Holotopia/T

We foster a meme

Margaret Mead also left us an admonition—what exactly distinguishes "a small group of citizens" that is capable of making a large difference—which we do not take lightly.

"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole, but the small group of interacting individuals who, together with the most gifted among them, can take the next step; then we can set about the task of creating the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution. That is, rather than isolating potential "leaders," we can purposefully produce the conditions we find in history, in which clusters are formed of a small number of extraordinary and ordinary men and women, so related to their period and to one another that they can consciously set about solving the problems they propose for themselves."

We have demonstrated that we are not creating the conditions "in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution". Our stories, deliberately chosen to be a half-century old, show that the "appropriately gifted" have offered their gifts—but we did not receive them.

Through innumerably many 'carrots and sticks', we have been socialized to turn a deaf ear to the hero in us, and conform to our institutions as "little cogs that mesh together" (see this excerpt from the animated film The Incredibles).

To act in ways we know don't work, because our embodied experience tells us that, is an epitome of stupidity. Unless, of course, our goal is to shift the paradigm—in which case acting in ways we know don't work is exactly what we have to be able to do!

Can the Holotopia prototype mobilize enough "human quality", within us who take in it an active part, and on the interface where it meets the world, to manifest its vision?

In the Holotopia prototype, we turn the challenge of transforming the cultural ecology that would make us "little cogs that mesh together" into a co-creative strategy game.

Our core goal is, in other words, to federate a value, and a way of being in the world—where we make both things and ourselves whole—by being responsible, responsive and self-organizing parts in a whole.

Tactical assets

The Holotopia prototype is conceived as a collaborative strategy game—where we make tactical moves toward the holotopia vision. By prime it by this collection of tactical assets.

Art

The Holotopia prototype extends science as we know it—and at the same time thoroughly transforms it. The science we practice is not limited to academic professionals and laboratories, on the contrary—it extends the traditional academia into a vibrant space of transformative action.

An example of a transformative space, created by our "Earth Sharing" pilot project, in Kunsthall 3.14 art gallery in Bergen, Norway.

Just as the case was during the Renaissance, only the art can give transformative insights a transformative form.

We are reminded of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the midst of the old order of things planting seeds of a new one. Art is what first comes to mind when we think of the Renaissance. What sort of art will be the vehicle for this new one?

When Marcel Duchamp exhibited the urinal, he challenged not only the meaning of "art", but also the limits of what we can conceive of as creative action. The deconstruction of the tradition, has, however, now been completed.

Our situation calls for artistic construction of a completely new kind.

Here is a very brief sketch of holotopia ("white") being "(...) also the new red"; through a brief sketch of (possible) holotopia's interpretation of "young Marx". Point is: Young Marx arrived at a theoretical / philosophical standpoint for understanding the society and its ills. But having seen the miserable condition of the workers, he (in the eyes of the revolutionary left "matured" and) eschewed the intellectual idealism of his era, and embraced revolutionary engagement instead. The paradox of Marx is that this latter having become controversial and in many ways inappropriate for our conditions, the former got forgotten and ignored...

In "Production of Space", Henri Lefebvre summarized Marx's essential and increasingly vital point, his objection to capitalism (or what we would call power structure evolution) as causing "alienation" (by which humans are forced to abandon their quest for wholeness), by observing that capital (machines, tools, materials...) or "investments" are products of past work, and hence represent "dead labour". Our past activity "crystalyzed, as it were, and became a precondition for new activity." Under capitalism, "what is dead takes hold of what is alive". Lefebvre proposed to turn this relationship upon its head. "But how could what is alive lay hold of what is dead? The answer is: through the production of space, whereby living labour can produce something that is no longer a thing, nor simply a set of tools, nor simply a commodity.

As an initiative in the arts, Holotopia produces a space where what is alive in us can overcome what is making us dead.

Stories

The "stories" here are what is technically called vignettes. They are a basic journalistic technique (where a relevant or complex issue is made palpable by telling people and situation stories), applied to basic academic ideas and developments. But not only; stories or vignettes can be used to federate any other relevant meme as well.

We are, of course, not limited to verbal story telling. Like the ideograms, the vignettes can take any sort of form, on any sort of medium, or their combination. Hence our collection of stories are offered as a way to federate the core ideas and insights that together compose the holotopia—by making them available to creative media people.

It may seem that story telling is an inefficient way to highlight a point, and hence also unacademic. But exactly the opposite is the case! The vignettes are beautifully efficient, because they point to numerous nuances at once, and the way in which they are connected. Hence they are invaluable for the cause of seeing things whole.

We have seen a number of such stories already. Here, however, we illustrate the concept by focusing on a single one—which is the iconic story introducing the knowledge federation.

The second book in the Holotopia series, tentatively titled "Systemic Innovation", and subtitled "Cybernetics of Democracy", will federate this story.

The incredible history of Doug Engelbart

We've told this story many times, and will federate them properly in the file linked by the title. We here only share the beginning, and a punchline.

It's 1950, and Christmas is drawing near. An idealistic young man, at the beginning of his career, is taking a critical look at what's ahead of him: He is twenty five, with excellent education, employed as an engineer by (what would became) NASA, engaged to be married... He sees his career as a straight path to retirement; and he doesn't like what he sees. A man's life should have a purpose! So right there and then Engelbart makes a decision: He will optimize his career so as to maximize the benefits it would have for the mankind.

After that, just as every good engineer should do, he spent three month intensely pondering about what would be the best way to fulfill his intention. Then he had an epiphany.

We could say "the rest is history"—but the nature of Engelbart's epiphany has not yet been understood. His gift to the world has not ye been received. In spite of being celebrated as the Silicon Valley's greatest inventor, or as we might phrase this, its 'giant in residence'—Engelbart passed away in 2013 feeling he had failed.

When properly told, this story is incredible. What makes it so interesting for us is that in spite of that it can be understood—when we place it as a transformative meme into the context of the five insights. Then, however, the story illustrates a range of phenomena that are central to holotopia.

The elephant

Elephant ideogram

Each of the stories alone is, of course, relevant and interesting. They, however, become dramatically more relevant and interesting when seen in the context of the mega-event we that is taking place in our time.

The role of this metaphorical image, the elephant, is to point to a "quantum leap" in relevance and interest, which specific insights and actions can achieve when presented as essential elements of a spectacularly large event—"a great cultural revival".

The elephant

Imagine the 20th century's visionary thinkers as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear them talk about things like "a fan", "a water hose" and "a tree trunk". But they don't make sense, and we ignore them.

Everything changes when we realize that they are really talking about the ear, the trunk and the leg of an imposingly large exotic animal, which nobody has yet had a chance to see—a whole new order of things, or cultural and social paradigm!

A spectacle

The effect of the five insights is to orchestrate this act of 'connecting the dots'—so that the spectacular event we are part of, this exotic 'animal', the new 'destination' toward which we will now "change course" becomes clearly visible.

A side effect is that the academic results once again become interesting and relevant. In this newly created context, they acquire a whole new meaning; and agency!

Reinstitution of the myth and the parable

Both had a core function in the traditional culture. We reinstate this function.

We also revitalize traditional myths and parables, from religious traditions and beyond. The key is to not see them as literally true (in the holotopia scheme of things nothing is), but as artifacts communicating culturally significant messages.

Post-post-structuralism

The structuralists undertook to bring rigor to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts, by observing that there is no such thing as "real meaning"; and that the meaning of cultural artifacts is open to interpretation.

This evolution may be taken a step further. What interests us is not what, for instance, Bourdieu "really saw" and wanted to communicate. We acknowledge (with the post-structuralists), that even Bourdieu would not be able to tell us that, if he were still around. We acknowledge, however, that Bourdieu saw something that invited a different interpretation and way of thinking than what was common; and did what he could to explain it within the old paradigm. Hence we give the study of cultural artifacts not only a sense of rigor, but also a new degree of relevance—by considering them as signs on the road, pointing to an emerging paradigm

Engelbart saw the elephant

While the view of the elephant is composed of a large number of stories, one of them—the incredible history of Doug (Engelbart)—is epigrammatic. It is not only a spectacular story—how the Silicon Valley failed to understand or even hear its "giant in residence", even after having recognized him as that; it is also a parable pointing to many of the elements we want to highlight by telling these stories—not least the social psychology and dynamics that 'hold Galilei in house arrest'.

This story also inspired us to use this metaphor: Engelbart saw 'the elephant' already in 1951—and spent a six decades-long career painstakingly trying to show him to us.

He did not succeed!

Engelbart passed away with only a meager (computer) mouse in his hand (to his credit)!

Mirror

Details from Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.

As a society, and as the academic tradition in particular—which has been guiding our society along the homo sapiens evolutionary path—we are now standing in front of the mirror. We are invited to self-reflect. And to find a way through.

In holotopia the mirror is a symbolic object with a variety of connotations. As an art object, is carries a spectrum of possibilities. And as a tactical object—the mirror lets us employ the symbolic language of the arts, to code culturally transformative messages.

Abolition of reification

The mirror brings an end to reifications of all kinds—of the power-laden way in which we see the world (or socialized reality created by power structure), our "scientific worldview" (or narrow frame), our ways of handling knowledge (our functionally impaired collective mind ), our likes and dislikes (convenience paradox).

Reinstitution of curiosity and accountability

When reification is removed, we are left with the question: "What do we really know, about the questions that matter?" The answer we'll reach may now seem preposterous, or shocking. So instead of jumping to a conclusion, we share a story. It is intended to serve as a parable for the inception of the Academia—and hence of the academic tradition.

The trial of Socrates as told in Plato's Apology

Someone went to Delphi and asked the Oracle about the wisest man in Athens; came back with the answer that it was Socrates. When the news reached him, Socrates was perplexed, because he did not consider himself knowledgeable or wise. And yet God does not lie! So he endeavored to find a solution to this puzzle, by seeking out and examining his contemporaries who were reputed as knowledgeable and wise. Surely he would find them superior! But the result was that he didn't. They knew just as little as Socrates did. The difference was, however, that they believed they knew a lot more. In this way Socrates resolved the puzzle of the Oracle: A wiser man is not the one who knows more than others—but the one who knows the limits of his knowledge.

Our situation now demands that we revive this original academic spirit. A cultural revival will once again follow.

Dialogs

The dialog is a different way to communicate

We must emphasize this at once:

While the word "dialog" is common, the dialog is an entirely uncommon way of communicating.

What we are calling the dialog is as different from the conventional academic and political debating, as the holotopia is different from our contemporary social and cultural order of things. Indeed, the dialog is the manner of communicating that characterizes the holotopia.

While through Socrates and Plato the dialog has been a foundation stone of the academic tradition, David Bohm gave this word a completely new meaning—which we have undertaken to adopt and to develop further. The Bohm Dialogue website provides an excellent introduction, so it will suffice to point to it by echoing a couple of quotations. The first one is by Bohm himself.

There is a possibility of creativity in the socio-cultural domain which has not been explored by any known society adequately.

We let it point to the fact that to Bohm the "dialogue" was an instrument of socio-cultural therapy, leading to a whole new co-creative way of being together. Bohm considered the dialogue to be a necessary step toward unraveling our contemporary situation.

The second quotation is a concise explanation of Bohm's idea by the creators of the website.

Dialogue, as David Bohm envisioned it, is a radically new approach to group interaction, with an emphasis on listening and observation, while suspending the culturally conditioned judgments and impulses that we all have. This unique and creative form of dialogue is necessary and urgent if humanity is to generate a coherent culture that will allow for its continued survival.

As this may suggest, the dialog is conceived as a direct antidote to power structure-induced socialized reality.

The dialog is the message

By creating the dialogs and engaging in them, we transform both our collective mind, and the way in which we are together.

Here the medium truly is the message. When we are engaged in a genuine dialog about a core contemporary issue—in the context of the relevant academic and other insights (represented in our current holotopia prototype by the five insights)—we are already part of a functioning collective mind. We are already applying our collective creativity toward evolving or federating our collective knowledge further.

The dialog is a tradition

Although the dialog, as Bohm envisioned it, is a relatively recent development, it is already a deep and profound tradition—and we here illustrate that by mentioning some references and stories.

• Bohm's own inspiration (story has it) is significant. Allegedly, Bohm was moved to create the "dialogue" when he saw how Einstein and Bohr, who were once good friends, and their entourages, were unable to communicate at Princeton. (The roots of this disagreement are interesting for holotopia although perhaps less for the dialog: Einstein's "God does not play Dice" criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory; and Bohr's reply "Einstein, stop telling god what to do!" While in our prototype Einstein has the role of the icon of "modern science", in this instance it was clearly Bohr and not Einstein who represented the epistemological position we are supporting. But Einstein later reversed his position— in "Autobiographical Notes", where Einstein made his epistemological testimony, on a similar note as Heisenberg did in Physics and Philosophy. While the foundations of the holoscope have been carefully federated, it has turned out that federating "Autobiographical Notes" is sufficient, see Federation through Images).
• There is a little known red thread in the history of The Club of Rome; the story could have been entirely different: Özbekhan, Jantsch and Christakis, who co-founded The Club with Peccei and King, and wrote its statement of purpose, were in disagreement with the course it took in 1970 (with The Limits to Growth study) and left. Alexander Christakis, the only surviving member of this trio, is now continuing their line of work as the President of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras. "The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is credited for the formalization of the science of Structured dialogic design." (Wikipedia).
• Bela H. Banathy, whom we've mentioned as the champion of "Guided Evolution of Society" among the systems scientists, extensively experimented with the dialog. With Jenlink he co-edited two large and most valuable volumes about the dialogue.
• In 1983 Michel Foucault gave a seminar at the UC Berkeley. What will this European historian of ideas par excellence choose to tell the young Americans? Foucault spent six lectures talking about an obscure Greek word, parrhesia. The key point here is that the dialog (as relationship with the people, the world and the truth) is a radical alternative to the "adiaphorized" or "instrumental" thinking, which has become common. An interesting point is that the Greeks considered parrhesia to be an essential element of democracy—which our contemporary democracies have increasingly failed to adopt and emulate. Both Socrates and Galilei were exemplars of "parrhesiastes" (a person who lives and uses parrhesia; the latter chose to retreat on this position a bit, and save his life).

  [P]arrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life. When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death.

• A whole new chapter in the evolution of the dialogue was made possible by the new information technology. We illustrate an already developed research frontier by pointing to Jeff Conklin's book "Dialogue Mapping: Creating Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems", where Bohm dialogue tradition is combined with Issue Based Information Systems, which Kunz and Rittel developed at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. The Debategraph, also developed by combining those two traditions, is actively transforming our collective minds.
• We experimented extensively with turning Bohm's dialog into a 'high-energy cyclotron'; and into a medium through which a community can find "a way to change course". The result was a series of so-called Key Point Dialogs. An example is the Cultural Revival Dialog Zagreb 2008. (We are working on bringing its website back online.)

The dialog is a powerful instrument of change

The methodological approach makes the dialog an especially powerful instrument of change: In the holotopia scheme of things the dialog as an attitude is axiomatic (it both follows from the fundamental insights and it is a convention within the definition of the methodology). Hence coming to the dialog 'wearing boxing gloves' (manifesting the now so common verbal turf strife behavior) is as ill-advised as making a case for an academic result by arguing that it was revealed to the author in a vision.

When a dialog is recorded, and placed into the holotopia framework, violation becomes obvious—because the attitude of the dialog is so completely different!

We may see how this can make a difference by looking at the Club of Rome's history: The debate gives unjust advantage to the homo ludens turf players, who will say whatever to gain points in a debate, knowing that the truth doesn't really matter, when the speaker is supporting the power structure's view and interests—which will surely prevail! But the body language makes this game transparent. In [this example Dennis Meadows is put off-balance by a self-assured opponent.

The holotopia dialogs will have the nature of spectacles—not the kind of spectacles fabricated by the media, but real ones. To the media spectacles, they present a real and transformative alternative.

The dialogs we initiate are a re-creation of the conventional "reality shows"—which show the contemporary reality in ways that need to be shown. The relevance is on an entirely different scale. And the excitement and actuality are of course larger! We engage the "opinion leaders" to contribute their insights to the cause.

When successful, the result is most timely and informative: We are witnessing the changing of our understanding and handling of a core issue.

When unsuccessful, the result is most timely and informative in a different way: We are witnessing our resistances and our blind spots, our clinging to the obsolete forms of thought.

Occasionally we publish books about those themes, based on our dialogs, and to begin new ones.

The dialog as an instrument of change

This point cannot be overemphasized: Our primary goal is not to warn, inform, propose a new way to look at the world—but to change our collective mind. Physically. The dialog is the medium for that change.

We organize public dialogs about the five insights, and other themes related to change, in order to make change.

Here the medium in the truest sense is the message: By developing dialogs, we re-create our collective mind—from something that only receives, which is dazzled by the media... to something that is capable of weaving together academic and other insights, and by engaging the best of our "collective intelligence" in seeing what needs to be done. And in inciting, planning and coordinating action.

In the holotopia scheme of things everything is a prototype. The prototypes are not final results of our efforts, they are a means to an end—which is to rebuild the public sphere; to reconfigure our collective mind. The role of the prototypes is to prime this process.

Keywords

What makes the Holotopia dialogs especially interesting is that they are no longer limited by conventional concepts and themes. Science and the Enlightenment introduced completely new ways of speaking; the holotopia does that through introduction of keywords.

A motivating challenge is reaching us from sociology.

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."

The '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 creation of keywords, by resorting to Truth by convention, is offered as the way out.

Wholeness

Simple goal, to direct our efforts ('destination to bus').

Culture

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 even 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.

Religion

In traditional cultures, religion was widely regarded as an integral part of our wholeness. Can this concept, and the heritage of the traditions it is pointing to, still have a function and a value in our own era?

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

Addiction

The evolution gave us senses and emotions to guide us to wholeness—in the natural condition. Civilization made it amply possible to deceive our senses—by creating pleasurable things that do not further wholeness. We point to them by the keyword addiction.

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. The civilized humans, 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 and things as addictions—such as the opiates and the gambling; and they developed suitable legislation and ethical norms. In modernity, however, with the help of new technology, businesses 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 addiction as an aspect of otherwise good and useful things. From a large number of obvious or subtle addictions, we here mention only pseudoconsciousness defined as "addiction to information". Consciousness of one's situation and surroundings is, of course, a necessary condition for wholeness. In civilization we can, however, drown this need in facts and data, which give us the sensation of knowing—without telling us what we need to know in order to be or become whole.

Ten themes

Everything in holotopia is a potential theme for a dialog. Indeed, everything in our holotopia prototype is a prototype; and a prototype is not complete unless there is a dialog around it, to to keep it evolving and alive.

In particular each of the five insights will, we anticipate, ignite a lively conversation.

We are, however, especially interested in using the five insights as a framework for creating other themes and dialogs. The point here is to have informed conversations; and to show that their quality of being informed is what makes all the difference. And in our present prototype, the five insights symbolically represent that what needs to be known, in order to give any age-old or contemporary theme a completely new course of development.

The five insights, and the ten direct relationships between them, provide us a frame of reference—in the context of which both age-old and contemporary challenges can be understood and handled in entirely new ways.

Here are some examples.

How to put an end to war?

So far our progress on this age-old frontier has largely been confined to palliative and not curative results. What would it take to really put an end to war, once and for all?

When this question is considered in the context of the power structure and socialized reality insights, we become ready to see the whole compendium of questions related to justice, power and freedom in a completely new way. We then realize in what way exactly, throughout history, we have been coerced, largely through cultural means, to serve renegade power, in the truest sense our enemy, by engaging our sense of duty, heroism, honor and other values and traits that constitute "human quality".

When those two insights are fully understood—could the war become as unthinkable as the witch trials are today?

Alienation

This theme takes some of the most interesting moments in the development of Western philosophy—and combines them with some of the most interesting tenets of the Eastern philosophy or the spiritual traditions. By placing alienation in the context of the convenience paradox on the one side, and the collective mindon the other, the possibilities open up for illuminating this uniquely relevant theme by federating both the cultural artifacts representing "ancient wisdom", with the influence the new media have had on our awareness and our culture, which have not yet even remotely been understood.

We point to some of the sides of this theme by telling a story.

This story will be another symbolic gesture, where Marxism is (in the context of holotopia) federated and thereby reconciled with both religion and business.

The story elaborates on the "young Marx" notion in the humanities (see it explained), which is "controversial" among the "neo-Marxists". We here offer it as a prototype of federating Marx...—with the goal of revising and reviving what's been called "left" or socially progressive.

The starting point is to imagine young Marx come to roughly the same conclusion as young Gandhi: we humans aspire to self-realization (which is in holotopia subsumed by wholeness). Whatever obstructs it needs to be removed—and what we'll have is real "progress".

"Young Marx" (in 1844 in Paris) saw the "alienation" as the capital obstacle (pun intended). He later saw the private ownership of the means of production as the capital cause of alienation (instead of fulfilling their potential and pursuing their real interests, the workers must submit themselves to a meaningless routine to be able to survive). And being a child of his time—Marx embraced "science" and "materialism" as a way to make progress on also this most vital of frontiers.

But having seen the miserable conditions of the 1940s working class, young Marx became rather ashamed of his so bourgeois ideals—having realized that those people lacked the most basic means. A revolution is a way to end alienation. The religion, which keeps people ethically bound to the status quo, must be considered "the opiate of the masses".

The consequences were a fascinating collection of ironies.

One of them is that the left became anti-religious, and abandoned Christ to the right. Christ, however, has only one violent act on his record—when he order the "money changes" out of the house of God. His point was obvious—religion is inherently progressive, and should not be co-opted by the power structure. Well, it was co-opted...

Another irony is that—having (with mature Marx) embraced the "adiaphorized" or "instrumental" values, the left never really became progressive. In the countries where it apparently succeeded to become reality, "the dictatorship of the proletariat" became no more than—a dictatorship! And in the countries where it didn't, or didn't even try—the politicians representing the left readily learned that to be successful in their work, they have to adapt to the existing power structure; and hence "the left" turned right.

The point of reconciliation is to see that while today the conditions of the working class are completely different—the issue of alienation is not only as present as ever, but it includes the owners of the capital as well (whether they are aware of that or not). But that is the power structure theory in a nutshell.

Guy Debord added to this picture a profound study of the role of the new media in this landslide toward alienation.

The largest contribution to knowledge

This theme is for the dialog about our knowledge federation proposal. We gave it this name to energize the conversation.

The theme focuses on the question "What might the largest contribution to knowledge be like?" A view is offered, to prime the convnersation, that it will be a contribution to the system by which information is turned into knowledge.

This theme continues The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart, by proposing that this largest contribution was his true gift to the mankind. And that, for interesting reasons which we will return to in a moment, his contribution has not yet been acknowledged and received. The essential point of his vision—that by creating a radically better technology-enabled process that turns information into knowledge practically all our core systems can be radically improved—will give us an instance of such a contribution, to make our conversation not hypothetical but concrete.

By placing this theme in the context of the collective mind and the narrow frame insight, a whole new dimension is added—where the technology-and-process approach is complemented by developing a suitable epistemology and a method. It is by removing the narrow frame limitations—by developing a general-purpose methodology—that we arrive at a creative frontier where improvements of our handling of knowledge can continue beyond bounds.

Academia quo vadis?

This title is reserved for the academic dialog in front of the mirror.

Its venture point are the good tidings brought to us by the socialized reality insight—that the key to our situation is in not in the hands of the Church and the Inquisition as it was in Galilei's time, or with the Wall Street bankers as it might appear, but in the academia's hands!

We highlighted the favorable side of this turn of events by defining academia as "institutionalized academic tradition". And by introducing this tradition by the histories of Socrates and Galilei. Both of them needed to risk their lives, to help our evolution move ahead. Without doubt, it was the pure love of truth, and knowledge of knowledge, that the academic tradition added to our evolutionary scene at opportune moments, to help us overcome the false realities that the power structure held us in, and evolve further. But now the academic tradition has been institutionalized; it is already in power! So all we need to do to "change course" toward holotopia is to just let the academia guide us along the evolutionary course one more time.

But there's a rub: Being now in charge of the relationship we have with knowledge, the academia has become part of the power structure. Which means that the way in which the academic tradition has been institutionalized may have followed our other systems. It is this way in which the academic tradition has been institutionalized that this conversation is about.

How might the academic tradition be corrupted by the power structure?

The theory says that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake would gradually be replaced by Bourdieu-style turf strife—with adjustments to the power "field" both within and without the institutions.

Education the academia would provide would no longer be in the name of the pursuit of "human quality" or human wholeness, as the case may have been in the original Academia, but on the contrary a socialization for taking place in the power structure, driven by competition. Those young people who are efficient learners and test takers, who allocate their time and attention so as to get the best grades in all subjects, would have advantage over those who would give themselves to an interest, and pursue it wherever it takes them.

The most successful among them would become academic researchers. And naturally, they would adjust the academic ecology to their own interests and standards. The academic researchers would not attend conferences to serve the knowledge and the humanity, but to further their own position in the "field" by presenting their own results, and making contacts. The academic 'turf' would be divided into small tracts so that everyone gets his share. Those small and private areas would be organized together into larger disciplinary units, to secure the privileges to their members, and keep the outliers outside.

This is, of course, only theory. This self-reflective dialog would see to what degree this theory may be reflected by practice. And how successfully the values and the spirit of the academic tradition are preserved and supported by the academia as modern institution.

A way to do that would be to look at the giants and their most daring ideas. We adopted this keyword from Newton, to point to visionary thinkers "on whose shoulders we now need to stand, to see further". Is the academia ready to adopt their ideas? The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart and his "largest contribution to knowledge" suggests that it is not. Our keyword may suggest the reason—the giants would take too much space on the academic 'turf'...

Books

Occasionally we publish books about of the above themes—to punctuate the laminar flow of events, draw attention to a theme and begin a dialog.

Shall we not recreate the book as well—along with all the rest? Yes and no. In "Amuzing Ourselves to Death", Neil Postman—who founded "media ecology" as the research field— left us a convincing argument why the book is here to stay. His point was that the book creates a different "ecology of the mind" (to mention also Gregory Bateson's fertile metaphor) than the contemporary "immersive" audio-visual media do: The book invites us to reflect.

We, however, let the book exist in an 'ecosystem' with other media. Notably with the dialog. In that way, a reflection that an author passes onto the readers continues as community action—engages our collective creativity and comes back to the author, polinated with new ideas.

Liberation

The book titled "Liberation", with subtitle "Religion beyond Belief", is scheduled to be completed during the first half of 2021, and serve as an ice breaker.

"Religion beyond Belief" is one of the ten themes. Positioned in the context of socialized reality and convenience paradox, this book elaborates on the kind of change that is the hallmark of holotopia—where something we take for granted is turned upside down, and shown to stand a lot better in that way. It is now common to associate the word "religion" with rigidly held beliefs, which resist argumentation and evidence. The view offered in the book is of a religion that liberates us not only from rigidly held "religious" views—but from rigidly held beliefs and identities of any kind, including rigidly held self-interests.

Prototypes

Prototypes, as we have seen, are a way to federate information by weaving it directly into the fabric of everyday reality. They can be literally anything—including book manuscripts.

In the holotopia scheme of things, pretty much everything is a prototype. In this way we subject everything to knowledge-based evolution.

The Holotopia project proceeds largely by evolving prototypes. What is described here is, of course, an initial prototype of the holotopia. The project is meant to develop by evolving this prototype further.

Events

The holotopia events punctuate the becoming of a new order of things.

An illustration is our pilot project "Earth Sharing" in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen.