Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<blockquote>Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>   
 
<blockquote>Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>   
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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>
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</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
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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. In view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
 
<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. 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 waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>  
 
<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>  
<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>  
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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 attainable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>  
  
 
<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</blockquote>
 
<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</blockquote>
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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>  
 
<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 [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]—<em>we must be able to see them whole</em>! </blockquote>  
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<blockquote>To be able to make things [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]—<em>we must be able to see things 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>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>
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<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 <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>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 entire <em>whole</em> from a certain angle are called <em>aspects</em>.</p>  
  
<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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<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 a 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 one other and with our conventional ones.</p>  
  
 
<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>  
 
<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>
 
  
 
<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 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>  
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</blockquote>  
 
</blockquote>  
  
<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>A way of looking or [[scope|<em>scope</em>]]—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct assessment of an object of study or situation—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>  
  
<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>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 needs to be perceived (also) 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>  
 
 
<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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</p>  
 
</p>  
 
   
 
   
<p>We use the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes, which <em>determine</em> the "course":</p>  
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<p>We apply the <em>holoscope</em> and illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes, which <em>determine</em> the "course":</p>  
  
 
<ul>  
 
<ul>  
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</ul>  
 
</ul>  
  
<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>
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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 elimination of problems.</p>
  
 
<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision results.</blockquote>   
 
<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision results.</blockquote>   
 
<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. The development of this new approach to knowledge is shown to follow from the state of the art of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—hence <em>it is an academic job</em>.</p>
 
 
<blockquote>We are proposing a practical way to do that job.</blockquote>
 
  
 
<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>  
 
<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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<blockquote><b>What</b> might constitute "a way to change course"?</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote><b>What</b> might constitute "a way to change course"?</blockquote>  
  
<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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<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>
  
<blockquote>The [[Power structure|<em>power structure</em>]] insight allows us to see why no dictator is needed.</blockquote>  
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<blockquote>The [[Power structure|<em>power structure</em>]] insight is that no dictator is needed.</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>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>  
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<blockquote>Survival of the fittest favors the <em>systems</em> that are predatory, not those that are useful. </blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>Survival of the fittest favors the <em>systems</em> that are predatory, not those that are useful. </blockquote>  
  
<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>  
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<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  <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>  
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<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"; if our business is to succeed in competition, we <em>must</em> act in ways that lead to that effect. Whether we bend and comply, or get replaced—will have no effect on the <em>system</em>.</p>  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
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<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>  
 
<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>  
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<p>In 2010 Knowledge Federation began to self-organize to enable further progress on this vitally important 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>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>  
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<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>
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<p>We have just seen that our key evolutionary task is to make institutions <em>whole</em>.</p>
  
<blockquote><b>Where</b>—with what system—shall we begin?</blockquote>  
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<blockquote><b>Where</b>—with what institution or <em> system</em> shall we begin?</blockquote>  
  
<p>The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. </p>
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<p>The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for two 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>  
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<p>One of them is obvious: If information and not competition will be our guide, then our information will need to be different.</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>  
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<p>In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication—which turns a collection of independent individual into a coherently functioning entity— <em>is</em> in effect the system. It is the communication system that determines how the system as a whole will behave. Wiener made that point by talking about the colonies of ants and bees.  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 system's <em>sustainability</em>. 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>  
  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
  
<p>That is presently <em>not</em> the case with our core systems; and with our civilization as a whole.</p>
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<p>Presently, our core systems, and with our civilization as a whole, do not have that.</p>
  
 
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>  
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[[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</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>  
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<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush diagnosed that the tie between <em>scientific</em> information, and public awareness and policy, had been broken. 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>
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<blockquote>These calls to action remained without effect.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>These calls to action remained, however, without effect.</blockquote>  
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<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. We have assembled a collection of examples of similarly important academic results that shared a similar fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we called the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. </p>  
  
<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>  
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<blockquote>As long as the link between communication and action is broken—<em>the academic results that challenge the present "course" or point to a new one will tend to be ignored</em>!</blockquote>  
  
<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>
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<p>To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds have been ignored.</p>  
  
<p>To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds remained ignored.</p>  
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<p>This sentiment is, however, transformed to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, as soon we see 'the other side of the coin'—the vast 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>, and our own, academic system to begin with—by reconfiguring the communication that holds them together, and enables them to interoperate.</p>
  
<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>
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<p>And optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> widely ignored fact:</p>  
  
<p>Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> widely ignored fact:</p>  
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<blockquote>The core elements of the information technology we now use to communicate were <em>created</em> to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.</blockquote>  
  
<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>  
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<p>
 +
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
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<p>The 'lightbulb' has already been created—<em>for the purpose of</em> giving our society the right sort of 'headlights'!</p>  
  
<p>'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have already been created—<em>for the purpose of</em> giving our society the 'headlights' it needs.</p>  
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<p>But it has not yet been put to use!</p>  
  
<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>  
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<p>Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that given our vast volumes of information—technology and processes must be devised to enable us to "connect the dots" or think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", based on microfilm as technology.</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>  
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<p>Douglas Engelbart took Bush's idea 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>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>  
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<p>All earlier innovations in this area—from the clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium with the message be <em>transported</em>.</p>  
  
<blockquote>This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</blockquote>  
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<blockquote>This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human organism do.</blockquote>  
  
<p>We can now develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em>.</p>  
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<p>We can develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em>.</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>  
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<p>Engelbart conceived this new technology as a key step toward enabling us to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate. </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>[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>  
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Revision as of 08:39, 25 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."

Postman.jpg
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.

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.


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."

Peccei.jpg
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 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. 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 attainable—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 be able to make things wholewe must be able to see things 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.


Holoscope.jpeg
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 entire 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 a 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 one other and with our conventional ones.

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

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 way of looking or scope—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct assessment of an object of study or situation—is a new kind of result that is made possible by (the general-purpose science that is modeled by) the holoscope.

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 needs to be perceived (also) 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.


Scope


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

FiveInsights.JPG
Five Insights ideogram

We apply the holoscope and 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 elimination of problems.

The holotopia vision results.

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 is that 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"; if our business is to succeed in competition, we must act in ways that lead to that effect. Whether we bend and comply, or get replaced—will have no effect on the system.

Bauman-PS.jpeg

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.

Jantsch-vision.jpeg

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 enable further progress on this vitally important 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 only for traditional professions, once in a lifetime, is an obvious 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 key evolutionary task is to make institutions whole.

Where—with what institution or system shall we begin?

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

One of them is obvious: If information and not competition will be our guide, then our information will need to be different.

In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In social systems, communication—which turns a collection of independent individual into a coherently functioning entity— is in effect the system. It is the communication system that determines how the system as a whole will behave. Wiener made that point by talking about the colonies of ants and bees. 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 system's sustainability. 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

Presently, our core systems, and with our civilization as a whole, do not have that.

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.

Bush-Vision.jpg

To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush diagnosed that the tie between scientific information, and public awareness and policy, had been broken. 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 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 collection of examples of similarly important academic results that shared a similar fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we called the Wiener's paradox.

As long as the link between communication and action is broken—the academic results that challenge the present "course" or point to a new one will tend to be ignored!

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

This sentiment is, however, transformed to holotopian optimism, as soon we see 'the other side of the coin'—the vast creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed obliged to reinvent the systems in which we live and work, and our own, academic system to begin with—by reconfiguring the communication that holds them together, and enables them to interoperate.

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

The core elements of the information technology we now use to communicate were created to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.

DE-one.jpeg

The 'lightbulb' has already been created—for the purpose of giving our society the right sort of 'headlights'!

But it has not yet been put to use!

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

Douglas Engelbart took Bush's idea 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—from the clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium with the message be transported.

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

We can develop insights and solutions together.

Engelbart conceived this new technology as a key step toward enabling us 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.

Giddens-OS.jpeg

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 simple and clear answer: 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).

BCN2011.jpg
Paddy 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 Paddy 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.