Holotopia

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Imagine...

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? 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.

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 ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation.

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram

Our proposal

The core of our knowledge federation proposal is to change the relationship we have with information. And through information, the relationship we have with the world; and with ourselves.

What is our relationship with information presently like? Here is how Neil Postman described it:

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

Postman.jpg
Neil Postman

Suppose we handled information as we handle other man-made things—by suiting it to the purposes that need to be served.

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? And academic communication, and education?

Our knowledge federation 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 prototypes.



An application

What difference will this make? The Holotopia prototype, which is under development, is a proof of concept application.

The Club of Rome's assessment of the general condition we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting our ideas to test. A half-century 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:

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

Peccei.jpg Aurelio Peccei

Already this event constitutes an anomaly, which motivates the paradigm we are proposing (we attribute to these keywords a similar meaning as Thomas Kuhn did). Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's quest—to illuminate the way our civilization has taken—handled by our society's institutions, while performing their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?

Peccei also specified what would need to be done to "change course":

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

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

The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique", and "the predicament of mankind. The Holotopia project is a structured, academic and social-entrepreneurial response to The Club of Rome. We federate their results by building on them further. We not only propose techniques for unraveling the "problematique"—but also pave the way for a "solutionatique".

Peccei's following observation, with which he concluded his analysis in "One Hundred Pages for the Future", will also be relevant:

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 the sense of the whole.

Seeing things whole

In the context of Holotopia, we refer to our proposal by its pseudonym holoscope, which highlights its distinguishing characteristic—it helps us see things whole.

Perspective-S.jpg Perspective ideogram

The holoscope uses suitable information in a suitable way, to illuminate what remained obscure or hidden, so that we may correctly see the shape and the dimensions of the whole (correct our perspective).

The Information idogram, shown on the right, explains how the information we propose to create is different from the one we have.

The ideogram shows an "i", which stands for "information", as composed of a circle placed on top of a square. The square stands for the details; and also for looking at a theme of choice from all sides, by using diverse kinds of sources and resources. The circle, or the dot on the "i", stands for the function or the point of it all. That might be an insight into the nature of a situation; or a rule of thumb, pointing to a general way to handle situations of a specific kind; or a project, which implements such handling.

Information.jpg Information ideogram

By showing the circle as founded on the square, the Information ideogram points to knowledge federation as a social process (the 'principle of operation' of the socio-technical 'lightbulb'), by which the insights, principles, strategic handling and whatever else may help us understand and take care of our increasingly complex world are kept consistent with each other, and with the information we own.

Knowledge federation is itself a result of knowledge federation: We draw insights about handling information from the sciences, communication design, journalism... And we weave them into technical solutions.

Local-Global.jpg
BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool for shifting positions, which was part of our pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen, suggests how this proposed information 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.

The holoscope complements the usual approach in the sciences:

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

A vision

What possible futures would we see, if a proper 'light' were used to 'illuminate the way'?

The holotopia is an astonishingly positive future scenario.

This future vision is indeed more 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.

But unlike the utopias, the holotopia is readily realizable—because we already have the information that is needed for its fulfillment.

Making things whole

What exactly do we need to do, to "change course", and pursue and fulfill the holotopia vision?

From all the detailed information that we carefully selected and considered, and organized and made available in the square so that this claim can be verified, we distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb:

We need to see ourselves and what we do as parts in a larger whole or wholes; and act in ways that make those larger wholes more whole.

This is, of course, exactly the course of action that the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.

Holotopia is a radical alternative to what is now common: we currently reify not only our science, journalism and education, but also the corporation, the "democracy" and whatever else constitutes our culture—instead of considering each of them a means to an end, which needs to evolve further to serve us in new conditions.

We pursue what we consider "our own interest" competitively—trusting that "the free competition", acting through "the invisible hand" of the market or the academic "publish or perish", will turn our self-serving acts into the greatest common good.

A project

As a project, Holotopia federates, and fulfills, the holotopia vision.

Margaret Mead's familiar dictum points to this project's core mission:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

It is, however, the 'small print' that we found most useful—Mead's insights, based on her research, into what exactly distinguishes "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens" that is capable of making a large difference.

Mead.jpg

Margaret Mead

The following Mead's observation, made more than fifty years ago, points to an immediate effect of the Holotopia project:

"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."



Five insights

FiveInsights.JPG

The holotopia vision is made concrete in terms of five insights.

The five insights constitute the 'engine' that drives the Holotopia project to its destination—the holotopia.

At the same time, the five insights provide us a concrete way to federate the The Club of Rome's work.

Strategically located in five pivotal domains of interest: values (the "pursuit of happiness"), 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) and method (the ways in which we look at the world and try to comprehend it), the five insights disclose large anomalies that obstruct progress in those domains, and demand structural or paradigmatic changes. Together, they show what, metaphorically speaking, is keeping Galilei is house arrest, once again in our era.

At the same time, each of the five insights points to an overarching opportunity for creative change:

  • a revolution in culture analogous to the Renaissance, and hence in "human quality"
  • a radical improvement of effectiveness and efficiently of human work, and the liberation from stress and toil that the Industrial Revolution promised but did not quite deliver
  • a revolution in communication analogous to what the printing press made possible)
  • a revolutionary empowerment of human reason to explore and understand the world, analogous to the Enlightenment
  • 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

Each of the five insights is reached by using the holoscope to federate information from disparate sources, that is, by seeing things whole. Each of the anomalies is resolved by using the proposed rule of thumb—by making things whole.

Furthermore, we show that the five anomalies, and their resolutions, are so interdependent, that to realistically resolve any of them—we need to resolve them all. Hence we see why:

Comprehensive change can be easy, even when smaller and obviously necessary changes have proven to be impossible.

In this way the recommendation of The Club of Rome is federated, and the strategy that distinguishes holotopia (to focus on changing the whole order of things) is confirmed.

This strategy has, however, its own inherent logic and "leverage points"; instead of occupying Wall Street, we see why continuing the evolution of knowledge work, which just in Galilei's time once again got stalled, is an easier and more effective way to proceed. Exactly as the Modernity ideogram, that metaphorical image of a bus with candle headlights, might suggest.

Perhaps the most immediately interesting, however, are the relationships between the five insights—which provide us a context for perceiving and handling, in informed and completely new ways, some of the age-old challenges such as:

  • How to put an end to war
  • Where the largest possible contribution to human knowledge might reside, and how it may be achieved
  • How to overcome the present dichotomy between science and religion, and use a further evolved approach to knowledge to revolutionize religion

This provides us a wealth of tactical possibilities, which power the Holotopia as a project.

It is impossible to overemphasize that the core purpose of the Holotopia project is not to merely draw attention to certain core anomalies and opportunities for comprehensive creative change, but above all to choreograph that change. By organizing dialogs about the five insights and about the ten most timely themes that are marked by their direct relationships, we recreate a public sphere that empowers us to collectively co-create important insights, and solutions.

And that—the change of the way in which our collective mind is presently working—is the Holotopia project's core mission.

A space

KunsthallDialog01.jpg
A snapshot of Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen.

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.

In a symbolic sense, we are developing the following five sub-spaces.

Fireplace

The fireplace is where our varius dialogs take place, through which our insights are deepen by combining our collective intelligence with suitable insights from the past

Library

The library is where the necessary information is organized and provided, in a suitable form.

Workshop

The workshop is where a new order of things emerges, through co-creation of prototypes.

Gallery

The gallery is where the resulting prototypes are displayed

Stage

The stage is where our events take place.

This idea of "space" brings up certain most interesting connotations and possibilities—which Lefebre and Debord pointed to.


The Box

Box1.jpg A model of The Box.

So many people now talk about"thinking outside the box"; but what does this really mean? Has anyone even seen the box?

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 create the box. And to choreograph the process of unboxing our thinking, and handling.

Holotopia's Box is an object designed for 'initiation' to holotopia, 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.

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.

We also see that by resolving this whole new issue, a much larger gains can be reached than what we originally anticipated and intended. And that there are other similar insights; and that they are all closely related.


A vocabulary

Science was not an exception; every new paradigm brings with it a new way of speaking.

The following collection of keywords will provide an alternative, and a bit more academic and precise entry point to holoscope and holotopia.


Wholeness

We define wholeness as the quality that distinguishes a healthy organism, or a well-configured and well-functioning machine. Wholeness is, more simply, the condition or the order of things which is, from an informed perspective, worthy of being aimed for and worked for.

The idea of wholeness is illustrated by the bus with candle headlights. The bus is not whole. Even a tiny piece can mean a world of difference.

A subtle but important distinction needs to be made: While the wholeness of a mechanism is secured by just all its parts being in place, cultural and human wholeness are never completed; there is always more that can be discovered, and aimed for. This makes the notion of wholeness especially suitable for motivating cultural revival and human development, which is our stated goal.

Tradition and design

Tradition and design are two alternative ways to wholeness. Tradition relies on Darwinian-style evolution; design on awareness and deliberate action. When tradition can no longer be relied on, design must be used.

In a more detailed explanation, we would quote Anthony Giddens, as the icon of design and tradition, to show that our contemporary condition can be understood as a precarious transition from one way of evolving to the next. We are no longer traditional; and we are not yet designing. Which is, of course, what the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.


Prototype

A prototype is a characteristic "result" that follows from the design approach to information.

When Information is conceived of an instrument to interact with the world around us—then information cannot be only results of observing the world; it cannot be confined to academic books and articles. The prototypes serve as models, as experiments, and as interventions.

The prototypes give agency to information.

Prototypes also enable knowledge federation—a transdiscipline is organized around a prototype, to keep it consistent with the state of the art of knowledge in the participating disciplines.

Human development and cultural revival

We adopt these keywords from Aurelio Peccei, and use them exactly as he intended them—as the goals of our federation exercise. We show how differently, and more effectively, both are handled within the proposed paradigm.

A prototype

We develop holotopia as a prototype.

The Holotopia Prototype is not only a description, but also and most importantly it already is "a way to change course".

Holoscope and Holotopia

Some rudimentary understanding of our holoscope prototype is necessary for understanding what is about to follow.

The Holoscope ideogram serves to explain the role this has in the inner workings of the holoscope. If one should inspect a hand-held cup, to see whether it is cracked or whole, one must be able to look at it from all sides; and perhaps also bring it closer to inspect some detail, and take it further away and see it as a whole. The control over the scope is what enables the holoscope to make a difference.

Holoscope.jpeg
Holoscope ideogram

To be able to say that a cup is whole, one must see it from all sides. To see that a cup is broken, it is enough to show a single angle of looking. Much of the art of using the holoscope will be in finding and communicating uncommon ways of looking at things, which reveal their 'cracks' and help us correct them.

The difference between the paradigm modeled by the holoscope and the traditional science can easily be understood if one considers the difference in the purpose, or epistemology. When our goal is to "see things whole", so that we can make them whole, a discovery of a way of looking that reveals where a 'crack' might exist, although we might not (yet) be able to see it, can be a valuable contribution to knowledge, as a warning to take precaution measures against the potential consequences of an undetected 'crack'. In science, on the other hand, where our goal is to discover only the most solid 'bricks', with which we can construct the edifice of a "scientific reality picture"—such ways of looking and hypothetical 'cracks' are considered worthless, and cannot even be reported.

Human lives are in question, very many</em human lives; and indeed more, a lot more. The task of creating the 'headlights' that can illuminate a safe and sane course to our civilization is not to be taken lightly. An easy but central point here is that this task demands that information be federated, not ignored (when it fails to fit our "reality picture", and the way we go about creating it).

Here is a subtlety—whose importance for what we are about to propose, and for paving the road to holotopia, cannot be overrated. We will here be using the usual manner of speaking, and make affirmative statements, of the kind "this is how the things are". Such statements need to be interpreted, however, in the way that's intended—namely as views resulting from specific scopes. A view is offered as sufficiently fitting the data (the view really serves as a kind of a mnemonic device, which engages our faculties of abstraction and logical thinking to condense messy data to a simple and coherent point of view)—within a given scope. Here the scopes serve as projection planes in projective geometry. If a scope shows a 'crack', then this 'crack' needs to be handled, within the scope—regardless of what the other scopes are showing.

Hence a new kind of "result", which the holoscope makes possible—to "discover" new ways of looking or scopes, which reveal something essential about our situation, and perhaps even change our perception of it as a whole.

"Reality" is always more complex than our models. To be able to "comprehend" it and act, we must be able to simplify. The big point here is that the simplification we are proposing is a radical alternative to simplification by reducing the world to a single image—and ignoring whatever fails to fit in. This simplification is legitimate by design. The appropriate response to it (within the proposed paradigm) is dialog, not discussion—as we shall see next.

Or in other words—aiming to return knowledge to power, we shall say things that might sound preposterous, sensational, scandalous... Yet they won't be a single bit "controversial"—within the order of things we are proposing, and using. It may require a moment of thought to understand this fully.


Elephant

Elephant.jpg
Elephant ideogram

Let us conclude by putting all of these pieces together, into a big-picture view.

Let's talk about empowering cultural heritage, and knowledge workers, to make the kind of difference that Peccei was calling for. That's what the Elephant ideogram stands for.

The structuralists attempted to give rigor (in the old-paradigm understanding of rigor) to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists deconstructed this attempt—by arguing that writings of historical thinkers, and cultural artifacts in general, have no "real" interpretation. And that they are, therefore, subject to free interpretation.

Our information, and our cultural heritage in general, is like Humpty Dumpty after the great fall—nobody can put it back together! That is, within the old paradigm, of course.

But there is a solution: We consider the visionary thinkers of the present and the past as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear one of them talk about "a fan", another one about "a water hose", and yet another one about "a tree trunk". They don't make sense, and we ignore them.

Everything changes when we understand that what they are really talking about are the ear, the trunk and the leg of the big animal—which, of course, metaphorically represents the emerging paradigm! Suddenly it all not only makes sense—but it becomes a new kind of spectacle. A real one!

In an academic context, we might talk, jokingly about post-post-structuralism. The elephant (as metaphor) is pointing to a way to empower academic workers to make a dramatic practical difference, in this time of need—while making their work even more rigorous; and academic!