Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<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>
 
<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>
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<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>
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<p>The purpose of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is to
  
 
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[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
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<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on culture. And on "human quality".</p>  
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<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>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>  
  
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<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>  
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> those people love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them was to 'pull the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is more closely inspected, it becomes clear that also its 'brakes' are dysfunctional.</p>  
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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 urgent task on evolutionary agenda—empower us to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>?</p>  
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<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" as institution 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>  
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<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>Why?</p>  
  
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> followed the general trend, and became a <em>power structure</em>. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.</p>  
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<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.   
 
<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> that something is true?" led to certain "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, or that is in any case how 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 academically correct or qualified way in <em>any</em> domain.</p>  
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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>In the opening paragraph of this website we brought up the image of Galilei in house arrest, to pointe out that this fundamental and seemingly only "philosophical" pursuit has a tremendous power. 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. "A great cultural revival" was a result. In the opening of our website we asked "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" </p>  
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<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>In what follows we offer an affirmative answer to that question.</p>  
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<p>We began our presentation of <em>knowledge federation</em> by asking "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" </p>  
  
<p>In what follows you will recognize <em>the core of our proposal</em>—we'll propose to change the relationship we have with information. But here we'll make a case for that proposal on fundamental or <em>academic</em> grounds.</p>  
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<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
  
<blockquote>The spontaneous pursuit of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> has brought us to a point where changing the relationship we have with information has become immanent—also for intrinsic or <em>fundamental</em> reasons.</blockquote>
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<p>Here is why we felt confident in drafting an affirmative answer to this rhetorical question.</p>  
 
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 
  
<p>Early in the course of 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>  
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<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 myth incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the purpose of information, and of knowledge, is to allow us to know the reality "objectively", as it truly is. </p>  
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<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>  
 
<blockquote>The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.</blockquote>  
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<p>There is simply no way, scientists found out, to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing.</p>  
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<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>
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<p>How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?</p>
  
<p>So what, then, are the origins of our "reality picture"? How do we decide whether something is "true"?</p>
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<p>Reality, reported scientists and philosophers, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </p>  
  
<p>"Reality", it has been reported, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>create</em>. Hence we shall from here on prefer to use the verb, <em>reification</em>. </p>
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<p>Part of this construction is a function of our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense, and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it. Through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—as our culture defines it. As everyone knows, every "normal human being" sees the reality as it truly is. Wasn't that the reason why our ancestors often considered the members of a neighboring tribes, who saw the reality differently, as not completely normal; and why they treated them as not completely human?</p>  
<p>Part of our "reality construction" is performed by 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; and through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—the way of our culture.</p>  
 
  
<p>There are at least two reasons why we should not waste more time, but abandon this dangerous "reality myth" as we abandoned other such myths and prejudices from the past. </p>  
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<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served. </p>  
  
<p>To see the first, we invite you to a simple, one-minute thought experiment. We invite you to follow us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this has nothing to do with religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our metaphorical images or <em>ideograms</em>, to help us see things in proportion and make a point.</p>  
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<p>To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our <em>ideograms</em>, to put things in proportion and make a point.</p>  
  
<p>What strikes us, as we enter, is the architecture, which inspires awe. We hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are frescos by masters of old on the walls. If the cathedral of your choice is the St. Peter's in Rome, then Michelangelo's frescos are near. And there is the ritual...</p>  
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<p>What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...</p>  
<p>There is also a little book on each bench. Its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>  
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<p>We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>  
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—point to the difference in the importance of the roles of the factual or "objective" information—and the one that is <em>implicit</em> in everything else we call "culture"—whose role is to create (let's call it that) a <em>symbolic environment</em> by which our <em>socialization</em> takes place. By which our inclinations to feel and think in a certain way, and our values and our "human quality" are created. We are making no value judgment, and you should not do that either. We are only pointing to a role or a <em>function</em>.</p>  
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<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on <em>explaining</em> how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to <em>socialize</em> people in a certain specific way. To <em>create</em> certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.</p>  
  
<p>What happens with this function when we, considering the <em>worldview</em> to be the point, replace the worldview of the tradition with the "scientific" one? Who becomes responsible for our <em>socialization</em>? The answer is obvious. A superficial look around will suffice to see just how much our contemporary <em>symbolic environment</em> is a product of advertising—whose function is to give us the kind of "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow; and not to help us become the kind of people who will <em>make things whole</em>.  But explicit advertising is, of course, only a tip of an iceberg, through which our <em>socialization</em> is takes place.</p>  
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<p>The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even <em>try</em> to make this a scientific and political issue.</p>  
  
<p>So the first reason why we need to abandon the "reality myth" is that it it alienates us from a lion's share of our cultural heritage—and makes us abandon the creation of culture and "human quality" to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
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<p>So how <em>are</em> our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the <em>symbolic environment</em>  we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are <em>socialized</em> to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things <em>whole</em>".</p>  
  
<p>The second reason is the role in which "constructed reality" plays within the <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
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<p>By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. <em>And</em> we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
  
<p>It could be sufficient for our purpose to only point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann pointed out that throughout history, the "universal theories" (about the nature of reality and how it is to be understood) have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme being central to <em>holotopia</em>, we here give a gist of a more thorough explanation.</p>  
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<p>To see our second point, that reality construction is a key instrument of the <em>power structure</em>, and hence of power, it may be sufficient to point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann explained how throughout history, the "universal theories" about the nature of reality have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme is central to <em>holotopia</em>, and here too we can only get a glimpse of a solution by looking at deeper dynamics and causes.</p>  
  
<p>This being only a teaser and a summary, we do that by giving only broad contours of a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> and strung together to compose a larger insight.</p>   
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<p>To be able to do that we devised a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> are strung together to compose a larger insight.</p>   
  
<p>The first <em>vignette</em> in this <em>thread</em> is a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors, aging Odin the Horse and New Horse, are engaged in turf strife. We'll ask you to just imagine their long hairs waving in the wind, and their display of power—as Odin, who had been the stallion and the king of the turf, tries to keep New Horse away from his mares.</p>  
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<p>The first <em>vignette</em> describes a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors—aging Odin the Horse, and New Horse who is just being introduced to the herd where Odin is the stallion and the leader—are engaged in turf strife. It will be suffice to just imagine these two horses running side by side, with their long hairs waving in the wind, Odin pushing New Horse toward the river, and away from his pack of mares.</p>  
  
 
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<p>The second story involves 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 how it works through creation and use of what he called "symbolic power". Our point will be to combine these two stories, and show that "we have a problem" (or more to the point—that we need to see things in that way), which we have not yet seen and understood. We too are (need to see ourselves as) "territorial animals"; only our 'turf strifes' are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of the horses—just as much as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>  
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<p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>  
  
<p>Bourdieu has two keywords for this symbolic 'turf', "field" and "game", which he uses interchangeably. He calls it a "field"—to suggest both a field of activity such as an academic community or discipline or any other institution; <em>and</em> something akin to a gravitational field or a magnetic field—which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random behavior in a certain specific direction. When he refers to it as "game", he suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, and allowable 'moves', which serve to organize our 'turf strife' in some specific way.</p>  
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<p>Bourdieu devised two keywords for the symbolic cultural 'turf'" "field" and "game", and used them interchangeably. He called it a "field", to suggest (1) a field of activity or profession, and the <em>system</em> where it is practiced; and (2)  something akin to a magnetic field, in which we people are immersed as small magnets, and which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random or "free" movement. He referred to it as "game", to suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, with allowable 'moves', by which our 'turf strife' is structured in a specific way.</p>  
  
<p>To explain the mechanism by which the <em>symbolic power</em> induces a field, Bourdieu uses additional two keywords, which have a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". The habitus includes embodied behaviors and predispositions, which are part of everyone's 'role' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do its pages. The doxa refers to a form of experience, or a belief, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" is a related terms, where multiple "realities" are acknowledged to coexist, of which only one is the "right" one. Doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives. Here we may complete this brief sketch by observing that the habitus is an instrument, by which the positions on the symbolic 'turf' are maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too). Doxa then serves as cement, to make it all stable and permanent.</p>  
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<p>To explain the dynamics of the game or the field, Bourdieu adapted two additional keywords, each of which has a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". A habitus is composed of embodied behavioral predispositions, and may be thought of as distinct 'roles' or 'avatars' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do his pages. The habitus is routinely maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too), without conscious intention or awareness. Doxa is the belief, or embodied experience, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" acknowledges that multiple "realities" coexist, of which only a single one is "right"; doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives.</p>
  
<p>Antonio Damasio completes this <em>thread</em> as a cognitive neuroscientist, to help us see that these "embodied predispositions" reach far deeper and wider into our cognitive structure and inclinations than what was believed earlier. That they act as a cognitive filter—determining our priorities, and even <em>what</em> we may consciously consider as possible. (Why, for instance, we don't consider the option of taking off our pajamas and running into the street naked.)</p>  
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<p>Hence we may understand <em>socialized reality</em> as something that 'gamifies' our social behavior, by giving everyone an 'avatar' or a role, and a set of capabilities.  Doxa is the 'cement' that makes such <em>socialized reality</em> relatively permanent.</p>  
  
<p>And now our point.</p>  
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<p>A [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] involving Antonio Damasio as cognitive neuroscientist completes this <em>thread</em>, by helping us see that the "embodied predispositions" that are maintained in this way have a <em>decisive role</em>, contrary to what the 19th century science and indeed the core of our philosophical tradition made us believe. Damasio showed that our socialized <em>embodied</em> predispositions act as a cognitive filter—<em>determining</em> not only our priorities, but also the <em>options</em> we may be able to rationally consider. Our embodied, socialized predispositions are a reason, for instance, why we don't consider showing up in public naked (which in another culture might be normal). </p>  
  
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<p>This conclusion suggests itself: Changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>—however rational, and necessary, that may be—is for <em>similar</em> reasons inconceivable. </p>
  
<blockquote> In our hitherto modernization we have learned to harness the power of the rivers, the sun, the wind and the atom. What remained as our next task is to harness the power that has remained as the <em>largest</em> in our Earthly abode—the power of our socialization. It is the largest because it determines how all those other powers will be used. </blockquote>  
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<blockquote>We are incapable of changing our <em>systems</em>, because we have been <em>socialized</em> to accept them as reality.</blockquote>  
  
<p>The <em>socialized reality</em>, as we've just outlined it, is the reason why we, for instance, still use 'candles' as 'headlights'; we have <em>reified</em> them as such. For us, the candles <em>are</em> headlights. The work of journalists, and of scientists, is not a means to an end; science "is" what the scientists do, things like physics, biology and chemistry. </p>
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<p>We may now condense this diagnosis to a single keyword: <em>reification</em>. We are incapable of replacing 'candle headlights' because we have <em>reified</em> them as 'headlights'! "Science" has no systemic purpose. Science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing. Just as "journalism" is the profession we've inherited from the tradition. </p>
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<p>But <em>reification</em> reaches still deeper—to include the very <em>language</em> we use to organize our world. It includes the very concepts by which we frame our "issues". Ulrich Beck continued the above observation:</p>
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"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of <em>categories and basic assumptions</em> of classical social, cultural and political sciences."
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<p>Our social reality is kept from evolving by a doxa—which is deeply grounded in the way in which we see the function of information; and of knowledge.</p>  
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<p>We may now see not only our inherited physical institutions or <em>systems</em> as 'candles'—but also our inherited or socialized concepts, which determine the very <em>way</em> in which we look at the world.</p>  
  
<p>But if information and knowledge should now liberate us—as they did our ancestors following Galilei's time—then once again the very relationship we have with information will need to change.</p>
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<p><em>Reification</em> underlies <em>both</em> problems. It is what <em>keeps us</em> in 'iron cage'.</p>  
  
  
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<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
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<p>Notice the depth and the beauty of our challenge.</p>
  
<p>We use the <em>mirror</em> as metaphorical image, in a similar way as we use the bus with candle headlights, to point to the academic and cultural situation that resulted. The spontaneous pursuit of knowledge, and the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> that resulted, brought us to the <em>mirror</em>. The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes coming back to the original academic values, and ethos: self-reflection; and the Socratic dialog, about the meaning and purpose of what we do. But now in the light of <em>contemporary</em> knowledge of knowledge. It symbolizes also a new self-awareness and self-image that will result: We are not <em>above</em> the world, observing it "objectively"; we are <em>in</em> the world—and have a role in it.</p>  
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<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 may place this idea into existing philosophy of science with recourse to Herbert Simon's "Sciences of the Artificial". A new <em>kind of</em> science has emerged, Simon observed, which does not study natural phenomena but man-made things, to help people make them better. Examples include computer science and economics. Our point is that there is an urgent need for a new "science of the artificial"—where our handling of information will be handled in an organized, scientific way.</p>  
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<p>We <em>are</em> in a paradox; how can we ever come out?</p>  
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> as a symbol points out that <em>both</em> the epistemological state of the art <em>and</em> the situation our civilization is in demand that we do that. </p>  
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<p>The answer we proposed is in two steps.</p>  
  
<p>When we self-reflect in front of the <em>mirror</em> about the fundamental premises, we are compelled to replace "reality" as foundation for our work with information with <em>reification</em>—which denotes something we do. <em>We</em>, or our predecessors, have <em>created</em> the methods we used; they are not something that objectively existed, and was only discovered. </p>
 
  
<p>And when we also see the condition of the world we are in, we are compelled to replace <em>reification</em> with <em>accountability</em>. Realizing that the claim that we are only "doing our job", which means reporting "objectively" what we see—we also realize that we have a key role to play in the world in change; and we have to adapt to that role, to be able to perform in it successfully. </p>  
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<p>The <em>mirror</em> also stands for a surprising, seemingly magical solution to our cultural entanglement.</p>
 
  
<blockquote>We can go <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—and into a completely <em>new</em> academic and social reality.</blockquote>  
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<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>  
  
<p>This is done in three easy steps.</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>
+
<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>  
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>The first—what makes this apparent magic <em>academically</em> possible—is <em>truth by convention</em>. Quine identified it as a phase, and a sign of maturing, that every field of science goes through. <em>Truth by convention</em>, where we <em>postulate</em> the meaning of words by making a convention, is the natural alternative, and antidote, to <em>reification</em>. It is the natural "Archimedean point" for once again giving information, and knowledge, the power to "move the world". </em>.
 
  
<p>The next step is to use <em>truth by convention</em> to <em>postulate</em> an <em>epistemology</em>. In the <em>holoscope</em>, we postulated the <em>design epistemology</em>—which turns the "relationship we have with information" we are proposing into a convention. A convention is not a reality claim, so there is no need for consensus; the <em>holoscope</em> is simply a tool or a toolkit. <em>Truth by convention</em> is its principle of operation.</p>  
+
<p>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>  
  
<p>The third and last step is <em>methodology</em> definition—where we spell out the fundamental assumptions. At this point they become <em>known</em>; they become part of our "social contract"! We can then <em>define</em> what the word like "information" and "culture" mean, even give them purpose. Once again the consensus is not needed—such definitions are binding only <em>within</em> the <em>methodology</em>.</p>  
+
<p>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>  
  
<blockquote>This key step is not a deviation from the academic tradition—but its straight-line continuation.</blockquote>  
+
<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>The result is that the <em>academia</em> now has the historical privilege, and the obligation—because its social role, and because of the academic tradition it institutionalizes—to guide the society <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>. To <em>liberate</em> the "oppressed".</p>
 
  
<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, we find ourselves in a completely new academic and cultural reality—where we are free to, and empowered to, be creative in ways in which our new situation requires. We can
+
<p>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>
  
<ul>  
+
</div>  
<li><b>Liberate the academic researchers</b>—<em>the</em> key resource in these demanding times—from <em>reifying</em> their disciplines; and from the traditional "observer" role—and empower them to perceive themselves as <em>creators</em> and not mere <em>observers</em> of our world; and to create the <em>way</em> they do their work to begin with</li>  
+
<div class="col-md-3">
<li><b>Liberate the people</b> from <em>reification</em> the institutions—and hence from the <em>systems</em>, and the <em>power structure</em></li>  
+
<p>  
<li><b>Liberate the people</b> from <em>reification</em> of their "needs" and other forms of "reality" perception—and take up "human development", as we shall see later</blockquote>  </li>  
+
[[File:Mirror2.jpg]]<br>
<li><b>Liberate our language, and method, and worldview</b>  from the reification of inherited concepts—and empower us to create completely <em>new</em> ways of seeing the world, and speaking and acting</li>  
+
<small>Mirror <em>ideogram</em></small>  
</ul>  
+
</p>  
 +
</div> </div>  
  
<p>The concepts defined by convention are called <em>keywords</em>; we've been using them all along.</p>
 
  
<p>We turned "information" into a <em>keyword</em> by defining it as "recorded experience". The substance of <em>information</em>, according this definition, is not "reality" but human experience—where "experience" is interpreted in a most general sense, to include also results of academic work and other forms of insight as  (to use the colloquial phrase) "aha experiences". <em>Information</em> is, according to this definition, not only written text, but <em>any</em> artifacts that embody human experience.</p>  
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
  
<p><em>Information</em> includes also <em>prototypes</em>. Instead of only writing articles and <em>observing</em> the world—on the other side of the <em>mirror</em> the researchers can give their insights <em>direct</em> impact on systems. Hereby <em>information</em> is given agency; knowledge is given its power to make a difference.</p>  
+
<p>The answer, and the second step we are proposing, is unexpected; even seemingly impossible, or magical.</p>  
  
<blockquote>And to rebuild the <em>culture</em>.</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>We can go <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—into a completely <em>new</em> academic and social reality.</blockquote>  
  
<p>While we are eager to show our <em>prototype</em> portfolio to illustrate these abstract ideas and make them concrete, we leave that for the detailed modules and here only share two examples. They are both <em>keywords</em> and <em>prototypes</em>—because these two <em>keywords</em> have already been proposed to the academic communities they originally belong to, and proven to be well received and useful.</p>  
+
<p>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>We defined <em>design</em> as "alternative to <em>tradition</em>". By this definition, <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> are two alternative ways to secure the <em>wholeness</em> of the human systems and nature, where <em>tradition</em> relies on what's been inherited from the past and modifies it only exceptionally and carefully; and where <em>design</em> is the alternative—where we <em>consciously</em> and deliberately curate <em>wholeness</em>. The point of this definition is that in a post-traditional culture, or in other words in the "modernity", <em>tradition</em> no longer works, and <em>design</em> must be used. </p>  
+
<p>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>This leads to a more precise interpretation of the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our contemporary situation: We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; but we are not yet <em>designing</em>. Our contemporary difficulties are a result.</p>  
+
<p>Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:</p>  
 +
<blockquote>  
 +
"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."
 +
</blockquote>
  
<p>Our call to action can then be understood as a way to operationalize the key step—to modernize <em>information</em></p>  
+
<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>The second <em>keyword</em> is the definition of <em>implicit information</em> as <em>information</em> where no explicit claims are made; where human experience is coded, and embodied, in cultural artifacts of all kinds.</p>  
+
<p><em>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>We can now interpret our <em>cultural</em> situation by saying that while we've been focused on the <em>explicit</em>—on understanding how the world works etc.—we've been culturally dominated by the <em>implicit information</em>, and the "symbolic power" it embodies. This definition gives the <em>implicit information</em> citizenship rights—and empower us to treat it, and hence also <em>culture</em>, with the kind of thoroughness and care that have hitherto been reserved to traditional scientific pursuits.</p>
+
<p>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 research in the humanities will, of course, have a lead role to play. But to be able to do that—it needs to liberate itself <em>reifications</em>, and the observer role, and dare to <em>create</em> the methods that will give their findings the impact they need to have.</p>  
+
<p>The <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>How exactly this may need to be done is the next theme on our agenda.</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>  
  
</div> </div>  
+
<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>  
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<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>We have now come to the second half of this exploration of the <em>holotopia</em>'s philosophical underpinnings. We divided them by following, roughly, the traditional philosophical lines of division—so that <em>socialized reality</em> covered the "epistemology", while now w'll talk about "ontology". Ontology is the study of "what is" or of the "being", which then naturally leads to an understanding of the right information or knowledge, to inform us about what is. But here, as explained already, our orientation will be more practical, and we'll explore <b>how</b> we may need to "look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it". When we opened this introduction to <em>holotopia</em> by comparing our present way of looking at the world with a pair of candle headlights, we obviously implied that there is a <em>much</em> better way. </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>This question becomes especially interesting when we consider it in the light of the task we've taken up, of <em>federating</em> Aurelio Peccei's call to action, to "find a way to change course", by beginning a "great cultural revival". Clearly—and we highlighted that by talking about Galilei in house arrest—the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival" was largely a result of a new way to look at the world, which liberated us from the worldview of the Scripture and empowered us to use the reason, and the human experience, to <em>understand</em> the world. Our question was, and is all along—"Could a similar advent be in store for us today?"</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>This question is also most pertinent in the context of our proposal to <em>academia</em>, to establish <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field and a real-life [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]]. And especially so in the light of the <em>accountability</em> argument we've presented in <em>socialized reality</em>—according to which the <em>academia</em> must consider itself accountable for the way of looking at the world it gives to the researcher, and the lay person (its core function in the society to tell us what is "right" information leading to "right" knowledge—so that we may pursue it in all walks of life). To highlight the importance of this role, imagine an extraordinarily gifted young man entering the <em>academia</em>. Let's call him Pierre Bourdieu, to be concrete. The academic toolkit given to this young man as part of his academic training, which he'll henceforth simply take for granted, as part of his job and self-identity, will largely determine how useful or <em>usable</em> the results of his career will be to the society. </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>  
  
<p>Imagine the effects on the rest of us, and our culture—if <em>we</em> can be educated, and legislated, to think in a new way! Isn't that the <em>natural</em> way to "cultural revival"?</p> 
 
  
<p>Herein lies the <em>academia</em>'s immense power: It holds the key to "great cultural revival" (provided a better "course" for handling information and knowledge can be found). </p>
 
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
<blockquote>So what <em>is</em> "right" knowledge? <br>
+
BBB -->  
Nobody knows! </blockquote>  
 
  
<p>Of course, innumerable views of this core philosophical issue have been contributed since as far back as our collective memory can reach. But no consensus or "official narrative" has as yet emerged.</p>
 
  
<p>So all we can do here to begin exploring this all-important question is share what <em>we</em>'ve been told while growing up. We'll simplify and caricature—and point to an issue that is the <em>key</em> to changing our situation.</p>
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 +
<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>
  
<blockquote>So what <em>is</em> "right" knowledge? What <em>is</em> the right foundation for creating truth and meaning? Nobody knows! </blockquote>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>Of course, innumerable views of this core philosophical issue have been contributed since as far back as our collective memory can reach. But no "official narrative" or consensus has as yet emerged.</p>
 
  
<p>So all we can do here to begin this exploration is share what <em>we</em>'ve been told, while we were growing up. We'll simplify and caricature—to point to an issue that calls for attention.</p>
+
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
  
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we were informed, we have the evolutionary prerogative to understand the world, and to make choices rationally. Give the <em>homo sapiens</em> a correct understanding of the natural world, he'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "his needs", which he no doubt knows because he can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, our ancestors invented a "ghost in the machine"—and prayed to <em>him</em> to give them what they wanted. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost"—and told us how the nature, or 'the machine', <em>really</em> works. </p>
+
<blockquote>So <em>how</em> should we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it? <br>
 +
Nobody knows! </blockquote>  
  
<p>This gigantic step—removing the "ghost in the machine"—is what modernization was really all about! Isn't that how we came to understand, finally, that women can't fly on broomsticks?</p> 
+
<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>We can now combine scientific understanding of causes with technology, and get out the nature exactly what we want and need!</p> 
 
<p>Of course, some social instruments also need to be in place to make it all work. The <em>homo sapiens</em> needs a similarly "objective reality picture" about what's happening in the social world, so that also there he can make informed, rational decisions.. That's what the media informing provides him. And when his wants and needs contradict with those of another, he needs "the free market" and "the free elections" to serve as perfect scales, and assure that justice, the will of the majority, will prevail.</p>  
 
  
<p>And culture—what about the culture? Some people, mostly older, still like to go to classical music concerts and to the theatre. And we also have researchers in the humanities, who <em>study</em> culture. But their role in practical reality is not very clear. Anyhow they never seem to agree with one other.</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>Popular myths of this kind, which began to take hold of our culture around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes were replaced by Darwin and Newton, were proven wrong in 20th century science and philosophy.</p>  
+
<p>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>
  
<blockquote>It has turned out that <em>we</em> got it wrong.</blockquote>  
+
<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 our collection of reasons, why this approach to social construction of truth and meaning makes us socially dysfunctional and culturally lame, we'll highlight only two.</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>  
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
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</p>
 
</p>
 
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>  
<p>Modern physics proved that <em>scientifically</em>—by showing that small <em>quanta</em> of matter exhibited behaviors that could not be 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 <em>narrow frame</em> would be removed. </p>  
+
<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 "Physics and Philosophy" Heisenberg describes our zeitgeist as we know it, including our worldview <em>and</em> our values, to explain how it followed from the assumptions that the scientists <em>proved</em> 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>  
  
<blockquote>We have thrown out the baby with the bathwater!</blockquote>  
+
<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>We've eliminated lots of myths and prejudices—but we also eliminated the core elements of culture that were rooted in them.</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>
 
<p>
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</p>
 
</p>
  
<blockquote>The second reason is that even the "classical" systems cannot be understood in causal therms.</blockquote>
+
<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>This, indeed, is <em>the</em> main message that we as society needed to receive from cybernetics, and from the systems sciences at large.</p> 
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] say:
+
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, and the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:
 
<blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>  
 
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"  
 
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"  
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</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<p>As the things are, the simplification that marks our thinking, of a complex reality to simple causes and effects, has been diagnosed again and again as <em>the</em> source of our problems.</p>
 
  
<p>But the tie between information and action having been broken—they of course remained without effect.</p>
+
<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>
  
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
+
<p>Our <em>prototype</em> is called Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>, and nicknamed <em>polyscopy</em>. </p>  
 
 
<p>A useful precedent, and template, is found in the repertoire of the sciences of the artificial—in computer science.</p>  
 
<p>A closely similar situation arose in the early days of computer programming, when the buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which ended up in a chaos. [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#InformationHolon The story] is interesting, but here we only summarize the main points, or lessons learned or <em>design patterns</em> we've adopted.</p>
 
  
<p>The first and most important is <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, usable, well-structured code. Let's put the <em>academia</em> in that frame of reference, and a most empowering view emerges. To see it, imagine that an unusually gifted young man comes to <em>academia</em>; to make the story concrete, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu will spend a lifetime uses the toolkit the <em>academia</em> has given him. He will not think about changing it—and why would he; each journal has a given article format, and the refereeing process etc. Imagine now if what he produces, along with so many others, is "spaghetti code"—something so complex, that a newcomer can only with extreme difficulty, and perhaps with a lifetime of work (he must first <em>become</em> a sociologist) understand his contribution.</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>Imagine the contribution to human knowledge we would make by radically improving this 'toolkit'!</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>The second point is technical—the practical way to do this is to create a "methodology". A methodology has all the core elements of a <em>paradigm</em>—it includes a way <em>to conceive of</em> programming; methods for creating programs and structuring programs; and technical programming tools, such as a programming language and a compiler, for putting them into practice. As we shall see in a moment, we did something closely similar. Here the winning principle was the "object oriented methodology", developed by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kirsten Nygaard.</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>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg]]
 
[[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 third and final point is even more technical: The only way to understand a dynamic system is in terms of a <em>hierarchy</em> of concepts. Object oriented methodology's main concept or tool is to conceive programming as modeling dynamic systems, in terms of "objects"—each of which "hides implementation" and "exports function"—which can then be easily integrated in higher-level objects. </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> </div>  
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<div class="col-md-6">
 
<div class="col-md-6">
  
<p>What we did was closely similar: We created a general-purpose methodology, which enables one to <em>choose</em> the scope, choose a high-level concept (such as "climate change", or "culture", or "happiness") and create an core insight—to be exported into higher-level objects.</p>
 
  
<p>And we created the <em>information holon</em>!</p>  
+
<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>  
  
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<div class="col-md-7">  
 
<div class="col-md-7">  
  
<p>The Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em> <em>prototype</em> shows how a general-purpose methodology can be created—to enable abstraction, and creation of principles, rules of thumb etc. in <em>any</em> domain.</p>
 
  
<p>Of the various <em>prototypes</em> that may illustrate this method we here point to only one: "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" book manuscript. Here the claim made in the title is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it. The book is an <em>information holon</em>, where the insight created is what we've been talking about all along—that we can no longer live with only the <em>traditional</em> approach to information; that <em>information</em> must be modernized, or <em>designed</em>. </p>  
+
<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>This book, of course, provides a template for any other such result. And most importantly, it is also a <em>prototype</em> showing what may result from <em>developing</em> this approach to knowledge—which is the core of our proposal.</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>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
<!-- XXX
  
  

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>