Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Imagine...</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Imagine...</h2></div>
 
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<p>You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice two flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed in the circular holes where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? <em>As headlights</em>? </p>  
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<p>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? <em>As headlights</em>? </p>  
<p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it? Because <em>on a much larger scale</em> this absurdity has become reality.</p>  
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<p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?
<p>By depicting our society as a bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world and try to comprehend it and handle it as a pair of candle headlights, the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> renders the essence of our contemporary situation.</p>
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<blockquote> Because <em>on a much larger scale</em> this absurdity has become reality.</blockquote> </p>  
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<p>The Modernity <em>ideogram</em> 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.</p>
 
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<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
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<p>
 
<blockquote>The core of our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is to change the relationship we have with information. And through information—with the world; and with ourselves.
 
</blockquote></p>
 
  
<p>What is our relationship with information presently like? Here is how [[Neil Postman]] described it:</p>  
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>In a nutshell</h3>  
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<blockquote>
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The core of our [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
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</blockquote>
  
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<p>What is our relationship with information presently like?</p>  
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<p>Here is how [[Neil Postman]] described it:</p>  
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<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
 
"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
 
"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
 
</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
</div><div class="col-md-3">[[File:Postman.jpg]]<br><small>Neil Postman</small></div>
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<p>The objective of our proposal is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</p>
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[[File:Postman.jpg]]<br><small>Neil Postman</small>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>In detail</h3>  
<p><blockquote>Suppose we handled information as we handle other man-made things—by suiting it to the purposes that need to be served. </blockquote></p>  
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<p>What would it take to <em>reconnect</em> information with action? </p>
<p>What consequences would this have? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted? What would public informing be like? <em>And academic communication, and education?</em>
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<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated information as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served? </p>
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<p>What would our <em>world</em> be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"; if they attended to the other half of this picture, the use and usefulness of information, with thoroughness and rigor that distinguish academic technical work? What do the people out there actually <em>need</em> to know?</p>  
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<p>What would the academic field that develops this approach to information be like? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>
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<blockquote>The substance of our proposal is a <em>complete</em> [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], by which those and other related questions are answered. </blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>Our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is a complete and academically coherent answer to those and other related questions; an answer that is not only described and explained, but also implemented—in a collection of real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>.
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<p><em>Knowledge federation</em> is a [[Holotopia:Paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. Not in a specific field of science, where new paradigms are relatively common, but in "creation, integration and application of knowledge" at large.</p>  
</blockquote></p>
 
  
</div> </div>  
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<blockquote>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as real-life <em>praxis</em>.</blockquote>  
  
  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>An application</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>An application</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>The situation we are in</h3>  
<p>What difference will this make? The Holotopia <em>prototype</em>, which is under development, is a proof of concept application.</p>
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<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test. Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—[[Aurelio Peccei]] issued the following call to action:  
<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting our ideas to 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 warning:  
 
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
 
"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
 
"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
 
</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
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<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
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<blockquote>
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"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future."
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</blockquote>
 
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[[File:Peccei.jpg]]
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[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small>Aurelio Peccei</small>  
<small>Aurelio Peccei</small>  
 
 
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<p>Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this <em>already</em> showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?</p>  
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<p>This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". </p>  
<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":
+
<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:</p>
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future."
+
"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."
</blockquote> </p>  
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</blockquote>
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<p>
 +
The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Can the proposed 'headlights' help us "find a way to change course"?</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's regular institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>If we used <em>knowledge federation</em> to 'illuminate the way'—what difference would that make? </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The Holotopia project is conceived as a <em>knowledge federation</em>-based response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We coined the keyword [[Holotopia:Holotopia|<em>holotopia</em>]] to point to the cultural and social order of things that will result.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To begin the Holotopia project, we are developing an initial <em>prototype</em>. It includes a vision, and a collection of strategic and tactical assets—that will make the vision clear, and our pursuit of it actionable. </p>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>holotopia</em> is not a utopia</h3>
 +
<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
 +
<p>As the optimism regarding our future faded, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is a <em>more</em> attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily realizable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]</h3>
 +
<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to change course toward the <em>holotopia</em>?</p>
 +
<blockquote> From a collection of insights from which the <em>holotopia</em> emerges as a future worth aiming for, we have distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</blockquote>
 +
<p>This principle is suggested by the <em>holotopia</em>'s very name. And also by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>. Instead of <em>reifying</em> our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the [[Wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]] of it all. </p>
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 +
<p>Imagine if academic and other knowledge-workers collaborated to serve and develop planetary wholeness – what magnitude of benefits would result!</p>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A method</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We see things whole</h3>
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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>
 +
<blockquote>To make things whole—<em>we must be able to see them whole</em>! </blockquote>  
 +
<p>To highlight that the <em>knowledge federation</em> methodology described in the mentioned <em>prototype</em> affords that very capability, to <em>see things whole</em>, in the context of the <em>holotopia</em> we refer to it by the pseudonym <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
 +
<p>The characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation. One characteristic, however, must be made clear from the start.</p>
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<h3>We look at all sides</h3>  
 
<p>
 
<p>
Since its inception, The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".</p>  
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[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
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<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
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</p> 
 +
<p>If our goal would be to put a new "piece of information" into an existing "reality picture", then whatever challenges that reality picture would be considered "controversial". But when  our goal is to see whether something is <em>whole</em> or 'cracked', then our attitude must be different.</p>
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<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>
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<p>In the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing, every statement, or model, or <em>view</em>, is necessarily a simplification, which resulted from a certain specific way of looking or <em>scope</em>. Views that show the whole from a specific angle (as exemplified by the above picture) are called <em>aspects</em></p>
 +
<p>The aim of this presentation being to challenge the <em>exclusiveness</em> of our present social and academic <em>paradigm</em> in order to propose an update, we will of necessity present views that are, relative to this <em>paradigm</em>, "controversial".  The views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to relax and enjoy this presentation, if you consider that the communication we invite you to engage in with us  <em>is</em> academically rigorous—but with a different <em>idea</em> of rigor. In the <em>holoscope</em> we take no recourse to "reality". Coexistence of multiple ways of looking at any theme or issues (which in the <em>holoscope</em> are called <em>scopes</em>) is axiomatic. And so is the assumption that we <em>must</em> overcome our habits and resistances and look in new ways, if we should see things whole and finding a new course.</p>
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 +
<p>Although we have created all our claims, and <em>prototypes</em>, to our best ability, to be perfectly coherent and rigorous, and to stand to scrutiny, <em>we do not need to make such claims</em>, and we are not making them. Everything here is <em>prototypes</em>. Our invitation is not for adopting them as a "new reality"—but to begin a <em>dialog</em>, and by doing that co-create a social process by which our "realities", and the ways we create them, will be continuously evolving.</p>
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<blockquote>We invite you to be with us in the manner of the <em>dialog</em>—to <em>genuinely</em> share, listen and co-create.</blockquote>
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<p>Indeed, in the communication space where you are now invited to join us, in which this <em>holotopia</em> presentation is an integral part, launching an attack at a presented view from the old power positions would be as little sensible as claiming the validity of a scientific result by arguing that it was revealed to the author in a vision.</p>  
  
<p>Peccei's following observation, with which he concluded his analysis in "One Hundred  Pages for the Future", will also be relevant:
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<h3>We modified science</h3>
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<p>To liberate our thinking from the  inherited concepts and methods, and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
The arguments posed in the preceding pages (...) 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>.
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Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em> is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
 
</blockquote>  
 
</blockquote>  
</p> 
 
  
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<div class="page-header" ><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
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<p>
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[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
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<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>
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</p>
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<h3>Before we begin</h3>
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<p>What theme, what evidence, what "new discovery" might have the force commensurate with the momentum with which our civilization is rushing onward—and have a <em>realistic</em> chance to make it "change course"?</p>
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<p>We offer these [[Holotopia:Five insights|<em>five insights</em>]] as a <em>prototype</em> answer. </p>
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<p>They result when we apply the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five pivotal themes:
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<ul>
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<li>Innovation (how we use our ability to create, and induce change)</li>
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<li>Communication (how information technology is being used)</li>
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<li>Epistemology (fundamental premises on which our handling of information is based)</li>
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<li>Method (how truth and meaning are created)</li>
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<li>Values (how we "pursue happiness")</li>
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</ul> </p>
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<p>For each of these five themes, we show that our conventional way of looking made us ignore a principle or a rule of thumb, which readily emerges when we 'connect the dots'—when we <em>combine</em> published insights. We see that by ignoring those principles, we have created deep <em>structural</em> problems ('crack in the cup')—which are causing problems, and "global issues" in particular.</p>
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<p>A 'scientific' approach to problems is this way made possible, where instead of focusing on symptoms, we understand and treat their deeper, structural causes—which <em>can</em> be remedied. </p>
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<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we only summarize each of the <em>five insights</em>—and provide evidence and details separately.</p>
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>Power structure</em>]]</h2></div>
 
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<p>In the context of Holotopia, we refer to our proposal by its pseudonym [[Holotopia: Holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]], which highlights its distinguishing characteristic—it helps us see things whole. </p>
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<p>
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<h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
[[File:Perspective-S.jpg]]
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<small>Perspective <em>ideogram</em></small>
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<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. We look at the <em>way</em> in which man uses his  power to <em>innovate</em> (create, and induce change). </p>
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<blockquote>We look at the way our civilization follows in its evolution; or metaphorically, at 'the itinerary' of our 'bus'. </blockquote>
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<p>We readily observe that we use competition or "survival of the fittest" to orient innovation, not information and "making things whole". The popular belief that "the free competition" or "the free market" will serve us better, also makes our "democracies" elect the "leaders" who represent that view. But is that view warranted?</p>
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<blockquote>Genuine revolutions include new ways to see freedom and power; <em>holotopia</em> is no exception. </blockquote>
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<p>We offer this [[Keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]], as a means to that end. Think of the <em>power structure</em>  as a new way to conceive of the intuitive notion "power holder", who might take away our freedom, or be our "enemy". </p>
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<p>While the nature of <em>power structures</em> will become clear as we go along, imagine them, to begin with, as institutions; or more accurately, as <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> (we'll here call them simply <em>systems</em>).</p>
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<p>Notice that <em>systems</em> have an <em>immense</em> power—<em>over us</em>, because <em>we have to adapt to them</em> to be able to live and work; and <em>over our environment</em>, because by organizing us and using us in a specific ways, <em>they determine what the effects of our work will be</em>.</p>
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<blockquote>The <em>power structures</em> determine whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions. </blockquote> 
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<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
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<p>How suitable are <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> for their all-important role?</p>
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<p>Evidence, circumstantial <em>and</em> theoretical, shows that they waste a lion's share of our resources. And that they <em>cause</em> problems, or make us incapable of solving them.</p>
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<p>The reason is the intrinsic nature of evolution, as Richard Dawkins explained it in "The Selfish Gene". </p>
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<blockquote>"Survival of the fittest" favors the <em>systems</em> that are by nature predatory, not the ones that are useful. </blockquote>
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<p>[https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg?t=920 This excerpt]  from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as law professor created to <em>federate</em> an insight he considered essential) explains how the corporation, the most powerful institution on the planet, evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, such as the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect "killing machine".  [https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?t=2780 This scene] from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how our <em>systems</em> affect <em>our own</em> condition.</p>
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<blockquote>Why do we put up with such <em>systems</em>? Why don't we treat them as we treat other human-made things—by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served?</blockquote> 
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<p>The reasons are interesting, and in <em>holotopia</em> they'll be a recurring theme. </p>
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<p>One of them we have already seen: We do not <em>see things whole</em>. When we look in conventional ways, the <em>systems</em> remain invisible for similar reasons as a mountain on which we might be walking.</p>  
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<p>A reason why we ignore the possibility of adapting <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> to the functions they have in our society, is that they perform for us a <em>different</em> function—of providing structure to power battles and turf strifes. Within a <em>system</em>, they provide us "objective" and "fair" criteria to compete;  and in the world outside, they give us as system <em>system</em> "competitive edge".</p>  
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<p>Why don't media corporations <em>combine</em> their resources to give us the awareness we need? Because they must <em>compete</em> with one another for our attention—and use only "cost-effective" means.</p> 
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<p>The most interesting reason, however, is that the <em>power structures</em> have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> interests. Through <em>socialization</em>, they can adapt to their interests both our culture <em>and</em> our "human quality".</p>
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<p>
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[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>The <em>holoscope</em> uses suitable information in a suitable way, to illuminate what remained obscure or hidden, so that we may 'see through' the whole, and correctly assess its shape, dimensions and condition (correct our <em>perspective</em>).</p>  
+
<p>A result is that bad intentions are no longer needed for cruelty and evil to result. The <em>power structures</em> can co-opt our sense of duty and commitment, and even our heroism and honor.</p>
 +
<p>Zygmunt Bauman's key insight, that the concentration camp was only a special case, however extreme, of (what we are calling) the <em>power structure</em>, needs to be carefully digested and internalized: While our ethical sensibilities are focused on the <em>power structures</em> of yesterday, we are committing the greatest  [https://youtu.be/d1x7lDxHd-o massive crime] in human history (in all innocence, by only "doing our job" within the <em>systems</em> we belong to).</p>  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>Our civilization is not "on the collision course with nature" because someone violated the rules—but <em>because we follow them</em>.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The fact that we will not "solve our problems" unless we learned to collaborate and adapt our <em>systems</em> to their contemporary roles and our contemporary challenges  has not remained unnoticed. Alredy in 1948, in his seminal Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener explained why competition cannot replace 'headlights and steering'. Cybernetics was envisioned as a <em>transdisciplinary</em> academic effort to help us understand <em>systems</em>, so that we may adapt their structure to the functions they need to perform. </p>
 +
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
[[File:Local-Global.jpg]]<br>
+
[[File:Jantsch-vision.jpeg]]
<small>BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool for shifting positions, which was part of our pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen, suggests how this proposed <em>information</em> is to be used—by transcending fixed relations between top and bottom, and building awareness of the benefits of multiple points of view; and moving in-between.</small>
 
</p>
 
<p>The <em>holoscope</em> complements the usual approach in the sciences:
 
<blockquote>
 
Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em>  is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in correct proportions.
 
</blockquote>
 
 
</p>
 
</p>
 +
 +
<p>The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome did after its inception in 1968 was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adopted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation was created as a system to enable <em>federation</em> into systems. To bootstrap <em>systemic innovation</em>. The method is to create a <em>prototype</em>, and a <em>transdiscipline</em> around it to update it continuously. This enables the information created in disciplines to be woven into systems, to have real or <em>systemic</em> impact.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The <em>prototypes</em> are created by weaving together <em>design patterns</em>. Each of them is a issue-solution pair. Hence each roughly corresponds to a discovery (of an issue), and an innovation (a solution). A <em>design pattern</em> can then be adapted to other design challenges and domains. The <em>prototype</em> shows how to weave the relevant <em>design patterns</em> into a coherent whole.</p>
 +
 +
<p>While each of our <em>prototypes</em> is an example, the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em> is offered as a canonical example. It has about a dozen <em>design patterns</em>, solutions to questions how to make education serve transformation of society—instead of educating people for society as is.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Each <em>prototype</em> is also an experiment, showing what works in practice. Our very first <em>prototype</em> of this kind, the Barcelona Ecosystem for Good Journalism 2011, revealed that the prominent experts in a system (journalism) cannot change the system they are part of. The key is to empower the "young" ones. We created The Game-Changing Game. And The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 +
 +
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Collective mind|<em>Collective mind</em>]]</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Scope</h3>
<p>What possible destinations would we see, if proper 'headlights' were used to 'illuminate the way'?</p>
+
 
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is an astonishingly positive future scenario.</p>  
+
 
<p>This future vision is indeed <em>more</em> positive than what the familiar utopias offered—whose authors lacked the information to see what was possible; or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. </p>  
+
<p>If our next evolutionary task is to make institutions or <em>systems</em> <em>whole</em>—<b>where</b> shall we begin?</p>
<p>But unlike the utopias, the <em>holotopia</em> is readily realizable—because we already have the information that is needed for its fulfillment.</p>
+
<p>Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>
 +
<p>Norbert Wiener contributed another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. In his 1948 book Wiener talked about the communication in ants and bees to make that point. Furthermore, "the tie between information and action" is <em>the</em> key property of a system, which cybernetics invites us to focus on. 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, and to "change course" when the circumstances demand that (Wiener used the technical term "homeostasis", which we may here interpret as "sustainability")—the system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>
 +
<p>Our society's communication-and-control is broken, and it has to be restored.</p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 +
</p>
 +
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their own</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>These calls to action remained, however, without effect. And it is not difficult to see why.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his results to the communication whose tie with action had been severed!</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We have assembled an interesting collection of academic results that shared a similar fate, as illustration of the phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]].</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It may be disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see so many best ideas of our best minds unable to benefit our society. But this sentiment quickly changes to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier this is pointing to; which Vannevar Bush pointed to in 1945. </p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>Optimism turns into enthusiasm, when the information technology, which we all now use to communicate with the world, is taken into consideration.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>Core elements of the contemporary information technology were <em>created to enable a paradigm change</em> on that creative frontier.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>Vannevar Bush already pointed to this new paradigm, indeed already in the title, "As We May Think", of his 1945 article. His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that our knowledge work must be organized in such a way <em>that we may benefit from each other's "thinking"</em>—and in effect think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Douglas Engelbart, however, took this development in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar way as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. While all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be physically <em>transported</em>, this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote> We can now think and create—together!</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the <em>system</em> by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that can and needs to be achieved is not only large, it is <em>qualitative</em>— from a system that doesn't really fulfill its function, to one that does.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>By collaborating in this new way, Engelbart envisioned, we would become able to comprehend our problems and respond to them incomparably faster than we do. Engelbart foresaw that the <em>collective intelligence</em> that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially". </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>But to Engelbart's dismay, this new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, which only <em>broadcast</em> data. </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The difference that makes a difference, which <em>knowledge federation</em> is positioned to contribute, is to organize us in knowledge work in such a way, that the result is the production of <em>meaning</em>.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>The purpose of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is to
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 +
</p>  
 +
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact that its absence, the impact of using the technology to merely broadcast information, had on culture and "human quality".</p>
 +
<p>Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>But <em>ontological security</em> is what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote><em>What is to be done</em>, if we should be able to use the new technology to change our <em>collective mind</em>?</blockquote> 
 +
 
 +
<p>Engelbart left us a clear answer in the opening slides of his "A Call to Action" presentation, which were prepared for a 2007 panel that Google organized to share his vision to the world, but were not shown(!).</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In the first slide, Engelbart emphasized that "new thinking" or a "new paradigm" is needed. In the second, he pointed out what this "new thinking" was. </p>  
 +
 
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
<p>When the details offered on these pages have been considered, it will be clear why white (which, as the all-inclusive color, might symbolize the <em>holotopia</em>) is not only "the new black", but also <em>the new red</em>; and <em>the new green</em>!</p>  
+
<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
 +
<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
 
</blockquote>  
 
</blockquote>  
</div> </div>
+
 
 +
<p>There can be no doubt that <em>systemic innovation</em> was the direction Engelbart was pointing to. He indeed published an ingenious methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em> <em>already in 1962</em>, six years before Jantsch and others created theirs in Bellagio, Italy; and he used this methodology throughout his career. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Engelbart also made it clear what needs to be our next step—by which the spell of the <em>Wiener's paradox</em> is to be broken. He called it "bootstrapping"—and we adopted <em>bootstrapping</em> as one of our <em>keywords</em>. The point here is that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done (the tie between information and action being broken) will not lead to a desired effect; the way out of the paradox, or <em>bootstrapping</em>, means that we <em>act</em>—and either create a new system with our own minds and bodies, or actively help others do that.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is the 'collective thinking' that the new informati9on technology enables, and our society requires.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was created by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. Originally, we were a community of knowledge media researchers and developers, developing the <em>collective mind</em> solutions that the new technology enables. Already at our first meeting, in 2008, we realized that the technology that we and our colleagues were developing has the potential to change our <em>collective mind</em>; but that to realize that potential, we need to self-organize differently.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Ever since then have been <em>bootstrapping</em>, by developing <em>prototypes</em> with and for various communities and situations.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>Among them, we highlight
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, IEJ2011</li>
 +
<li>Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015</li>
 +
<li>The LIghthouse 2016</li>
 +
</ul> </p>
 +
<p>The first, IEJ2011m, shows how researchers, journalists, citizens and creative media workers can collaborate to give the people exactly the kind of information they need—to be able to orient themselves in contemporary world, and handle its challenges correctly.</p>
 +
<p>The second, TNC2015, shows how to <em>federate</em> a result of a single scientist—which is written in an inaccessible language, and has high potential relevance to other fields and to the society at large.</p>
 +
<p>The third, The Lighthouse 2016, empowers a community of researchers (the concrete <em>prototype</em> was made for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences) to <em>federate</em> a single core insight that the society needs from their field. (Here the concrete insight was that "the free competition" cannot replace "communication and control" and provide "homeostasis"—as Wiener already argued in Cybernetics, in 1948.)</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Together, those three <em>prototypes</em> constitute a <em>prototype</em> solution to the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>  
 +
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Making things whole</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Socialized reality|<em>Socialized reality</em>]]</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
<p>What exactly do we need to <em>do</em>, to "change course", and pursue and fulfill the <em>holotopia</em> vision?</p>  
+
<p>
<p>The evidence that the <em>holotopia</em> brought together, allowed us to distill a simple principle or rule of thumb:  
+
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>
 +
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> the political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking for was to 'hit the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is inspected, it becomes clear that its 'brakes' too are dysfunctional.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>So <b>who</b> will lead us through the next and vitally important step on our evolutionary agenda—where we shall learn how to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored—and so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and the others who followed. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Why?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> too followed the general trend, and evolved as a <em>power structure</em>. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>As we pointed out in the opening paragraph of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. 
 +
Our tradition developed from classical philosophy, where the "philosophical" questions such as "How do we know that something is <em>true</em>?" and even "<em>What does it mean</em> to say that something is true?" led to rigorous or "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, as we, academic people tend to perceive it, is to uphold those standards. By studying at a university, one becomes capable of pursuing knowledge in an academic way in <em>any</em> domain of interest.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>And as we also pointed out, by bringing up the image of Galilei in house arrest, this seemingly esoteric or "philosophical" pursuit was what largely <em>enabled</em> the last "great cultural revival", and led to all those various good things that we now enjoy. The Inquisition, censorship and prison were unable to keep in check an idea whose time had come—and the new way to pursue knowledge soon migrated from astrophysics, where it originated, and transformed all walks of life. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We began our presentation of <em>knowledge federation</em> by asking "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" </p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Here is why we felt confident in drafting an affirmative answer to this rhetorical question.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Early in the course of our modernization, we made a fundamental error whose consequences cannot be overrated.  This error was subsequently uncovered and reported, but it has not yet been corrected.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a <em>myth</em> incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the role of information is to provide us an "objectively true reality picture", so that we may distinguish truth from falsehood by simply checking whether an idea fits in. </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.</blockquote>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
<p>It has turned out that <em>there is simply no way</em> to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing!</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Reality, reported scientists and philosophers, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Part of this construction is a function of our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense, and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it. Through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—as our culture defines it. As everyone knows, every "normal human being" sees the reality as it truly is. Wasn't that the reason why our ancestors often considered the members of a neighboring tribes, who saw the reality differently, as not completely normal; and why they treated them as not completely human?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.  </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our <em>ideograms</em>, to put things in proportion and make a point.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...</p>
 +
<p>We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>  
 +
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on <em>explaining</em> how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to <em>socialize</em> people in a certain specific way. To <em>create</em> certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even <em>try</em> to make this a scientific and political issue.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>So how <em>are</em> our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the <em>symbolic environment</em>  we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are <em>socialized</em> to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things <em>whole</em>".</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. <em>And</em> we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To see our second point, that reality construction is a key instrument of the <em>power structure</em>, and hence of power, it may be sufficient to point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann explained how throughout history, the "universal theories" about the nature of reality have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme is central to <em>holotopia</em>, and here too we can only get a glimpse of a solution by looking at deeper dynamics and causes.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To be able to do that we devised a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> are strung together to compose a larger insight.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>The first <em>vignette</em> describes a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors—aging Odin the Horse, and New Horse who is just being introduced to the herd where Odin is the stallion and the leader—are engaged in turf strife. It will be suffice to just imagine these two horses running side by side, with their long hairs waving in the wind, Odin pushing New Horse toward the river, and away from his pack of mares.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Bourdieu devised two keywords for the symbolic cultural 'turf'" "field" and "game", and used them interchangeably. He called it a "field", to suggest (1) a field of activity or profession, and the <em>system</em> where it is practiced; and (2)  something akin to a magnetic field, in which we people are immersed as small magnets, and which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random or "free" movement.  He referred to it as "game", to suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, with allowable 'moves', by which our 'turf strife' is structured in a specific way.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To explain the dynamics of the game or the field, Bourdieu adapted two additional keywords, each of which has a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". A habitus is composed of embodied behavioral predispositions, and may be thought of as distinct 'roles' or 'avatars' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do his pages. The habitus is routinely maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too), without conscious intention or awareness. Doxa is the belief, or embodied experience, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" acknowledges that multiple "realities" coexist, of which only a single one is "right"; doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Hence we may understand <em>socialized reality</em> as something that 'gamifies' our social behavior, by giving everyone an 'avatar' or a role, and a set of capabilities.  Doxa is the 'cement' that makes such <em>socialized reality</em> relatively permanent.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] involving Antonio Damasio as cognitive neuroscientist completes this <em>thread</em>, by helping us see that the "embodied predispositions" that are maintained in this way have a <em>decisive role</em>, contrary to what the 19th century science and indeed the core of our philosophical tradition made us believe. Damasio showed that our socialized <em>embodied</em> predispositions act as a cognitive filter—<em>determining</em> not only our priorities, but also the <em>options</em> we may be able to rationally consider. Our embodied, socialized predispositions are a reason, for instance, why we don't consider showing up in public naked (which in another culture might be normal). </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>This conclusion suggests itself: Changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>—however rational, and necessary, that may be—is for <em>similar</em> reasons inconceivable. </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We are incapable of changing our <em>systems</em>, because we have been <em>socialized</em> to accept them as reality.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>We may now condense this diagnosis to a single keyword: <em>reification</em>. We are incapable of replacing 'candle headlights' because we have <em>reified</em> them as 'headlights'! "Science" has no systemic purpose. Science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing. Just as "journalism" is the profession we've inherited from the tradition. </p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
<p>But <em>reification</em> reaches still deeper—to include the very <em>language</em> we use to organize our world. It includes the very concepts by which we frame our "issues". Ulrich Beck continued the above observation:</p>
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
We need to <em>see ourselves and what we do as parts in a larger whole</em> or wholes; and act in ways that make those larger wholes more [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].
+
"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of <em>categories and basic assumptions</em> of classical social, cultural and political sciences."
</blockquote></p>  
+
</blockquote>
<p>This is, of course, a radical departure from our current course—which <em>emerges</em> as a result of us pursuing what we perceive as "our own" interests; and trusting that "the invisible hand" of the market, or the academic "publish and perish", will turn our self-serving acts into the greatest common good.</p>  
+
 
<p>It is also the course that the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> is pointing to.</p>
+
<p>We may now see not only our inherited physical institutions or <em>systems</em> as 'candles'—but also our inherited or socialized concepts, which determine the very <em>way</em> in which we look at the world.</p>  
<p>All of <em>holotopia</em> follows from an obvious rational principle, which we have somehow ignored—that the <em>wholeness</em> of the whole thing must be secured; that our beautiful home will not last—in an apartment building that is falling apart.</p>  
+
 
 +
<p><em>Reification</em> underlies <em>both</em> problems. It is what <em>keeps us</em> in 'iron cage'.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Notice the depth and the beauty of our challenge.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>When we write "worldviews", our word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with the world!  <em>Whatever we say</em>, even when that is "we are constructing reality", <em>by default</em> we are making a statement <em>about</em> reality, we are saying how the things "really are" out there. But in this latter case, of course, the result is a paradox. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We <em>are</em> in a paradox; how can we ever come out?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The answer we proposed is in two steps.</p>  
 +
 
 +
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A project</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-6">  
+
<div class="col-md-6">
<p>As a project, Holotopia <em>federates</em>, and fulfills, the <em>holotopia</em> vision.</p>
+
 
<p>[[Margaret Mead]]'s familiar dictum points to this project's core mission:
+
 
<blockquote>
+
<p>The first – pointed to by the metaphor of the mirror, and the Mirror <em>ideogram</em> – is to self-reflect. We are proposing the kind of self-reflection that Socrates championed, which was the academic tradition's very source, and point of inception. We believed that something was the case, and it turned out that it was not. Meanwhile, we built on that assumption our institutional organization, our ethos and our self-image. We built on it even a formal logic, which excludes the middle.</p>
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
+
 
</blockquote></p>  
+
<p>The <em>mirror</em> reflects the fact that we are not <em>above</em> the world, looking at it objectively. However it might have seemed otherwise, the procedures we use were not objectively existing ways to objectively see the world, which were only <em>discovered</em> by our predecessors. We cannot forever continue being busy doing the work that is <em>defined</em> by those procedures. The evolution of <em>our</em> system must be allowed to continue.  </p>
<p>It is, however, the 'small print' that we found most useful—Mead's insights, based on her research, into what exactly <em>distinguishes</em> "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens" that is capable of making a large difference.</p>
+
 
</div>  
+
<p>The <em>mirror</em> warns us that <em>we</em> are now 'keeping Galilei in house arrest'—by using only "symbolic power", of course, and without being aware of that.</p>  
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">
+
 
[[File:Mead.jpg]]
+
<p>Our self-reflection in front of the <em>mirror</em> is not from a power position, but in the manner of the [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]]. Which means—in a completely different tone of voice, which reflects <em>genuine</em> intention to see what goes on, correct errors, and make improvements.</p>
<small><center>Margaret Mead</center></small>  
+
 
 +
<p>The Mirror <em>ideogram</em> points to the nature of our contemporary academic situation, in a similar way as the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> points to our general one. The spontaneous evolution of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> has brought us here, in front of the <em>mirror</em>. Seeing ourselves in the <em>mirror</em> means seeing ourselves in the world. It means the end of <em>reification</em>—and the beginning of <em>accountability</em>. The world we see in the <em>mirror</em> is a world in dire need—for <em>new</em> ways to be creative. The role in which we see ourselves, in that world, by looking at the <em>mirror</em> is all-important.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>Imagine what it will mean to liberate the vast academic 'army', all of us who have been selected, trained and publicly sponsored to produce new ideas—from disciplinary constraints, to empower us to see ourselves as the core part of our society's 'headlights', and to self-organize and be creative accordingly!</p> 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>But how shall we do that, how shall we step into that so much larger and freer yet more responsible role—without sacrificing the core element of our tradition; which is logical and methodological <em>rigor</em>?</p>  
 +
 
 +
</div>  
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
<p>  
 +
[[File:Mirror2.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Mirror <em>ideogram</em></small>
 +
</p>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>The Holotopia project undertakes to make a difference by organizing us differently. And by putting a (snow-) ball in play.</p>  
+
 
<p>The following Mead's observation, made more than fifty years ago, points to an <em>immediate</em> effect of the Holotopia project:
+
<p>The answer, and the second step we are proposing, is unexpected; even seemingly impossible, or magical.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>We can go <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—into a completely <em>new</em> academic and social reality.</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>Symbolically, that means liberating ourselves from the entrapment of <em>reification</em>—and liberating the people, the oppressed. We all must be liberated from reifying the way we see our world, from reifying our <em>systems</em> or institutions, and the very concepts we use to make sense of our world. We must all move to a world where what constitutes our society, and our culture, is given the kind of status that the technology has—of humanly created things; which must continue to evolve, by being adapted to their purposes. </p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>Academically or philosophically, this crucial step, through the <em>mirror</em>, is made possible by what philosopher Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—which we adapted as one of our <em>keywords</em>.</p> 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:</p>
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
"One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
+
"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."
</blockquote></p>
+
</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>But if the switch to <em>truth by convention</em> is the way in which the sciences repair their logical foundations—then why not use it to update the logical foundations of our <em>knowledge work</em> at large?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p><em>Truth by convention</em>, as we use this [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let <em>x</em> be <em>y</em>. Then..." and the argument follows. Obviously, the claim that <em>x</em> "really is" <em>y</em> is unintended, and meaningless. Only a  convention has been made—which is valid <em>within the given context</em>, of an article, or a theory, or a methodology.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In our <em>prototype</em> we used [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] to define an <em>epistemology</em>; and a <em>methodology</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>epistemology</em>, called <em>design epistemology</em>, turns the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information, as we described above) into a convention.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In the "Design Epistemology" research article, where we articulated this proposal, we drafted a parallel between the modernization of knowledge work we are proposing, and the emergence of modern art. By defining an <em>epistemology</em> and a <em>methodology</em> as conventions, we academic researchers can do as the artists did, when they liberated themselves from the demand to faithfully depict the reality, by using the techniques of Old Masters—we can be creative in the very way in which we practice our profession. We made it clear that the approach we proposed was a general one, and that our <em>design epistemology</em> was only an <em>example</em> showing what might be possible when the approach is developed.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Notice that logically <em>anything</em> can be turned into a convention. The "proof of the pie" is that it works!  <em>truth by convention</em>. We, however, chose to use [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] to codify the state-of-the-art <em>epistemological</em> insights; the ones that now serve as anomalies, challenging the epistemological and methodological status quo, and demanding change. In this way, by weaving those insights into a <em>prototype</em> <em>methodology</em>, and configuring a system that will continuously keep them up to date (we are doing that as we speak)—we use [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to give information the agency to <em>modify</em> the <em>epistemology</em> and the <em>methods</em>; and to enable the latter to <em>evolve</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A <em>vast</em> creative frontier opens up before us on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, both academic <em>and</em> cultural. We developed the <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em> as <em>prototypes</em>, to show what might be possible if we pursued this <em>new course</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>By using [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]], language too can be liberated from <em>reification</em> and tradition; and so can our professional and specifically disciplinary-academic pursuits. We conclude here by only mentioning two examples, each of which illustrates <em>both</em> possibilities (both were proposed to corresponding communities of interest, where they proved welcome, and useful). </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Our definition of <em>design</em>, as "the alternative to <em>tradition</em>", introduced <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> as two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>. Here <em>tradition</em> means relying on what we've inherited from the past, and relying on small changes and "the survival of the fittest"; <em>design</em> is the alternative, where we consciously and intentionally "make things <em>whole</em>". The point is that when <em>tradition</em> can no longer be relied on, <em>design</em> must be used. This pair of <em>keywords</em> allows us to understand the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our situation or the "world problematique" in simple terms: We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; and yet we are not yet <em>designing</em>. We are caught up in an unstable way of evolving, where neither of the options work. Our <em>technology</em> is developed by <em>design</em>—and progressed at an accelerated rate; our culture (represented by the <em>headlights</em>) has remained <em>traditional</em>, and fallen behind.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Our definition of <em>implicit information</em> as <em>information</em> that is not making a factual statement, but is implicit in cultural artifacts, mores etc., and of <em>visual literacy</em> (a definition for the International Visual Literacy Association), as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em>", opens up a whole realm of possibilities to be developed. While our ethics, legislature and academic production have been focused on factual, <em>explicit information</em>, we have been culturally (and ethically and politically) dominated by the subtle <em>implicit information</em>, which we have not yet learned to decode, <em>or</em> control. The creation of <em>prototypes</em>—the core activity on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, by which agency is restored to information—opens up a myriad possibilities for combining art and science. As we shall see, in the Holotopia project this will be our core approach.</p>  
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 +
BBB -->
 +
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Narrow frame|<em>Narrow frame</em>]]</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
 +
 +
<p>The question we'll explore here is the one posed by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>:  <b>How</b> do we need to "look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it". </p>
 +
 +
<p>We build part of our case for the <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em> by developing an analogy between the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival", where a <em>fundamental</em> change of the way we look at the world (from traditional/Biblical, to rational/scientific) effortlessly caused nearly <em>everything</em> to change. Notice that to meet <em>that</em> sort of a change, we do not need to convince the political and business leaders, we do not need to occupy Wall Street. It is the prerogative of our, academic occupation to uphold and update and give to our society this most powertful agent of change—the standard of "right" knowledge.</p>
 +
 +
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Federation</h2></div>
+
<blockquote>So <em>how</em> should we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it? <br>
 +
Nobody knows! </blockquote>  
  
 +
<p>Of course, countess books and articles have been written that could inform an answer to this most timely question. But no consensus has emerged—or even a consensus about a <em>method</em> by which that could be achieved. </p>
 +
 +
<p>That being the case, we'll begin this diagnostic process by simply sharing what <em>we</em>'ve been told while we were growing up. Which is roughly as follows.</p>
 +
 +
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to understand the world, and to make rational choices based on such understanding. Give us a correct model of the natural world, and we'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "our needs", which we of course know because we can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to the ghost to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost", and told us how 'the machine' <em>really</em> works. </p>
 +
 +
<p>Of course no rational person would ever <em>write</em> this sort of a silly idea. But—and this is a key point in this diagnosis—this idea was <em>not</em> written. It has simply <em>emerged</em>—around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes were replaced for so many of us by Darwin and Newton. Science originated, and shaped its disciplinary divisions and procedures <em>before</em> that time, while still the tradition and the Church had the prerogative of telling people how to see the world, and what values to uphold.</p>
 +
 +
<p>From a collection of reasons why this popular idea of what constitutes the "scientific worldview" needs to be updated, we here mention only two.</p>
  
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Five insights|Five insights]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]
+
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
<center><small>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>.</small></center>
+
</p>
 +
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>  
 +
<p>The mechanistic or "classical" worldview of 19th century's science was disproved and disowned by modern science. <em>Even the physical reality</em> cannot be understood as a mechanism, or explained in "classical" or "causal" terms. Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be <em>on popular culture</em>—because the way of looking at the world that it took over from the 19th century's science, which he called the "narrow frame" (and which we adapted as a <em>keyword</em>), would be removed. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In "Physics and Philosophy" Heisenberg described how the destruction of religious and other traditions on which the continuation of culture and "human quality" depended, and the dominance of "instrumental" thinking and values (which Bauman called "adiaphorisation") followed from the assumptions that the modern physics <em>proved</em> were wrong.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr, Heisenberg's intellectual "heir", co-authored the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message was "We have to learn to think in a new way". The new way of thinking, conspicuously impregnated by "seeing things whole" and seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, was shown to follow from the worldview of new physics, and the environmental and larger social crisis.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second reason is that even mechanisms, when they are complex, (or technically even <em>classical</em> nonlinear and dynamic or "complex" systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>This is yet another core insight that we the people needed to acquire from the systems sciences, and from cybernetics in particular.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There is a <em>scientific</em> reason for that: The "hell" (which you may imagine as the global issues, or as the destination toward which our 'bus' is currently taking us) consisting largely of "side effects" of our best efforts, and "solutions".
 +
<p>
 +
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, and the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"
 +
</blockquote>  
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>The [[Holotopia:Five insights|<em>five insights</em>]] constitute the 'engine' that drives the Holotopia project to its destination—the <em>holotopia</em>.</p>
+
 
<p>At the same time, the <em>five insights</em> provide us a concrete way to <em>federate</em> the The Club of Rome's work.  
+
 
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The remedy we proposed is to spell out the rules, by defining a <em>general-purpose methodology</em> as a convention; and by turning it into a <em>prototype</em> and developing it continuously—to represent the state of the art of relevant knowledge, and technology.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Our <em>prototype</em> is called Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>, and nicknamed <em>polyscopy</em>. </p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>This approach allows us to <em>specify</em> what "being informed" means (by claiming it not as a "fact about reality", but as a convention, and part of a practical toolkit). In <em>polyscopy</em>, the intuitive notion, when one may be considered "informed", is made concrete by the technical keyword <em>gestalt</em>; one is informed, if one has a <em>gestalt</em> that is appropriate to one's situation. An <em>appropriate gestalt</em> interprets a situation in a way that points to right action—and you'll easily recognize now that we'll be using this idea all along, by rendering our general situation as the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our academic one as the Mirror <em>ideogram</em>. Suitable techniques for communicating and 'proving' or <em>justifying</em> such claims are offered, most of which are developed by generalizing the standard toolkit of science.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Most of the <em>design patterns</em> of this <em>methodology prototype</em> are <em>federated</em>; and we here give a single example of a source, to point in a brief and palpable way to some of the important nuances, and to give due credit.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming, when the buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to understand and correct.  [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#InformationHolon The story] is interesting, but here we only highlight the a couple of main points and lessons learned.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
 +
<p>They are drawn from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Old-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard. The first one is that—to understand a complex system—<em>abstraction</em> must be used. We must be able to <em>create</em> concepts on distinct levels of generality, representing also distinct angles of looking (which, you'll recall, we called <em>aspects</em>). But that is exactly the core point of <em>polyscopy</em>, suggested by the methodology's very name.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The second point we'd like to highlight is is the <em>accountability</em> for the method. Any sufficiently complete programming language including the native "machine language" of the computer will allow the programmers to create <em>any</em> sort of program. The creators of the "programming methodologies", however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would not only enable them, but even <em>compel</em> them to write comprehensible, reusable, well-structured code. To see how this reflects upon our theme at hand, our proposal to add systemic self-organization to the <em>academia</em>'s repertoire of capabilities, imagine that an unusually gifted young man has entered the <em>academia</em>; to make the story concrete, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. Young Bourdieu will spend a lifetime using the toolkit the <em>academia</em> has given him. Imagine if what he produces, along with countless other selected creative people, is equivalent to "spaghetti code" in computer programming! Imagine the level of improvement that this is pointing to!</p>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 +
 +
<p>The object oriented methodology provided a template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without inspecting the details of its code! (But those details are made available for inspection; and of course also for continuous improvement.)</p>
 +
 +
 +
 +
<p>The solution for structuring information we provided in <em>polyscopy</em>, called <em>information holon</em>, is closely similar. Information, represented in the Information <em>ideogram</em> as an "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. The circle represents the point of it all (such as "the cup is whole"); the square represents the details, the side views. </p>
 +
 +
<p>When the <em>circle</em>  is a <em>gestalt</em>, it allows this to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into <em>higher-level</em> insights; and it allows various and heterogeneous insights on which it is based to remain 'hidden', but available for inspection, in the <em>square</em>. When the <em>circle</em> is a <em>prototype</em> it allows the multiplicity of insights that comprise the <em>square</em> to have a direct <em>systemic</em> impact, or agency.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
 +
[[File:Information.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Information <em>ideogram</em></small>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
 +
 +
<p>The <em>prototype</em> <em>polyscopic</em> book manuscript titled "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" book manuscript is structured as an <em>information holon</em>. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it.</p>
 +
 +
<p>It is customary in computer methodology design to propose a programming language that implements the methodology—and to <em>bootstrap</em> the approach by creating a compiler for that language in the language itself. In this book we did something similar. The book's four chapters present four angles of looking at the general issue of information, identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the <em>design patterns</em> of the proposed <em>methodology</em>. The book then uses the <em>methodology</em> to justify the claim that motivates it—that makes a case for the proposed <em>paradigm</em>, by using the <em>paradigm</em>.
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<!-- XXX
 +
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]]</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
 +
 +
<p>In this last of the <em>five insights</em>, we answer the question that has remained as perhaps most intriguing—and <em>portray</em> "a great cultural revival" that is now ready to emerge. To see what this may mean practically, think of the world in Galilei's time. Concerns about "original sin" and "eternal punishment" were soon to be replaced; happiness and beauty would be lived here and now, and elevated and celebrated by the arts. What might the <em>next</em> "great cultural revival" be like? </p>
 +
 +
<p>Another place to begin is what we've just proposed—to develop a <em>general purpose methodology</em>, or 'generalized science', which allows us to <em>federate</em> cultural insights emanating from ancient and contemporary cultural traditions, religions, schools of therapy <em>and</em> science, that would allow us to create insights, rules of thumb or principles in <em>any</em> domain of choice. We are about to apply our <em>prototype</em> to the pivotal issue, the one that gives our cultural evolution or our 'bus' its direction—the question of human aims and values. To inform our "pursuit of happiness". What insights, what new discoveries might emerge?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 +
 +
<p>The insight we propose is closely similar to the <em>academic</em> one resulting from the self-reflection with the help of the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]; the discovery that emerges is as simple as—the discovery of ourselves.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The values that will be challenged are the ones that resulted by looking at the world through the <em>narrow frame</em>, as we've just described. First of all (in the more <em>private</em> pursuits) the value of <em>convenience</em> (or "instant gratification"), which <em>appeared</em> as "scientific" because it roughly corresponds to the scientific experiment. And then (in the more social ones) the value of <em>egotism</em> (or "egocenteredness"), which appears to follow as "natural" from Darwin's theory. And relying on "free competition" to take care of <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<p>Both values ignore systems—first of all the natural ones, and then also social. Both are the environments, whose quality largely determines our life quality. They have, however, a difference—that in culture we have no CO2 and CO2 quotas; and that the destruction can be <em>more</em> pervasive, and remain unnoticed.</p>
 +
 +
<p>What we, however, focus on here is the third system—ourselves. The observation that our "values" made us neglect how our choices influence our own condition, including our <em>capability to feel</em> in the long run. And that by 'seeing ourselves in the <em>mirror</em>',  we become liberated from <em>objectifying</em> our own emotional responses—that when we feel something is attractive, or repulsive, it "really is" so. </p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>The way in which we emotionally react to stimuli from the outside will turn out to be <em>the</em> most fertile ground for improvement.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>Completely ignored!</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 +
<p>When we apply the <em>holoscope</em> to this most fertile realm of questions, three insights emerge.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The first is the <em>convenience paradox</em>—that <em>convenience</em> is a deceptive and useless value, behind which <em>enormous</em> cultural opportunities have remained hidden. The idea of a "couch potato" provides a common-sense illustration—but, we show, the depth and breadth of possibilities for improving our condition through long-term cultivation is beyond what most of us will dare to consider possible.</p>
 
<p>
 
<p>
Strategically located in five pivotal domains of interest: innovation (the way we use our majestically grown capability to create and induce change), communication (the way information technology is used and information is handled), foundations (what the creation of truth and meaning is based on), method (the ways in which we look at the world and try to comprehend it) and values (the "pursuit of happiness"), the <em>five insights</em> disclose large anomalies that obstruct progress in those domains, and demand structural or <em>paradigmatic</em> changes. Together, they show what, metaphorically speaking, is keeping Galilei is house arrest, once again in <em>our</em> era.</p>
+
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
<p>Each of the <em>five insights</em> points to an overarching opportunity for creative change:
 
<ul>
 
<li>a radical improvement of effectiveness and efficiently of human work, and the liberation from stress and strife that the Industrial Revolution promised, but did not deliver</li>
 
<li>a revolution in communication analogous to what the printing press made possible)</li>
 
<li>a revolutionary empowerment of human reason to explore and understand the world, analogous to the Enlightenment</li>
 
<li>a revolution in conceptual tools and methods for understanding our social and cultural world, and hence improving the human condition, similar to what science brought to our understanding of natural phenomena</li>
 
<li>a revolution in culture analogous to the Renaissance, leading to a dramatic improvement of "human quality"</li>
 
</ul>
 
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<p>Each of the <em>five insights</em> is reached by using the <em>holoscope</em> to <em>federate</em> information from disparate sources, that is, by seeing things whole. Each of the <em>anomalies</em> is resolved by using the proposed rule of thumb—by making things whole.
+
<p>The second insight is what we propose to call "the best kept secret of human culture": Human <em>wholeness</em> does exist; and it feels, and looks, incomparably better than most of us will dare to imagine. It is this that drove people to the Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and other founders of religion. We represent them all here by Lao Tzu, who is often considered the founder of "Taoism". "Tao" literally means "way". The point here is to develop one's way of live, and culture, based on on <em>where the way is leading to</em>—and not (only) based on how attractive a direction may feel at the moment.</p>  
 +
<p>The most fascinating insight is reached as soon as we ignore the differences in worldview, what the adherents of different religion "believe in"—and pay attention to the <em>symbolic environment</em> they produce, and the kind of values and way of being they nourish. Compare, for instance, the above Lao Tzu's observations with what Christ told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. </p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
 +
<p>The third insight is that the <em>transcendence</em> of <em>egotism</em> is a key element of the "way". </p>
 +
<p>Lao Tzu is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies that he conquered and tamed his ego. We here quote Aldous Huxley, to point out that transcending <em>egotism</em> is so much part of our <em>wholeness</em>, that even <em>physical</em> effort and effortlessness—which we now handle exclusively by developing the technology—is conditioned by it. </p> 
 +
 +
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em>: Definition of <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with archetypes". </p>
 +
 +
<p>The book "Liberation" subtitled "Religion beyond Belief" is an ice breaker. It <em>federates</em> "the best kept secret", and creates a <em>dialog</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<p>Movement and Qi is a template how to put the <em>language</em> of "movement" (doing something with the body) into the academic repertoire. And how to put the heritage of the world traditions such as yoga and qigong into academic repertoire.</p>
 +
 +
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Sixth insight</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A great cultural revival</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>The five anomalies, and their resolutions, are so interdependent, that to realistically resolve any of them—we need to resolve them all. Another, more general <em>sixth insight</em> follows:
+
 
<blockquote> Comprehensive change can be easy, even when smaller and obviously necessary changes have proven to be impossible.</blockquote>  
+
<p>The <em>five insights</em> have been chosen to reflect five <em>aspects</em> of the last "great cultural revival", to which we point by bringing up the image of Galilei in hose arrest. Our point is that when those five centrally important aspects of our society's 'drive into the future' are no longer looked at by using the <em>inherited</em> ways of looking at the world ('in the light of a pair of candles') but by a deliberately <em>designed</em> way (represented by the <em>holoscope</em>), or in other words when our minds and eyes are liberated from the habit and the tradition and we allow ourselves to <em>create</em> the way we look at the world—then once again the blind spots and the opportunities for creative action are seen that <em>naturally</em> lead to a deep and comprehensive change.</p>
In this way the recommendation of The Club of Rome is <em>federated</em>, and the strategy that distinguishes <em>holotopia</em> (to focus on changing the whole <em>order of things</em>) is confirmed.  
+
 
</p>  
+
<p>Hence the <em>five insights</em> together reveal a vast creative frontier, where dramatic improvements can be reached. And which <em>together</em> constitute "a great cultural revival"—each of them being a piece in the large puzzle, a mechanism that unleashes our creative potential on such major scale.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A revolution in innovation</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution liberated our ancestors from the toil for survival, and empowered them to devote themselves to more humane pursuits such as developing their "human quality", by developing culture. Or so we were told. The real story may, however, be entirely different. Research has shown that the hunger-gatherers used only a small fraction of their time for hunting and gathering. The <em>power structure</em> insight shows that not only today—but throughout history the improvements in effectiveness and efficiency in human work have been largely wasted by the <em>systems in which we live and work</em></p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We saw, by illuminating those systems and the way in which they evolve, that this age-old negative trend in our evolution can be countered by innovating differently—through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], or by "making things whole". And how this <em>socio-technical</em> innovation can, finally, liberate us from toil and empower us to engage in cultural revival.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A revolution in communication</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy, and in communication.  The <em>collective mind</em> insight shows that the new information technology enables a <em>similar</em> revolution—whose effects will not be only a mass production of volumes of information, but most importantly a revolution in the production of <em>meaning</em>. A revolution where information is considered and treated as the lifeblood of human society—and enabled to make all the differences it can and needs to make, in a post-industrial society.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<h3>A revolution in vision</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Enlightenment was a combined revolution; our ancestors were first empowered to use their reason to <em>understand</em> the world; and then to see that the royalties were not divinely ordained, but indeed part of a human-made <em>power structure</em>. The whole revolution, however, began as a relatively minor epistemological innovation in astrophysics. By putting the Sun into the center of the Solar system, a scientific explanation of the movement of the planets became possible. We have seen that a <em>continuation</em> of that revolution is now due, by which all <em>reification</em> is seen as obsolete and a product of <em>power structure</em>; and in particular the <em>reification</em> of our worldview, and of our <em>systems</em>. By liberating the <em>academia</em> from the pitfall of <em>reification</em>, we can both empower ourselves to adapt our <em>systems</em> to the purposes they need to serve <em>and</em> liberate the vast global army of academic researchers from the disciplinary constraints on creativity—and empower them to be creative in ways and on the scale that a "great cultural revival" enables and requires.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A revolution in method</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Galilei in house arrest was really <em>science</em> in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The <em>narrow frame</em> insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that science left in the dark. </p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A revolution in culture</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Renaissance <em>was</em> a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, and developing the arts. The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight illuminates two <em>dimensions</em> of this most fertile creative domain we've neglected—the time dimension, and the inner one. When this is done, a completely new <em>direction</em> of human pursuits readily emerge as natural—where our goal is the cultivation of inner <em>wholeness</em>, by developing culture. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>This new revolution perhaps finds its most vivid expression in re-evolution of religion—by which an age-old conflict between science and religion is seen as a conflict between two <em>power structures</em>, which hindered the evolution of <em>both</em> our understanding of the world and our understanding of our selves. And how a completely <em>new</em> phase in this relationship can now begin.</p>  
 +
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Ten conversations|Ten conversations]]</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The 6th insight</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>Perhaps the most immediately interesting, however, are the <em>relationships</em> between the <em>five insights</em>—which provide us a context for perceiving and handling, in informed and completely new ways, some of the age-old challenges such as:
+
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>These solutions compose a <em>paradigm</em></h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The five issues, and their solutions, are closely co-dependent; the key to resolving them is the relationship we have with information (the <em>epistemology</em> by which the proposed <em>paradigm</em> is defined).  </p>
 +
 
 
<ul>  
 
<ul>  
<li>How to put an end to war</li>
+
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue cannot be resolved (we cannot begin "guided evolution of society", as Bela H. Banathy called the new evolutionary course that is emerging) without resolving the <em>collective mind</em> issue (by creating a knowledge-work infrastructure that provides "evolutionary guidance")</li>
<li>Where the largest possible contribution to human knowledge might reside, and how to achieve it</li>
+
<li>The resolution of the <em>collective mind</em> issue requires that we resolve the <em>socialized reality</em> issue (that instead of <em>reifying</em> our present institutions or systems, and the way in which we look at the world, we consider them as functional elements in a larger whole)</li>
<li>How to overcome the present dichotomy between science and religion, and use a further evolved approach to knowledge to <em>revolutionize</em> religion</li>  
+
<li>The resolution of the <em>socialized reality</em> issue follows from <em>intrinsic</em> considerations—from the reported anomalies, and published epistemological insights (Willard Van Orman Quine identified the transition to truth by convention as a sign of maturing that has manifested itself in the evolution of every science)</li>
 +
<li>The resolution of the <em>narrow frame</em> issue, by developing a general-purpose <em>methodology</em>, is made possible by just mentioned <em>epistemological</em> innovation</li>  
 +
<li>The resolution of the <em>convenience paradox</em> issue is made possible by <em>federating</em> knowledge from the world traditions, by using the mentioned methodology</li>  
 +
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue can only be resolved when we the people find strength to overcome self-serving, narrowly conceived values, and collaborate and self-organize to create radically better <em>systems in which we live and work</em></li>
 
</ul>  
 
</ul>  
</p>
 
<p>In all, we have <em>fifteen</em> themes to develop in <em>dialogs</em>: Five corresponding to the <em>five insights</em>, and ten corresponding to their relationships. This provides us a wealth of strategic and tactical possibilities, to power the <em>holotopia</em>.</p>
 
  
 +
<p>Hence we have an overarching new insight.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>A comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The global system does maintain a self-destructive <em>homeostasis</em>. It resist the changes that are contrary to its nature.</p>
 +
 +
<p>We have seen that, however, <em>the system as a whole</em> is ripe for change.</p>
 +
 +
<p>And that the key to that change, the "systemic leverage point", is to change the relationship we have with information.</p>
 +
 +
<p>We have also seen (and called it the <em>socialized reality</em> insight) that this change is now due also for fundamental reasons, because our <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> demands it. And hence that the spontaneous evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to that point.</p>
 +
 +
<p>This completes the analogy with Galilei's time—which is or main line of argument, in the case for developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em>.</p>
 +
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will <em>not</em> solve "the huge problems now confronting us"</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
 +
<p>Already in 1964, four years before The Club of Rome was established, Margaret Mead wrote:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
 +
</blockquote> </p>
 +
<p>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing <em>can</em> be solved.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Margaret Mead</small>
 +
</div> </div> 
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=223 Hear Dennis Meadows] (the leader of the team that produced The Club of Rome's seminal 1972 report Limits to Growth) diagnose, based on 44 years of experience on this frontier, that our pursuit of "sustainability" falls short of avoiding the "predicament" they were warning us about back then:</p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"Will the current ideas about "green industry", and "qualitative growth", avoid collapse? No possibility. Absolutely no possibility of that. (...) Globally, we are something like sixty or seventy percent <em>above</em> sustainable levels."
 +
</blockquote> 
 +
 +
<p>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). </p>
 +
 +
<p>So no, we do not claim that our problems can be solved. Neither do we deny them. </p>
 +
 +
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, of empowerment, of deep understanding that small things don't matter, that only being creative in the manner and on the scale we are proposing <em>can</em> matter—which needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
 +
<p>We take a deep dive into that depth. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>
 +
 +
<p>"The huge problems now confronting us" <em>must</em> be dealt with, conscientiously and resolutely. We, however, do not do that. We propose to add to those most necessary and timely efforts a strategy—through which the solutions may be made easy; and which may well be necessary for the solutions to even exist.</p>
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A space</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a great cultural revival"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>
+
 
 +
<p>Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</p>
 +
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 +
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"Will it be possible, here in Germany, to continue this level of energy consumption, and this degree of material welfare? Absolutely not. Not in the United States, not in other countries either. Could you <em>change</em> your cultural and your social norms, in a way that gave attractive future? Yes, you could."
 +
</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>Margaret Mead encouraged us, with her best known motto:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
 +
</blockquote> </p>
 +
<p>And she also pointed to the critical task at hand: "Although tremendous advances in the human sciences have been made in the last hundred years, almost no advance has been made in their use, especially in ways of creating reliable new forms in which cultural evolution can be directed to desired goals."</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It is that "creating" that the Holotopia project is about. We set it up as a research lab, for resolutely working on that goal. We create a transformative 'snowball', with the material of our own bodies, and we let it roll. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole", Mead wrote, "but <em>the small group of interacting individuals</em> 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."</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>As we have seen, and will see, the "single gifted individuals" have already offered us their gifts, already a half-century ago. But their insights failed to incite the kind of self-organization and action that would enable them to make a difference.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Here the <em>holotopia</em>'s "rule of thumb", to "make things <em>whole</em>", which is really an ethical stance, plays a central role. While we are creating a small 'snowball' and letting it roll, the cohesive force that holds it together is of a paramount importance. We are not developing this project to further our careers; nor to earn some money, or get a grant. We are doing that because it's beautiful. And because it's what we need to give to our next generation.</p>
 +
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<b>To be continued...</b>
 +
 
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>The Holotopia project continues to evolve as a collaborative strategy game—where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision. We bring to this 'game' a collection of tactical assets we've developed—to make it flow. </p>
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A pilot project</h2></div>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 
<br>
 
<br>
<small>A snapshot of Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen.</small>
 
</p>
 
<p>Holotopia undertakes to develop whatever is needed for "changing course". Imagine it as a space, akin to a new continent or a "new world" that's just been discovered—which combines physical and virtual spaces, suitably interconnected. </p>
 
<p>In a symbolic sense, we are developing the following five sub-spaces.</p>
 
  
<h3><em>Fireplace</em></h3>
 
<p>The <em>fireplace</em> is where our varius <em>dialogs</em> take place, through which our insights are deepen by combining our collective intelligence with suitable insights from the past</p>
 
  
<h3><em>Library</em></h3>  
+
<!-- YYY
<p>The <em>library</em> is where the necessary information is organized and provided, in a suitable form.</p>  
+
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Before we begin</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>Before we share the "tactical assets" we've put together to prime the Holotopia project, a couple of notes are in order to explain how exactly we want them to be understood and received.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A 'cardboard city'</h3>  
 +
 
 +
<p>While each of these "assets" is created, to the best of our ability, to serve as a true solution, <em>we do not need to make that claim</em>, and we are not making it. Everything here is just <em>prototypes</em>. Which means models, each made to serve as a "proof of concept", to be experimented with and indefinitely improved.</p>
 +
<p>Think of what's presented here as a cardboard model of a city. </p>  
 +
<p>It includes a 'school', and a 'hospital', a 'main square' and 'residential areas'. The model is complete enough for us to see that this 'city' will be a wonderful place to be in; and to begin building. But as we build—<em>everything</em> can change!</p>
 +
<p>One of the points of using this keyword, <em>prototype</em>, is to consider them as placeholders. A city needs a school, and a hospital, and... The whole thing models a 'modern city' (an up-to-date approach to knowledge).</p>
 +
<p>Another important point: <em>design patterns</em>. The <em>prototypes</em> * model * a multiplicity of challenge–solution pairs. <em>With</em> provisions for updating the solutions continuously. The point here is that while solutions can and need to evolve, the <em>design patterns</em> (as 'research questions') can remain relatively stable.</p>
 +
<p>This will all make even more sense when one takes into consideration that the core of our proposal is not to build a city; it is <em>to develop 'architecture'</em>!</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A 'business plan'</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>No, we are not doing this to start a business, or to make money. But a 'business plan' is still a useful metaphor, because we <em>do</em> "mean business". The purpose of the Holotopia project is <em>to make a difference</em>. In the social and economic reality we are living in.</p>
 +
<p>These "tactical assets" can then also be read as points in a business plan—which point to the realistic <em>likelihood</em> of it all to achieve its goals.</p>
 +
<p>The point here is not money, but impact. Making a <em>real</em> difference. From the business point of view, perhaps a suitable metaphor could be 'branding'. And 'strategy'. There are numerous movements, dedicated to a variety of causes. Can we unite under a single flag and mission, not as a monolithic thing but a 'federation', or a 'franchise' of sorts, so that the <em>holotopia</em> offers <em>these</em> resources.</p>
 +
<p>Peccei wrote in One Hundred Pages for the Future (the boldface emphasis is ours):</p>
 +
<blockquote><p>For some time now, the perception of (our responsibilities relative to "problematique") has motivated a number of organizations and small voluntary groups of concerned citizens which have mushroomed all over to respond to the demands of new situations or to change whatever is not going right in society. These groups are now legion. They arose sporadically on the most variend fronts and with different aims. They comprise peace movements, supporters of national liberation, and advocates of women's rights and population control; defenders of minorities, human rights and civil liberties; apostles of "technology with a human face" and the humanization of work; social workers and activists for social change; ecologists, friends of the Earth or of animals; defenders of consumer rights; non-violent protesters; conscientious objectors, and many others. These groups are usually small but, should the occasion arise, they can mobilize a host of men and women, young and old, inspired by a profound sense of te common good and by moral obligations which, in their eyes, are more important than all others.</p>
 +
<p>They form a kind of popular army, actual or potential, with a function comparable to that of the antibodies generated to restore normal conditions in a biological organism that is diseased or attacked by pathogenic agents. The existence of so many spontaneous organizations and groups testifies to the vitality of our societies, even in the midst of the crisis they are undergoing. <b>Means will have to be found one day to consolidate their scattered efforts in order to direct them towards strategic objectives.</b></p> </blockquote>
 +
<p>An obvious problem is the lack of a shared and effective strategy that would allow the movements to <em>really</em> make a difference. As it is, they are largely reactive and not <em>pro</em>-active. But as we have seen, the problems can only be solved when their <em>systemic</em> roots are understood and taken care of.</p>
 +
<p>But there is a subtle and perhaps even more important difficulty—that our efforts at making a difference tend to be <em>symbolic</em>. We adapted this <em>keyword</em> from political scientist Murray Edelman, and attribute to it the following meaning.</p>
 +
<p><em>Real</em> impact, we might now agree, is impact on <em>systems</em>. They are the 'riverbed' that directs the 'current' in which we are all swimming. We may 'swim against the current' for awhile, with the help of all our courage and faith and togetherness—but ultimately we get exhausted and give up.</p>
 +
<p>The difficulty, however, is our <em>socialization</em>—owing to which we tend to take <em>systems</em> for granted; they <em>are</em> the "reality" within which we seek solutions. And so our attempts at solution end up being akin to social rituals, where we <em>symbolically</em> act out our "responsibilities" and concerns (by writing an article, organizing a conference, or a demonstration) and put them to rest.</p>
 +
<p>The alternative is, of course, <em>to restore agency to information, and  power to knowledge</em>—i.e. to create a clear guiding light under which efforts can be <em>effectively</em> focused.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>five insights</em>, which we'll list as our first "tactical asset", are our <em>prototype</em> placeholder in that role.</p>
 +
<p>So here we have a <em>design pattern</em>: The challenge is How to create a shared strategy, so that efforts can be coordinated and meaningfully directed? The <em>holotopia</em> is offered as a <em>prototype</em>. As all <em>prototypes</em> do, here too the solution part has provisions for updating itself continuously—with everyone's participation</p>
 +
 
 +
</div> </div> 
 +
 
 +
 
  
<h3><em>Workshop</em></h3>  
+
<div class="row">
<p>The <em>workshop</em> is where a new order of things emerges, through co-creation of <em>prototypes</em>.</p>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Five insights|Five insights]]</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>They provide us a frame of reference, around which the <em>city</em> is built.  They serve as foundation stones, or as 'five pillars' lifting the emerging construction up from the mundane reality, and making it stand out.</p>  
  
<h3><em>Gallery</em></h3>
+
<p>In our challenge to come through the sensationalist press and reach out to people, each of them is a sensation in its own right; but a <em>real</em> sensation, which merits our attention.</p>  
<p>The <em>gallery</em> is where the resulting <em>prototypes</em> are displayed</p>
 
  
<h3><em>Stage</em></h3>
+
<p>In our various artistic, research, media... projects—they provide us building material.</p>  
<p>The <em>stage</em> is where our events take place.</p>
 
  
<p>This idea of "space" brings up certain most interesting connotations and possibilities—which Lefebre and Debord pointed to.</p>
 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
Line 235: Line 905:
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The Box</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>mirror</em></h2></div>
 +
 
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
[[File:Box1.jpg]]
+
<p>POINT: Bring in the fundamental element. CHANGE of WORLDVIEW begins with FOUNDATIONS—and here we orchestrate it carefully. BRING ACADEMIA ALONG! LIBERATE the enormous creative potential it contains. WE DO NOT NEED TO "PUBLISH OR PERISH".</p>
<small>A model of The Box.</small>
+
 
<p>So many people now talk about"thinking outside the box"; but what does this really mean? Has anyone even <em>seen</em> the box?</p>  
+
<p>The appeal here is to institutionalize a FREE academic space, where this line of work can be developed with suitable support.</p>  
<p>Of course, "thinking outside the box" is what the development of a new paradigm is really all about. So to facilitate this most timely process, we decided to <em>create</em> the box. And to choreograph the process of unboxing our thinking, and handling.</p>  
+
 
<p> Holotopia's [[Holotopia:The Box|Box]] is an object designed for 'initiation' to <em>holotopia</em>, a way to help us 'unbox' our conception of the world and see, think and behave differently; change course inwardly, by embracing a new value.</p>  
+
<h3>A way out</h3>
<p>We approach The Box from a specific interest, an issue we may care about—such as communication, or IT innovation, or the pursuit of happiness and the ways to improve the human experience, and the human condition. But when we follow our interest a bit deeper, by (physically) opening the box or (symbolically) considering the relevant insights that have been made—we find that there is a large obstacle, preventing our issue to be resolved. </p>  
+
 
<p>We also see  that by resolving this whole <em>new</em> issue, a much larger gains can be reached than what we originally anticipated and intended. And that there are <em>other</em> similar insights; and that they are all closely related.</p>
+
<p>That there is an unexpected, seemingly magical way into a new cultural and social reality is really good news. But is it realistic?</p>
 +
<p>We here carefully develop the analogy with Galilei's time, when a new <em>epistemology</em> was ready to change the world, but still kept in house arrest. All we need to do is to set it free.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<h3>The discovery of ourselves</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes the ending of <em>reification</em> (when we see ourselves <em>in the world</em>, we realize that we are not above it and observing it "objectively"); and the beginning of accountability (we see the world in dire need for creative action; and we see our own role in it).</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>This insight extends into ending of the <em>reification</em> of our personal preferences, feelings, tastes... <em>What we are able to</em> feel, think, create... is determined, to an astounding degree, by the degree in which our "human quality" has been developed. And our ability to develop it depends in an overwhelming degree on the way in which our culture has been developed.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<h3>The <em>academia</em>'s situation</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes also the <em>academia</em>'s situation, just as the bus with candle headlights symbolizes our civilization's situation. The point is that the hitherto development of the academic tradition brought us there, in front of the <em>mirror</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>An enormous liberation of our creative abilities results when we realize they must not be confined to traditional disciplinary pursuits and routines. </p>  
 +
 
 +
<p>Especially important is the larger understanding of <em>information</em> that the self-reflection in front of the <em>mirror</em> brings us to; <em>information</em> is no longer only printed text; it includes <em>any</em> artifacts that embody human experience, refined by human ingenuity. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3> Occupy the university</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Who holds 'Galilei in house arrest'</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We don't need to occupy Wall Street. The key is in another place.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We really just need to occupy our own profession—by continuing the tradition that our great predecessors have created.</p>  
 +
 
 +
<h3>A sand box</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em> we create a 'sandbox'; that's really the <em>holotopia</em> project. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>Note: on the other side of the <em>mirror</em> the contributions of Jantsch and Engelbart are seen as <em>fundamental</em> (they were drafting, and <em>creating</em> strategically, a new 'collective mind'). </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>See the description of 'sandbox' in our contribution  [https://holoscope.info/2013/06/22/enabling-social-systemic-transformations-2/ Enabling Social-Systemic Transformations] to the 2013 conference "Transformations in a Changing Climate"</p>  
 +
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vocabulary</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Ten themes|Ten themes]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>Science was not an exception; <em>every</em> new paradigm brings with it a new way of speaking; and a new way of looking at the world.</p>  
+
<p>The <em>five insights</em>, and the ten direct relationships between them, provide us reference—in the context of which some of the age-old challenges are understood and handled in entirely new ways.</p>  
<p>The following collection of <em>keywords</em> will provide an alternative, and a bit more academic and precise entry point to <em>holoscope</em> and <em>holotopia</em>.</p>
+
 
 +
<h3>How to put an end to war</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Consider, for instance, this age-old question: "How to put an end to war?" So far our progress on this all-important frontier has largely been confined to palliative measures; and ignored those far more interesting <em>curative</em> ones. What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war, once and for all?</p>
 +
<p>When this question is considered in the context of two direction-changing insights, <em>power structure</em> and <em>socialized reality</em>, we become ready to see the whole compendium of questions related to justice, power and freedom in a <em>completely</em> 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". We then become ready to redeem the best sides of ourselves from the <em>power structure</em>, and apply them toward true betterment of our condition.</p>  
  
<h3><em>Wholeness</em></h3>
+
<h3>Religion beyond belief</h3>  
<p>We define <em>wholeness</em> as the quality that distinguishes a healthy organism, or a well-configured and well-functioning machine. <em>Wholeness</em> is, more simply, the condition or the order of things which is, from an <em>informed</em> perspective, worthy of being aimed for and worked for.</p>
+
<p>Or think about religion—which has in traditional societies served to bind each person with "human quality", and the people together into a culture or a society. But which is in modern times all too often associated with dogmatic beliefs, and inter-cultural conflicts.</p>  
<p>The idea of <em>wholeness</em> is illustrated by the bus with candle headlights. The bus is not <em>whole</em>. Even a tiny piece can mean a world of difference. </p>
+
<p>When religion is, however, considered in the context provided by <em>socialized reality</em> and <em>convenience paradox</em>, a whole <em>new</em> possibility emerges—where <em>religion</em> no longer is an instrument of <em>socialization</em>—but of <em>liberation</em>; and as an essential way to cultivate our personal and communal <em>wholeness</em>.</p>  
<p>While the <em>wholeness</em> of a mechanism is secured by just all its parts being in place, cultural and human <em>wholeness</em> are <em>never</em> completed; there is always more that can be discovered, and aimed for. This makes the notion of <em>wholeness</em> especially suitable for motivating <em>cultural revival</em> and <em>human development</em>, which is our stated goal.</p>  
+
<p>A <em>natural</em> strategy for remedying religion-related dogmatic beliefs and inter-cultural conflicts emerges—to <em>evolve</em> religion further!</p>  
  
<h3><em>Tradition</em> and <em>design</em></h3>
+
<h3>The ten themes cover the <em>holotopia</em></h3>  
<p><em>Tradition</em> and <em>design</em> are two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>. <em>Tradition</em> relies on Darwinian-style evolution; <em>design</em> on awareness and deliberate action. When <em>tradition</em> can no longer be relied on, <em>design</em> must be used.</p>
+
<p>Of course <em>any</em> theme can be placed into the context of the <em>five insights</em>, and end up being seen and handled radically differently. To prime these eagerly sought-for conversations, we provided a selection of ten themes (related to the future of education, business, science, democracy, art, happiness...)  that—together with the <em>five insights</em>—cover the space of <em>holotopia</em> in sufficient detail to make it transparent and tangible.</p>
<p>As the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> might suggest, our contemporary situation may be understood as a precarious transition from one way of evolving to the next. We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; and we are not yet <em>designing</em>. Our situation can naturally be reversed by understanding our situation in a new way; by responding to its demands, and developing its opportunities. </p>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
  
<h3><em>Keyword</em> and <em>Prototype</em></h3>
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>dialogs</em></h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an art form</h3>
 +
<p>We make conversation themes alive through dialogs.</p> 
 +
<p>We turn conversations into artistic and media-enabled events (see the Earth Sharing <em>prototype</em> below).</p>
 +
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an attitude</h3>
 +
<p>The <em>dialog</em> is an integral part of the <em>holoscope</em>. Its role will be understood if we consider the human inclination to hold onto a certain <em>way</em> of seeing things, and call it "reality". And how much this inclination has been misused by various social groups to bind us to themselves, and more recently by various modern <em>power structures</em>. (Think, for instance, about the animosity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.)</p>
 +
<p>The attitude of the <em>dialog</em> may be understood as an antidote.</p>
  
<p>The <em>keywords</em> are concepts created by <em>design</em>. We shall see exactly how. For now, it is sufficient to keep in mind that we need to interpret them not as they what they "are", according to <em>tradition</em>, but as used and defined in this text. Until we find a better solution, we distinguish the <em>keywords</em> by writing them in italics.</p>  
+
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an age-old tradition</h3>  
<p>The core of our proposal is to "restore agency to information, and power to knowledge". When <em>Information</em> is conceived of an instrument to interact with the world around us—then <em>information</em> cannot be only results of observing the world; it cannot be confined to  academic books and articles. The <em>prototypes</em> serve as models, as experiments, and as interventions.</p>  
+
<p>The dialogues of Socrates marked the very inception of the academic tradition. More recently, David Bohm gave the evolution of the dialogue a new and transformative direction. Bohm's dialogues are a form of collective therapy. Instead of arguing their points, the participants practice "proprioception" (mindfully observe their reactions), so that they may ultimately listen without judging, and co-create a space where new and transformative ideas can emerge.</p>  
 +
<p>We built on this tradition and developed a collection of <em>prototypes</em>—which <em>holotopia</em> will use as construction material, and build further.</p>  
  
<h3><em>Human development</em> and <em>cultural revival</em> as ways to <em>change course</em></h3>
 
<p>We adopt these <em>keywords</em> from Aurelio Peccei, and use them exactly as he did. </p> 
 
</div> </div>
 
  
<div class="row">
+
<h3>We employ contemporary media</h3>
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A prototype</h2></div>
+
<p>The use of contemporary media opens up a whole new chapter, or dimension, in the story of the <em>dialog</em>. </p>  
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<p>Through suitable use of the camera, the <em>dialog</em> can be turned into a mirror—mirroring our dysfunctional communication habits; our turf strifes.</p>  
<p>We develop <em>holotopia</em> as a <em>prototype</em>. And the <em>holoscope</em> as a <em>prototype</em> 'headlights'—the leverage point, the natural way to <em>change course</em>. </p>  
+
<p>By using Debategraph and other "dialog mapping" online tools, the <em>dialog</em> can be turned into a global process of co-creation of meaning.</p>  
<p>The Holotopia <em>prototype</em> is not only a description, but also and most importantly it already <em>is</em> "a way to change course". </p>  
 
  
<h3>A strategy</h3>
+
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> as <em>spectacle</em></h3>
 +
<p>The <em>holotopia</em> dialogs will have the nature of <em>spectacles</em>—not the kind of spectacles fabricated by the media, but <em>real</em> ones. To the media spectacles, they present a real and transformative alternative.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>dialogs</em> we initiate are a re-creation of the conventional "reality shows"—which show the contemporary reality in ways that <em>need</em> 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.</p>
 +
<p>When successful, the result is most timely and informative: We are <em>witnessing</em> the changing of our understanding and handling of a core issue.</p>
 +
<p>When unsuccessful, the result is most timely and informative in a <em>different</em> way: We are witnessing our resistances and our blind spots, our clinging to the obsolete forms of thought.</p>
 +
<p>Occasionally we publish books about those themes, based on our <em>dialogs</em>, and to begin new ones.</p>  
  
<p>The strategy that defines the Holotopia project—to focus on the natural and easy way, on changing the whole thing—has  its own inherent logic and "leverage points": Instead of occupying Wall Street, changing the relationship we have with information emerges as an easier, more natural and far more effective strategy. Just as it was in Galilei's time. </p>  
+
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an instrument of change</h3>
 +
<p>This point cannot be overemphasized: Our <em>primary</em> goal is not to warn, inform, propose a new way to look at the world—but <em>to change our collective mind</em>. Physically. The <em>dialog</em> is the medium for that change. </p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
We organize public dialogs about the <em>five insights</em>, and other themes related to change, in order to <em>make</em> change.</blockquote>  
  
<p>As an academic initiative, to give our society a new capability, to 'connect the dots' and see things whole, <em>knowledge federation</em> brings to this strategy a collection of technical assets. Their potential to make a difference may be understood with the help of the <em>elephant</em> metaphor.</p>  
+
<p>Here the medium in the truest sense is the message: By developing <em>dialogs</em>, we re-create our <em>collective mind</em>—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 <em>inciting, planning and coordinating action</em>.</p>
 +
<p>In the <em>holotopia</em> scheme of things everything is a <em>prototype</em>. The <em>prototypes</em> are not final results of our efforts, they are a means to an end—which is to <em>rebuild</em> the public sphere; to <em>reconfigure</em> our <em>collective mind</em>. The role of the <em>prototypes</em> is to prime this process.</p
 +
</div> </div>  
  
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>elephant</em></h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
 
[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
Line 289: Line 1,017:
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<p>Imagine visionary thinkers as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear them talk about "a fan", and "a water hose" and and "a tree trunk". They don't make sense, and we ignore them.</p>  
+
<h3>The <em>elephant</em></h3>
<p>Everything changes when we understand that what they are really talking about are the ear, the trunk and the leg of an exotic animal—which is enormously large! And of the kind that nobody has seen! </p>
+
<p>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.</p>  
<p>The <em>elephant</em> symbolizes the <em>paradigm</em> that is now ready to emerge among us, as soon as we begin to 'connect the dots'. Unlike the sensations we are accustomed to see on TV, the <em>elephant</em> is not only more spectacular, but also incomparably more relevant. <em>And</em> as we shall see in quite a bit of detail, it gives relevance, meaning and agency to academic insights and contributions. </p>  
+
<p>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 <em>order of things</em>, or cultural and social <em>paradigm</em>! </p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A spectacle</h3>
 +
<p>The effect of the <em>five insights</em> is to <em>orchestrate</em> 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.</p>
 +
<p>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 <em>agency</em>!</p>  
 +
 
 +
<h3>Post-post-structuralism</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The structuralists undertook to bring rigor to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts, by observing that <em>there is no</em> such thing as "real meaning"; and that the meaning of cultural artifacts is open to interpretation.</p>
 +
<p>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 <em>saw something</em> that invited a different interpretation and way of thinking than what was common; and did what he could to explain it within the <em>old</em> 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 <em>paradigm</em></p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>A parable</h3>
 +
<p>While the view of the <em>elephant</em> is composed of a large number of stories, one of them—the story 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'.</p>
 +
<p>This story also inspired us to use this metaphor: Engelbart saw 'the elephant' <em>already in 1951</em>—and spent a six decades-long career to show him to us. And yet he passed away with only a meager (computer) mouse in his hand (to his credit)!</p> 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>holoscope</em></h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Seeing things whole</h3>
 +
<p>Peccei concluded his analysis in "One Hundred  Pages for the Future":
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The arguments posed in the preceding pages [...] 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>.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
</p> 
 +
<p>In the context of Holotopia, we refer to <em>knowledge federation</em> by its pseudonym [[Holotopia: Holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]], to highlight one of its distinguishing characteristics—it helps us see things whole. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Different from the sciences that have been "zooming in" (toward finer technical details); and promoting a <em>fixed</em> way of looking at the world (a domain of interest, a terminology and a set of methods being what <em>defines</em> a scientific discipline); and the informing media's focus on specific spectacular events, the <em>holoscope</em> allows us to <em>chose</em> our <em>scope</em> –"what is being looked at and how".</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
 
 +
<p>We bring together stories (elsewhere called <em>vignettes</em>)—which share the core insights of leading contemporary thinkers. We tell their stories.</p>
 +
<p>They become 'dots' to connect in our <em>dialogs</em>.</p>
 +
<p>They also show what obstructed our evolution (the emergence of <em>holotopia</em>). </p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Ideograms</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Art meets science</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Placeholder. The point is enormous—<em>federation</em> of insights, connecting the dots, not only or even primarily results in rational insights. It results in <em>implicit information</em>; we are undoing our <em>socialization</em>! </p>
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:H side.png]]<br>
 +
<small>A paper model of a sculpture, re-imaging the <em>five insights</em> and their relationships.</small>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>The <em>ideograms</em> condense lots of insights into a simple image, ready to be grasped. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>As the above image may suggest, the pentagram—as the basic icon or 'logo' of <em>holotopia</em>—lends itself to a myriad re-creations. We let the above image suggest that a multiplicity of ideas can be condensed to a simple image (the pentagram); and how this image can be  expanded into a multiplicity of artistic creations.</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Keywords</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>The Renaissance, and also science, brought along a whole new way of speaking—and hence a new way to look at the world. With each of the <em>five insights</em> we introduce a collection of <em>keywords</em>, in terms of which we come to understand the core issues in new ways.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>keywords</em> will also allow us to propose solutions to the anomalies that the <em>five insights</em> bring forth.</p> 
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>Information has agency only when it has a way to impact our actual physical reality. A goal of the Holotopia project is to co-create <em>prototypes</em>—new elements of our new reality. We share the <em>prototypes</em> we've already developed, to put the ball in play.</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Earth Sharing <em>prototype</em></h2></div>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>These titles will change</h2></div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<h3>Art leads science</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>How the action began... </p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Seeing differently</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Up and down</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>The vault</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Precious space for reflection—where the stories are told, and insights begin to take shape.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Holotopia is an art project</h3>
 +
<p>The Holotopia is an art project. We are reminded of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the heart of the old world order planting the seeds of the new one.</p>
 +
<p>Duchamp's (attempted) exhibition of a urinal challenged what art may be, and contributed to the legacy that the modern art was built on. Now our conditions demand that we deconstruct the deconstruction—and begin to <em>construct</em> anew. </p>
 +
<p>What will the art associated with the <em>next</em> Renaissance be like? We offer <em>holotopia</em> as a creative space where the new art can emerge.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 +
<br>
 +
<small>A snapshot of Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen.</small>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>Henri Lefebvre summarized the most vital of Karl Marx's objections to capitalism, by observing that capital (machines, tools, materials...) or "investments" are products of past work, and hence represent "dead labour". That in this way past activity "crystalyzes, as it were, and becomes a precondition for new activity." And that under capitalism, "what is dead takes hold of what is alive"</p>
 +
<p>Lefebvre proposes 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.</p>
 +
<p>As the above image may suggest, the <em>holotopia</em> artists still produce art objects; but they are used as pieces in a larger whole— which is a <em>space</em> where transformation happens. A space where the creativity of the artist can cross-fertilize with the insights of the scientist, to co-create a new reality that none of them can create on her own.  Imagine it as a space, akin to a new continent or a "new world" that's just been discovered—which combines physical and virtual spaces, suitably interconnected. </p>  
  
<h3>A <em>dialog</em></h3>
+
<h3>Going online</h3>  
<p>This point cannot be overemphasized: The immediate goal of the Holotopia <em>prototype</em> is <em>not</em> to get  the proposed ideas accepted. Rather, it is to develop a <em>dialog</em> around them. Our strategy is to put forth a handful of insights that are <em>in the real sense</em> sensational—and to organize a structured conversation around them. </p>
 
<p>That structured conversation, that public <em>dialog</em>, constitutes the 'construction project' by which 'the headlights' are rebuilt!</p>  
 
  
<h3>A tactical detail</h3>
+
<p>Debategraph was not yet implemented. But David was there!</p>  
<p>To deflect the ongoing <em>power structure</em> devolution, we provide an arsenal of tactical tools, one of which must be mentioned early: Our invitation to a <em>dialog</em> is an invitation to abandon the usual fighting stance, and speak and collaborate in an <em>authentic</em> way. The <em>dialog</em> will evolve together with suitable technical instruments, including video and other forms of recording as corrective feedback.</p>
 
<!-- <p><em>Attrape-nigaud</em> is a French phrase for tactical contraptions of this kind.</p> -->
 
  
<h3>A step toward <em>academic</em> revival</h3>
 
<p>A <em>cultural revival</em> requires an <em>academic</em> revival—where a 'change of course' perceived as purpose, serves to give new notions of impact and agency to academic work. </p>
 
<p>Here is how this may fit into the existing streams of thought. </p>
 
<p> The structuralists attempted to give rigor to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" this attempt—by showing that writings of historical thinkers, and indeed <em>all</em> cultural artifacts, <em>have no</em> "real" interpretation. And that they are, therefore, subject to <em>free</em> interpretation.</p>
 
<p>The new relationship with information, which we are proposing, sets the stage for taking this line of development a step further: Instead of asking what, for instance, Pierre Bourdieu "really" saw and wanted to say, we acknowledge that he probably saw something that was <em>not</em> as we were inclined to believe; and that he struggled to understand and communicate what he saw in the manner of speaking of our traditional <em>order of things</em>, where what he saw could not fit in. </p>
 
<p>So we can now consider Bourdieu's work as a piece in a completely <em>new</em> puzzle—a <em>new</em> societal <em>order of things</em>. To which we have given the pseudonym <em>holotopia</em>.  </p>
 
<p>By placing the work of social scientists into that new context, we give their insights a completely <em>new</em> life; and a completely <em>new</em> degree of relevance. We show how this can be done without a single bit sacrificing rigor, but indeed—with a new degree of rigor and a new <em>kind of</em> rigor.</p>
 
 
</div> </div>
 
</div> </div>
  
Leftovers are in [[Clippings]].
+
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<!--
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
The key novelty in the <em>holoscope</em> is the capability it affords to deliberately choose the way in which we look at an issue or situation, which we call <em>scope</em>. Just as the case is when inspecting a hand-held cup to see if it is whole or cracked, and in projective geometry, the art of using the <em>holoscope</em> will to a large degree consist in finding suitable ways of looking—which show the <em>whole</em> from all sides, and afford a correct "big picture"</em>
 +
 
 +
<p>Especially valuable will be those <em>scopes</em> that illuminate what our habitual ways of looking left in the dark.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>This capability, to create <em>views</em> by choosing <em>scopes</em> on any desired level of detail, adds to our work with contemporary issues a whole new 'dimension' or "degree of freedom"—where we <em>choose</em> what we perceive as issues; so that the issues <em>can</em> be resolved, and <em>wholeness</em> can be restored. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>Thinking outside the box</h3>
 +
<p>That we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them is a commonplace. But this presents a challenge when academic rigor needs to be respected.</p>
 +
<
 +
<p>While we did our best to ensure that the presented views accurately represent what might result when we 'connect the dots' or <em>federate</em> published insights and other relevant cultural artifacts, <em>we do not need to make such claims</em>; and we are not making them. It is a <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing; it is the <em>methodology</em> by which our views are created that gives them rigor—as "rigor" is understood in the <em>paradigm</em>.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>methodology</em> itself is, to the best of our knowledge, flawlessly rigorous and coherent. But we don't need to make that claim either.</p>
 +
<p><em>Everything</em> here is offered as a collection of [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]]. The point is to show <em>what might result</em> if we changed the relationship we have with information, and developed, both academically and on a society-wide scale, the approach to information and knowledge we are proposing.</p>
 +
<p>Our goal when presenting them is to initiate the <em>dialogs</em> and other social processes that constitute that development.</p>
 +
 
 +
-------
 +
 
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>prototype</em> is conceived as a portfolio of about forty smaller <em>prototypes</em>, which cover the range of questions that define an academic field—from epistemology and methods, to social organization and applications.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>We use our main keyword, <em>knowledge federation</em>, in a similar way as the words "design" and "architecture" are used—to signify both a <em>praxis</em> (informed practice), and an academic field that develops it and curates it.</p>
 +
 
 +
-------
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<p>To see what all this practically means, in the context of our theme (we are <em>federating</em> Peccei), we invite you to follow us in a brief thought experiment. We'll pay a short visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we are using the image of a cathedral as an <em>ideogram</em>—to correct the proportions, and  "see things whole".</p>
 +
<p>So there is architecture, which inspires awe. We hear music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And there is the ritual...</p>
 +
<p>But there is also a little book on each bench. Its first few paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
 +
<p>Let this difference in size, between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—the cathedral as a whole, with its physical objects and the activities it provides a space for—point to the difference in <em>importance</em> between the factual explanations of the mechanisms of nature and <em>our culture as a whole</em>, relative to our theme, the "human quality". For <em>there can be no doubt</em> that a function of the cathedral—<em>and</em> of culture—is to nourish the "human quality" in a certain specific ways.  By providing a certain <em>symbolic environment</em>, in which certain ethical and emotional dispositions can grow. Notice that we are only pointing to a <em>function</em>, without making any value judgement of its results. </p>
 +
<p>The question is—How, and by whom, is the evolution of culture secured today? <em>Who</em> has the prerogative of <em>socializing</em> people in our own time?</p>
 +
<p>The answer is obvious; it suffices to look around. All the advertising, however, is only a tip of an iceberg—comprised by various instruments of <em>symbolic power</em>, by which our choices are directed and our values modified—to give us the "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow.</p>
 +
<p>The ethical and legal norms we have do not protect us from this dependence. </p>
 +
<p>The humanities researchers are, of course, well aware of this. But the "objective observer" role to which the academic researchers are confined, and the fact that "the tie between information and action is broken",  makes this all but irrelevant.</p>
 +
<p>While most of us still consider ourselves as "rational decision makers", who can simply "feel" their "real interests" or "needs" and bring them to the market of goods, or as voters to the market of political agendas (which will like a perfect scale secure justice by letting the largest ones prevail), the businesses and the politicians know better. <em>Scientific</em> means are routinely used by their advisers, to manipulate our choices.</p>
 +
 
 +
------
 +
 
 +
  however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.
 +
 
 +
-------
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
 +
 
 +
<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
 +
<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
 +
<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p> 
 +
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 +
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 +
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 +
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 +
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 +
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 +
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
 +
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 +
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
 +
<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of  publicly supported intellectuals. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
 +
<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
 +
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
 +
<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
 +
<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
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<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>
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<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
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<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>
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<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
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<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>
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<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.  
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Revision as of 09:38, 11 August 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


Scope

The question we'll explore here is the one posed by the Modernity ideogram: How do we need to "look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it".

We build part of our case for the holoscope and the holotopia by developing an analogy between the last "great cultural revival", where a fundamental change of the way we look at the world (from traditional/Biblical, to rational/scientific) effortlessly caused nearly everything to change. Notice that to meet that sort of a change, we do not need to convince the political and business leaders, we do not need to occupy Wall Street. It is the prerogative of our, academic occupation to uphold and update and give to our society this most powertful agent of change—the standard of "right" knowledge.


Diagnosis

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

Of course, countess books and articles have been written that could inform an answer to this most timely question. But no consensus has emerged—or even a consensus about a method by which that could be achieved.

That being the case, we'll begin this diagnostic process by simply sharing what we've been told while we were growing up. Which is roughly as follows.

As members of the homo sapiens species, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to understand the world, and to make rational choices based on such understanding. Give us a correct model of the natural world, and we'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "our needs", which we of course know because we can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to the ghost to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error. It removed the "ghost", and told us how 'the machine' really works.

Of course no rational person would ever write this sort of a silly idea. But—and this is a key point in this diagnosis—this idea was not written. It has simply emerged—around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes were replaced for so many of us by Darwin and Newton. Science originated, and shaped its disciplinary divisions and procedures before that time, while still the tradition and the Church had the prerogative of telling people how to see the world, and what values to uphold.

From a collection of reasons why this popular idea of what constitutes the "scientific worldview" needs to be updated, we here mention only two.

Heisenberg–frame.jpeg

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

The mechanistic or "classical" worldview of 19th century's science was disproved and disowned by modern science. Even the physical reality cannot be understood as a mechanism, or explained in "classical" or "causal" terms. Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be on popular culture—because the way of looking at the world that it took over from the 19th century's science, which he called the "narrow frame" (and which we adapted as a keyword), would be removed.

In "Physics and Philosophy" Heisenberg described how the destruction of religious and other traditions on which the continuation of culture and "human quality" depended, and the dominance of "instrumental" thinking and values (which Bauman called "adiaphorisation") followed from the assumptions that the modern physics proved were wrong.

In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr, Heisenberg's intellectual "heir", co-authored the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message was "We have to learn to think in a new way". The new way of thinking, conspicuously impregnated by "seeing things whole" and seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, was shown to follow from the worldview of new physics, and the environmental and larger social crisis.

The second reason is that even mechanisms, when they are complex, (or technically even classical nonlinear and dynamic or "complex" systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.

This is yet another core insight that we the people needed to acquire from the systems sciences, and from cybernetics in particular.

MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg

It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There is a scientific reason for that: The "hell" (which you may imagine as the global issues, or as the destination toward which our 'bus' is currently taking us) consisting largely of "side effects" of our best efforts, and "solutions". <p> Hear Mary Catherine Bateson (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, and the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:

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


Remedy

The remedy we proposed is to spell out the rules, by defining a general-purpose methodology as a convention; and by turning it into a prototype and developing it continuously—to represent the state of the art of relevant knowledge, and technology.

Our prototype is called Polyscopic Modeling methodology, and nicknamed polyscopy.

This approach allows us to specify what "being informed" means (by claiming it not as a "fact about reality", but as a convention, and part of a practical toolkit). In polyscopy, the intuitive notion, when one may be considered "informed", is made concrete by the technical keyword gestalt; one is informed, if one has a gestalt that is appropriate to one's situation. An appropriate gestalt interprets a situation in a way that points to right action—and you'll easily recognize now that we'll be using this idea all along, by rendering our general situation as the Modernity ideogram, and our academic one as the Mirror ideogram. Suitable techniques for communicating and 'proving' or justifying such claims are offered, most of which are developed by generalizing the standard toolkit of science.

Most of the design patterns of this methodology prototype are federated; and we here give a single example of a source, to point in a brief and palpable way to some of the important nuances, and to give due credit.

A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming, when the buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to understand and correct. The story is interesting, but here we only highlight the a couple of main points and lessons learned.

Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg

They are drawn from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Old-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard. The first one is that—to understand a complex system—abstraction must be used. We must be able to create concepts on distinct levels of generality, representing also distinct angles of looking (which, you'll recall, we called aspects). But that is exactly the core point of polyscopy, suggested by the methodology's very name.

The second point we'd like to highlight is is the accountability for the method. Any sufficiently complete programming language including the native "machine language" of the computer will allow the programmers to create any sort of program. The creators of the "programming methodologies", however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would not only enable them, but even compel them to write comprehensible, reusable, well-structured code. To see how this reflects upon our theme at hand, our proposal to add systemic self-organization to the academia's repertoire of capabilities, imagine that an unusually gifted young man has entered the academia; to make the story concrete, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. Young Bourdieu will spend a lifetime using the toolkit the academia has given him. Imagine if what he produces, along with countless other selected creative people, is equivalent to "spaghetti code" in computer programming! Imagine the level of improvement that this is pointing to!


The object oriented methodology provided a template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without inspecting the details of its code! (But those details are made available for inspection; and of course also for continuous improvement.)


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

When the circle is a gestalt, it allows this to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into higher-level insights; and it allows various and heterogeneous insights on which it is based to remain 'hidden', but available for inspection, in the square. When the circle is a prototype it allows the multiplicity of insights that comprise the square to have a direct systemic impact, or agency.

Information.jpg
Information ideogram


The prototype polyscopic book manuscript titled "Information Must Be Designed" book manuscript is structured as an information holon. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is justified in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it.

It is customary in computer methodology design to propose a programming language that implements the methodology—and to bootstrap the approach by creating a compiler for that language in the language itself. In this book we did something similar. The book's four chapters present four angles of looking at the general issue of information, identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the design patterns of the proposed methodology. The book then uses the methodology to justify the claim that motivates it—that makes a case for the proposed paradigm, by using the paradigm. </div> </div>