engelbart, of a new <em>paradigm</em> in communication, has neither been understood in theory nor implemented in practice.</blockquote>
+
<blockquote>This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</blockquote>  
 
<p>When we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar way as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. While all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be physically <em>transported</em>—this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>  
 
  
<blockquote> We can now think and create—together!</blockquote>  
+
<p>We can now develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em>.</p>  
  
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the <em>system</em> by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The improvement that is possible is not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that can and needs to be achieved is indeed <em>qualitative</em>— from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.</p>  
+
<p>Engelbart conceived this new technology as a necessary step toward becoming able to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate. </p>  
  
<p>By collaborating in new ways, as Engelbart envisioned, we would be able to comprehend our problems and respond to them incomparably more quickly than we do. Engelbart foresaw that the <em>collective intelligence</em> that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially". </p>  
+
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", will give us an opportunity for a pause and an illuminating reflection. Think about the prospects of improving the planetary <em>collective mind</em>. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then our old man put his fingers on his forehead, and raised his eyes up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential is not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that is both necessary and possible is <em>qualitative</em>—from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.</p>  
  
<p>But to Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to only implement the <em>old</em> processes and systems, which evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, and make them more efficient; to only <em>broadcast</em> data. </p>
+
<p>To Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that <em>broadcast</em> information. </p>
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on us as culture; and on "human quality". Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>
 
  
<p>But this is, of course, what binds us to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
+
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the effects that our dazzled and confused <em>collective mind</em> had on our culture; and on "human quality".</p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>Our sense of meaning having been drowned in an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>  
  
<blockquote> Instead of liberating us—the new information technology bounded us to <em>power structure</em> even stronger. </blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>But that is exactly what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>!</blockquote>
  
  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is the functioning of our <em>collective mind</em> that suits the new technology—and our situation.</p>  
+
<p><em>What is to be done</em>, to restore the severed link between communication and action?</p>
 +
<blockquote><em>How can we begin to change our collective mind</em>—as our technology enables, and our situation demands?</blockquote> 
 +
 
 +
<p>Engelbart left us a clear and concise answer; he called it <em>bootstrapping</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>His point was that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done would not have an effect (the tie between information and action having been broken). <em>Bootstrapping</em> means that we consider ourselves as <em>parts</em> in a <em>collective mind</em>; and that we self-organize, and <em>act</em>, as it may best serve its restoration to <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The key to solution is to either <em>create</em> new systems with the material of our own minds and bodies—or to <em>help others</em> do that.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was conceived by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is an umbrella term for a variety of activities and social processes that together comprise the functions of a <em>collective mind</em>. Obviously, the development of the <em>collective mind</em> [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] will requires a <em>system</em>, a new kind of institution, which will assemble and mobilize the required knowledge and human and other resources toward that end. Presently, Knowledge Federation is a complete <em>prototype</em> of the <em>transdiscipline</em> for <em>knowledge federation</em>, ready for inspection, co-creative updates and deployment.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>But may will have the requisit knowledge, and who may be given the power—to update our <em>collective mind</em>?</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The <em>praxis</em> of  <em>knowledge federation</em> itself must, of course, also be <em>federated</em>.</blockquote> 
 +
 
 +
<p>In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers, working on technology and processes for collective sense making). </p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:BCN2011.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Patty Coulter, Mei Lin Fung and David Price speaking at the 2011 An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism workshop in Barcelona</small>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>We use the above triplet of photos ideographically, to highlight that Knowledge Federation is a true federation—where state of the art knowledge is combined in state of the art <em>systems</em>. The featured participants of our 2011 workshop in Barcelona, where our public informing <em>prototype</em> was created, are Patty Coulter (the Director of Oxford Global Media and Fellow of Green College Oxford, formerly the Director of Oxford University's Reuter Program in Journalism) Mei Lin Fung (the founder of Program for the Future) and David Price (who co-founded both the Global Sensemaking R & D community, and Debategraph—which is now the leading global platform for collective thinking).  
 +
</p>  
  
<p>Our call to action—to develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as real-life <em>praxis</em>—is proposed as a remedy to the <em>collective mind</em> issue.</p>  
+
<p>Other <em>prototypes</em> contributed other <em>design patterns</em> for restoring the severed link between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 <em>prototype</em> showed what may constitute the <em>federation</em> of a research result—which is written in an esoteric academic vernacular, and has large potential general interest and impact. The first phase of this <em>prototype</em>, completed through collaboration between the author and our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams, and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile, televised and live streamed event, where the result was made public. The third phase, implemented on Debategraph, modeled proper online collective thinking about the result—including pros and cons, connections with other related results, applications etc. </p>  
  
<p>Our <em>prototype</em> is offered as a proof of concept model of this solution.</p>  
+
<p>The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> is a conceived as a <em>direct</em> remedy for the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This <em>prototype</em> models a system by which <em>an academic community</em> can federate a single core message into the public sphere. The message in this case was also relevant—it was whether or not we can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the functioning of our <em>systems</em>; or whether we must use its alternative—the knowledge developed in the systems sciences. </p>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
Line 317: Line 364:
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
 
<p>
 
<p>
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else"</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>  
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Securing our children a future, however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.</p>  
+
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them to do was to 'hit the brakes'; and when the 'bus' they are believed to be 'driving' is inspected, it becomes clear that the 'brakes' too are missing. The job of a politician is to keep 'the bus on course' (the economy growing) for yet another four years. <em>Changing</em> the 'course' or the <em>system</em> is well beyond what they are able to do, or even imagine doing.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic may require systemic changes <em>now</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><b>Who</b>—what institution or <em>system</em>—will take the leadership role, and guide us through our unprecedentedly immense creative and evolutionary challenges?</blockquote> 
 +
 
 +
<p>Both Erich Jantsch and Doug Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them—just as they ignored Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and so many others who followed. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Why?</p>  
  
<p>So our next question is <b>who</b>, that is <em>what institution</em> will initiate the next urgent task on our evolutionary agenda—tell us how to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>; and empower us to do that?</p>  
+
<p>Isn't the prospect of restoring agency to information and power to knowledge deserving of academic attention?</p>  
  
<p>Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored. And so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them; and also Neil Postman and others that followed. </p>  
+
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the university institution followed the general trend, and evolved as a <em>power structure</em>. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.</p>  
<p>Why? Isn't restoring agency to information and power to knowledge a task worthy of academic attention?</p>  
+
<p>  
 +
[[File:Toulmin-Vision2.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
  
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> too followed the general evolutionary trend; that the academic discipline too evolved as <em>power structure</em>—to provide clear and fair rules for pursuing a career <em>within</em> a discipline; and divide the 'academic turf' <em>between</em> disciplines—while keeping the outliers outside.</p>
+
<p>We readily find them in the way in which the university institution <em>originated</em>.</p>  
 
<p>But to see solutions, we will need to look at deeper causes.</p>  
 
  
<p>As we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. By bringing up the image of Galilei in house arrest, we highlighted that it was not the pursuit of <em>practical</em> knowledge that led our ancestors to a "great cultural revival", but of <em>knowledge for its own sake</em>. Censorship and prison were unable to contain the new way to look at the world, whose time had come—and it transpired from astrophysics, where it originated, and permeated the society.</p>  
+
<p>The academic tradition did not originate as a way to practical knowledge, but to <em>freely</em> pursue knowledge for its own sake; in a manner disciplined only by [[knowledge of knowledge|<em>knowledge of knowledge</em>]]—which philosophers have been developing since antiquity. Wherever this free-yet-disciplined pursuit of knowledge took us, we followed.</p>  
  
<p>So the core role of the university is to inform us about the meaning and purpose of knowledge, so that we may successfully pursue knowledge in <em>any</em> context. The traditional academic keyword is "epistemology", which is usually interpreted as the exploration of the limits of knowledge, understood as "how and to what degree can we really know reality?". Here we'll use this keyword a bit differently, and let <em>epistemology</em> mean both the "knowledge of knowledge", and the "foundation for creating truth and meaning" that follows from it. </p>
+
<p>And as we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, by highlighting the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest,  
  
<p>We concluded the opening paragraph of our website by asking, rhetorically, "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" In this way we suggested that our situation today might be similar as the situation back then, in Galilei's time. That now again there is a new way to look at the world waiting to be given 'citizenship rights'—ready to transform our world. </p>  
+
<blockquote>it was this <em>free</em> pursuit of knowledge that led to the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival".</blockquote>
 +
</p>  
  
<p>This leads us to <em>the</em> key question, which we shall here begin to explore.</p>  
+
<p>We asked:
 +
<blockquote>Could a similar advent be in store for us today?</blockquote></p>  
  
<blockquote>Who, or what, might be 'Galilei in house arrest' today?</blockquote>  
+
<p>The key to the positive answer to this question—which is obviously central to <em>holotopia</em>—is in the <em>historicity</em> of "the relationship we have with knowledge"—which Stephen Toulmin explicated so clearly in his last book, "Reurn to Reason", from which the above quotation was taken. So that is what we here focus on.</p>
  
<p>What transformative ideas are ready to emerge? What new way of looking at the world is ready to transform it?</p>  
+
<p>As Toulmin pointed out, at the time when the <em>contemporary</em> academic ethos was taking shape, it was the Church and the tradition that had the prerogative of telling the people how to conduct their daily affairs and what to believe in. And as the image of Galilei in house arrest may suggest—they held onto that prerogative most firmly! But the censorship and the prison could not stop an idea whose time had come. They were unable to prevent a completely <em>new</em> way of exploring the world to transpire from astrophysics, where it originated, and transform first our pursuit of knowledge in general—and then our society and culture at large.</p>  
  
<p>And who, or what, is keeping Galilei 'in house arrest'?</p>
+
<p>It is therefore natural that at the universities we consider the curation of this <em>approach</em> to knowledge to be our core role in our society. Being the heirs and the custodians of a tradition that has historically led to some of <em>the</em> most spectacular evolutionary leaps in human history, we remain faithful to that tradition. We do that by meticulously conforming to the methods and the themes of interests of mathematics, physics, philosophy, biology, sociology, philosophy and other traditional academic disciplines, which, we believe, <em>embody</em> the highest standards of that tradition. People can learn practical skills elsewhere. It is only at the <em>university</em> that they can acquire the highest standards of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—and the ability to pursue knowledge effectively in <em>any</em> domain.</p>  
  
 +
<p>We must ask:</p>
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
+
<blockquote>Could the academic tradition evolve further? </blockquote>  
  
 +
<p>Could this tradition <em>once again</em> give us a completely <em>new</em> way to explore the world?</p>
  
<blockquote>So what <em>is</em> "right" knowledge? What <em>is</em> the right foundation for creating truth and meaning? Nobody knows! </blockquote>  
+
<p>Can the free pursuit of knowledge, curated by the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>, once again lead to "a great cultural revival" ?</p>
  
<p>Of course, innumerable views of this core philosophical issue have been contributed since as far back as our collective memory can reach. But no "official narrative" or consensus has as yet emerged.</p>
+
<blockquote>Can "a great cultural revival" <em>begin</em> at the university?</blockquote>  
  
<p>So all we can do here to begin this exploration is share what <em>we</em>'ve been told, while we were growing up. We'll simplify and caricature—to point to an issue that calls for attention.</p>
 
  
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we were informed, we have the evolutionary prerogative to understand the world, and to make choices rationally. Give the <em>homo sapiens</em> a correct understanding of the natural world, he'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "his needs", which he no doubt knows because he can experience directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, our ancestors invented a "ghost in the machine"—and prayed to <em>him</em> to give them what they wanted. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost"—and told us how the nature, or 'the machine', <em>really</em> works. We can now combine scientific understanding of causes with technology, and get out the nature exactly what we want and need.</p>
+
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
  
<p>And yes, one more thing: Our wants and needs can of course contradict one another. Here "the free market" and "the free elections" will serve as perfect scales, to assure that the majority prevails.</p>
 
  
<p>And culture—what about culture? Oh yes; some people, mostly older, still like to go to classical music concerts, to the theatre and that sort of things. We also have research in humanities, who study "culture". But their role in practical reality is not very clear. And anyhow, they haven't been able to give us anything close in spirit to a "scientific worldview"; indeed, the humanities researchers never seem to agree with each other.</p>  
+
<blockquote>In the course of our modernization, we made a <em>fundamental</em> error.</blockquote>
  
<p>According to this view, all we need from information is to give us "an objective reality picture", so that we may use our rational faculties and handle our affairs correctly. </p>  
+
<p>From the traditional culture we adopted a <em>myth</em> far more disruptive of modernization than the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; and that the purpose of information, and of our pursuit of knowledge, is to "know the reality" objectively, as it truly is. It may take a moment of reflection to see how much this <em>myth</em> permeates our popular culture, our society and institutions; how much it marks "the relationship we have with information"—in all its various manifestations.</p>  
  
<p>Popular myths of this kind, which began to take hold of our culture around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes were replaced by Darwin and Newton, were proven wrong in 20th century science and philosophy.</p>  
+
<p>This fundamental error has subsequently been detected and reported, but not corrected. (We again witness that the link between information and action has been severed.)</p>  
  
<blockquote>It turned out that <em>we</em> got it wrong.</blockquote>
 
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>It is impossible, scientists found out, to assert that our ideas and models <em>correspond</em> to reality. There is simply no way to open the supposed "mechanism of nature", and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to it.</p>  
+
<p><em>It is simply impossible</em> to open up the 'mechanism of nature', and verify that our ideas and models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing!</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The "reality", the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </blockquote>  
  
<p>"Reality", sociologists found out, should rather be considered as a contrivance of the traditional culture (or of what we called the <em>power structure</em>), invented to <em>socialize</em> us in a certain way.  In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann pointed out that throughout history, the explanations how "the reality really works", which they called "universal theories", have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> the given social order.</p>  
+
<p>This "social construction of reality" is a result of complex interaction between our cognitive organs and our culture. From the cradle to the grave, through innumerably many 'carrots and sticks', we are <em>socialized</em> to organize and communicate our experience <em>in a certain specific way</em>. </p>
  
<p>Results in cognitive science, and in political science and sociology, showed that we are not the "rational decision makers", as the 19th century made us believe.</p>
+
<blockquote>The <em>socialized reality</em> construction has has served as the 'DNA', which enabled the traditional cultures to reproduce themselves and evolve.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>Information, in other words, <em>has</em> traditionally served as 'headlights'; the purpose of the traditional myths was not to tell the people how the world really originated—but to serve as foundation for principles and norms, which oriented their behavior; and the development of "human quality".</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Information, however, and <em>socialization</em>, have always served also a different purpose—as instruments of power; as media which the power relationships were maintained. And hence as core elements of the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann left us an analysis of the social process by which the reality is constructed—and pointed to the role that "universal theories" (which determine the relationship we have with information) play in maintaining a given social and political status quo. An example, but not the only one, is the Biblical worldview of Galilei's persecutors.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To organize and sum up what we above all need to know about the <em>nature</em> of <em>socialization</em>, and about the relationship between power and culture, we created the Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio [[thread|<em>thread</em>]], consisting of three short real-life stories or [[vignette|<em>vignettes</em>]]. (The <em>thread</em> is an adaptation of Vannevar Bush's technical idea for organizing collective mind work, which he called "trail".) </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The first, Odin the Horse [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]], points to the nature of turf struggle, by portraying the turf behavior of horses. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second <em>vignette</em>, featuring Pierre Bourdieu as leading sociologist, shows that we humans exhibit a similar behavior—and that our culture may be perceived as a complex 'turf'.</p>  
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
</p>  
+
</p>
<p>They explained the <em>mechanism</em> of <em>socialization</em>—the way in which our seemingly rational choices are manipulated through the use of "symbolic power", without <em>anyone</em> noticing.</p>
+
<p>Bourdieu used interchangeably two keywords—"field" and "game"—to refer to this 'turf'. By calling it a field, he portrayed it as something akin to  a magnetic field, which orients our seemingly random or "free" behavior, without us noticing. By calling it a game, he portrayed it as something that structures or "gamifies" our social existence, by giving each of us certain "action capabilities" (which Bourdieu called "habitus"), pertaining to a role, which tends to be transmitted from body to body <em>directly</em>. Everyone bows to the king, and we do that too. With time, we become <em>socialized</em> to accept those roles and behaviors as <em>the</em> "reality". Bourdieu called this experience (that our social reality is as immutable and real as the physical reality) <em>doxa</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The third story, featuring Antonio Damasio in the role of a leading cognitive neuroscientist, completes this <em>thread</em> by explaining that we, humans, are <em>not</em> the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Each of us has an <em>embodied</em> cognitive filter, which <em>determines what options</em> we are able to rationally consider. This cognitive filter is <em>programmed</em> through <em>socialization</em>. Damasio's insight allows us to understand why we civilized humans don't rationally <em>consider</em> taking off our clothes and walking into the street naked; and that for <em>cognitively similar reasons</em> we don't consider changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><em>Socialized reality</em> constitutes a <em>pseudo-epistemology</em>.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>Hence the <em>socialized reality</em> insight, which we have so far only touched upon, delineates and opens up a truly <em>wonderful</em> creative frontier—where three realms that are usually considered as independent are inextricably intertwined: culture, power and <em>epistemology</em> (or "the relationship we have with information").  </p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>As an <em>understandable</em> consequence of historical circumstances, as Toulmin showed, our hitherto modernization has ignored these subtleties—and we've assumed that (1) the purpose of information is to mirror reality and (2) the traditions got it all wrong.  The consequences are far reaching and central to <em>holotopia</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<ul>
 +
<li><b>Severed link between information and action</b>. The (perceived) purpose of information being to complete the 'reality puzzle'—every new piece appears to be as relevant as others, and <em>necessary</em> for completing the 'puzzle'. In the sciences <em>and</em> in the media, enormous quantities of information are produced "disconnected from usefulness"—as Neil Postman diagnosed. </li> 
 +
<li><b>Stringent limits to creativity</b>. A vast global army of selected, trained and publicly sponsored creative people are obliged to confine their repertoire of creative action to producing research articles in traditional academic fields. </li>
 +
<li><b>Loss of cultural heritage</b>. A trivial observation will suffice to make a point: With the threat of eternal fire on the one side, and the promise of heavenly pleasures on the other, a 'field' was created that oriented people's ethical sense and behavior. To see that the ancient myths were, however, only a tip of an iceberg (a small part of a complex ecosystem whose purpose was to develop "human quality") this one-minute thought experiment—an imaginary visit to a cathedral—might be helpful: There is awe-inspiring architecture; Michelangelo's Pietà meets the eye, and his frescos are near by. Allegri's Miserere reaches us from above. And there's of course also the ritual. All this comprises an ecosystem—in which the emotions of awe and respect make one open to practicing and learning. By its complex dynamics, it resembles our biophysical environment—but there is a notable difference: There we have nothing equivalent to the temperature and CO2 measurements, to be able to diagnose problems and propose remedies. </li>
 +
<li><b>"Human quality" abandoned to <em>power structure</em></b>. Advertising is everywhere. And <em>explicit</em> advertising too is only a tip of an iceberg, the bulk of which consists of a variety of ways in which "symbolic power" is used to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit the <em>power structure</em> interests. Scientific techniques are used; [https://youtu.be/lOUcXK_7d_c the story of Edward Bernays], Freud's American nephew who became "the pioneer of modern public relations and propaganda", is iconic.</li>
 +
<li><b><em>Reification</em> of institutions</b>. Even when they cause us problems, and make us incapable of solving them.</li>
 +
</ul> 
 +
 
 +
<p>This conclusion suggests itself.</p>  
  
<p>This, however, <em>has</em> been noticed. The business people were quick to learn that our choices can be manipulated; they now use <em>scientific</em> advisers to do that (the epic story of Edward Bernays, Freud's American nephew, illustrates how this began). The politicians followed.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The Enlightenment did not liberate us from power-related reality construction, as it is believed.</blockquote>  
  
<p>As it turned out, the Enlightenment did not really liberate us, as we tend to believe. Our <em>socialization</em> only changed hands—from one <em>power structure</em> (the kings and the clergy) to the next (the corporations and the media). </p>
+
<blockquote>Our <em>socialization</em> only changed hands—from the kings and the clergy, to the corporations and the media.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote><em>They</em> are now creating our culture.</blockquote>  
+
<p>Ironically, our carefully cultivated academic self-identity—as "objective observers of reality"—keeps us on the 'back seat'; we diagnose problems—but we cannot <em>federate</em> solutions.</p>  
  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
<p>"Reality" as foundation for creating truth and meaning, and hence of culture, is bankrupt. It has no basis in reality.</p>  
+
<p>We have already seen the remedy.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The remedy is to change the relationship we have with information.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>To consider information as <em>the</em> core element of our <em>systems</em>; and to adapt it to the functions that need to be served.</p>
 +
<p>When making this proposal, we are not saying anything new; we are indeed only echoing the calls to action that <em>many</em> have made before us.</p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Jantsch-university.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
<p>We, however, also <em>federate</em> those calls.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we condensed the <em>fundamental</em> part of this argument by a metaphorical image, the Mirror <em>ideogram</em>. This <em>ideogram</em> renders the essence of the <em>academic</em> situation we are in.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Mirror [[ideogram|<em>ideogram</em>]] invites us to interrupt what we are doing and self-reflect—as Socrates used to invite his contemporaries, at the Academia's point of inception.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 
 +
<p>This self-reflection leads us to two insights.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We are compelled to abolish <em>reification</em>.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>When we look at a mirror, we see ourselves <em>in the world</em>. We are not <em>above</em> the world, observing it "objectively". The disciplinary interests, methods and institutions are not something that objectively existed, which our predecessors only discovered. They <em>created</em> them—in certain historical circumstances. Hence it is academically legitimate to create new ones.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We are compelled to embrace <em>accountability</em>.</blockquote>  
  
<p>We use the <em>mirror</em> as metaphorical image, in a similar way as we use the bus with candle headlights, to point to the academic and cultural situation that resulted. The spontaneous pursuit of knowledge, and the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> that resulted, brought us to the <em>mirror</em>. The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes coming back to the original academic values, and ethos: self-reflection; and the Socratic dialog, about the meaning and purpose of what we do. But now in the light of <em>contemporary</em> knowledge of knowledge. It symbolizes also a new self-awareness and self-image that will result: We are not <em>above</em> the world, observing it "objectively"; we are <em>in</em> the world—and have a role in it.</p>  
+
<p>The world we see ourselves in, when we look at the <em>mirror</em>, is a world in dire need—for <em>new</em> ideas, new ways of thinking and being. We see that, by virtue of the role we have in that world, we hold the very key to its transformation.</p>  
 +
</div>  
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Mirror2.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Mirror <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
 +
</div> </div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
 +
<p>We are then also compelled to ask:</p>
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> points out that the effect that the epistemological state is to replace "reality" as foundation for our work withinformation with <em>reification</em>—which denotes something we do. And to replace <em>reification</em> with accountability. It is no longer <em>academically</em> legitimate to claim, in academia <em>and</em> in public informing, that we are not responsible, that we are simply doing our job—reporting "objectively" what we see. We have a key role to play in the world in change; and we have to change the way we perform in that role.</p>  
+
<blockquote>How can we be accountable in our new social role, without sacrificing the academic rigor—which has been <em>the</em> distinguishing trait of our tradition?</blockquote>  
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> also stands for a surprising, seemingly magical solution to our cultural entanglement.</p>
+
<p>The answer offers itself as an unexpected result of our metaphorical <em>self-reflection</em>:</p>
  
<blockquote>We can go <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—and into a completely <em>new</em> academic and social reality.</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>We can walk right <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>!</blockquote>  
  
<p>This is done in three easy steps.</p>  
+
<p>This takes only two steps.</p>  
  
 +
<p>The first is to use what philosopher Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—which we adapted as one of our <em>keywords</em>.</p> 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>The first—what makes this apparent magic <em>academically</em> possible—is <em>truth by convention</em>. Quine identified it as a phase, and a sign of maturing, that every field of science goes through. <em>Truth by convention</em>, where we <em>postulate</em> the meaning of words by making a convention, is the natural alternative, and antidote, to <em>reification</em>. It is the natural "Archimedean point" for once again giving information, and knowledge, the power to "move the world". </em>.
 
  
<p>The next step is to use <em>truth by convention</em> to <em>postulate</em> an <em>epistemology</em>. In the <em>holoscope</em>, we postulated the <em>design epistemology</em>—which turns the "relationship we have with information" we are proposing into a convention. A convention is not a reality claim, so there is no need for consensus; the <em>holoscope</em> is simply a tool or a toolkit. <em>Truth by convention</em> is its principle of operation.</p>  
+
<p>Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:</p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."
 +
</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>But if  <em>truth by convention</em> has been the way in which <em>the sciences</em> augment the rigor of their logical foundations—why not use it to update the logical foundations of <em>knowledge work</em> at large?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>As we are using this [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], the [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let <em>X</em> be <em>Y</em>. Then..." and the argument follows. Insisting that <em>X</em> "really is" <em>Y</em> is obviously meaningless. A convention is valid only <em>within a given context</em>—which may be an article, or a theory, or a methodology.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second step is to use <em>truth by convention</em> to <em>define</em> an <em>epistemology</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We defined [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] by rendering the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information—by considering it a human-made thing, and adapting information and the way we handle it to the functions that need to be served) as a convention.</p>  
  
<p>The third and last step is <em>methodology</em> definition—where we spell out the fundamental assumptions. At this point they become <em>known</em>; they become part of our "social contract"! We can then <em>define</em> what the word like "information" and "culture" mean, even give them purpose. Once again the consensus is not needed—such definitions are binding only <em>within</em> the <em>methodology</em>.</p>  
+
<p>Notice that nothing has been changed in the traditional-academic scheme of things. The <em>academia</em> has only been <em>extended</em>; a new way of thinking and working has been added to it, for those who might want to engage in that new way. On the 'other side of the <em>mirror</em>', we see ourselves and what we do as (part of) the 'headlights' and the 'light'; and we self-organize, and act, and use our creativity freely-yet-responsibly, and create a variety of new methods and results—just as the founding father of science did, at the point of its inception. </p>
  
<blockquote>This key step is not a deviation from the academic tradition—but its straight-line continuation.</blockquote>  
+
<p>In the "Design Epistemology" research article (published in the special issue of the Information Journal titled "Information: Its Different Modes and Its Relation to Meaning", edited by Robert K. Logan) where we articulated this proposal, we made it clear that the <em>design epistemology</em> is only one of the many ways to manifest this approach. We drafted a parallel between the <em>modernization</em> of science that can result in this way and the emergence of modern art:  By defining an <em>epistemology</em> and a <em>methodology</em> by convention, we can do in the sciences as the artists did—when they liberated themselves from the demand to mirror reality, by using the techniques of Old Masters. </p>  
  
<p>The result is that the <em>academia</em> now has the historical privilege, and the obligation—because its social role, and because of the academic tradition it institutionalizes—to guide the society <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>. To <em>liberate</em> the "oppressed".</p>  
+
<blockquote>As the artists did—we can become creative <em>in the very way in which we practice our profession.</em></blockquote>  
  
<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, we find ourselves in a completely new academic and cultural reality—where we are free to, and empowered to, be creative in ways in which our new situation requires. We can
+
<p>To complete this proposal and make it concrete, we developed two <em>prototypes</em>: the <em>holoscope</em> models the <em>academic</em> reality on the other side; the <em>holotopia</em> models the corresponding <em>social</em> reality.</p>
  
<ul>  
+
<p>Let us illustrate these abstract ideas by brief and self-contained module, comprising an academically stated challenge, and two examples of its resolution—by using the techniques just described. Each of the examples includes both a concept definition <em>by convention</em>, and a <em>prototype</em> (of disciplinary or institutional re-definition) that was embedded and tested in academic practice, with encouraging results.</p>  
<li><b>Liberate the academic researchers</b>—<em>the</em> key resource in these demanding times—from <em>reifying</em> their disciplines; and from the traditional "observer" role—and empower them to perceive themselves as <em>creators</em> and not mere <em>observers</em> of our world; and to create the <em>way</em> they do their work to begin with</li>
 
<li><b>Liberate the people</b> from <em>reification</em> the institutions—and hence from the <em>systems</em>, and the <em>power structure</em></li>
 
<li><b>Liberate the people</b> from <em>reification</em> of their "needs" and other forms of "reality" perception—and take up "human development", as we shall see later</blockquote>  </li>
 
<li><b>Liberate our language, and method, and worldview</b>  from the reification of inherited concepts—and empower us to create completely <em>new</em> ways of seeing the world, and speaking and acting</li>
 
</ul>  
 
  
<p>The concepts defined by convention are called <em>keywords</em>; we've been using them all along.</p>
 
  
<p>We turned "information" into a <em>keyword</em> by defining it as "recorded experience". The substance of <em>information</em>, according this definition, is not "reality" but human experience—where "experience" is interpreted in a most general sense, to include also results of academic work and other forms of insight as  (to use the colloquial phrase) "aha experiences". <em>Information</em> is, according to this definition, not only written text, but <em>any</em> artifacts that embody human experience.</p>  
+
<p>This challenge is reaching us from sociology.</p>
 +
<p>  
 +
[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
 +
</p>  
 +
<p>Beck continued the above observation:</p>
 +
<blockquote>  
 +
"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of <em>categories and basic assumptions</em> of classical social, cultural and political sciences."
 +
</blockquote>
  
<p><em>Information</em> includes also <em>prototypes</em>. Instead of only writing articles and <em>observing</em> the world—on the other side of the <em>mirror</em> the researchers can give their insights <em>direct</em> impact on systems. Hereby <em>information</em> is given agency; knowledge is given its power to make a difference.</p>  
+
<p>Our 'candle headlights' (the practice of <em>inheriting</em> the way we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it) are keeping us in 'iron cage'!</p>  
  
<blockquote>And to rebuild the <em>culture</em>.</blockquote>
 
  
<p>While we are eager to show our <em>prototype</em> portfolio to illustrate these abstract ideas and make them concrete, we leave that for the detailed modules and here only share two examples. They are both <em>keywords</em> and <em>prototypes</em>—because these two <em>keywords</em> have already been proposed to the academic communities they originally belong to, and proven to be well received and useful.</p>  
+
<p>The definition of <em>design</em> allowed us to capture the essence of our post-traditional cultural condition, and suggest how to adapt to it.</p>  
  
<p>We defined <em>design</em> as "alternative to <em>tradition</em>". By this definition, <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> are two alternative ways to secure the  <em>wholeness</em> of the human systems and nature, where <em>tradition</em> relies on what's been inherited from the past and modifies it only exceptionally and carefully; and where <em>design</em> is the alternative—where we <em>consciously</em> and deliberately curate <em>wholeness</em>. The point of this definition is that in a post-traditional culture, or in other words in the "modernity", <em>tradition</em> no longer works, and <em>design</em> must be used. </p>  
+
<p>We defined <em>design</em> as "alternative to <em>tradition</em>", where <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> are (by convention) two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>. <em>Tradition</em> relies on spontaneous, gradual, Darwinian-style evolution. Change is resisted, small changes are tried—and tested and assimilated through generations of use. We practice <em>design</em> when we consider ourselves <em>accountable</em> for <em>wholeness</em>. </p>  
  
<p>This leads to a more precise interpretation of the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our contemporary situation: We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; but we are not yet <em>designing</em>. Our contemporary difficulties are a result.</p>  
+
<blockquote>When <em>tradition</em> cannot be relied on, <em>design</em> must be used.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Our call to action can then be understood as a way to operationalize the key step—to modernize <em>information</em></p>  
+
<p>The situation we are in, which we rendered by the bus with candle headlights metaphor, can now be understood as a result of a transition: We are no longer <em>traditional</em> (our technology evolves by <em>design</em>); but we are not yet <em>designing</em> ("the relationship we have with information" is still <em>traditional</em>). Our call to action can be understood as a practical way to <em>complete</em> modernization. </p>  
  
<p>The second <em>keyword</em> is the definition of <em>implicit information</em> as <em>information</em> where no explicit claims are made; where human experience is coded, and embodied, in cultural artifacts of all kinds.</p>  
+
<p><em>Reification</em> can now be understood as the foundation for truth and meaning that suits the <em>tradition</em>; <em>truth by convention</em> is what empowers us to <em>design</em>.</p>  
  
<p>We can now interpret our <em>cultural</em> situation by saying that while we've been focused on the <em>explicit</em>—on understanding how the world works etc.—we've been culturally dominated by the <em>implicit information</em>, and the "symbolic power" it embodies. This definition gives the <em>implicit information</em> citizenship rights—and empower us to treat it, and hence also <em>culture</em>, with the kind of thoroughness and care that have hitherto been reserved to traditional scientific pursuits.</p>
+
<p>We proposed this definition to the academic design community, as part of an answer to its quest for logical foundations. The fact that Danish Designers chose our presentation to be repeated as opening keynote at their tenth anniversary conference suggests that this praxis, of <em>assigning</em> a purpose to a discipline and a community by using <em>ruth by convention</em>, may be of <em>immediately</em> interest. </p>
  
<p>The research in the humanities will, of course, have a lead role to play. But to be able to do that—it needs to liberate itself <em>reifications</em>, and the observer role, and dare to <em>create</em> the methods that will give their findings the impact they need to have.</p>  
+
<p>The definition of <em>implicit information</em> and of <em>visual literacy</em> as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em> for the International Visual Literacy Association was in spirit similar—but its point was different.</p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Whowins.jpg]]
 +
</p>
 +
<p>We showed the above <em>ideogram</em> as depicting a situation where two kinds of information—the <em>explicit information</em> with explicit, factual and verbal warning in a black-and-white rectangle, and the visual and "cool" rest—meet each other in a direct duel. The image shows that the <em>implicit information</em> wins "hands down" (or else this would not be a cigarette advertising). Our larger point was that while our legislation, ethical sensibilities and "official" culture at large are focused on <em>explicit information</em>, our culture is largely created through subtle <em>implicit information</em>. Hence we need a <em>literacy</em> to be able to decode those messages—and reverse the negative consequences of <em>reification</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Lida Cochran, the only surviving IVLA founder, found that this definition expressed and served the founders' original intention.</p>  
  
<p>How exactly this may need to be done is the next theme on our agenda.</p> 
 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Narrow frame|<em>Narrow frame</em>]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Narrow frame|<em>Narrow frame</em>]]</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>We have just seen that the academic tradition—instituted as the modern university—finds itself in a much larger and more central social role than it was originally conceived for. We look up to the <em>academia</em>, and not to the Church and the tradition, for an answer to <em>the</em> pivotal question:</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><b>How</b> should we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it?</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>That role, and that question, carry an immense power!</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It was by providing a completely <em>new</em> answer to that question, that the last "great cultural revival" came about.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
  
<!-- XXX
+
<blockquote>So how <em>should</em> we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it? </blockquote>
 +
<blockquote>Nobody knows! </blockquote>
  
<p>Here our focus is on what most closely corresponds to 'candle headlights' on this <em>fundamental</em> level—on the way or the method by which we look at the world, to comprehend it and handle it.</p>  
+
<p>Of course, countess books and articles have been written about this theme since antiquity. But in spite of that—or should we say <em>because</em> of that—no consensus has emerged.</p>  
  
<p>Traditionally, such a method is a result of "ontology" or of the way in which we conceive "the nature of reality"—and "the common sense" that keeps us and our 'bus' oriented in a certain way today is no exception.</p>
+
<p>The way we the people look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it, shaped itself spontaneously—from scraps of science that were most visible around the middle of the 19th century, when Darwin and Newton as cultural heroes replaced Adam and Moses. What is today popularly considered as the "scientific worldview" took shape then—and remained largely unchanged.</p>
<p>Around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes and forefathers had to give way to Darwin and Newton, the belief emerged that the universe is in essence a mechanism; that science removed from it even the last traces of "ghosts"; and that the "scientific worldview" consists in considering as possible or real only that which can be explained as a consequence of the functioning of this 'mechanism', or in a "scientific" way. Isn't this how we finally came to understand that women cannot fly on broomsticks (because that would violate some well-established "natural laws")?</p>  
 
  
<p>But here too the 20th century disproved and disowned the 19th century's worldview. Modern physics <em>proved</em> the "classical" or "causal" way of explaining phenomena proved to be unable to explain the behavior of small particles or "quanta" of matter, that manifested itself in experiments. </p>
+
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, this worldview would make us believe, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to comprehend the world in causal terms, and to make rational choices accordingly. Give us a correct model of the world, and we'll know exactly how to satisfy our needs (which we can experience directly). But the traditional cultures got it all wrong: Not knowing how the nature works, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to him to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error—and now we can satisfy our needs by manipulating the mechanisms of nature directly, with the help of technology. </p>
  
 +
<p>It is this causal or "scientific" understanding of the world that made us modern. Isn't that how we understood that women cannot fly on broomsticks?</p>
  
<p>Yet we <em>still</em> consider as "scientific" a way of thinking which, as physicist Werner Heisenberg observed in "Physics and Philosophy",  [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/STORIES#Heisenberg has been damaging to culture]—because the "truth and meaning" it provided was too narrow to hold many of the values and practices that were the culture's very core. We may easily recognize in his description the thinking and values that Bauman called "adiaphorized". </p>
+
<p>From our collection of reasons why this way of looking at the world is neither scientific nor functional, we here mention only two.</p>  
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>Heisenberg expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be <em>on popular culture</em>—because the <em>narrow frame</em> would be removed. would make the largest impact 20th century's physics constituted a scientific <em>disproof</em> of the <em>narrow frame</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>
<p>But the tie between information and action having been broken—our "conventional wisdom" remained unchanged.</p>  
+
 
 +
<p>The mechanistic way of looking at the world that Newton and his contemporaries developed in physics, which around the 19th century shaped the worldview of the masses, was later disproved and disowned by modern science. Research in physics showed that even the <em>physical</em> phenomena exhibit the <em>kinds of</em> interdependence that cannot be understood in "classical" or causal terms.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In "Physics and Philosophy", Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, described how "the narrow and rigid" way of looking at the world that our ancestors adapted from the 19th century science was damaging to culture—and in particular to its parts on on which the "human quality" depended, such as ethics and religion. And how as a result the "instrumental" thinking and values, which Bauman called "adiaphorized", became prominent. Heisenberg believed that the dissolution of that "rigid and narrow frame" would be <em>the</em> most valuable gift of his field to the humanity. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr (considered as Heisenberg's scientific "heir") co-wrote the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message is "We need to learn to think in a new way". The proposed new thinking is similar to the one that leads to <em>holotopia</em>: "The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. (...) We need to reach a fundamentally new way of thinking and a more comprehensive under­standing of our <em>Wirklichkeit</em>, in which we, too, see ourselves as a thread in the fabric of life, without sacrificing anything of our special human qualities. This makes it possible to recognize hu­manity in fundamental commonality with the rest of nature (...)"</p>  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The second reason is that even complex mechanisms ("classical" nonlinear dynamic systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.</blockquote>
  
<p>Another set of reasons why the <em>narrow frame</em> needs to be changed is reaching us from the systems sciences. <em>The whole point</em> of the "systemic thinking" is that <em>causal thinking is erroneous</em>, that it leads to wrong conclusions even when applied to the behavior of the systems that <em>can</em> be modeled in the "classical" way. Notably those systems that govern the human society and culture.</p>
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg]]
 
[[File:MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
 +
<p>It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Research in the systems sciences, one of which is cybernetics, explained this <em>scientifically</em>: The "hell" (which you may imagine as global issues, or the 'destination' toward which our 'bus' is believed to be headed) tends to be a "side effect" of our best efforts and "solutions", reaching us through "nonlinearities" and "feedback loops" in the natural and social systems we are trying to manipulate. </p>
 
<p>
 
<p>
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] say:
+
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
 
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"  
 
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"  
Line 479: Line 641:
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<h3>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]] issue</h3>  
+
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><em>Truth by convention</em> allows us to explicitly <em>define</em> and academically <em>develop</em> a way to look at the world, in order to comprehend and handle it.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We called the result a <em>methodology</em>, and our <em>prototype</em> the Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em> or [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A <em>methodology</em> is in essence a toolkit; anything that does the job would do. We, however, defined <em>polyscopy</em> by turning state of the art <em>epistemological</em> insights into conventions.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>That constitutes a way in which the severed link between the scientific insights and the popular worldview can be restored.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>polyscopy</em> definition comprises eight aphorismic postulates; by using [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]], each of them is given an exact interpretation.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The first postulate defines <em>information</em> as "recorded experience". It is thereby made explicit that the substance communicated by information is not "reality", but human experience. Since human experience can be recorded in a variety of ways (a chair is a record of experience related to sitting and chair making), the notion of <em>information</em> is extended beyond written documents. The first postulate enables <em>knowledge federation</em> across cultural traditions and fields of interests; the barriers of language and method are bridged by reducing all that is of relevance to human experience, as a 'common denominator'. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second postulate is that the [[scope|<em>scope</em>]] (the way we look) determines the <em>view</em> (what is seen). In <em>polyscopy</em> the experience (or "reality" or whatever is "behind" experience) is not assumed to have an a priori structure. We <em>attribute</em> to it a structure with the help of the concepts and other elements of our <em>scope</em>. This postulate enables us to create new ways of looking, and to make the basic approach of science generally applicable—as prototyped by the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p><em>Polyscopy</em> did not talk about knowledge. We may now improvise this new axiom:</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><em>Knowledge</em> must be <em>federated</em>.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>This only states the intuitive or common-sense idea of "knowledge": If we should be able to say that we "know" something, we must <em>federate</em> not only supporting evidence, but also potential counter-evidence—and hence <em>information</em> in general. Academic peer reviews implement that principle in science; but this <em>federation</em> tends to be restricted to a discipline. An analogy with constitutional democracy also comes to mind—where even a hated criminal has the right for a fair trial. Like a dutiful attorney, <em>knowledge federation</em> does its best to gather suitable evidence, and back each <em>federated</em> insight with a convincing case.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A <em>methodology</em> allows us to state explicitly what information needs to be like; and what being "informed" means. We modeled this intuitive notion with the keyword [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]]. To be "informed", one needs to have a <em>gestalt</em> that is appropriate to one's situation. "Our house is on fire" is a canonical example. The knowledge of <em>gestalt</em> is profoundly different from only knowing the data (such as the room temperatures and the CO2 levels.). To have an appropriate <em>gestalt</em> means to be moved to do the action that a situation is calling for.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>Can we be uninformed—in spite of all the information we have?</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>"One cannot not communicate", reads one of Paul Watzlawick's axioms of communication. Even when everything in a news report is <em>factually</em> correct, the <em>gestalt</em> it conveys <em>implicitly</em> can be profoundly deceptive—because we are told what Donald Trump has said, and not Aurelio Peccei.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p><em>Polyscopy</em> offers a collection of techniques for communicating and 'proving' or <em>justifying</em> general or <em>high-level</em> insights and claims. <em>Knowledge federation</em> is conceived as the social process by which such insights can be created and maintained. To create the <em>methodology</em>, we <em>federated</em> methodological insights from a variety of fields:</p>
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>[[pattern|<em>Patterns</em>]] have a closely similar function as mathematics does in traditional sciences—and at the same time completely generalize the implementation of this function</li>
 +
<li>[[ideogram|<em>Ideograms</em>]] allow us to include the expressive power and the insights and techniques from art, advertising and information design</li>
 +
<li>[[vignette|<em>Vignettes</em>]] implement the basic technique from media informing, where an insight or issue is made accessible by telling illustrative and engaging or "sticky"  real-life people and situation stories</li>
 +
<li>[[thread|<em>Threads</em>]] implement Vannevar Bush's technical idea of "trails" as a way to combine specific ideas into higher-level units of meaning</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>We conclude by telling a [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]]—which will illustrate some of the further nuances of this <em>methodological</em> approach to information and knowledge.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming. The buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to 'detangle' (understand and correct). The solution was conceived as "computer programming methodology"; [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#InformationHolon the longer story] is interesting, but we only highlight a couple of lessons learned from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard.</p>
 +
 
  
<p>We now look at what (in a "democracy", and a "free market economy") <em>directly</em> determines our society's course—our values</p>  
+
<blockquote>The designers of a computer programming language made themselves accountable for the "usability" of the results, and developed a methodology.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Here the "ontology" and the "epistemology" we have just seen led to a way of making choices that vastly relies on "classical" or "Newtonian" <em>direct</em> causality—namely "instant gratification". This way of making choices, where we focus on "our own interests", also seems to be supported on the ethical side by the Darwin's theory of evolution, as "simply natural". </p>  
+
<p>Any sufficiently complete programming language, even the "machine language" of the computer, will allow the programmers to create <em>any</em> application program. The creators of the object oriented methodology, however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would enable them, or even <em>compel</em> them, to write comprehensible, reusable and well-structured code. </p>  
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 +
[[File:Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>To understand a complex system, <em>abstraction</em> must be used. We must be able to <em>create</em> views of the complex whole on distinct levels of generality.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The object oriented methodology provided a structuring template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without the burden of the details of its code. </p>
 +
 +
<p>We have seen, in <em>socialized reality</em>, that the <em>academia</em> too needs to consider itself accountable for the tools and processes by which information and knowledge are handled—<em>both</em> for the ones used by academic researchers,  <em>and</em> for the ones used by people at large. To see what those two lessons learned may mean practically, Imagine a highly talented young person, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu to be concrete, about to become a researcher. The <em>academia</em> will give Bourdieu a certain way to render his results, which he'll be using throughout his career. The "usability", comprehensibility and in a word—the <em>usefulness</em> of Bourdieu's life work will largely depend on the format in which he'll render his results. This format, however, will not be in his power to change, and it is unlikely that even Bourdieu would even think about doing that.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Bourdieu is, of course, only a drop in an ocean.</p>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 +
 +
<p>The solution for structuring information we devised in <em>polyscopy</em> is called <em>information holon</em>. An <em>information holon</em> is closely similar to the "object" in object oriented methodology. Information, represented in the Information <em>ideogram</em> as an "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. The circle represents the point of it all (such as "the cup is whole"); the square represents the details, the side views. </p>
 +
 +
<p>When the <em>circle</em>  is a general insight or a <em>gestalt</em>, it allows that insight to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into <em>higher-level</em> insights (while the contributing insights and data remain "hidden" in the <em>square</em>). When the <em>circle</em> is a <em>prototype</em>, the multiplicity of insights that comprise the <em>square</em> are given direct <em>systemic</em> impact, and hence agency.</p>
 +
</div> <div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Information.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Information <em>ideogram</em></small>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
 +
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> may now be understood as the <em>circle</em> by which our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is <em>federated</em>; a vision is not only provided and published—but already turned into a collaborative strategy game whose goal is to "change course".</p>
 +
 +
<p>A <em>prototype</em> <em>polyscopic</em> book manuscript titled "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" is structured as an <em>information holon</em>. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it. The book's four chapters present four <em>aspects</em> of our handling of information; they identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the <em>design patterns</em> of the proposed <em>methodology</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<p>It is customary in programming language design to showcase the language by creating its first compiler in the language itself. In this book we described the <em>paradigm</em> that is modeled by <em>polyscopy</em>,  and then used <em>polyscopy</em> to make a case for that <em>paradigm</em>.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The book's [http://folk.uio.no/dino/IDBook/Introduction.pdf introduction] is available online. What we then branded <em>information design</em> is today completed and called <em>knowledge federation</em>. </p>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]]</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
 +
 +
<p>We turn to culture and to "human quality", and ask: </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<b>Why</b> is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>What insight, and what strategy, may divert our "pursuit of happiness" from material consumption to human cultivation?</p>
 +
 +
<p>We may approach the same theme from a different angle: Suppose we developed the <em>praxis</em> of <em>federating</em> information—and used it to combine <em>all</em> relevant heritage and insights—from the sciences, the world traditions, the therapy schools... </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>Suppose we used <em>real</em> information to guide our choices, instead of advertising. What changes would develop? What difference would they make?</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>During the Renaissance, preoccupations with original sin and eternal reward gradually gave way to a pursuit of happiness and beauty here and now; and the arts prospered.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote> What might the <em>next</em> "great cultural revival" be like? </blockquote>
 +
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 +
 +
<p>There is a popular <em>myth</em> which precludes information and knowledge to make a difference in this realm too—analogous and related to the <em>myth</em> of free competition that breeds the <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>It is the belief that we don't really need information, or culture, because we can experience what makes us happy <em>directly</em>—and reach out toward it with the help of science and technology.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>Our "pursuit of happiness" 'in the light of a candle' made two values prominent, at the detriment of others:  <em>convenience</em> (favoring what <em>appears</em> to be pleasant and easy) and <em>egotism</em> (favoring narrowly conceived "personal interests"). Both appear as scientific: <em>convenience</em> because it resembles the experiment; <em>egotism</em> because it is the way in which nature herself pursues <em>wholeness</em>. Both values are, of course, endlessly supported by advertising.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>Those two values now guide <em>even</em> our choice and creation of information!</blockquote>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 +
<p>We point to the remedy by the Convenience Paradox <em>ideogram</em>. Like all of us, the person in the picture wants his life to be convenient. But he made a wise choice: Instead of simply following the direction downwards, which <em>feels</em> easier, he paused to reflect whether this direction also leads to a more convenient <em>condition</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>It doesn't.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> is a <em>pattern</em>, where the pursuit of a more convenient direction leads to a less convenient situation. The iconic image of a "couch potato" in front of a TV is an obvious instance.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> is a result of us simplifying "pursuit of happiness" by ignoring its two most interesting <em>dimensions</em>—time; and our own condition, which makes us inclined or <em>able to</em> feel</em> in any specific way.</p>
 +
 +
<p>By depicting the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em> as "yang" in the traditional yin-yang <em>ideogram</em>, it is suggested that its nature os paradoxical and obscure—and that the <em>way</em> needs to be illuminated by suitable <em>information</em>. This <em>way</em> is what the Buddhists call "Dhamma" and the Taoists "Tao". </p>
 +
 +
 +
<p>However paradoxical, the <em>way</em> follows a certain pattern that <em>can</em> be understood; not in a mechanistic-causal way, not by studying what various cultures <em>believe</em> in—but by focusing on and <em>federating</em> the <em>phenomenology</em> repeated in the world traditions.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Convenience Paradox.jpg]]
 +
<small>Convenience Paradox <em>ideogram</em></small>
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</div> </div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<p><em>Wholeness</em> is such a beautifully inclusive value, with so many sides! We may have everything else in the world—and the lack of vitamin C will make it all futile. </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>We showed that the <em>convenience paradox</em> is a <em>pattern</em> repeated or subtly reflected in all major aspects of our civilized human condition.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>To illustrate it, however, we here focus on what might be its least known and most interesting side—<em>our capacity to feel</em>. We'll elaborate it in terms of three specific insights.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>1. Human wholeness <em>feels</em> better than most of us can imagine.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>We called this insight "the best kept secret of human culture" , and made it a theme of one of our chosen <em>ten conversations</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<p><em>It was a glimpse or an experience or side of human wholeness</em> that attracted our ancestors to the Buddha, the Christ, Mohammed and other adepts and teachers of the <em>way</em>, or "sages" or "prophets". C.F. Andrews described this in "Sermon on the Mount":</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>"(Through their practice, the early disciples of Jesus found out) that the Way of Life, which Jesus had marked out for them in His teaching, was revolutionary in its moral principles. It turned the world upside down (Acts 17. 6). (...) They found in this new 'Way of Life' such a superabundance of joy, even in the midst of suffering, that they could hardly contain it. Their radiance was unmistakable. When the Jewish rulers saw their boldness, they 'marvelled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus' (Acts 4. 13). (...) It was this exuberance of joy and love which was so novel and arresting. It was a 'Way of Life' about which men had no previous experience. Indeed, at first those who saw it could not in the least understand it; and some mocking said, 'These men are full of new wine' (Acts 2. 13)."</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The existence and character of this experience can, however, readily be verified by simply observing or asking the people who have followed the <em>way</em>, and tasted some of its fruits.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>2. The <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em> is counter-intuitive or paradoxical.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>
 
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
 
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue is that <em>convenience</em> is a paradoxical and deceptive value, whose pursuit leaves us as a rule <em>less</em> whole. And that <em>immense</em> opportunities for improving our condition remained ignored. </p>  
+
<p>To get a glimpse of it, compare the above utterances by Lao Tzu, with what Christ taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Why was Teacher Lao claiming that "the weak can defeat the strong"? Why did the Christ asked his disciples to "turn the other cheek"?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Aldous Huxley's book "Perennial Philosophy" is <em>alone</em> sufficient to make this point.  Coming from a family that gave some of Britain's leading scientists, Huxley undertook to not only <em>federate</em> some of the core insights about the <em>way</em> (by demonstrating the consistency of both the relevant practices <em>and</em> their results across historical periods and cultures), but to also make a case for the method he used, as an extension of science needed to support core elements of our cultural heritage.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>3. The key to unraveling the paradox is to <em>reverse</em> the values.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p><em>Convenience</em> needs to be replaced by (to use Peccei's keyword) "human development". </p>
 +
 
 +
<p><em>Egotism</em> needs to be overcome through "selfless service".</p>  
  
<p>A <em>radically</em> better human experience is possible, than what our culture allows us to experience. <em>Wholeness</em> does exist; and it does feel incomparably better than what the deception of <em>convenience</em> might allow us to believe. But the way to it is paradoxical, and needs to be illuminated by suitable information.</p>
+
<p>Lao Tzu, an iconic representative of the <em>way</em>, is often portrayed as reading a bull—which signifies that he's harnessed his <em>egotism</em>.</p>  
  
<p>Two consequences or more specific insights follow and are worth highlighting, that result when this insight (what the way to human <em>wholeness</em> is <em>really</em> like) is understood on a more detailed level.</p>  
+
<p>While this insight can easily be <em>federated</em> in the manner just described, we here point to it by a curiosity.</p>
  
<p>The first is that <em>we do not need</em> all the material welfare to pursue <em>wholeness</em>. On the contrary—the kind of lifestyle we've developed, in the pursuit of "material welfare", makes this pursuit impossible.</p>
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>The second insight is that <em>overcoming</em> egocentricity is an essential part of the way to <em>wholeness</em>; and most interestingly—even when its <em>physical</em> or motoric side is concerned!</p>  
+
<p>In "The Art of Seeing", Huxley observed that overcoming egotism is a necessary element of even <em>physical</em> wholeness!</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We may now perceive significant parts of our cultural history as struggle between <em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em> guided by insights into the nature of the <em>way</em>—and the <em>power structure</em>–related <em>socialization</em>, aided by the attraction of <em>convenience</em> and <em>egotism</em>. It is on the outcome of this struggle, Peccei observed, that our future will depend. </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>What hope do we have of reversing its outcome?</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>The answer is, of course, that we now have a whole new <em>dimension</em> to work with.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We can <em>design</em> communication.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We can create media content that will communicate the <em>convenience paradox</em> in clear and convincing ways; we can guide people to an <em>informed</em> use of information; <em>and</em> we can create various elements of culture to <em>socialize</em> us or <em>cultivate</em> us accordingly. Including, of course, <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>A <em>vast</em> creative frontier opens up.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We illustrate it here by a handful of examples.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In a fractal-like manner, our definition of <em>culture</em> reflects the entire situation around <em>holoscope</em> and <em>holotopia</em>. So let us summarize it here in that way, however briefly. We motivated this definition by discussing Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis"—where Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and reached the conclusion that they are so diverse that they cannot be reconciled with one another. How can we develop culture as <em>praxis</em>—if we don't know what "culture" means? We defined  <em>culture</em> as "<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>", where the keyword <em>cultivation</em> is defined by analogy with planting and watering a seed (which suits also the etymology of "culture") . Thereby (and in accordance with the general <em>holotopia</em> approach we discussed above), we pointed to a specific <em>aspect</em> of culture. No amount of dissecting and studying a seed would suggest that it needs to be planted and watered. Hence when we reduced "reality" to what we can explain in that way, the <em>culture</em> as <em>cultivation</em> is all gone! When, however, we consider and treat <em>information</em> as human experience, and look for what may help us redeem and further develop <em>culture</em>—then a remedial trend, modeled by <em>holotopia</em>, is already under way. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We defined <em>addiction</em> as a <em>pattern</em>; and motivated this definition by observing that evolution equipped us, humans with emotions of comfort and discomfort to guide our choices toward <em>wholeness</em>. We, however, found ways to deceive nature—by creating pleasurable things called "addictions", which lead us <em>away</em> from <em>wholeness</em>. Since selling addictions is lucrative business, the <em>traditions</em> identified certain activities or <em>things</em> (such as opiates and gambling) as addictions and developed suitable legislation and ethical norms. But with the help of technology, contemporary industries can develop hundreds of <em>new</em> addictions—without us having a way to even recognize them as that. By defining <em>addiction</em> as a <em>pattern</em>, we can perceive it (as we did with the <em>power structure</em>) as an <em>aspect</em> of otherwise good and useful things. From a large number of obvious or subtle candidates or examples, we here mention only <em>pseudoconsciousness</em> defined as "<em>addiction</em> to information". Consciousness of one's situation and surroundings is, of course, an evolutionary need. In civilization we can, however, drown this need in massive facts and data—which give us the <em>sensation</em> of knowing, without telling us what we above all <em>need to</em> know.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with the <em>archetype</em>" (this again harmonizes with the etymological meaning of this word). The <em>archetypes</em> here include "justice", "beauty", "truth", "love" and anything else that may make a person overcome <em>egotism</em> and <em>convenience</em> and serve a "higher" ideal.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The NaCuHeal-Information Design was our project developed in collaboration with the European Public Health Association, through Prof. Gunnar Tellnes who was then its president. In Norway Tellnes developed an authentic approach to health, which was based on nature and culture-related activities. This collaboration resulted in several <em>prototypes</em>, of which we mention two. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We contributed "Healthcare as a Power Structure" to the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. Historiographically, we based this research on the results  of Weston Price and Werner Kollath—two pioneers of the scientific "hygiene", understood as a scientific study of the ways in which civilized lifestyle influences people's health. But we also added a <em>methodological</em> contribution—a way to 'connect the dots' and supplement historiographic research by a general "law of change" result. By seeing that also our approach to health and medicine can develop pathological tendencies, we can explain the fact that the results of those pioneers are still virtually unknown even to medical professionals; and why, in spite of them, our "caring for health" so consistently ignores the lifestyle factors, and relies on far more costly interventions.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Kommunewiki—a <em>dialog</em>-based communication project for Norwegian municipalities (as basic units of Norwegian democracy)—was conceived to empower their members to counter <em>power structure</em> lifestyle tendencies, and develop <em>salutogenic</em> new ones.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We developed the "Movement and Qi" educational <em>prototype</em> as a way to add to the conventional academic portfolio a collection of ways to use human <em>body</em> as medium—and work with "human quality" directly. And as a way to include the insights and techniques of the "human quality" traditions such as yoga and qigong into the academic repertoire. </p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>"Liberation", subtitled "Religion beyond Belief", is a book manuscript and a communication design project. The book <em>federates</em> the message of Ven. Ajahn Buddhadasa, a 20th century's Buddhism reformer in Thailand, who—having through experimentation and practice understood and 'repeated the Buddha's experiment', found in it also a natural antidote to rampant materialism. The first four chapters present four <em>aspects</em> of human <em>wholeness</em>, including physical effortlessness, creativity, emotions and vitality. Buddhadasa's insights are shown to be a <em>necessary</em> piece in this large puzzle. The closing four chapters explain how <em>societal</em> <em>wholeness</em> may result.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The core Buddhadasa's message, which is also the message of this book, is to  portray <em>religion</em> as "liberation"—not only from rigidly held beliefs that form our self-identity, but from rigidly held <em>anything</em>, as well as from <em>self-identity</em> as such.</p>  
  
<p>Lao Tzu (often considered as the progenitor of Taoism) appears in <em>holotopia</em> as an icon for using knowledge to understand "the way" to <em>wholeness</em> ("tao" literally means "way"). He is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies his tamed ego.</p>
+
<p>We chose this book as part of our strategy for launching the <em>holotopia</em>. Many people have strong opinions about religion—be they "religious" and pro, or "scientific" and against. This book is likely to surprise both sides and challenge <em>both</em> positions—while at the same time reconciling their differences. </p>
  
<p>But <em>ego-centeredness</em> is what <em>makes us</em> create the <em>power structures</em>! And what prevents us from collaborating and self-organizing differently!
+
<blockquote>Isn't the prospect of <em>evolving</em> religion further a promising strategy for remedying religion-inspired violence?</blockquote>  
  
<p>With this the circle of causality that the <em>five insights</em> compose together has been closed.</p>  
+
<p>And of course, a way to evolve further culturally and ethically—as Peccei requested; and <em>holotopia</em> promised to deliver.</p>  
  
 
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<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A great cultural revival</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
 
  
<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
+
<p>The <em>five insights</em> together compose a vision of "a great cultural revival". They complete the analogy between our time and the situation at the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance, which we've been pointing to by using the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest.</p>  
<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
+
 
<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p> 
+
<h3>A revolution in innovation</h3>
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>  
 
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>  
 
  
<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
+
<p>By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution promised to liberate our ancestors from hardship and toil, so that they may focus on developing culture and "human quality". The <em>power structure</em>, however, thwarted our aspirations. This issue can be resolved, and progress can be resumed, by learning to "make things whole" on the level of <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>.</p>
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
 
<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>  
 
  
<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<h3>A revolution in communication</h3>  
  
<p>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </p>  
+
<p>The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy and communication. The <em>collective mind</em> insight shows that the new information technology can power a <em>similar</em> revolution—whose effect will be a revolution of <em>meaning</em>. The kind of revolution that can make the differences that needs to make, in a post-industrial society.</p>  
  
<p>Of the concrete <em>prototypes</em>, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, BCN2011, may be named as a <em>prototype</em> of a public informing that provides the information according to <em>real</em> that is <em>systemic</em> needs of people and society—as it may be necessary for <em>making things whole</em>. A number of <em>design patterns</em> are woven together. The news production loop begins by citizen journalism (the local Barcelona Wikidiario project gave us a head start); the people themselves report about their issues and problems. These reports are then curated by journalists, to present recurring or important ones as "front page news" etc. The production enters then into its second loop, <em>where systemic causes</em> to perceived issues are identified and reported. Professional (academic and other) advisors are followed in this loop by communication designers, to make academic insights clear and palpable (by using video, animation, story telling...). The second loop concludes by giving advice for <em>systemic action</em>. So here we have a journalism <em>prototype</em> that supports <em>systemic innovation</em>—and counteracts the <em>power structure</em></p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in the relationship we have with information</h3>  
  
<p>Also the Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015 <em>prototype</em</em> and The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> are also offered as <em>prototype</em> resolutions to the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>. The former shows how to <em>federate</em> a single result of a researcher, which is written in a highly specialized academic language (quantum physics), and has large potential to impact other fields (the article is about the phenomenology, and cultivation and use, of the kind of creativity that we  now vitally need (the creativity that was manifested, and described, by genius inventor Nikola Tesla). The latter shows how to <em>federate</em> a single core insight from an entire research field. Here the field is the systems science; the insight is that "free competition" cannot be trusted; that <em>systemic innovation</em> must be used. Both <em>prototypes</em> show how an academic discipline may need to self-organize to acquire the capability to make the most important insight that result in its midst usable and useful to the larger society. </p>  
+
<p>By reviving the academic tradition (which had remained dormant for almost two thousand years), the Enlightenment empowered our ancestors to use reason to comprehend the world, and to evolve faster. The <em>socialized reality</em> insight shows that the evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to a <em>new</em> turning point—which will liberate us from <em>reifying</em> our inherited <em>systems</em> and worldviews; and enable us to evolve culturally, a similar rate as we've evolved technologically.</p>  
  
 +
<h3>A revolution in method</h3>
  
<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<p>Galilei in house arrest was really <em>science</em> in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The <em>narrow frame</em> insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that traditional sciences left in the dark. </p>  
  
<p>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of  publicly supported intellectuals. </p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in culture</h3>  
  
<p>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>  
+
<p>The Renaissance <em>was</em> a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, manifested by the arts. The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight shows that our culture has once again become a victim of <em>power structure</em>; and that a <em>final</em> liberation is possible.</p>  
  
<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</p>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>
 
  
<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>  
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The sixth insight</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
  
<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>  
+
<p>Combined together, the <em>five insights</em> readily lead to a more general <em>sixth insight</em>. </p>  
  
<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>  
+
<blockquote>We must be able to create insights.</blockquote>  
  
<p>  
+
<p>We <em>have</em> all the knowledge we need to begin "a great cultural revival". What we are lacking is a way to put it together, and make sense of it.</p>  
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
  
<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>
 
  
<p>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>  
+
<blockquote>A case for our proposal is hereby also completed.</blockquote>  
  
<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
+
<p>The Holotopia project completes the <em>federation</em> of Peccei's vision, by making it actionable.</p>
  
<p>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>  
+
<p>It also completes the <em>knowledge federation</em> [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]], by serving as 'the dot on the i'.</p>  
  
<p>We have two canonical examples of concept-and-field definitions, which were tested in practice—through interaction with academic communities that represent them—and hence already are <em>prototypes</em>. </p>
+
</div> </div>  
<p>One of them is the definition of <em>design</em>, as "the alternative to <em>tradition</em>; when the two concepts are defined as two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>—where we either rely on spontaneous evolution (in the case of <em>tradition</em>), or take conscious responsibility for it (and use <em>design</em>). The point here is that in a culture that is no longer <em>traditional</em> (following conservatively in the footsteps of the ancestors, and perhaps making small and gradual changes)—<em>design</em> must be used.  </p>  
 
  
<p>The other definition is of <em>implicit information</em>, and of visual literacy (which also the name of an academic field) as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em>. The point here is that while our ethical, legal and political sensibilities are, by tradition, focused on <em>explicit information</em> (where is something explicitly claimed)—our culture is dominated by largely visual and subtle <em>implicit information</em>; which is the source of <em>symbolic power</em>, and an instrument of <em>socialization</em>. </p>  
+
<b><BIG>This Holotopia project description will be completed by elaborating:</BIG></b>
  
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
  
<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 
 +
<p>The Holotopia project is conceived as a space, where we make co-creative strategic moves toward "changing course".</p>  
  
<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
+
<p>We implement Margaret Mead's recommendations for responding to the situation we are in:
<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
+
<blockquote>  
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
+
"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
+
</blockquote> </p>  
<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
+
</div>  
<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>  
 
  
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Margaret Mead</small>
 +
</div> </div> 
  
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
  
<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
 
  
<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>  
+
<div class="row">
<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>  
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>  
+
<div class="col-md-7"><p>To the above co-creative space we bring a portfolio of assorted <em>tactical assets</em>. </p>
<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.
 
  
 +
</div> </div>
  
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A pilot project</h2></div>
  
<h3>These solutions compose a <em>paradigm</em></h3>
 
  
<p>The five issues, and their solutions, are closely co-dependent; the key to resolving them is the relationship we have with information (the <em>epistemology</em> by which the proposed <em>paradigm</em> is defined). </p>  
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen. </p>
  
<ul>
 
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue cannot be resolved (we cannot begin "guided evolution of society", as Bela H. Banathy called the new evolutionary course that is emerging) without resolving the <em>collective mind</em> issue (by creating a knowledge-work infrastructure that provides "evolutionary guidance")</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>collective mind</em> issue requires that we resolve the <em>socialized reality</em> issue (that instead of <em>reifying</em> our present institutions or systems, and the way in which we look at the world, we consider them as functional elements in a larger whole)</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>socialized reality</em> issue follows from <em>intrinsic</em> considerations—from the reported anomalies, and published epistemological insights (Willard Van Orman Quine identified the transition to truth by convention as a sign of maturing that has manifested itself in the evolution of every science)</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>narrow frame</em> issue, by developing a general-purpose <em>methodology</em>, is made possible by just mentioned <em>epistemological</em> innovation</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>convenience paradox</em> issue is made possible by <em>federating</em> knowledge from the world traditions, by using the mentioned methodology</li>
 
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue can only be resolved when we the people find strength to overcome self-serving, narrowly conceived values, and collaborate and self-organize to create radically better <em>systems in which we live and work</em></li>
 
</ul>
 
  
 +
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 +
<br>
  
<p>We adapted the keyword <em>paradigm</em> from Thomas Kuhn, and define it as
 
<ul><li>a new way of conceiving a domain of interest</li>
 
<li>which resolves the reported anomalies</li>
 
<li>and opens up a new frontier to research</li> </ul>
 
The <em>five insights</em> complete our proposal as a <em>paradigm</em> proposal. Not in any traditional domain of science, where paradigm proposals are relatively common, but in our handling of information or <em>knowledge work</em> at large.</p>
 
  
<h3>The solutions enable a cultural revival</h3>
 
<p>The <em>five insights</em> were deliberately chosen to represent the main five <em>aspects</em> of the cultural and social change that marked the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. They show how similar improvements in our condition can once again be achieved, by resolving the large anomalies they are pointing to.</p>
 
  
<ul>
 
<li>The <em>power structure</em> insight shows how dramatic improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of human work can be made, similar to the ones that resulted from the Industrial Revolution</li>
 
<li>The <em>collective mind</em> insights points to a revolution in communication, similar to the one that the invention of the printing press made possible</li>
 
<li>The <em>socialized reality</em> insight points to a revolution in our very relationship with information and knowledge, similar to the one that marked the Enlightenment</li>
 
<li>The <em>narrow frame</em> insight points to a revolution in our understanding of our everyday realities, similar to the revolution that science made possible in our understanding of natural phenomena</li>
 
<li>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight points to a general "cultural revival", analogous to the Renaissance</li>
 
</ul>
 
  
<p>Together, the <em>five insights</em> complete the first half of our response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action—where we showed that the <em>holoscope</em> can illuminate the way in the way in which he deemed necessary.</p>
+
<!-- CCC
<p>The second half will consist in implementing the "change of course" in reality.</p>
 
</div> </div>
 
  
 
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
 
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will not "solve our problems"</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will <em>not</em> solve "the huge problems now confronting us"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6">
 
<div class="col-md-6">
  
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"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
 
"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
 
</blockquote> </p>  
 
</blockquote> </p>  
<p>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing can be solved.</p>  
+
<p>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing <em>can</em> be solved.</p>  
 
</div>  
 
</div>  
  
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</blockquote>   
 
</blockquote>   
  
<p>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in a most charming tone, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). But we must forgive our political leaders for leading us into an abyss; they didn't <em>know</em> what they were doing. To be successful in politics, they had to genuinely believe what the <em>power structure</em> made them believe.</p>  
+
<p>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). </p>  
  
<p>Just as we must forgive our <em>academic</em> leaders for <em>not</em> leading us to a transformation of our knowledge work. To be successful in <em>academia</em>, they had to either "publish, or perish". </p>  
+
<p>So no, we do not claim that our problems can be solved. Neither do we deny them. </p>  
  
<p>We do not claim our problems can be solved. But neither do we deny them.</p>  
+
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, of empowerment, of deep understanding that small things don't matter, that only being creative in the manner and on the scale we are proposing <em>can</em> matter—which needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
 +
<p>We take a deep dive into that depth. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>  
  
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, of a <em>catharsis</em>, that needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
+
<p>"The huge problems now confronting us" <em>must</em> be dealt with, conscientiously and resolutely. We, however, do not do that. We propose to add to those most necessary and timely efforts a strategy—through which the solutions may be made easy; and which may well be necessary for the solutions to even exist.</p>  
<p>We take a deep dive into the depth of our problems. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>  
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a cultural revival"</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a great cultural revival"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
  
<p>Ironically, our problems might only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</p>  
+
<p>Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</p>  
 
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</p>  
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</p>  
Line 692: Line 1,024:
 
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>  
 
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
<b>To be continued...</b>
 +
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our mission</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
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<div class="col-md-7"><p>The Holotopia project continues to evolve as a collaborative strategy game—where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision. We bring to this 'game' a collection of tactical assets we've developed—to make it flow. </p>
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</div> </div>  
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<div class="page-header" ><h2>A pilot project</h2></div>
  
<p>By <em>mission</em> we mean the practical changes we undertake to achieve, to implement our strategy and pursue our vision. </p>
 
<blockquote>Our <em>mission</em> is to change the relationship we have with information.</blockquote>
 
  
<p>So that information will no longer be controlled by <em>power structure</em>, but be an instrument of our liberation; and our <em>cultural</em> re-evolution.</p>  
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><p>To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen. </p>
  
<p>Don't be deceived by the apparent modesty of this mission, compared to the size of our vision. "In all humility", </p>
 
<blockquote>the creative space this mission opens up to is unique is human history.</blockquote>
 
  
</div> </div>  
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[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
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<br>
  
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
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ENGELBART:
 
  
  
<p>
 
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]<br>
 
<small>Engelbart's own opening slide, pasted into our standard format. </small>
 
</p>
 
<p>We like to tell story of "Engelbart's unfinished revolution" (as Stanford University called it when it was first uncovered, in the 1990s), because it vividly, or strikingly, illustrates the kind of paradoxes and anomalies that we are now up against. Just imagine the Silicon Valley's premier innovator trying and trying—and failing—to explain to the Silicon Valley that if we should draw the kind of benefits from the information technology that can and need to be drawn, IT innovation will have to be <em>systemic</em>.</p>
 
<p>Engelbart explained in his second slide:</p>
 
<blockquote>
 
<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
 
<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
 
</blockquote>
 
  
 
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  however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
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<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
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<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
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<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p> 
 +
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 +
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 +
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 +
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 +
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 +
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 +
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>
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<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
 +
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 +
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
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<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>
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<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
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<p>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </p>
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<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
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<p>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of  publicly supported intellectuals. </p>
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<p>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>
 +
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<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</p>
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<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>
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<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>
 +
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<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>
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<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>
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<p>
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[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
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</p>
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<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>
 +
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<p>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>
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<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
 +
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<p>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>
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<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
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<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
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<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
 +
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
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<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
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<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
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<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>
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<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
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<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>
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<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
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<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>
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<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.
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<blockquote>Why do we put up with such <em>systems</em>? Why don't we treat them as we treat other human-made things—by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served?</blockquote> 
 +
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<p>The reasons are interesting, and in <em>holotopia</em> they'll be a recurring theme. </p>
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<p>One of them we have already seen: We do not <em>see things whole</em>. We don't see <em>systems</em> when we look in conventional ways—as we don't see the mountain on which we are walking.</p>
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<p>A reason why we ignore the possibility of adapting <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> to the roles they have in our society is that they perform for us a <em>different</em> role—they provide a stable structure to our various power battles and turf strifes. Within our <em>system</em>, they provide us "objective" and "fair" criteria for competing for positions; and in the world outside, they give us as a system the "competitive edge".</p>
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<p>This, for instance, is the reason why the media corporations don't <em>combine</em> their resources and give us the awareness we need; they must <em>compete</em> with one another—and use whatever means are the most "cost-effective" for acquiring our attention.</p> 
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<p>The most interesting reason—which we will revisit and understand more thoroughly below—is that the <em>power structures</em> have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> interests. This basic idea, of <em>socialization</em>, can however be understood if we think of our
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in the opening slides of his "A Call to Action" presentation, which were prepared for a 2007 panel that Google organized to share his vision to the world (but not shown!).</p>
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<p>
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[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
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</p>
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<p>In the first slide, Engelbart emphasized that  "new thinking" or a "new paradigm" is needed. In the second, he pointed out what this "new thinking" was. </p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
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<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Part of this construction is a function of our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense, and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it. Through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—as our culture defines it. As everyone knows, every "normal human being" sees the reality as it truly is. Wasn't that the reason why our ancestors often considered the members of a neighboring tribes, who saw the reality differently, as not completely normal; and why they treated them as not completely human?</p>
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<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.  </p>
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<p>To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our <em>ideograms</em>, to put things in proportion and make a point.</p>
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<p>What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...</p>
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<p>We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
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<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on <em>explaining</em> how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to <em>socialize</em> people in a certain specific way. To <em>create</em> certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.</p>
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<p>The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even <em>try</em> to make this a scientific and political issue.</p>
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<p>So how <em>are</em> our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the <em>symbolic environment</em>  we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are <em>socialized</em> to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things <em>whole</em>".</p>
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<p>By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. <em>And</em> we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
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<p>To see our second point, that reality construction is a key instrument of the <em>power structure</em>, and hence of power, it may be sufficient to point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann explained how throughout history, the "universal theories" about the nature of reality have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme is central to <em>holotopia</em>, and here too we can only get a glimpse of a solution by looking at deeper dynamics and causes.</p>
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<p>To be able to do that we devised a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> are strung together to compose a larger insight.</p> 
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<p>The first <em>vignette</em> describes a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors—aging Odin the Horse, and New Horse who is just being introduced to the herd where Odin is the stallion and the leader—are engaged in turf strife. It will be suffice to just imagine these two horses running side by side, with their long hairs waving in the wind, Odin pushing New Horse toward the river, and away from his pack of mares.</p>
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<p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>
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<p>Bourdieu devised two keywords for the symbolic cultural 'turf'" "field" and "game", and used them interchangeably. He called it a "field", to suggest (1) a field of activity or profession, and the <em>system</em> where it is practiced; and (2)  something akin to a magnetic field, in which we people are immersed as small magnets, and which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random or "free" movement.  He referred to it as "game", to suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, with allowable 'moves', by which our 'turf strife' is structured in a specific way.</p>
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<p>To explain the dynamics of the game or the field, Bourdieu adapted two additional keywords, each of which has a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". A habitus is composed of embodied behavioral predispositions, and may be thought of as distinct 'roles' or 'avatars' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do his pages. The habitus is routinely maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too), without conscious intention or awareness. Doxa is the belief, or embodied experience, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" acknowledges that multiple "realities" coexist, of which only a single one is "right"; doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives.</p>
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<p>Hence we may understand <em>socialized reality</em> as something that 'gamifies' our social behavior, by giving everyone an 'avatar' or a role, and a set of capabilities.  Doxa is the 'cement' that makes such <em>socialized reality</em> relatively permanent.</p>
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<p>A [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] involving Antonio Damasio as cognitive neuroscientist completes this <em>thread</em>, by helping us see that the "embodied predispositions" that are maintained in this way have a <em>decisive role</em>, contrary to what the 19th century science and indeed the core of our philosophical tradition made us believe. Damasio showed that our socialized <em>embodied</em> predispositions act as a cognitive filter—<em>determining</em> not only our priorities, but also the <em>options</em> we may be able to rationally consider. Our embodied, socialized predispositions are a reason, for instance, why we don't consider showing up in public naked (which in another culture might be normal). </p>
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<p>This conclusion suggests itself: Changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>—however rational, and necessary, that may be—is for <em>similar</em> reasons inconceivable. </p>
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<blockquote>We are incapable of changing our <em>systems</em>, because we have been <em>socialized</em> to accept them as reality.</blockquote>
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<p>We may now condense this diagnosis to a single keyword: <em>reification</em>. We are incapable of replacing 'candle headlights' because we have <em>reified</em> them as 'headlights'! "Science" has no systemic purpose. Science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing. Just as "journalism" is the profession we've inherited from the tradition. </p>
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<p>
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[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
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</p>
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<p>But <em>reification</em> reaches still deeper—to include the very <em>language</em> we use to organize our world. It includes the very concepts by which we frame our "issues". Ulrich Beck continued the above observation:</p>
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<blockquote>
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"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of <em>categories and basic assumptions</em> of classical social, cultural and political sciences."
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</blockquote>
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<p>We may now see not only our inherited physical institutions or <em>systems</em> as 'candles'—but also our inherited or socialized concepts, which determine the very <em>way</em> in which we look at the world.</p>
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<p><em>Reification</em> underlies <em>both</em> problems. It is what <em>keeps us</em> in 'iron cage'.</p>
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Revision as of 12:38, 1 September 2020

Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

The Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram

Our proposal

The core of our knowledge federation proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.

What is our relationship with information presently like?

Here is how Neil Postman described it:

"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."

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Neil Postman

What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated them as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted them to the purposes that need to be served?

By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And academic communication, and education?

The substance of our proposal is a complete prototype of knowledge federation, where initial answers to relevant questions are proposed, and in part implemented in practice.
Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop knowledge federation as an academic field, and a real-life praxis (informed practice).
Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.

A proof of concept application

The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test.

Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—Aurelio Peccei issued the following call to action:

"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."


Peccei also specified what needed to be done to "change course":

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

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Aurelio Peccei

This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". In what follows we shall assume that this conclusion has been federated—and focus on the more interesting questions, such as how to "change course"; and in what ways may the new course be different.

In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:

"Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world."

The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".

Could the change of 'headlights' we are proposing be "a way to change course"?


A vision

Holotopia is a vision of a possible future that emerges when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.

Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.

As the optimism regarding our future waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.

The holotopia is different in spirit from them all. It is a more attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the holotopia is readily actionable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.

The holotopia vision is made concrete in terms of five insights, as explained below.


A principle

What do we need to do to "change course" toward holotopia?

The five insights point to a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things whole.

This principle is suggested by the holotopia's very name. And also by the Modernity ideogram. Instead of reifying our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the wholeness of it all.

Imagine if academic and other knowledge-workers collaborated to serve and develop planetary wholeness – what magnitude of benefits would result!

A method

"The arguments posed in the preceding pages", Peccei summarized in One Hundred Pages for the Future, "point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost the sense of the whole."

To make things wholewe must be able to see them whole!

To highlight that the knowledge federation methodology described and implemented in the proposed prototype affords that very capability, to see things whole, in the context of the holotopia we refer to it by the pseudonym holoscope.

While the characteristics of the holoscope—the design choices or design patterns, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.


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Holoscope ideogram

To see things whole, we must look at all sides.

The holoscope distinguishes itself by allowing for multiple ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called scopes. The scopes and the resulting views have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing. The views that show the whole from a certain angle are called aspects.

This modernization of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed creation of the ways in which we look at any theme or issue—has become necessary in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with our conventional ones.

In the holoscope, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.

We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something is as stated, that X is Y—although it would be more accurate to say that X can or need to (also) be perceived as Y. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered scopes); and to do that collaboratively, in a dialog.

To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of scopes, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy.

Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention. The holoscope is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see any chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.

A discovery of a new way of looking—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct general assessment of an object of study or a situation as a whole (see if 'the cup is broken or whole') is a new kind of result that is made possible by the general-purpose science that is modeled by the holoscope

To see more, we take recourse to the vision of others. The holoscope combines scientific and other insights to enable us to see what we ignored, to 'see the other side'. This allows us to detect structural defects ('cracks') in core elements of everyday reality—which appear to us as just normal, when we look at them in our habitual way ('in the light of a candle').

All elements in our proposal are deliberately left unfinished, rendered as a collection of prototypes. Think of them as composing a 'cardboard model of a city', and a 'construction site'. By sharing them we are not making a case for a specific 'city'—but for 'architecture' as an academic field, and a real-life praxis.


Scope


What is wrong with our present "course"? In what ways does it need to be changed? What benefits will result?

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Five Insights ideogram

We use the holoscope to illuminate five pivotal themes, which determine the "course":

  • Innovation—the way we use our ability to create, and induce change
  • Communication—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled
  • Epistemology—the fundamental assumptions we use to create truth and meaning; or "the relationship we have with information"
  • Method—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life, or "the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it"
  • Values—the way we "pursue happiness", which in the modern society directly determines the course

In each case, we see a structural defect, which led to perceived problems. We demonstrate practical ways, partly implemented as prototypes, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We see that their removal naturally leads to improvements that are well beyond the removal of symptoms.

The holotopia vision results.

The key to comprehensive change turns out to be the same as it was in Galilei's time—a new approach to knowledge, which allows for creation of general principles and insights. As the case was then, the development of this new approach to knowledge is shown to follow from the state of the art of knowledge of knowledge—and hence as an academic task.

A case for our proposal is thereby also made.

In the spirit of the holoscope, we here only summarize the five insights—and provide evidence and details separately.


Scope

What might constitute "a way to change course"?

"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. Imagine if some malevolent entity, perhaps an insane dictator, took control over that power.

The power structure insight allows us to see why no dictator is needed.

While the nature of the power structure will become clear as we go along, imagine it, to begin with, as our institutions; or more accurately, as the systems in which we live and work (which we simply call systems).

Notice that systems have an immense power—over us, because we have to adapt to them to be able to live and work; and over our environment, because by organizing us and using us in certain specific ways, they decide what the effects of our work will be.

The power structure determines whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions.

Diagnosis

How suitable are the systems in which we live and work for their all-important role?

Evidence shows that the power structure wastes a lion's share of our resources. And that it either causes problems, or make us incapable of solving them.

The root cause of this malady is in the way systems evolve.

Survival of the fittest favors the systems that are predatory, not those that are useful.

This excerpt from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as a law professor created to federate an insight he considered essential) explains how the most powerful institution on our planet evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, notably the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect predator. This scene from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how the power structure affects our own condition.

The systems provide an ecology, which in the long run shapes our values and "human quality". They have the power to socialize us in ways that suit their needs. "The business of business is business"—and if our business is to succeed in competition, we must act in ways that lead to that effect. We either bend and comply—or get replaced. The effect on the system of both options will be the same.

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A consequence, Zygmunt Bauman diagnosed, is that bad intentions are no longer needed for bad things to happen. Through socialization, the power structure can co-opt our duty and commitment, and even heroism and honor.

Bauman's insight that even the holocaust was a consequence and a special case, however extreme, of the power structure, calls for careful contemplation: Even the concentration camp employees, Bauman argued, were only "doing their job"—in a system whose character and purpose was beyond their field of vision, and power to change.

While our ethical sense is tuned to the power structures of the past, we are committing (in all innocence, by acting only through power structures that bind us together) the greatest massive crime in history.

Our children may not have a livable planet to live on.

Not because someone broke the rules—but because we follow them.

Remedy

The fact that we will not solve our problems unless we develop the capability to update our systems has not remained unnoticed.

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The very first step that the The Club of Rome's founders did after its inception, in 1968, was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave making things whole on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adapted that as one of our keywords.

The work and the conclusions of this team were based on results in the systems sciences. In the year 2000, in "Guided Evolution of society", systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy surveyed relevant research, and concluded in a true holotopian tone:

We are the first generation of our species that has the privilege, the opportunity and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed chosen people. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These two are core requirements, because what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.

In 2010 Knowledge Federation began to self-organize to make further headway on this creative frontier. The procedure we developed is simple: We create a prototype of a system, and a transdisciplinary community and project around it to update it continuously. The insights in participating disciplines can in this way have real or systemic effects.

Our very first prototype, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism in 2011, was of a public informing that identifies systemic causes and proposes corresponding solutions (by involving academic and other experts) of perceived problems (reported by people directly, through citizen journalism).

A year later we created The Game-Changing Game as a generic way to change systems—and hence as a "practical way to craft the future"; and based on it The Club of Zagreb, as an update to The Club of Rome.

Each of about forty prototypes in our portfolio illustrates systemic innovation in a specific domain. Each of them is composed in terms of design patterns—problem-solution pairs, ready to be adapted for other applications and domains.

The Collaborology prototype, in education, will highlight some of the advantages of this approach.

An education that prepares us for yesterday's professions, and only in a certain stage of life, is obviously an obstacle to systemic change. Collaborology implements an education that is in every sense flexible (self-guided, life-long...), and in an emerging area of interest (collaborative knowledge work, as enabled by new technology). By being collaboratively created itself (Collaborology is created and taught by a network of international experts, and offered to learners world-wide), the economies of scale result that dramatically reduce effort. This in addition provides a sustainable business model for developing and disseminating up-to-date knowledge in any domain of interest. By conceiving the course as a design project, where everyone collaborates on co-creating the learning resources, the students get a chance to exercise their "human quality". This in addition gives the students an essential role in the resulting 'knowledge-work ecosystem' (as 'bacteria', extracting 'nutrients') .


Scope

We have just seen that our evolutionary challenge and opportunity is to develop the capability to update our institutions or systems, to learn how to make them whole.

Where—with what system—shall we begin?

The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons.

One of them is obvious: If we should use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.

In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In social systems, communication is what turns a collection of independent individuals into a system. Wiener made that point by talking about ants and bees. It is the nature of the communication that determines a social system's properties, and behavior. Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", but let us here use this more contemporary one) the sustainability of a system. The full title of Wiener's book was "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have suitable communication and control.

Diagnosis

That is presently not the case with our core systems; and with our civilization as a whole.

The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed.

Our society's communication-and-control is broken; it needs to be restored.

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To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising their communication their next highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.

These calls to action remained, however, without effect.

"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm. Wiener too entrusted his insight to the communication whose tie with action had been severed.

We have assembled a formidable collection of academic results that shared the same fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we are calling Wiener's paradox. The link between communication and action having been broken—the academic results will tend to be ignored whenever they challenge the present "course" and point to a new one!

To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds remained ignored.

This sentiment is transformed into holotopian optimism when we look at 'the other side of the coin'—the creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed obliged to reinvent the systems in which we live and work, by recreating the very communication that holds them together. Including, of course, our own, academic system, and the way in which it interoperates with other systems—or fails to interoperate.

Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also this widely ignored fact:

The information technology we now use to communicate with the world was created to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.

'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have already been created—for the purpose of giving our society the 'headlights' it needs.

Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that—given the vast volumes of our information—our knowledge work must be organized in a way that enables us to benefit from each other's thinking. Bush's point was that technology and processes must be devised to enable us to in effect "connect the dots" or think together, as a single mind does. He described a prototype system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.

Douglas Engelbart, however, took Bush's idea significantly further than Bush himself envisioned, and indeed in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system.

All earlier innovations in this area—the clay tablets and the printing press—required that a physical object with a message be physically transported.

This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" concurrently, as cells in a human nervous system do.

We can now develop insights and solutions together.

Engelbart conceived this new technology as a necessary step toward becoming able to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate.

This three minute video clip, which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", will give us an opportunity for a pause and an illuminating reflection. Think about the prospects of improving the planetary collective mind. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then our old man put his fingers on his forehead, and raised his eyes up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential is not only large; it is staggering. The improvement that is both necessary and possible is qualitative—from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.

To Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to only make the old processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that broadcast information.

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The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the effects that our dazzled and confused collective mind had on our culture; and on "human quality".

Our sense of meaning having been drowned in an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.

But that is exactly what binds us to power structure!


Remedy

What is to be done, to restore the severed link between communication and action?

How can we begin to change our collective mind—as our technology enables, and our situation demands?

Engelbart left us a clear and concise answer; he called it bootstrapping.

His point was that only writing about what needs to be done would not have an effect (the tie between information and action having been broken). Bootstrapping means that we consider ourselves as parts in a collective mind; and that we self-organize, and act, as it may best serve its restoration to wholeness.

The key to solution is to either create new systems with the material of our own minds and bodies—or to help others do that.

The Knowledge Federation transdiscipline was conceived by an act of bootstrapping, to enable bootstrapping.

What we are calling knowledge federation is an umbrella term for a variety of activities and social processes that together comprise the functions of a collective mind. Obviously, the development of the collective mind paradigm will requires a system, a new kind of institution, which will assemble and mobilize the required knowledge and human and other resources toward that end. Presently, Knowledge Federation is a complete prototype of the transdiscipline for knowledge federation, ready for inspection, co-creative updates and deployment.

But may will have the requisit knowledge, and who may be given the power—to update our collective mind?

The praxis of knowledge federation itself must, of course, also be federated.

In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers, working on technology and processes for collective sense making).

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Patty Coulter, Mei Lin Fung and David Price speaking at the 2011 An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism workshop in Barcelona

We use the above triplet of photos ideographically, to highlight that Knowledge Federation is a true federation—where state of the art knowledge is combined in state of the art systems. The featured participants of our 2011 workshop in Barcelona, where our public informing prototype was created, are Patty Coulter (the Director of Oxford Global Media and Fellow of Green College Oxford, formerly the Director of Oxford University's Reuter Program in Journalism) Mei Lin Fung (the founder of Program for the Future) and David Price (who co-founded both the Global Sensemaking R & D community, and Debategraph—which is now the leading global platform for collective thinking).

Other prototypes contributed other design patterns for restoring the severed link between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 prototype showed what may constitute the federation of a research result—which is written in an esoteric academic vernacular, and has large potential general interest and impact. The first phase of this prototype, completed through collaboration between the author and our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams, and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile, televised and live streamed event, where the result was made public. The third phase, implemented on Debategraph, modeled proper online collective thinking about the result—including pros and cons, connections with other related results, applications etc.

The Lighthouse 2016 prototype is a conceived as a direct remedy for the Wiener's paradox, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This prototype models a system by which an academic community can federate a single core message into the public sphere. The message in this case was also relevant—it was whether or not we can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the functioning of our systems; or whether we must use its alternative—the knowledge developed in the systems sciences.

Scope

"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Of course political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them to do was to 'hit the brakes'; and when the 'bus' they are believed to be 'driving' is inspected, it becomes clear that the 'brakes' too are missing. The job of a politician is to keep 'the bus on course' (the economy growing) for yet another four years. Changing the 'course' or the system is well beyond what they are able to do, or even imagine doing.

The COVID-19 pandemic may require systemic changes now.

Who—what institution or system—will take the leadership role, and guide us through our unprecedentedly immense creative and evolutionary challenges?

Both Erich Jantsch and Doug Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them—just as they ignored Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and so many others who followed.

Why?

Isn't the prospect of restoring agency to information and power to knowledge deserving of academic attention?

It is tempting to conclude that the university institution followed the general trend, and evolved as a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.

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We readily find them in the way in which the university institution originated.

The academic tradition did not originate as a way to practical knowledge, but to freely pursue knowledge for its own sake; in a manner disciplined only by knowledge of knowledge—which philosophers have been developing since antiquity. Wherever this free-yet-disciplined pursuit of knowledge took us, we followed.

And as we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, by highlighting the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest,

it was this free pursuit of knowledge that led to the last "great cultural revival".

We asked:

Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

The key to the positive answer to this question—which is obviously central to holotopia—is in the historicity of "the relationship we have with knowledge"—which Stephen Toulmin explicated so clearly in his last book, "Reurn to Reason", from which the above quotation was taken. So that is what we here focus on.

As Toulmin pointed out, at the time when the contemporary academic ethos was taking shape, it was the Church and the tradition that had the prerogative of telling the people how to conduct their daily affairs and what to believe in. And as the image of Galilei in house arrest may suggest—they held onto that prerogative most firmly! But the censorship and the prison could not stop an idea whose time had come. They were unable to prevent a completely new way of exploring the world to transpire from astrophysics, where it originated, and transform first our pursuit of knowledge in general—and then our society and culture at large.

It is therefore natural that at the universities we consider the curation of this approach to knowledge to be our core role in our society. Being the heirs and the custodians of a tradition that has historically led to some of the most spectacular evolutionary leaps in human history, we remain faithful to that tradition. We do that by meticulously conforming to the methods and the themes of interests of mathematics, physics, philosophy, biology, sociology, philosophy and other traditional academic disciplines, which, we believe, embody the highest standards of that tradition. People can learn practical skills elsewhere. It is only at the university that they can acquire the highest standards of knowledge of knowledge—and the ability to pursue knowledge effectively in any domain.

We must ask:

Could the academic tradition evolve further?

Could this tradition once again give us a completely new way to explore the world?

Can the free pursuit of knowledge, curated by the knowledge of knowledge, once again lead to "a great cultural revival" ?

Can "a great cultural revival" begin at the university?


Diagnosis


In the course of our modernization, we made a fundamental error.

From the traditional culture we adopted a myth far more disruptive of modernization than the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; and that the purpose of information, and of our pursuit of knowledge, is to "know the reality" objectively, as it truly is. It may take a moment of reflection to see how much this myth permeates our popular culture, our society and institutions; how much it marks "the relationship we have with information"—in all its various manifestations.

This fundamental error has subsequently been detected and reported, but not corrected. (We again witness that the link between information and action has been severed.)

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It is simply impossible to open up the 'mechanism of nature', and verify that our ideas and models correspond to the real thing!

The "reality", the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we construct.

This "social construction of reality" is a result of complex interaction between our cognitive organs and our culture. From the cradle to the grave, through innumerably many 'carrots and sticks', we are socialized to organize and communicate our experience in a certain specific way.

The socialized reality construction has has served as the 'DNA', which enabled the traditional cultures to reproduce themselves and evolve.

Information, in other words, has traditionally served as 'headlights'; the purpose of the traditional myths was not to tell the people how the world really originated—but to serve as foundation for principles and norms, which oriented their behavior; and the development of "human quality".

Information, however, and socialization, have always served also a different purpose—as instruments of power; as media which the power relationships were maintained. And hence as core elements of the power structure.

In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann left us an analysis of the social process by which the reality is constructed—and pointed to the role that "universal theories" (which determine the relationship we have with information) play in maintaining a given social and political status quo. An example, but not the only one, is the Biblical worldview of Galilei's persecutors.

To organize and sum up what we above all need to know about the nature of socialization, and about the relationship between power and culture, we created the Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio thread, consisting of three short real-life stories or vignettes. (The thread is an adaptation of Vannevar Bush's technical idea for organizing collective mind work, which he called "trail".)

The first, Odin the Horse vignette, points to the nature of turf struggle, by portraying the turf behavior of horses.

The second vignette, featuring Pierre Bourdieu as leading sociologist, shows that we humans exhibit a similar behavior—and that our culture may be perceived as a complex 'turf'.

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Bourdieu used interchangeably two keywords—"field" and "game"—to refer to this 'turf'. By calling it a field, he portrayed it as something akin to a magnetic field, which orients our seemingly random or "free" behavior, without us noticing. By calling it a game, he portrayed it as something that structures or "gamifies" our social existence, by giving each of us certain "action capabilities" (which Bourdieu called "habitus"), pertaining to a role, which tends to be transmitted from body to body directly. Everyone bows to the king, and we do that too. With time, we become socialized to accept those roles and behaviors as the "reality". Bourdieu called this experience (that our social reality is as immutable and real as the physical reality) doxa.

The third story, featuring Antonio Damasio in the role of a leading cognitive neuroscientist, completes this thread by explaining that we, humans, are not the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Each of us has an embodied cognitive filter, which determines what options we are able to rationally consider. This cognitive filter is programmed through socialization. Damasio's insight allows us to understand why we civilized humans don't rationally consider taking off our clothes and walking into the street naked; and that for cognitively similar reasons we don't consider changing the systems in which we live and work.

Socialized reality constitutes a pseudo-epistemology.

Hence the socialized reality insight, which we have so far only touched upon, delineates and opens up a truly wonderful creative frontier—where three realms that are usually considered as independent are inextricably intertwined: culture, power and epistemology (or "the relationship we have with information").

As an understandable consequence of historical circumstances, as Toulmin showed, our hitherto modernization has ignored these subtleties—and we've assumed that (1) the purpose of information is to mirror reality and (2) the traditions got it all wrong. The consequences are far reaching and central to holotopia.

  • Severed link between information and action. The (perceived) purpose of information being to complete the 'reality puzzle'—every new piece appears to be as relevant as others, and necessary for completing the 'puzzle'. In the sciences and in the media, enormous quantities of information are produced "disconnected from usefulness"—as Neil Postman diagnosed.
  • Stringent limits to creativity. A vast global army of selected, trained and publicly sponsored creative people are obliged to confine their repertoire of creative action to producing research articles in traditional academic fields.
  • Loss of cultural heritage. A trivial observation will suffice to make a point: With the threat of eternal fire on the one side, and the promise of heavenly pleasures on the other, a 'field' was created that oriented people's ethical sense and behavior. To see that the ancient myths were, however, only a tip of an iceberg (a small part of a complex ecosystem whose purpose was to develop "human quality") this one-minute thought experiment—an imaginary visit to a cathedral—might be helpful: There is awe-inspiring architecture; Michelangelo's Pietà meets the eye, and his frescos are near by. Allegri's Miserere reaches us from above. And there's of course also the ritual. All this comprises an ecosystem—in which the emotions of awe and respect make one open to practicing and learning. By its complex dynamics, it resembles our biophysical environment—but there is a notable difference: There we have nothing equivalent to the temperature and CO2 measurements, to be able to diagnose problems and propose remedies.
  • "Human quality" abandoned to power structure. Advertising is everywhere. And explicit advertising too is only a tip of an iceberg, the bulk of which consists of a variety of ways in which "symbolic power" is used to socialize us in ways that suit the power structure interests. Scientific techniques are used; the story of Edward Bernays, Freud's American nephew who became "the pioneer of modern public relations and propaganda", is iconic.
  • Reification of institutions. Even when they cause us problems, and make us incapable of solving them.

This conclusion suggests itself.

The Enlightenment did not liberate us from power-related reality construction, as it is believed.
Our socialization only changed hands—from the kings and the clergy, to the corporations and the media.

Ironically, our carefully cultivated academic self-identity—as "objective observers of reality"—keeps us on the 'back seat'; we diagnose problems—but we cannot federate solutions.

Remedy

We have already seen the remedy.

The remedy is to change the relationship we have with information.

To consider information as the core element of our systems; and to adapt it to the functions that need to be served.

When making this proposal, we are not saying anything new; we are indeed only echoing the calls to action that many have made before us.

Jantsch-university.jpeg

We, however, also federate those calls.

In the spirit of the holoscope, we condensed the fundamental part of this argument by a metaphorical image, the Mirror ideogram. This ideogram renders the essence of the academic situation we are in.

The Mirror ideogram invites us to interrupt what we are doing and self-reflect—as Socrates used to invite his contemporaries, at the Academia's point of inception.


This self-reflection leads us to two insights.

We are compelled to abolish reification.

When we look at a mirror, we see ourselves in the world. We are not above the world, observing it "objectively". The disciplinary interests, methods and institutions are not something that objectively existed, which our predecessors only discovered. They created them—in certain historical circumstances. Hence it is academically legitimate to create new ones.

We are compelled to embrace accountability.

The world we see ourselves in, when we look at the mirror, is a world in dire need—for new ideas, new ways of thinking and being. We see that, by virtue of the role we have in that world, we hold the very key to its transformation.

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Mirror ideogram

We are then also compelled to ask:

How can we be accountable in our new social role, without sacrificing the academic rigor—which has been the distinguishing trait of our tradition?

The answer offers itself as an unexpected result of our metaphorical self-reflection:

We can walk right through the mirror!

This takes only two steps.

The first is to use what philosopher Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—which we adapted as one of our keywords.

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Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:

"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."

But if truth by convention has been the way in which the sciences augment the rigor of their logical foundations—why not use it to update the logical foundations of knowledge work at large?

As we are using this keyword, the truth by convention is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let X be Y. Then..." and the argument follows. Insisting that X "really is" Y is obviously meaningless. A convention is valid only within a given context—which may be an article, or a theory, or a methodology.

The second step is to use truth by convention to define an epistemology.

We defined design epistemology by rendering the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information—by considering it a human-made thing, and adapting information and the way we handle it to the functions that need to be served) as a convention.

Notice that nothing has been changed in the traditional-academic scheme of things. The academia has only been extended; a new way of thinking and working has been added to it, for those who might want to engage in that new way. On the 'other side of the mirror', we see ourselves and what we do as (part of) the 'headlights' and the 'light'; and we self-organize, and act, and use our creativity freely-yet-responsibly, and create a variety of new methods and results—just as the founding father of science did, at the point of its inception.

In the "Design Epistemology" research article (published in the special issue of the Information Journal titled "Information: Its Different Modes and Its Relation to Meaning", edited by Robert K. Logan) where we articulated this proposal, we made it clear that the design epistemology is only one of the many ways to manifest this approach. We drafted a parallel between the modernization of science that can result in this way and the emergence of modern art: By defining an epistemology and a methodology by convention, we can do in the sciences as the artists did—when they liberated themselves from the demand to mirror reality, by using the techniques of Old Masters.

As the artists did—we can become creative in the very way in which we practice our profession.

To complete this proposal and make it concrete, we developed two prototypes: the holoscope models the academic reality on the other side; the holotopia models the corresponding social reality.

Let us illustrate these abstract ideas by brief and self-contained module, comprising an academically stated challenge, and two examples of its resolution—by using the techniques just described. Each of the examples includes both a concept definition by convention, and a prototype (of disciplinary or institutional re-definition) that was embedded and tested in academic practice, with encouraging results.


This challenge is reaching us from sociology.

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Beck continued the above observation:

"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of categories and basic assumptions of classical social, cultural and political sciences."

Our 'candle headlights' (the practice of inheriting the way we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it) are keeping us in 'iron cage'!


The definition of design allowed us to capture the essence of our post-traditional cultural condition, and suggest how to adapt to it.

We defined design as "alternative to tradition", where design and tradition are (by convention) two alternative ways to wholeness. Tradition relies on spontaneous, gradual, Darwinian-style evolution. Change is resisted, small changes are tried—and tested and assimilated through generations of use. We practice design when we consider ourselves accountable for wholeness.

When tradition cannot be relied on, design must be used.

The situation we are in, which we rendered by the bus with candle headlights metaphor, can now be understood as a result of a transition: We are no longer traditional (our technology evolves by design); but we are not yet designing ("the relationship we have with information" is still traditional). Our call to action can be understood as a practical way to complete modernization.

Reification can now be understood as the foundation for truth and meaning that suits the tradition; truth by convention is what empowers us to design.

We proposed this definition to the academic design community, as part of an answer to its quest for logical foundations. The fact that Danish Designers chose our presentation to be repeated as opening keynote at their tenth anniversary conference suggests that this praxis, of assigning a purpose to a discipline and a community by using ruth by convention, may be of immediately interest.

The definition of implicit information and of visual literacy as "literacy associated with implicit information for the International Visual Literacy Association was in spirit similar—but its point was different.

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We showed the above ideogram as depicting a situation where two kinds of information—the explicit information with explicit, factual and verbal warning in a black-and-white rectangle, and the visual and "cool" rest—meet each other in a direct duel. The image shows that the implicit information wins "hands down" (or else this would not be a cigarette advertising). Our larger point was that while our legislation, ethical sensibilities and "official" culture at large are focused on explicit information, our culture is largely created through subtle implicit information. Hence we need a literacy to be able to decode those messages—and reverse the negative consequences of reification.

Lida Cochran, the only surviving IVLA founder, found that this definition expressed and served the founders' original intention.



Scope

We have just seen that the academic tradition—instituted as the modern university—finds itself in a much larger and more central social role than it was originally conceived for. We look up to the academia, and not to the Church and the tradition, for an answer to the pivotal question:

How should we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it?

That role, and that question, carry an immense power!

It was by providing a completely new answer to that question, that the last "great cultural revival" came about.


Diagnosis

So how should we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it?
Nobody knows!

Of course, countess books and articles have been written about this theme since antiquity. But in spite of that—or should we say because of that—no consensus has emerged.

The way we the people look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it, shaped itself spontaneously—from scraps of science that were most visible around the middle of the 19th century, when Darwin and Newton as cultural heroes replaced Adam and Moses. What is today popularly considered as the "scientific worldview" took shape then—and remained largely unchanged.

As members of the homo sapiens species, this worldview would make us believe, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to comprehend the world in causal terms, and to make rational choices accordingly. Give us a correct model of the world, and we'll know exactly how to satisfy our needs (which we can experience directly). But the traditional cultures got it all wrong: Not knowing how the nature works, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to him to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error—and now we can satisfy our needs by manipulating the mechanisms of nature directly, with the help of technology.

It is this causal or "scientific" understanding of the world that made us modern. Isn't that how we understood that women cannot fly on broomsticks?

From our collection of reasons why this way of looking at the world is neither scientific nor functional, we here mention only two.

Heisenberg–frame.jpeg

The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.

The mechanistic way of looking at the world that Newton and his contemporaries developed in physics, which around the 19th century shaped the worldview of the masses, was later disproved and disowned by modern science. Research in physics showed that even the physical phenomena exhibit the kinds of interdependence that cannot be understood in "classical" or causal terms.

In "Physics and Philosophy", Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, described how "the narrow and rigid" way of looking at the world that our ancestors adapted from the 19th century science was damaging to culture—and in particular to its parts on on which the "human quality" depended, such as ethics and religion. And how as a result the "instrumental" thinking and values, which Bauman called "adiaphorized", became prominent. Heisenberg believed that the dissolution of that "rigid and narrow frame" would be the most valuable gift of his field to the humanity.

In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr (considered as Heisenberg's scientific "heir") co-wrote the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message is "We need to learn to think in a new way". The proposed new thinking is similar to the one that leads to holotopia: "The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. (...) We need to reach a fundamentally new way of thinking and a more comprehensive under­standing of our Wirklichkeit, in which we, too, see ourselves as a thread in the fabric of life, without sacrificing anything of our special human qualities. This makes it possible to recognize hu­manity in fundamental commonality with the rest of nature (...)"

The second reason is that even complex mechanisms ("classical" nonlinear dynamic systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.

MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg

It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Research in the systems sciences, one of which is cybernetics, explained this scientifically: The "hell" (which you may imagine as global issues, or the 'destination' toward which our 'bus' is believed to be headed) tends to be a "side effect" of our best efforts and "solutions", reaching us through "nonlinearities" and "feedback loops" in the natural and social systems we are trying to manipulate.

Hear Mary Catherine Bateson (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:

"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge in general. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"

Remedy

Truth by convention allows us to explicitly define and academically develop a way to look at the world, in order to comprehend and handle it.

We called the result a methodology, and our prototype the Polyscopic Modeling methodology or polyscopy.

A methodology is in essence a toolkit; anything that does the job would do. We, however, defined polyscopy by turning state of the art epistemological insights into conventions.

That constitutes a way in which the severed link between the scientific insights and the popular worldview can be restored.

The polyscopy definition comprises eight aphorismic postulates; by using truth by convention, each of them is given an exact interpretation.

The first postulate defines information as "recorded experience". It is thereby made explicit that the substance communicated by information is not "reality", but human experience. Since human experience can be recorded in a variety of ways (a chair is a record of experience related to sitting and chair making), the notion of information is extended beyond written documents. The first postulate enables knowledge federation across cultural traditions and fields of interests; the barriers of language and method are bridged by reducing all that is of relevance to human experience, as a 'common denominator'.

The second postulate is that the scope (the way we look) determines the view (what is seen). In polyscopy the experience (or "reality" or whatever is "behind" experience) is not assumed to have an a priori structure. We attribute to it a structure with the help of the concepts and other elements of our scope. This postulate enables us to create new ways of looking, and to make the basic approach of science generally applicable—as prototyped by the holoscope.

Polyscopy did not talk about knowledge. We may now improvise this new axiom:

Knowledge must be federated.

This only states the intuitive or common-sense idea of "knowledge": If we should be able to say that we "know" something, we must federate not only supporting evidence, but also potential counter-evidence—and hence information in general. Academic peer reviews implement that principle in science; but this federation tends to be restricted to a discipline. An analogy with constitutional democracy also comes to mind—where even a hated criminal has the right for a fair trial. Like a dutiful attorney, knowledge federation does its best to gather suitable evidence, and back each federated insight with a convincing case.

A methodology allows us to state explicitly what information needs to be like; and what being "informed" means. We modeled this intuitive notion with the keyword gestalt. To be "informed", one needs to have a gestalt that is appropriate to one's situation. "Our house is on fire" is a canonical example. The knowledge of gestalt is profoundly different from only knowing the data (such as the room temperatures and the CO2 levels.). To have an appropriate gestalt means to be moved to do the action that a situation is calling for.

Can we be uninformed—in spite of all the information we have?

"One cannot not communicate", reads one of Paul Watzlawick's axioms of communication. Even when everything in a news report is factually correct, the gestalt it conveys implicitly can be profoundly deceptive—because we are told what Donald Trump has said, and not Aurelio Peccei.

Polyscopy offers a collection of techniques for communicating and 'proving' or justifying general or high-level insights and claims. Knowledge federation is conceived as the social process by which such insights can be created and maintained. To create the methodology, we federated methodological insights from a variety of fields:

  • Patterns have a closely similar function as mathematics does in traditional sciences—and at the same time completely generalize the implementation of this function
  • Ideograms allow us to include the expressive power and the insights and techniques from art, advertising and information design
  • Vignettes implement the basic technique from media informing, where an insight or issue is made accessible by telling illustrative and engaging or "sticky" real-life people and situation stories
  • Threads implement Vannevar Bush's technical idea of "trails" as a way to combine specific ideas into higher-level units of meaning


We conclude by telling a vignette—which will illustrate some of the further nuances of this methodological approach to information and knowledge.

A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming. The buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to 'detangle' (understand and correct). The solution was conceived as "computer programming methodology"; the longer story is interesting, but we only highlight a couple of lessons learned from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard.


The designers of a computer programming language made themselves accountable for the "usability" of the results, and developed a methodology.

Any sufficiently complete programming language, even the "machine language" of the computer, will allow the programmers to create any application program. The creators of the object oriented methodology, however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would enable them, or even compel them, to write comprehensible, reusable and well-structured code.

Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg

To understand a complex system, abstraction must be used. We must be able to create views of the complex whole on distinct levels of generality.

The object oriented methodology provided a structuring template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without the burden of the details of its code.

We have seen, in socialized reality, that the academia too needs to consider itself accountable for the tools and processes by which information and knowledge are handled—both for the ones used by academic researchers, and for the ones used by people at large. To see what those two lessons learned may mean practically, Imagine a highly talented young person, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu to be concrete, about to become a researcher. The academia will give Bourdieu a certain way to render his results, which he'll be using throughout his career. The "usability", comprehensibility and in a word—the usefulness of Bourdieu's life work will largely depend on the format in which he'll render his results. This format, however, will not be in his power to change, and it is unlikely that even Bourdieu would even think about doing that.

Bourdieu is, of course, only a drop in an ocean.


The solution for structuring information we devised in polyscopy is called information holon. An information holon is closely similar to the "object" in object oriented methodology. Information, represented in the Information ideogram as an "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. The circle represents the point of it all (such as "the cup is whole"); the square represents the details, the side views.

When the circle is a general insight or a gestalt, it allows that insight to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into higher-level insights (while the contributing insights and data remain "hidden" in the square). When the circle is a prototype, the multiplicity of insights that comprise the square are given direct systemic impact, and hence agency.

Information.jpg
Information ideogram

The holotopia may now be understood as the circle by which our knowledge federation proposal is federated; a vision is not only provided and published—but already turned into a collaborative strategy game whose goal is to "change course".

A prototype polyscopic book manuscript titled "Information Must Be Designed" is structured as an information holon. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is justified in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it. The book's four chapters present four aspects of our handling of information; they identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the design patterns of the proposed methodology.

It is customary in programming language design to showcase the language by creating its first compiler in the language itself. In this book we described the paradigm that is modeled by polyscopy, and then used polyscopy to make a case for that paradigm.

The book's introduction is available online. What we then branded information design is today completed and called knowledge federation.


Scope

We turn to culture and to "human quality", and ask:

Why is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?

What insight, and what strategy, may divert our "pursuit of happiness" from material consumption to human cultivation?

We may approach the same theme from a different angle: Suppose we developed the praxis of federating information—and used it to combine all relevant heritage and insights—from the sciences, the world traditions, the therapy schools...

Suppose we used real information to guide our choices, instead of advertising. What changes would develop? What difference would they make?

During the Renaissance, preoccupations with original sin and eternal reward gradually gave way to a pursuit of happiness and beauty here and now; and the arts prospered.

What might the next "great cultural revival" be like?

Diagnosis

There is a popular myth which precludes information and knowledge to make a difference in this realm too—analogous and related to the myth of free competition that breeds the power structure.

It is the belief that we don't really need information, or culture, because we can experience what makes us happy directly—and reach out toward it with the help of science and technology.

Our "pursuit of happiness" 'in the light of a candle' made two values prominent, at the detriment of others: convenience (favoring what appears to be pleasant and easy) and egotism (favoring narrowly conceived "personal interests"). Both appear as scientific: convenience because it resembles the experiment; egotism because it is the way in which nature herself pursues wholeness. Both values are, of course, endlessly supported by advertising.

Those two values now guide even our choice and creation of information!

Remedy

We point to the remedy by the Convenience Paradox ideogram. Like all of us, the person in the picture wants his life to be convenient. But he made a wise choice: Instead of simply following the direction downwards, which feels easier, he paused to reflect whether this direction also leads to a more convenient condition.

It doesn't.

The convenience paradox is a pattern, where the pursuit of a more convenient direction leads to a less convenient situation. The iconic image of a "couch potato" in front of a TV is an obvious instance.

The convenience paradox is a result of us simplifying "pursuit of happiness" by ignoring its two most interesting dimensions—time; and our own condition, which makes us inclined or able to feel</em> in any specific way.

By depicting the way to wholeness as "yang" in the traditional yin-yang ideogram, it is suggested that its nature os paradoxical and obscure—and that the way needs to be illuminated by suitable information. This way is what the Buddhists call "Dhamma" and the Taoists "Tao".


However paradoxical, the way follows a certain pattern that can be understood; not in a mechanistic-causal way, not by studying what various cultures believe in—but by focusing on and federating the phenomenology repeated in the world traditions.

Convenience Paradox.jpg Convenience Paradox ideogram

Wholeness is such a beautifully inclusive value, with so many sides! We may have everything else in the world—and the lack of vitamin C will make it all futile.

We showed that the convenience paradox is a pattern repeated or subtly reflected in all major aspects of our civilized human condition.

To illustrate it, however, we here focus on what might be its least known and most interesting side—our capacity to feel. We'll elaborate it in terms of three specific insights.

1. Human wholeness feels better than most of us can imagine.

We called this insight "the best kept secret of human culture" , and made it a theme of one of our chosen ten conversations.

It was a glimpse or an experience or side of human wholeness that attracted our ancestors to the Buddha, the Christ, Mohammed and other adepts and teachers of the way, or "sages" or "prophets". C.F. Andrews described this in "Sermon on the Mount":

"(Through their practice, the early disciples of Jesus found out) that the Way of Life, which Jesus had marked out for them in His teaching, was revolutionary in its moral principles. It turned the world upside down (Acts 17. 6). (...) They found in this new 'Way of Life' such a superabundance of joy, even in the midst of suffering, that they could hardly contain it. Their radiance was unmistakable. When the Jewish rulers saw their boldness, they 'marvelled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus' (Acts 4. 13). (...) It was this exuberance of joy and love which was so novel and arresting. It was a 'Way of Life' about which men had no previous experience. Indeed, at first those who saw it could not in the least understand it; and some mocking said, 'These men are full of new wine' (Acts 2. 13)."

The existence and character of this experience can, however, readily be verified by simply observing or asking the people who have followed the way, and tasted some of its fruits.

2. The way to wholeness is counter-intuitive or paradoxical.

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To get a glimpse of it, compare the above utterances by Lao Tzu, with what Christ taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Why was Teacher Lao claiming that "the weak can defeat the strong"? Why did the Christ asked his disciples to "turn the other cheek"?

Aldous Huxley's book "Perennial Philosophy" is alone sufficient to make this point. Coming from a family that gave some of Britain's leading scientists, Huxley undertook to not only federate some of the core insights about the way (by demonstrating the consistency of both the relevant practices and their results across historical periods and cultures), but to also make a case for the method he used, as an extension of science needed to support core elements of our cultural heritage.

3. The key to unraveling the paradox is to reverse the values.

Convenience needs to be replaced by (to use Peccei's keyword) "human development".

Egotism needs to be overcome through "selfless service".

Lao Tzu, an iconic representative of the way, is often portrayed as reading a bull—which signifies that he's harnessed his egotism.

While this insight can easily be federated in the manner just described, we here point to it by a curiosity.

Huxley-vision.jpeg

In "The Art of Seeing", Huxley observed that overcoming egotism is a necessary element of even physical wholeness!

We may now perceive significant parts of our cultural history as struggle between cultivation of wholeness guided by insights into the nature of the way—and the power structure–related socialization, aided by the attraction of convenience and egotism. It is on the outcome of this struggle, Peccei observed, that our future will depend.

What hope do we have of reversing its outcome?

The answer is, of course, that we now have a whole new dimension to work with.

We can design communication.

We can create media content that will communicate the convenience paradox in clear and convincing ways; we can guide people to an informed use of information; and we can create various elements of culture to socialize us or cultivate us accordingly. Including, of course, the systems in which we live and work.


A vast creative frontier opens up.

We illustrate it here by a handful of examples.

In a fractal-like manner, our definition of culture reflects the entire situation around holoscope and holotopia. So let us summarize it here in that way, however briefly. We motivated this definition by discussing Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis"—where Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and reached the conclusion that they are so diverse that they cannot be reconciled with one another. How can we develop culture as praxis—if we don't know what "culture" means? We defined culture as "cultivation of wholeness", where the keyword cultivation is defined by analogy with planting and watering a seed (which suits also the etymology of "culture") . Thereby (and in accordance with the general holotopia approach we discussed above), we pointed to a specific aspect of culture. No amount of dissecting and studying a seed would suggest that it needs to be planted and watered. Hence when we reduced "reality" to what we can explain in that way, the culture as cultivation is all gone! When, however, we consider and treat information as human experience, and look for what may help us redeem and further develop culture—then a remedial trend, modeled by holotopia, is already under way.

We defined addiction as a pattern; and motivated this definition by observing that evolution equipped us, humans with emotions of comfort and discomfort to guide our choices toward wholeness. We, however, found ways to deceive nature—by creating pleasurable things called "addictions", which lead us away from wholeness. Since selling addictions is lucrative business, the traditions identified certain activities or things (such as opiates and gambling) as addictions and developed suitable legislation and ethical norms. But with the help of technology, contemporary industries can develop hundreds of new addictions—without us having a way to even recognize them as that. By defining addiction as a pattern, we can perceive it (as we did with the power structure) as an aspect of otherwise good and useful things. From a large number of obvious or subtle candidates or examples, we here mention only pseudoconsciousness defined as "addiction to information". Consciousness of one's situation and surroundings is, of course, an evolutionary need. In civilization we can, however, drown this need in massive facts and data—which give us the sensation of knowing, without telling us what we above all need to know.

We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined religion as "reconnection with the archetype" (this again harmonizes with the etymological meaning of this word). The archetypes here include "justice", "beauty", "truth", "love" and anything else that may make a person overcome egotism and convenience and serve a "higher" ideal.

The NaCuHeal-Information Design was our project developed in collaboration with the European Public Health Association, through Prof. Gunnar Tellnes who was then its president. In Norway Tellnes developed an authentic approach to health, which was based on nature and culture-related activities. This collaboration resulted in several prototypes, of which we mention two.

We contributed "Healthcare as a Power Structure" to the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. Historiographically, we based this research on the results of Weston Price and Werner Kollath—two pioneers of the scientific "hygiene", understood as a scientific study of the ways in which civilized lifestyle influences people's health. But we also added a methodological contribution—a way to 'connect the dots' and supplement historiographic research by a general "law of change" result. By seeing that also our approach to health and medicine can develop pathological tendencies, we can explain the fact that the results of those pioneers are still virtually unknown even to medical professionals; and why, in spite of them, our "caring for health" so consistently ignores the lifestyle factors, and relies on far more costly interventions.

Kommunewiki—a dialog-based communication project for Norwegian municipalities (as basic units of Norwegian democracy)—was conceived to empower their members to counter power structure lifestyle tendencies, and develop salutogenic new ones.

We developed the "Movement and Qi" educational prototype as a way to add to the conventional academic portfolio a collection of ways to use human body as medium—and work with "human quality" directly. And as a way to include the insights and techniques of the "human quality" traditions such as yoga and qigong into the academic repertoire.

"Liberation", subtitled "Religion beyond Belief", is a book manuscript and a communication design project. The book federates the message of Ven. Ajahn Buddhadasa, a 20th century's Buddhism reformer in Thailand, who—having through experimentation and practice understood and 'repeated the Buddha's experiment', found in it also a natural antidote to rampant materialism. The first four chapters present four aspects of human wholeness, including physical effortlessness, creativity, emotions and vitality. Buddhadasa's insights are shown to be a necessary piece in this large puzzle. The closing four chapters explain how societal wholeness may result.

The core Buddhadasa's message, which is also the message of this book, is to portray religion as "liberation"—not only from rigidly held beliefs that form our self-identity, but from rigidly held anything, as well as from self-identity as such.

We chose this book as part of our strategy for launching the holotopia. Many people have strong opinions about religion—be they "religious" and pro, or "scientific" and against. This book is likely to surprise both sides and challenge both positions—while at the same time reconciling their differences.

Isn't the prospect of evolving religion further a promising strategy for remedying religion-inspired violence?

And of course, a way to evolve further culturally and ethically—as Peccei requested; and holotopia promised to deliver.


A great cultural revival

The five insights together compose a vision of "a great cultural revival". They complete the analogy between our time and the situation at the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance, which we've been pointing to by using the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest.

A revolution in innovation

By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution promised to liberate our ancestors from hardship and toil, so that they may focus on developing culture and "human quality". The power structure, however, thwarted our aspirations. This issue can be resolved, and progress can be resumed, by learning to "make things whole" on the level of the systems in which we live and work.

A revolution in communication

The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy and communication. The collective mind insight shows that the new information technology can power a similar revolution—whose effect will be a revolution of meaning. The kind of revolution that can make the differences that needs to make, in a post-industrial society.

A revolution in the relationship we have with information

By reviving the academic tradition (which had remained dormant for almost two thousand years), the Enlightenment empowered our ancestors to use reason to comprehend the world, and to evolve faster. The socialized reality insight shows that the evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to a new turning point—which will liberate us from reifying our inherited systems and worldviews; and enable us to evolve culturally, a similar rate as we've evolved technologically.

A revolution in method

Galilei in house arrest was really science in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The narrow frame insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that traditional sciences left in the dark.

A revolution in culture

The Renaissance was a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, manifested by the arts. The convenience paradox insight shows that our culture has once again become a victim of power structure; and that a final liberation is possible.


The sixth insight

Combined together, the five insights readily lead to a more general sixth insight.

We must be able to create insights.

We have all the knowledge we need to begin "a great cultural revival". What we are lacking is a way to put it together, and make sense of it.


A case for our proposal is hereby also completed.

The Holotopia project completes the federation of Peccei's vision, by making it actionable.

It also completes the knowledge federation prototype, by serving as 'the dot on the i'.

This Holotopia project description will be completed by elaborating:

The Holotopia project is conceived as a space, where we make co-creative strategic moves toward "changing course".

We implement Margaret Mead's recommendations for responding to the situation we are in:

"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."

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Margaret Mead


To the above co-creative space we bring a portfolio of assorted tactical assets.


To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen.


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