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—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 situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting our ideas to test. Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—Aurelio Peccei issued the following warning:

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

Peccei.jpg Aurelio Peccei

Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?

Peccei also specified what needed to be done to "change course":

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

Since its inception, The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".

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 'see through' the whole, and correctly assess its shape, dimensions and condition (correct our perspective).

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 destinations would we see, if we used the holoscope 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.

When the details offered on these pages have been considered, it will be clear why white (which, as the all-inclusive color, might symbolize the holotopia) is not only "the new black", but also the new red; and the new green!

Making things whole

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

The evidence that the holotopia brought together, allowed us to distill 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, a radical departure from our current course—which emerges as a result of us pursuing what we perceive as "our own" interests; and trusting that "the invisible hand" of the market, or the academic "publish and perish", will turn our self-serving acts into the greatest common good.

It is also the course that the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.


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: innovation (the way we use our majestically grown capability to create and induce change), communication (the way information technology is used and information is handled), foundations (what the creation of truth and meaning is based on), method (the ways in which we look at the world and try to comprehend it) and values (the "pursuit of happiness"), the 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.

Each of the five insights points to an overarching opportunity for creative change:

  • a radical improvement of effectiveness and efficiently of human work, and the liberation from stress and strife that the Industrial Revolution promised, but did not deliver
  • 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
  • a revolution in culture analogous to the Renaissance, leading to a dramatic improvement of "human quality"

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.

Sixth insight

The five anomalies, and their resolutions, are so interdependent, that to realistically resolve any of them—we need to resolve them all. Another, more general sixth insight follows:

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.

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 to achieve it
  • How to overcome the present dichotomy between science and religion, and use a further evolved approach to knowledge to revolutionize religion

In all, we have fifteen themes to develop in dialogs: Five corresponding to the five insights, and ten corresponding to their relationships. This provides us a wealth of strategic and tactical possibilities, to power the holotopia.