Difference between revisions of "STORIES-OLD"

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<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Stories</h1> </div>
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<p>The first and most important thing you need to know is that what's being presented here is not only or even primarily an idea or a proposal or an academic result. We intend this to be an <em>intervention</em> into our academic and social reality. And more specifically an invitation to a conversation. </p>
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<p>And when we say "conversation", we don't mean "just talking". The conversations we want to initiate are intended to <em>build</em> communication in a certain new way, both regarding the media and the manner of communicating, <em>and</em> regarding the themes. We use the [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]] – which is a manner of speaking that sidesteps all coercion into a worldview and replaces it by genuine listening, collaboration and co-creation. By conversing in this way we also bring due attention to completely new themes. We evolve a public sphere, or a [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]], capable of thinking new thoughts, and of developing public awareness about those themes. Here in the truest sense the medium is the message.</p>
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<p>The details being presented are intended to ignite and prime and energize those [[dialogs|<em>dialogs</em>]]. And at the same time <em>evolve</em> through those [[dialogs|<em>dialogs</em>]]. In this way we want to prime our collective intelligence with some of the ideas of last century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], and then engage it to create insights about the themes that matter. </p>
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<p>There are at least four ways in which the four detailed modules of this website can be read. </p>
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<p>One way is to see it as a technical description or a blueprint of a new approach to knowledge (or metaphorically a lightbulb). Then you might consider
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<ul>
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<li> Federation through Images as a description of the underlying principle of operation (how electricity can create light that reaches further than the light of fire)</li>
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<li>Federation through Stories as a description of the suitable technology (we have the energy source and the the wiring and all the rest we need)</li>
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<li>Federation through Application as a description of the design, and of examples of application (here's how the lightbulb may be put together, and look – it works!)</li>
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<li>Federation through Conversations as a business plan (here's what we can do with it to satisfy the "market needs"; and here's how we can put this on the market, and have it be used in reality</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>Another way is to consider four detailed modules as an Enlightenment or next Renaissance scenario. In that case you may read
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<ul>
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<li>Federation through Images as describing a development analogous to the advent of science</li>
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<li>Federation through Stories as describing  a development analogous to the printing press (which provided the very illumination by enabling the spreading of knowledge)</li>
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<li>Federation through Applications as describing the next Industrial and technological Revolution, a new frontier for innovation and discovery</li>
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<li>Federation through Conversations as describing the equivalent of the Humanism and the Renaissance (new values, interests, lifestyle...)</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>The third way to read is to see this whole thing as a carefully argued <em>case</em> for a new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in knowledge work. Here the focus is on (1) reported anomalies that exist in the old [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] and how they may be resolved in the new proposed one and (2) a new creative frontier, that every new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] is expected to open up. Then you may consider
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<ul>
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<li>Federation through Images as a description of the fundamental anomalies and of their resolution</li>
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<li>Federation through Stories as a description of the anomalies in the use and development of information technology, and more generally of knowledge at large</li>
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<li>Federation through Applications as a description or better said of a map of the emerging creative frontier, showing – in terms of real-life [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] what can be done and how</li>
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<li>Federation through Conversations as a description of societal anomalies that result from an anomalous use of knowledge – and how they may be remedied</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>And finally, you may consider this an application or a showcase of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] itself. Naturally, we'll apply and demonstrate some of the core technical ideas to plead our case. You may then read
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<ul>
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<li>Federation through Images as a description and application of [[ideograms|<em>ideograms</em>]] – which we've applied to render fundamental-philosophical ideas of giants accessible, and in effect create a cartoon-like introduction to a novel approach to knowledge</li>
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<li>Federation through Stories brings forth [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] – which are the kind of interesting, short real-life stories one might tell to a party of friends over a glass of wine, and which enable one to "step into the shoes of a giant" or "see through his eyeglasses" </li>
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<li>ALT </li>
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<li>Federation through Applications as a portfolio of [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] – a characteristic kind of results that suit the new approach to knowledge – which in [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] serve as (1) models (showing how for ex. education or journalism may be different, who may create them and how), (2) interventions ([[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are embedded in reality and acting upon real-life practices aiming to change them) and (3) experiments (showing us what works and what doesn't).<li>
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<li>Federation through Applications as a small portfolio of [[dialogs|<em>dialogs</em>]] – by which the new approach to knowledge is put to use</li>
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</ul></p>
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<h3>Highlights</h3>
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<p>Instead of providing you an "executive summary", which would probably be too abstract for most people to follow, we now provide a few anecdotes and highlights, which – we feel – will serve better for mobilizing and directing your attention, while already extracting and sharing the very essence of this presentation. As always, we'll use the ideas of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] as 'bread crumbs' to mark the milestones in our story or argument.</p>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Social construction of truth and meaning</h3>
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<p>Sixty years ago, in "Physics and Philosophy", [[Werner Heisenberg]] explained how
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the nineteenth century developed an
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extremely rigid frame for natural science which formed not
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only science but also the general outlook of great masses of
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people.
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He then pointed out how this frame of concepts was too narrow and too rigid for expressing some of the core elements of human culture – which as a result appeared to modern people as irrelevant. And how correspondingly limited and utilitarian values and worldviews became prominent. Heisenberg then explained how modern physics disproved this "narrow frame"; and concluded that
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one may say that the most important change brought about by its results consists in the dissolution of this rigid frame of
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concepts of the nineteenth century.
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</blockquote></p>
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<p>If we now (in the spirit of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], and the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]) consider that the social role of the university (as institution) is to provide good knowledge and viable standards for good knowledge – then we see that just this Heisenberg's insight alone gives us an <em>obligation</em> – which we've failed to respond to for sixty years.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Heisenberg.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Werner Heisenberg]]<br>the icon of [[design epistemology]]</center></small></div>
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<p>The substance of Federation through Images is to show how <em>the fundamental insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy allow us to develop a way out of "the rigid frame" </em> – which is a rigorously founded methodology for creating truth and meaning about any issue and at any level of generality, which we are calling [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. You may understand [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] as an adaptation of "the scientific method" that makes it suitable for providing the kind of insights that our people and society need, or in other words for [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. In essence, [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] is just a generalization of the scientific approach to knowledge, based on recent scientific / philosophical insights – as we've already pointed out by talking about [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]], which is of course the epistemological foundation for [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. </p>
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<h3>Information technology</h3>
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<p>You may have also felt, when we introduced [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as 'the light bulb' that uses the new technology to illuminate the way, that we were doing gross injustice to IT innovation: Aren't we living in the Age of Information? Isn't our information technology (or in other words our civilization's 'headlights') indeed <em>the most modern</em> part of our civilization, the one where the largest progress has been made, the one that best characterizes our progress? In [[STORIES|Federation through Stories]] we explain why this is not the case, why the candle headlights analogy works most beautifully in this pivotal domain as well – by telling the story of Douglas Engelbart, the man who conceived, developed, prototyped <em>and demonstrated</em> – in 1968 – the core elements of the new media technology, which is in common use. This story works on many levels, and gives us a <em>textbook</em> example to work with when trying to understand the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] and the paradoxical dynamics around it (notice that we are this year celebrating the 50th anniversary of Engelbart's demo...).</p>
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<p>
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<blockquote>
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Digital technology could help make this a better world.  But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
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These two sentences were (intended to be) the first slide of Engelbart's presentation of his vision for the future of (information-) technological innovation in 2007 at Google. We shall see that this 'new thinking' was precisely what we've been calling [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. Engelbart's insight is so central to the overall case we are presenting, that we won't resist the urge to give you the gist of it right away.</p>
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<p>The printing press analogy works, because the printing press was to a large degree the technical invention that led to the Enlightenment, by making knowledge so much more widely accessible. The question is what invention may play a similar role in the emerging <em>next</em> phase of our society's illumination? The answer is of course the "network-interconnected interactive digital media" –  but there's a catch! Even the printing press (let it symbolize here the Industrial Age and the paradigm we want to evolve beyond) merely made what the scribes were doing more efficient. To communicate, people still needed to write and publish books, and hope that the people who needed what's written in them would find them on a book shelf. But the network-interconnected interactive digital media is a disruption of a completely <em>new</em> kind – it's not a broadcasting device but a "nervous system" (this metaphor is Engelbart's own); it interconnects us people in such a way that we can think together and coordinate our action, just as the cells in a sufficiently complex organism do!</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Doug.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Douglas Engelbart]]<br>the icon of [[knowledge federation]]</center></small></div>
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<p>To see that this is not what has happened, think about the "desktop" and the "mailbox" in your computer: The new technology has been used to implement the physical environment we've had around us – including the ways of doing things that evolved based on it. Consider the fact that in academic research we are still communicating by publishing books and articles. Haven't we indeed used the new technology to re-create 'fancy candles'. </p>
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<p>To see the difference that makes a difference, imagine that your cells were using your own nervous systems to merely <em>broadcast</em> data! Think about your state of mind that would result. Then think about how this reflects upon our society's state of mind, our "collective intelligence"...</p>
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<p> When we apply the Industrial Age efficiency thinking and values, and use the Web to merely broadcast knowledge, augment the volume, reduce the price – then the result is of course information glut. "We are drowning in information", Neil Postman observed! A completely new phase in our (social-systemic evolution) – new division, specialization and organization of the work with information, and beyond – is what's called for, and what's ahead of us.</p>
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<p>There are in addition several points that spice up the Engelbart's history, which are the reasons why we gave it the name (in the Federation through Stories) "the incredible story of Doug):
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<ul>
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<li>Engelbart saw this whole new possibility, to give our society in peril a whole new 'nervous system', already in 1951 – when there were only a handful of computers in the world, which were used solely for numerical scientific calculations (he immediately decided to dedicate his career to this cause</li>
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<li>Engelbart was unable to communicate his vision to the Silicon Valley – even after having been recognized as The Valley's "giant in residence" (think about Galilei in house arrest...)</li>
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</ul>  </p>
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<p>So the simple conclusion we may draw from this story is that to draw <em>real</em> benefits from information technology, [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] must replace the conventional reliance on the market. And conversely – that the contemporary information technology is an <em>enabler</em> of large-scale systemic change, because it's been <em>conceived</em> to serve that role.</p>
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<h3>Innovation and the future of the university</h3>
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<div class="col-md-6"><p>
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Fifty years ago Erich Jantsch made a proposal for the university of the future, and made an appeal that the university take the new leadership role which, as he saw it, was due.
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[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society’s capacity for continuous self-renewal.
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<p>Suppose the university did that. Suppose that we opened up the university to take such a leadership role. What new ways of working, results, effects... could be achieved? What might this new creative frontier look like, what might it consist of, how may it be organized?</p>
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<p>The technique demonstrated here is the [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] – which are the characteristic products of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. Here's a related question to consider: If we should aim at <em>systemic</em>  impact, if our key goal is to re-create systems including our own – then the traditional academic articles and book cannot be our only or even our main product. But what else <em>should</em> we do? And how?</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Jantsch.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Erik Jantsch]]<br>the icon of [[systemic innovation]]</center></small></div>
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<p>The [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] here serve as
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<ul>
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<li>models, embodying and exhibiting systemic solutions, how the things may be put together, which may then be adapted to other situations and improved further</li>
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<li>interventions, because they are (by definition) embedded within real-life situations and practices, aiming to change them</li>
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<li>experiments, showing what works and what doesn't, and what still needs to be changed or improved</li></ul></p>
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<p>In Federation through Images we exhibit about 40 [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]], which together compose the single central one – of the creative frontier which we are pointing to by our four mentioned main keywords. We have developed it in the manner of prospectors who have found gold and are preparing an area for large-scale mining – by building a school and a hospital and a hotel and... What exactly is to be built and how – those are the questions that those [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are there to answer.</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><p>
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In 1968 The Club of Rome was initiated, as a global think tank to study the future prospects of humanity, give recommendations and incite action. Based on the first decade of The Club's work, Aurelio Peccei – its founding president and motor power – gave this diagnosis:
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The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future.
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<p>If there was any truth in Peccei's conclusion, then the challenge that history has given our generation is at the same time a historical opportunity.</p>
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<p>The last time "a great cultural revival" happened, the "Renaissance" as we now call it, our ancestors liberated themselves from a worldview that kept them captive – where the only true happiness was to be found in the afterlife. Provided of course that one lived by the God's command, and by the command of the kings and the bishops as His earthly representatives. Is it indeed possible – and what would it take – to see our own time's prejudices and power issues in a similar way as we now see the ones that the Enlightenment liberated us from? What new worldview might help us achieve that? What new way of evolving our culture and organizing our society might we find to replace them? These, in a nutshell, are the questions taken up in Federation through Conversations.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Peccei.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]<br>the icon of [[guided evolution of society]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Symbolic power and re-evolutionary politics</h3>
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<p>Another way to approach this part of our presentation is to say "Now that we've created those 'headlights' – can we use them to illuminate 'the way'? Can we see where we are headed, and find a better road to follow?" Which of course means that we must explore the way we've been evolving, as culture and as society; because that's 'the way', isn't it?</p>
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<p>If this challenge may seem daunting, the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] again come to our rescue. Pierre Bourdieu, for one, who saw French imperialism show its true face in the war in Algeria in the late 1950s. And who, as Algeria was gaining independence, saw the old power relationship mutate and take a completely new form – so that the power was no longer in weaponry and in the instruments of torture, but in economy and the instruments of culture. This insight made Bourdieu a sociologist; he understood that the society, and the power, evolve and function in a completely different way than what we've been told.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Bourdieu.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Pierre Bourdieu]]<br>the icon of [[symbolic power]]</center></small></div>
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<p>We federate Bourdieu. We connect his insights with the insights of Antonio Damasio, the cognitive neuroscientist who discovered that we were not the rational choosers we believed we were. Damasio will help us understand why Bourdieu was so right when he talked about our worldview as <em>doxa</em>; and about the <em>symbolic power</em> which can only be exercised without <em>anyone's</em> awareness of its existence. We also [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] Bourdieu's insights with... No, let's leave those details to Federation through Conversations, and to our very conversations.</p>
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<p>Let's conclude here by just highlighting the point this brings us to in the case we are presenting: When this [[knowledge federation|<em>federation</em>]] work has been completed, we'll not end up with another worldview that will liberate us from the old power relationships and empower us to pursue happiness well beyond what we've hitherto been able to achieve. We shall liberate ourselves from socialization into any fix worldview altogether! We'll have understood, indeed, how the worldview creation and our socialization into a fixed worldview has been <em>the</em> key instrument of the sort of power we now must liberate ourselves from.</p>
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<p>In this way the circle has been closed – and we are back where we started, at [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]] as issue. We are looking at the way in which truth and meaning are socially created – which is of course what this presentation is about.</p>
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<p>Far from being "just talking", the conversations we want to initiate <em>build</em> communication in a certain new way, both regarding the media used and the manner of communicating. We use the [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]] – which is a manner of speaking that sidesteps all coercion into a worldview and replaces it by genuine listening, collaboration and co-creation. By conversing in this way we also bring the public attention to completely new themes. We evolve a public sphere capable of developing public awareness about those themes. Here in the truest sense the medium is the message. </p>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Religion and pursuit of happiness</h3>
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<p>Modernity liberated us from a religious worldview, by which happiness is to be found in the afterlife (provided we do as the bishops and the kings direct us in this life). We became free to pursue happiness here and now, in this life. But what if in the process we've misunderstood <em>both</em>religion <em>and</em>happiness?</p>
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<p>It has turned out that the key [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] is already there; and that it only needs to be [[knowledge federation|<em>federated</em>]]. This [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] also comes with an interesting story, which lets itself be rendered as a [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]]. </p>
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<p>Early in the 20th century a young monk in Thailand spent a couple of years in a monastery in Bangkok and thought "This just cannot be it!" So he decided to do as the Buddha did – he went alone into a forest and experimented. He also had the original Pali scriptures with him, to help him find the <em>original</em> way. And reportedly he did!</p>
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<p>What Buddhadasa ("the slave of the Buddha", as this [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] of religion called himself) found out was that the essence of the Buddha's teaching was different, and in a way <em>opposite</em> from how Buddhism is usually understood and taught. And not only that – the practice he rediscovered is in its essential elements <em>opposite</em> from what's evolved as "the pursuit of happiness" in most of the modern world. Buddhadasa saw the Buddha's discovery, which he rediscovered, as a kind of a natural law, the discoveries of which have marked the inception of all major religions. Or more simply, what Buddhadasa discovered, and undertook to give to the world, was "the essence of religion". </p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
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<p>You may of course be tempted to disqualify the Buddha's or Buddhadasa's approach to happiness as a product of some rigidly held religious belief. But the epistemological essence of Buddhadasa's teaching is that it's not only purely <em>evidence-based</em> or experience-based – but also that the liberation from <em>any</em> sort of clinging, and to clinging to beliefs in particular, is <em>the</em> essential part of the practice.</p>
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<p>In the Liberation book we federate Buddhadasa's teaching about religion by (1) moving it from the domain of religion as belief to the domain of the pursuit of happiness; (2) linking this with a variety of other sources, thus producing a kind of a roadmap to happiness puzzle, and then showing how this piece snuggly fits in and completes the puzzle; (3) showing how religions – once this [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] was discovered – tended to become instruments of negative socialization; and how we may now do better, and need to do better.</p>
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<h3>Knowledge federation dialog</h3>
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<p>Finally, we need to talk about our [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]], about [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. While this conversation will complete the [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] (by creating a feedback loop with the help of which it will evolve further), the real theme and interest of this conversation is of course well beyond what our little model might suggest.</p>
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<p>In the midst of all our various evolutionary mishaps and misdirections, there's at least this one thing that has been done right – the academic tenure. And the ethos of academic freedom it institutionalized. What we now have amounts to a global army, of people who've been selected and trained and publicly sponsored to think freely. If our core task is a fresh new evolutionary start – beyond "the survival of the fittest" and the power structures it has shackled us with – then it's hard to even imagine how this could be done without engaging in some suitable way this crucially important resource.</p>
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<p>How are we using it?</p>
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<!-- CLIPPINGS
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<p>What we offer here is a 'view from a mountain top', or a 'view in the light of a lightbulb' (created by federating knowledge) of the need and the possibility for a new paradigm in knowledge work or creative work. </p>
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<p>Our point of departure are three disruptive changes that developed during the past century:
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<ul>
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<li>fundamental insights have been reached in the sciences, which challenged or disproved the assumptions based on which our knowledge-related values, and practices, have developed</li>
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<li>new information technology enables, and as we shall see also <em>demands</em> that we reconsider and change the way we handle knowledge</li>
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<li>our civilization has reached a condition, and also a level of development or maturity, where what we need as information is entirely different than what the case was just a generation or two ago</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>It has indeed turned out that each of those changes have been so clear-cut and so spectacularly large in degree, that each of them alone provides more than a sufficient reason for engaging in the kind of changes that we are about to describe and propose. We highlight that by weaving together the stories and the insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] that represent the main milestones in the mentioned disruptive changes. We see that what's really going on in our time, and what's really worth seeing and attending to, is not Donald Trump but a sweeping Enlightenment-like change. And we already get glimpses of iconic characters and stories that might represent it, as Galilei and Newton were the icons of the previous such change.</p>
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<p>In each of the four modules in which our case is presented, we look at our case from a different angle. You may understand them with the help of our metaphorical image, the Modernity [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]], as showing respectively that (1) we have, and need a different principle of operation – not fire but electricity; (2) we have the technology that is needed for creating the light bulb; (3) a plan of a lightbulb, together with the proof of concept – showing in what way the lightbulb can be created, and what practical differences it may make; (4) the larger picture, where by looking at our civilization's evolution 'in the light of the lightbulb', and the particular point in it where we now find ourselves, we see our own times and mores in a similar way as we may see the mindset of the Middle Ages – which of course makes the change immanent.</p>
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<p>Here and also in those four modules, we use the technique that is common in journalism – which is to present a larger issue by telling a concrete story, which typically involves a [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] and one of his core insights. This will give some real-life touch and zest to our stories – but it will leave you the challenge of seeing the larger picture we are pointing at by talking about concrete people and things.</p>
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<p>In each of the four modules we apply a different set of  [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] techniques. In this way we also illustrate [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]].</p>
 +
<h3>Federation through Images</h3>
 +
<p>Our ideas of what constitutes "good" information have been evolving since antiquity, and they now find their foremost expression in science and philosophy. In [[IMAGES|Federation through Images]] we show that the developments in 20th century's science and philosophy empower the next disruptive change, along the lines we've just discussed.</p>
 +
<p>You may interpret what's told there in the light of our Modernity image, and the challenge to create the (socio-technical) 'light bulb": Is there a whole new principle of operation, so that we may no longer use 'fire' but 'electricity', and be provide a light so strong that it can illuminate our way as far as our speed might now require?</p>
 +
<p>We answer by 'standing on the shoulders of giants'; we show that surprisingly many of the 20th century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in science and philosophy saw that the new insights challenged the very foundations based on which our knowledge-work practices developed, and the very criteria we commonly use to assign value to knowledge and to knowldge work. </p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
<p>And we'll represent them all here by a single one – [[Werner Heisenberg]]. Who sixty years ago, in "Physics and Philosophy", explained how
 +
<blockquote>
 +
the nineteenth century developed an
 +
extremely rigid frame for natural science which formed not
 +
only science but also the general outlook of great masses of
 +
people.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
He then pointed out how this frame of concepts was too narrow and too rigid for expressing some of the core elements of human culture – which as a result appeared to modern people as irrelevant. And how correspondingly limited and utilitarian values and worldviews became prominent. Heisenberg then explained how modern physics disproved this "narrow frame"; and concluded that
 +
<blockquote>
 +
one may say that the most important change brought about by its results consists in the dissolution of this rigid frame of
 +
concepts of the nineteenth century.
 +
</blockquote></p>
 +
<p>If we now (in the spirit of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], and the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]) consider that our social role is to provide good knowledge and viable standards for good knowledge – then we see that just this Heisenberg's insight alone gives us an <em>obligation</em> – which we've failed to respond to for sixty years.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Heisenberg.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Werner Heisenberg]]<br>the icon of [[design epistemology]]</center></small></div>
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</div>
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 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>The substance of Federation through Images is to show how <em>the fundamental insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy allow us to develop a way out of "the rigid frame" </em> – which is a rigorously founded methodology for creating truth and meaning about any issue and at any level of generality, which we are calling [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. You may understand [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] as an adaptation of "the scientific method" that makes it suitable for providing the kind of insights that our people and society need, or in other words for [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. In essence, [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] is just a generalization of the scientific approach to knowledge, based on recent scientific / philosophical insights – as we've already pointed out by talking about [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]], which is of course the epistemological foundation for [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. </p>
 +
<p>As the technique for extracting and presenting core insights of leading thinkers we used the metaphorical and often paradoxical images called [[ideograms|<em>ideograms</em>]]. The result is a cartoon-like introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of a refreshingly novel approach to knowledge.</p>
 +
<h3>Federation through Stories</h3>
 +
<p>The abstract definition of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] we've given a moment ago, and the "value proposition" to make the kind of difference that the comparison of the dollar value of the headlights with the value of the entire bus and the people in it may suggest,  may have left you wondering: Are there real-life, practical examples that confirm this theory? </p>
 +
<p>You may have also felt, when we introduced [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as 'the light bulb' that uses the new technology to illuminate the way, that we were doing gross injustice to IT innovation: Aren't we living in the Age of Information? Isn't our information technology (or in other words our civilization's 'headlights') indeed <em>the most modern</em> part of our civilization, the one where the largest progress has been made, the one that best characterizes our progress? In [[STORIES|Federation through Stories]] we explain why this is not the case, why the candle headlights analogy works most beautifully in this pivotal domain as well – by telling the story of Douglas Engelbart, the man who conceived, developed, prototyped <em>and demonstrated</em> – in 1968 – the core elements of the new media technology, which is in common use. This story works on many levels, and gives us a <em>textbook</em> example to work with when trying to understand the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] and the paradoxical dynamics around it (notice that we are this year celebrating the 50th anniversary of Engelbart's demo...).</p>
 +
</div>
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</div>
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
<p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
Digital technology could help make this a better world.  But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
These two sentences were (intended to be) the first slide of Engelbart's presentation of his vision for the future of (information-) technological innovation in 2007 at Google. We shall see that this 'new thinking' was precisely what we've been calling [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. Engelbart's insight is so central to the overall case we are presenting, that we won't resist the urge to give you the gist of it right away.</p>
 +
<p>The printing press analogy works, because the printing press was to a large degree the technical invention that led to the Enlightenment, by making knowledge so much more widely accessible. The question is what invention may play a similar role in the emerging <em>next</em> phase of our society's illumination? The answer is of course the "network-interconnected interactive digital media" –  but there's a catch! Even the printing press (let it symbolize here the Industrial Age and the paradigm we want to evolve beyond) merely made what the scribes were doing more efficient. To communicate, people still needed to write and publish books, and hope that the people who needed what's written in them would find them on a book shelf. But the network-interconnected interactive digital media is a disruption of a completely <em>new</em> kind – it's not a broadcasting device but a "nervous system" (this metaphor is Engelbart's own); it interconnects us people in such a way that we can think together and coordinate our action, just as the cells in a sufficiently complex organism do!</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Doug.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Douglas Engelbart]]<br>the icon of [[knowledge federation]]</center></small></div>
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</div>
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<p>To see that this is not what has happened, think about the "desktop" and the "mailbox" in your computer: The new technology has been used to implement the physical environment we've had around us – including the ways of doing things that evolved based on it. Consider the fact that in academic research we are still communicating by publishing books and articles. Haven't we indeed used the new technology to re-create 'fancy candles'. </p>
 +
<p>To see the difference that makes a difference, imagine that your cells were using your own nervous systems to merely <em>broadcast</em> data! Think about your state of mind that would result. Then think about how this reflects upon our society's state of mind, our "collective intelligence"...</p>
 +
<p> When we apply the Industrial Age efficiency thinking and values, and use the Web to merely broadcast knowledge, augment the volume, reduce the price – then the result is of course information glut. "We are drowning in information", Neil Postman observed! A completely new phase in our (social-systemic evolution) – new division, specialization and organization of the work with information, and beyond – is what's called for, and what's ahead of us.</p>
 +
<p>There are in addition several points that spice up the Engelbart's history, which are the reasons why we gave it the name (in the Federation through Stories) "the incredible story of Doug):
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Engelbart saw this whole new possibility, to give our society in peril a whole new 'nervous system', already in 1951 – when there were only a handful of computers in the world, which were used solely for numerical scientific calculations (he immediately decided to dedicate his career to this cause</li>
 +
<li>Engelbart was unable to communicate his vision to the Silicon Valley – even after having been recognized as The Valley's "giant in residence" (think about Galilei in house arrest...)</li>
 +
</ul>  </p>
 +
<p>So the simple conclusion we may draw from this story is that to draw <em>real</em> benefits from information technology, [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] must replace the conventional reliance on the market. And conversely – that the contemporary information technology is an <em>enabler</em> of large-scale systemic change, because it's been <em>conceived</em> to serve that role.</p>
 +
 +
<p>We use [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] – short, lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories – to explain and empower some of the core ideas of daring thinkers. A vignette liberates an insight from the language of a discipline and enables a non-expert to 'step into the shoes' of a leading thinker, 'look through his eye glasses'. By combining [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], and threads into higher units of meaning, we take this process of [[knowledge federation|<em>federation</em>]] all the way to the kind of direction-setting principles we've just been talking about. </p>
 +
<h3>Federation through Applications</h3>
 +
<p>In [[APPLICATIONS|Federation through Applications]] we showcase the creative frontier that is opening up.</p>
 +
<p>One way to enter it is by taking a look at your smartphone; appreciate so many fruits of finest human work and ingenuity that had to come together to produce this true wonder of technological micro-gadgetry. Then consider the even more wonderful <em>neglect</em> which we have shown toward those incomparably more important mega-gadgets – in which people and technology come together to give us the knowledge we need. The last century gave us the airplane, the washing machine, the TV and the computer. If this century's inventions are going to be <em>systems</em> that make ourselves and our society and our environment whole and thriving (a better way to inform the public; a better way to direct our creative work; a better way to (re-)educate the young and the old; or a completely new approach to healthcare or to tourism) – then who, and in what way, will do that sort of innovation? What might be its results? What technologies might enable it? What practical differences might this make? What can we do to ignite such a change? </p>
 +
<p>Alternatively you may consider what's presented here as a sufficiently complete prototype of the (socio-technical) 'light bulb', with examples of application, which amounts to a proof of concept, showing "It works – and look what we'll be able to see when it's been turned on!"</p>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><p>
 +
Fifty years ago Erich Jantsch made a proposal for the university of the future, and made an appeal that the university take the new leadership role which, as he saw it, was due.
 +
<blockquote>
 +
[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society’s capacity for continuous self-renewal.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>Suppose the university did that. Suppose that we opened up the university to take such a leadership role. What new ways of working, results, effects... could be achieved? What might this new creative frontier look like, what might it consist of, how may it be organized?</p>
 +
<p>The technique demonstrated here is the [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] – which are the characteristic products of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. Here's a related question to consider: If we should aim at <em>systemic</em>  impact, if our key goal is to re-create systems including our own – then the traditional academic articles and book cannot be our only or even our main product. But what else <em>should</em> we do? And how?</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Jantsch.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Erik Jantsch]]<br>the icon of [[systemic innovation]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>The [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] here serve as
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>models, embodying and exhibiting systemic solutions, how the things may be put together, which may then be adapted to other situations and improved further</li>
 +
<li>interventions, because they are (by definition) embedded within real-life situations and practices, aiming to change them</li>
 +
<li>experiments, showing what works and what doesn't, and what still needs to be changed or improved</li></ul></p>
 +
<p>In Federation through Images we exhibit about 40 [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]], which together compose the single central one – of the creative frontier which we are pointing to by our four mentioned main keywords. We have developed it in the manner of prospectors who have found gold and are preparing an area for large-scale mining – by building a school and a hospital and a hotel and... What exactly is to be built and how – those are the questions that those [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are there to answer.</p></div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Federation through Conversations</h3>
 +
<p> In [[CONVERSATIONS|Federation through Conversations]] the theme is the larger societal change – and the change of our understanding of core issues.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><p>
 +
In 1968 The Club of Rome was initiated, as a global think tank to study the future prospects of humanity, give recommendations and incite action. Based on the first decade of The Club's work, Aurelio Peccei – its founding president and motor power – gave this diagnosis:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future.
 +
</blockquote></p>
 +
<p>If there was any truth in Peccei's conclusion, then the challenge that history has given our generation is at the same time a historical opportunity.</p>
 +
<p>The last time "a great cultural revival" happened, the "Renaissance" as we now call it, our ancestors liberated themselves from a worldview that kept them captive – where the only true happiness was to be found in the afterlife. Provided of course that one lived by the God's command, and by the command of the kings and the bishops as His earthly representatives. Is it indeed possible – and what would it take – to see our own time's prejudices and power issues in a similar way as we now see the ones that the Enlightenment liberated us from? What new worldview might help us achieve that? What new way of evolving our culture and organizing our society might we find to replace them? These, in a nutshell, are the questions taken up in Federation through Conversations.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Peccei.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]<br>the icon of [[guided evolution of society]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Re-evolution, power and politics</h3>
 +
<p>How to make a change? How to change course?</p>
 +
<p>Another way to approach this part of our presentation is to say "Now that we've created those 'headlights' – can we use them to illuminate 'the way'? Can we see where we are headed, and find a better road to follow?" Which of course means that we must explore the way we've been evolving, as culture and as society; because that's 'the way', isn't it?</p>
 +
<p>If this challenge may seem daunting, the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] again come to our rescue. Pierre Bourdieu, for one, who saw French imperialism show its true face in the war in Algeria in the late 1950s. And who, as Algeria was gaining independence, saw the old power relationship mutate and take a completely new form – so that the power was no longer in weaponry and in the instruments of torture, but in economy and the instruments of culture. This insight made Bourdieu a sociologist; he understood that the society, and the power, evolve and function in a completely different way than what we've been told.</p>
 +
<p>We federate Bourdieu. We connect his insights with the insights of Antonio Damasio, the cognitive neuroscientist who discovered that we were not the rational choosers we believed we were. Damasio will help us understand why Bourdieu was so right when he talked about our worldview as <em>doxa</em>; and about the <em>symbolic power</em> which can only be exercised without <em>anyone's</em> awareness of its existence. We also [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] Bourdieu's insights with... No, let's leave those details to Federation through Conversations, and to our very conversations.</p>
 +
<p>Let's conclude here by just highlighting the point this brings us to in the case we are presenting: When this [[knowledge federation|<em>federation</em>]] work has been completed, we'll not end up with another worldview that will liberate us from the old power relationships and empower us to pursue happiness well beyond what we've hitherto been able to achieve. We shall liberate ourselves from socialization into any fix worldview altogether! We'll have understood, indeed, how the worldview creation and our socialization into a fixed worldview has been <em>the</em> key instrument of the sort of power we now must liberate ourselves from.</p>
 +
<p>In this way the circle has been closed – and we are back where we started, at [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]] as issue. We are looking at the way in which truth and meaning are socially created – which is of course what this presentation is about.</p>
 +
<p>Far from being "just talking", the conversations we want to initiate <em>build</em> communication in a certain new way, both regarding the media used and the manner of communicating. We use the [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]] – which is a manner of speaking that sidesteps all coercion into a worldview and replaces it by genuine listening, collaboration and co-creation. By conversing in this way we also bring the public attention to completely new themes. We evolve a public sphere capable of developing public awareness about those themes. Here in the truest sense the medium is the message. </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
------
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Turning on the light</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Where shall we point it?</h3>
 +
<p>Sometimes when we talk about this work people ask "so where do you think this can be applied?" Well, it's a new way to work with information, we answer. So it can be applied wherever information is applied. This is of course true, but it still misses the main point. Which is that <em>our main value proposition is to vastly broaden and strengthen the application of information or knowledge</em>. This leaves a vast range of possible themes for us to talk about. But it's time now to be concrete, and choose one. Or a handful.</p>
 +
<p>So imagine that you had it – a strong and flexible electrical flashlight (metaphorically speaking), which you can point at will toward any question or theme you may want to illuminate. Suppose that a prototype of this flashlight has just been completed, and now you want to demonstrate its value in practice. You want to show it to people, show what it can do, invite – and attract – the people to try it and use it. What themes would you choose?</p>
 +
<p>We've chosen the following three themes. </p>
 +
<h3>The paradigm strategy dialog</h3>
 +
<p>One could say that this is the most natural and straight-forward choice we could have made. The 'road of the bus' is really the course of our civilization's evolution. Can we illuminate <em>that</em> – and show how exactly it's been developing; where we are coming from and where we are headed; and what we <em>should</em> do at this particular point on this road where we currently are, what course should we steer? And how? These are, roughly, the themes of The Paradigm Strategy dialog.</p>
 +
<p>While of course anyone can participate, the intended primary audience are the informed and concerned creatives, the global change makers. Can we engage them to co-create a vision? Can we use the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] techniques and technologies to orchestrate a global conversation where the best insights of our present best minds are aided by the most relevant insights of the historical [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], to co-create a state-of-the-art vision for all of us, and for our society?</p>
 +
<p>The [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] vision that is offered is what we called the [[paradigm strategy|<em>paradigm strategy</em>]] – which is to focus our energies on shifting the whole paradigm. The insight to be developed is that while even small and obviously necessary changes may be difficult or impossible (because they don't fit into the existing [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]), the biiig change may still be easy (because we are at the point in our evolution where everything's been prepared for it, and where that's just our natural next step). </p>
 +
<p>To illuminate our evolutionary trajectory and the just mentioned view of our present-day position on it we have developed The Paradigm Strategy poster, where a variety of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] techniques are applied and showcased. The [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] here are the leading thinkers in sociology, cognitive science, philosophy... But not only. </p>
 +
<p>Long story made short – by federating Chomsky as linguist, Harari as historian, Graeber as anthropologist, Nietzsche as philosopher, Bourdieu and Giddens as sociologists, Damasio as cognitive scientist... we arrive at a radically fresh view of the nature of our societal evolution. And of our <em>socialization</em>. Without going into details (which will be shared in Federation through Conversations and of course in the conversations) let's just highlight a single paradigm-shifting detail: Our shared single worldview, which in the earlier paradigm tended to be considered as "the objective truth about the nature reality" (even if we could never really agree what exactly this thing might be...) – now becomes an instrument of our socialization! The <em>liberation</em> from clinging on to this "reality picture" is then seen as our evolutionary step forward. So we have made a full circle and came back to – [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]], which is of course the mother of any paradigm.</p>
 +
<p> Let us here also share an insight, a [[high-level|<em>high-level</em>]] view that follows from this conversation – how we've been evolving socially and culturally as the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] (man the (game) player). This expression has been used as the title of an old book, but we've polished it and redefined it, so that it has a much more precise and agile meaning what good old Johan Huizinga intended. The point is that the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] is not the <em>homo sapiens</em>; he does not really seek knowledge or use knowledge. He's become adapted to the complex reality combined with the lack of suitable information – by simply learning his different social roles, and in particular his profession, as one would learn the rules of a game; and by playing competitively, aiming to increase what he (or better said the game) considers as his gains or interests. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] learns by seeing what works in practice, and adapting. In the shadow of this evolutionary condition, needless to say, one finds spectacular opportunities for insight and improvement – which should give zest and zeal to this conversation.</p>
 +
<p>An interesting subtlety is that the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] and the <em>homo sapiens</em> are not only two different cultural species and ways of evolving; they are also signature themes of two <em>incommensurable</em> [[paradigm|<em>paradigms</em>]] (ways of creating truth and meaning). Each of them – by looking in his own characteristic way – sees the other as going extinct, and himself as the paragon of evolution: The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] just looks around, see that it's the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] specimen who are succeeding in life, and that the <em>homo sapiens</em> specimen are becoming scarce, and draws the obvious conclusion. The cultural <em>homo sapiens</em> looks at the data, sees the global trends, and the values and behaviors that are causing them, and draws the <em>opposite</em> conclusion.</p>
 +
<h3>Liberation dialog</h3>
 +
<p>However timely the [[paradigm strategy|<em>paradigm strategy</em>]] may be as a theme, it is probably too abstract and esoteric for most people. To engage the general public in a conversation, we have prepared a whole other one – which brings in much of the same insights and content, but through a back door, so to speak. The title theme of this dialog, however, is religion, and its nature and future. Here too we have a document that can strike the conversation; it's the book (presently a manuscript) titled "Liberation" and subtitled "Religion for the third millennium". It's the first book in the intended Knowledge Federation trilogy, by which [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] will be introduced to general audiences. </p>
 +
<p>In traditional cultures, religion has served as the ethical and hence also evolutionary guidance; it's provided the moral code and the sense of identity that held the people together in a community. </p>
 +
<p>Religion is also a theme on which the opinions are most strongly held – both when they are <em>pro</em> religion, or a certain specific religion, and when they are against it. So this theme has the potential to truly engage the people. This potential is vastly augmented by the fact that, as it turns out, we have a way of looking at this theme that is likely to upset both the <em>pro</em> and the <em>con</em> side! How is this possible?</p>
 +
<p>You must have noticed that religion has been associated with <em>believing</em> in something, even against evidence. Those beliefs were, furthermore, so strong, that people have been prone to go into armed disputes even over small differences – flagrantly violating the Almighty's explicit command not  to kill (delivered by Moses, who's been recognized as a prophet in major Western religions). So the question is – what's really going on here? And – can we understand the issue of religion in a completely new way – which will help us reconfigure our values and our priorities, and bind us together in a society <em>in a completely new way</em>?</p>
 +
</div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
<p>It has turned out that the key [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] is already there; and that it only needs to be [[knowledge federation|<em>federated</em>]]. This [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] also comes with an interesting story, which lets itself be rendered as a [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]]. </p>
 +
<p>Early in the 20th century a young monk in Thailand spent a couple of years in a monastery in Bangkok and thought "This just cannot be it!" So he decided to do as the Buddha did – he went alone into a forest and experimented. He also had the original Pali scriptures with him, to help him find the <em>original</em> way. And reportedly he did!</p>
 +
<p>What Buddhadasa ("the slave of the Buddha", as this [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] of religion called himself) found out was that the essence of the Buddha's teaching was different, and in a way <em>opposite</em> from how Buddhism is usually understood and taught. And not only that – the practice he rediscovered is in its essential elements <em>opposite</em> from what's evolved as "the pursuit of happiness" in most of the modern world. Buddhadasa saw the Buddha's discovery, which he rediscovered, as a kind of a natural law, the discoveries of which have marked the inception of all major religions. Or more simply, what Buddhadasa discovered, and undertook to give to the world, was "the essence of religion". </p></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
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<p>You may of course be tempted to disqualify the Buddha's or Buddhadasa's approach to happiness as a product of some rigidly held religious belief. But the epistemological essence of Buddhadasa's teaching is that it's not only purely <em>evidence-based</em> or experience-based – but also that the liberation from <em>any</em> sort of clinging, and to clinging to beliefs in particular, is <em>the</em> essential part of the practice.</p>
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<p>In the Liberation book we federate Buddhadasa's teaching about religion by (1) moving it from the domain of religion as belief to the domain of the pursuit of happiness; (2) linking this with a variety of other sources, thus producing a kind of a roadmap to happiness puzzle, and then showing how this piece snuggly fits in and completes the puzzle; (3) showing how religions – once this [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] was discovered – tended to become instruments of negative socialization; and how we may now do better, and need to do better.</p>
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<h3>Knowledge federation dialog</h3>
 +
<p>Finally, we need to talk about our [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]], about [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. While this conversation will complete the [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] (by creating a feedback loop with the help of which it will evolve further), the real theme and interest of this conversation is of course well beyond what our little model might suggest.</p>
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<p>In the midst of all our various evolutionary mishaps and misdirections, there's at least this one thing that has been done right – the academic tenure. And the ethos of academic freedom it institutionalized. What we now have amounts to a global army, of people who've been selected and trained and publicly sponsored to think freely. If our core task is a fresh new evolutionary start – beyond "the survival of the fittest" and the power structures it has shackled us with – then it's hard to even imagine how this could be done without engaging in some suitable way this crucially important resource.</p>
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<p>How are we using it?</p>
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<p>What follows is a description of the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] model, and an invitation to a conversation. The purpose of the conversation will be to discuss the opportunity that our model will illuminate – and by doing that <em>already</em> make concerted progress toward our goal.</p>
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<p>We rush to make this clear: When we say "conversation", we don't mean just talking. On the contrary! The idea is to develop a new <em>way</em> of talking in public,  an orchestrated, media-enabled and growing global conversation about the themes that matter. The idea is to evolve a [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]] capable of thinking new thoughts, of grasping situations and finding solutions. We intend to bring the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] and their game-changing insights into the focus of the public eye.</p></div></div>
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<p>By sharing this model, we want to initiate a conversation about the way we handle <em>the</em> most critical resource – human creativity (or insight, ingenuity, capacity to envision and induce change...) and its fruits accumulated through the ages. It is the way we use this resource that what will determine how all our other resources will be used. In this challenging point in human history, we may need to depend on this resource more than we ever did!</p>
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<p>On a similar note, we are not implying that anything might be wrong with the fine work that our academic colleagues are doing. Science rose to prominence owing to its successes in dispelling age-old prejudices, by explaining the natural phenomena. That it ended up in "the Grand Revelator of modern Western culture" role was an unintended consequence of its successes, as Benjamin Lee Whorf observed long ago. Science was not <em>conceived</em> for the role of informing people about basic things in life. The paradigm we are proposing is alternative to or <em>incommensurable</em> to traditional science (in Thomas Kuhn's usage of this word). It represents a different set of values and a different way of looking at the world. It serves an entirely different set of purposes.</p>
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<p>We have ample evidence to show that – if our society shall have the kind of benefits that it can and must draw from the results in disciplinary academic work – then (something like) [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] must also be in place.</p>
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If you feel already overloaded with technical-academic ideas, [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] will instantly come to your rescue! You may (unless you are an academic researcher and interested in all this) safely forget all that's just been told about [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]],  because the Modernity [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] expresses the gist of it in a nutshell. What it's saying is that in [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] we are using a different set of values, and a different standard of excellence, to evaluate knowledge and knowledge work. We don't try to tell "the objective truth about reality". Our goal is philosophically more humble, and practically more fastidious: To provide the 'light'; to be the 'headlights'; to show the way.</p>
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<p>Last century brought a disruption in the mentioned evolutionary process. Not something small and subtle, but very large and obvious. To model the behavior of small particles of matter, as revealed by the experiments, the physicists needed to thoroughly revise not only the "natural laws", but also the very concepts in terms of which the phenomena were modeled. The "Newton's laws" turned out to be only an approximation. The concepts he used were shown to be not his discovery, but his creation.</p>
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<p>"We are not discovering reality", the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] concluded, "we are <em>constructing</em> (representations of) reality". We shall see evidence of this in Federation through Images, where this disruption and the opportunity it has opened for us will be our theme. Thomas Kuhn, originally a physicist, moved to the philosophy of science and made himself a name there by telling us about the paradigms. Some controversy arose (as it indeed should when the foundations are moving): Do those paradigms <em>really exist</em> in the sciences – or is all this only Kuhn's construction?</p>
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<p>What we are calling [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] is simply an academically clean way by which such controversies can be resolved. A way in which the evolution can be continued by (as we pointed out above) <em>both</em> resolving the fundamental difficulties <em>and</em> putting good knowledge to good use. The whole thing takes only two simple steps:
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<ul>
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<li>Turn the above conclusion of the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], or the [[constructivist credo|<em>constructivist credo</em>]] as we are calling it, into a convention (instead of making it as a statement about reality) – by combining it with what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention" (mathematicians make such conventions when they define their formulas; and when they say "Let <em>x</em> be...")</li>
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<li>State – as a convention – that the purpose of knowledge (in the particular context or [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] we are creating) is not to "objectively describe reality" – but to provide the information and knowledge to contemporary people and society <em>as they may need it</em></li>
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<p>This then allows us to define everything else – concepts, methods, and even the values which guide us in knowledge work – by making conventions.</p>
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<p>You may notice how the Modernity [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] is at the same time both a question and an answer to that question. A lion's share of our difficulty, when it comes to changing behaviors and directions, is in the age-old <em>reifications</em>: science is what the scientists are doing; public informing is what the journalists are doing. We don't really have a clear sense of purpose beyond that. And even if we would try to give those large things a purpose, someone would surely object "but is that purpose <em>really</em> as you claim it is?". But this [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] marries the knowledge work with its purpose – by convention. It makes just as little  sense to argue against it, as to ask whether <em>x</em> "really is" as a mathematician defined it.
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<p>As we shall show on these pages, we would first of all see that something breathtakingly large happened during the past century. It didn't happen at once, but it did happen in so many places (or minds or academic fields) at the same time that the overall effect is shocking – albeit visible only when  best insights of our best minds have been put together. In a nutshell, what has happened was that the rational method (which was empowered during the Enlightenment to challenge not only the scriptures but also all other forms of insight, and which as a result came to believe that it was alone capable of seeing the reality objectively that is, as it truly is) developed to the point that it is now able to understand its own limits. The scientific concepts and methods – which were believed to be the <em>discovery</em> of Newton and other early scientific [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], turned out to be only an approximation, and their <em>creation</em>.</p>
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<p>The natural next step in this process then also becomes visible – and that's what we are pointing to (or more precisely what we are [[prototypes|<em>prototyping</em>]]) by the above image and the [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]].
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<p>At the same time, this seemingly all-too-pragmatic [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]] can be shown to provide an academically rigorous foundation for the creation of truth and meaning – which enables the creation of exactly the kind of knowledge that we described above as our vision and goal (well-founded knowledge about any relevant theme, and on any desired level of detail or abstraction). The details will be provided in Federation through Images, and we'll here only give you this hint, which is also necessary for fully understanding the nature of the [[keywords|<em>keyword</em>]] and definitions that are our theme here. What makes us truly able to depart from the traditional concepts, method and reality pictures and [[design|<em>design</em>]] new ones rigorously yet freely, is what philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention", and identified as "an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science". You'll easily understand why we considered it as an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of knowledge work at large.  Truth by convention (as defined and used within [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]]) is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let <em>x</em> be...".  When something is defined by a convention, it is meaningless to argue whether it "really is" as defined.  It is this approach to truth that truly makes us able to depart from the age-old <em>reifications</em> and traditional definitions and "correspondence theory" – and <em>construct</em> knowledge and knowledge work without raising a controversy; to leave the reality of 'candles' behind and freely create 'lightbulbs'. Concepts, and also methods, when defined in this way, become human-made and ideal "ways of looking at things" – which we can then use to look at human experience in new ways, and to organize it differently. </p>
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<p>The practical relevance of such ideal concepts must then of course be confirmed by showing that they help us see and organize  things in reality in more accurate and more useful ways. You'll notice that this is exactly what this website is about.</p>
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<p>It is a glimpse of this uncommon opportunity (that a line of work might exist which, just as good old science did in its day, dares to revisit and revise the very foundations that underlie our pursuit of knowledge, and then offers the kind of knowledge that can be vital and transformative to the people and the society of today) that compelled us to apply our best ability to its exploration and development.</p>
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<p>When making this proposal, we do not imply that anything might be wrong with the fine work our academic colleagues are doing. Science rose to prominence owing to its successes in dispelling age-old superstitions, by explaining the natural phenomena. Science was not <em>conceived</em> for the role of informing people about basic things in life. We are talking here about paradigms that are (in Thomas Kuhn's usage of this keyword) <em>incommensurable</em> – they represent different ways of looking at the world, each better suited for its own set of purposes. We have ample evidence to show that if our society shall have the kind of benefits that it can and must draw from disciplinary research – then (something like) the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]] must also be in place.</p>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>We will not solve our world's problems</h3>
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<p>[[Donella Meadows]] talked about systemic leverage points as those places within a complex system "where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything". She identified "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise" as <em>the</em> most impactful <em>kind of</em> systemic leverage points. Our proposal is to act in this most impactful way.</p>
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<p>We are proposing an approach to contemporary issues that is complementary to the approaches that are focused on those issues.</p>
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<p>This does not mean that we are proposing to replace the worthy efforts of our friends and colleagues who are working on specific problems such as the climate change, or on the millennium development goals. What we are proposing is a way to augment their likelihood of success.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Donella.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Donella Meadows]]</center></small></div>
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<h3>We will not change the world</h3>
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<p>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has", wrote [[Margaret Mead]]. You'll find evidence of our thoughtfulness and commitment on these pages.</p>
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<p>And yet it is clear to us, and it should be clear to you too, that we <em>cannot</em> really change the world. The world is not only us – it is <em>all of us</em> together! Which of course includes you as well.</p>
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<p>So if the world will change, that will be a result of <em>your</em> doing; of <em>your</em> thoughtfulness and commitment!</p>
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<p>Collaboration is to the emerging paradigm as competition is to the old one. In Norway (this website is hosted at the University of Oslo) there is a word – dugnad – for the kind of collaboration that brings together the people in a neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon, to gather fallen leaves and branches and do small repairs in the commons, and then share a meal together. Consider this as an invitation to a dugnad – whose purpose is to enkindle society-wide renewal.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Mead.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Margaret Mead]]</center></small></div>
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<h3>A paradigm</h3>
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<p>As a way of handling knowledge, [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is in the proper sense of that word (as Thomas Kuhn defined it and used it) a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. We offer it as an alternative to the approaches to knowledge where the goal is to create a single "reality picture", with which whatever is to be considered "real" or "true" must be consistent. Isn't the dictatorship of any single worldview an <em>impediment</em> to communication; and to evolution of ideas?  In knowledge [[knowledge federation|<em>federation</em>]] the ideas and their authors are allowed to preserve in some suitable degree their autonomy and identity. The goal is still to unify them and make our understanding of the world coherent – but not at all cost! Sometimes good ideas just cannot be reconciled. Sometimes they represent distinct points of view, each of which is useful in its own way.</p>
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<p>On our main page we suggested that when we liberate our creative work in general, and our knowledge work in particular, from subservience to age-old patterns and routines and outmoded assumptions, and then motivate it and orient it differently, a sweeping Renaissance– like change may be expected to result. We motivated this observation, and our initiative, by three large changes that took place during the past century – of epistemology, of information technology, and of our society's condition and information needs. In Federation through Images we took up the first motive. Here our theme will be the second one.</p>
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<p>In Federation through Images we used the image of a bus with candle headlights to make a sweepingly large claim: When innovation, or creative work in general, is "knowledge-based" and directed as it may best improve or complete the larger whole in which what is being innovated has a role, then the difference this may make, the benefits that may result to our society, are similar as the benefits of substituting light bulbs for candles may be to the people in that bus. </p>
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<p>There is, however, an obvious alternative – and that is what is in effect today. It is to simply have everyone act as it may best further (what they perceive as) their "personal interests" – and trust that the "free competition" or "the survival of the fittest" or "the invisible hand" of the market will turn that into common good. The real-life stories we are about to tell will help us make a case for an informed and more sober alternative.</p>
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<p>We choose our stories to serve as parables. In a fractal-like manner, each of them will reflect – from a specific angle, of course – the entire situation our creative work and specifically knowledge work is in. So just as the case was with [[ideograms|<em>ideograms</em>]], stories too can be worth one thousand words. They too can condense and vividly display a wealth of insight. Bring to mind again the iconic image of Galilei in house prison, whispering ''eppur si muove'' into his beard. The stories  we are about to tell will suggest that also in our own time similar situations and dynamics are at play.</p>
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<h3>They lift up ideas of giants</h3>
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<p>How to lift up a core insights of a [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] out of undeserved anonymity? We tell [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] – lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories. They are the kind of stories one might want to tell to an assembly of friends over a glass of vine. Their role is to distill core ideas of daring thinkers from the vocabulary of a discipline, and give them the visibility and appeal they deserve. If you are like us, weary of Donald Trump-style sensations in the media, then you might be glad to find here sensations of a completely new kind – that are in a truest sense good news, and also relevant! And with <em>completely</em> different protagonists! Our sensations will bring to the foreground some of our most innovative and daring thinkers, and make them a subject of conversations. What they'll have to say will give us the power of think new thoughts and handle large and small issues in completely new ways. </p>
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<p>By joining [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] together into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], and [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] into a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] – we can create an overarching view of any situation, and of our historical, global situation at large – and see in a completely new light how those situations may need to be handled. </p>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>How the Silicon Valley failed to understand its giant in residence</h3>
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<p>Before we go into the details of this story, let's take a moment to see how it works as a parable. The story is about how the Silicon Valley failed to understand and even hear its giant or genius in residence, even after having recognized him as such! This makes the story emblematic: The Silicon Valley is the world's hottest innovation hub. The paradigm shifts have, on the other hand, always been opportunities for creative new actors, for unconventional and daring thinkers and does, to emerge as new leaders. Could the large paradigm shift we've been talking about indeed be an opportunity for new actors to take the lead – <em>even in</em> technological innovation? </p>
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<p>Douglas Engelbart, the main protagonist of this story, is not only [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]'s iconic progenitor or "patron saint"; to quite a few of us he has also been a revered friend. Among us we call him "Doug". So we'll continue this tradition sporadically also on these pages.</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Doug.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Douglas Engelbart]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Engelbart too stood on the shoulders of giants</h3>
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<p>It is in the spirit of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to at least mention the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] on whose shoulders Engelbart was standing. We'll here mention only one, whom we also need to lift up as an icon. [[Vannevar Bush]] was a scientist and a scientific strategist par excellence,  who pointed to the urgent need for (what we are calling) [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] – already in 1945!</p>
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<p>A pre-WW2 pioneer of computing machinery, and professor and dean at the MIT, During the war Bush served as the leader of the entire US scientific effort – supervising about 6000 leading scientists, and assuring that the Free World is a step ahead in developing all imaginable weaponry including The Bomb. And so in 1945, the war just barely being finished, Bush wrote an article titled "As We May Think", where the tone is "OK, we've won the great war. But one other problem still remains to which we scientists now need to give the highest priority – and that is to recreate what we do with knowledge after it's been published". He urged the scientists to focus on developing suitable technology and processes.</p>
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<p>Engelbart heard him. He read Bush's article in 1947, as a young army recruit, in a Red Cross library in the Philippines, and it helped him 'see the light' a couple of years later. But Bush's article inspired in part also another development – and that's what we'll turn to next.</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bush.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Vannevar Bush]]</center></small></div>
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<p>Having decided, as a novice engineer in December of 1950, to direct his career so as to maximize its benefits to the mankind, [[Douglas Engelbart]] thought intensely for three months about the best way to do that. Then he had an epiphany.</p>
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<p>On a convention of computer professionals in 1968 Engelbart and his SRI-based lab demonstrated the computer technology we are using today – computers linked together into a network, people interacting with computers via video terminals and a mouse and windows – and through them with one another.</p>
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<p>In the 1990s it was finally understood (or in any case <em>some</em> people understood) that it was not Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who invented the technology, or even the XEROS PARC, from where they took it. Engelbart received all imaginable honors that an inventor can have. Yet he made it clear, and everyone around him knew, that he felt celebrated for a wrong reason. And that the gist of his vision had not yet been understood, or put to use. "Engelbart's unfinished revolution" was coined as the theme for the 1998 Stanford University celebration of his Demo. And it stuck. </p>
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<p>The man whose ideas made "the revolution in the Valley" possible passed away in 2013 – feeling he had failed.</p></div>
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<h3>Engelbart's vision</h3>
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<p>What is it that Engelbart saw? How important is it? Why was he not understood?</p>
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<p>We'll answer by zooming in on one of the many events where Engelbart was celebrated, and when his vision was in the spotlight – a videotaped panel that was organized for him at Google in 2007. This will give us an opportunity to explain his vision – if not in his own words, then at least with his own Powerpoint slides. Here is how his presentation was intended to begin.</p>
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<p></p>
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<p>[[File:Doug-4.jpg]]<br><small><center>The title and the first three slides of Engelbart's call to action panel at Google in 2007.</center></small></p>
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<p></p>
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<p>Around that time it became clear that Engelbart's long career was coming to an end. By choosing title "A Call to Action!", Engelbart obviously intended make it clear that what he wanted to give to Google, and to the world through Google, was a direction and a call to pursue it.</p>
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<p>The first slide pointed to a large and as yet unfulfilled opportunity that is immanent in digital technology. The digital technology can help make this a better world! But to realize this potential of technology, we need to change our way of thinking.</p>
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<p>The second slide was meant to explain the nature of this different thinking, and why we needed it. The slide points to a direction. Doug talks about a 'vehicle' we are riding in. You'll notice that part of the message here is the same as in our [[Modernity ideogram]], which we discussed at length in Federation through Images. But there's also more; the vehicle has inadequate "steering and braking controls". We'll come back to that further below.</p>
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<p>The third slide was there to point to Doug's way to remedy this problem. It sets the stage for explaining the essence of Doug's vision; for understanding the purpose and the value of his many technical ideas and contributions, which is what the remainder of the slides were about; and ultimately for his call to action.</p>
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INTERMISSION [[The future of innovation]]
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  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Innovation 2.0</h3>
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<p>However incredible the story we've just told might appear (a very smart man trying to communicate a very important insight to a whole community of very smart folks, and (to use the expression for which Doug was notorious) "they just didn't get it!" – the story <em>does</em> have a simple explanation: A shared paradigm (consistency with a set of basic assumptions) is what <em>enables</em> us to communicate. The seemingly naive metaphor in Doug's second slide, the image of a vehicle in which we ride toward our future, points to a whole new paradigm in the way in which we use our creative capabilities. Consider the way the things are presently done: A scientists learns how to do physics, or biology, and does that. A journalist, similarly, learns the trade of media reporting from the past-generation journalists. There is no awareness of a larger, systemic purpose involved, no possibility of adapting what we do to that purpose. With every new generation, we are just passing on those 'candles'.</p>
 +
<p>Technological innovation is presently driven by "market needs":  What are the scientists doing? What do the journalists need? We can use new technology to have them do those things incomparably easier and faster! </p>
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<p>In his second slide, Doug was pointing to a radical alternative. Information, knowledge work, and information technology, have  <em>systemic</em> roles and purposes. Information must be perceived as a system within a system. We must configure our way of handling it as it may best suit its vitally important roles in the larger systems – so that the larger systems may fulfill <em>their</em> vitally important roles. </p>
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<p>There's a message on an even higher level in Doug's second slide – that one whole category of human activities, of decisive importance to our future, cannot be driven by age-old habits, or "the market"; that it must become "systemic" or informed. And when it does, that it will serve us incomparably better and more safely than it does, guide us toward an incomparably better future. But this – as Naomi Klein observed – changes everything! It changes <em>the</em> most important meme or gene in our 'cultural DNA'! We are not in the habit of using information to make this sort of basic, directional choices. To get there will require one whole evolutionary quantum leap. But isn't that what we've been talking about all along?</p>
 +
<p>Hence the difficulty in communicating it. We don't come to a lecture to hear that sort of thing! We are all far too busy to ever come back to such basics. We come to a talk to get a technical idea – and perhaps implement it in the new system we are building. Not to learn that the very <em>direction</em> of technological innovation has to change! We have no time, and no place to such messages. And hence we just ignore them.</p>
 +
<p>But here our goal is to change that practice. We've now heard Doug's basic message. But can we rely on it? In what follows we'll begin to connect the dots. We'll connect his vision with the insights of other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. We'll begin to see the emerging order of things in which the mentioned details will make perfect sense. We'll begin to draft the  [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]].</p>
 +
</div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-6">
 +
<h3>Connecting the dots</h3>
 +
<p>[[Erich Jantsch]], the main protagonist of the story we are about to share, will here serve as an icon for those very insights that Doug's audiences were lacking, to be able to understand what he was talking about. It's what we've been calling [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. We shall see his insights were so similar to Doug's, and his story so parallel to his, that we couldn't help calling it "the incredible history of Eric". Jantsch was, however, focusing on questions that were complementary to Doug's: What properties do our large and basic systems (such as our civilization at large, or Doug's 'vehicle') need to be safe or governable or sustainable or simply "good"? In what way should we intervene into those systems so that they may acquire those properties? Who – and in what way, that is, by what methods – should do such interventions? </p>
 +
<p>Having received his doctorate in astrophysics at the tender age of 22, from the University of Vienna, [[Erich Jantsch]] realized that it is here on Earth that his attention is needed. And so he ended up researching, for the OECD in Paris, the theme that animates our initiative (how our ability to create and induce change can be directed far more purposefully and effectively). Jantsch's specific focuse was on the ways in which technology was being developed and introduced in different countries, the OECD members. Jantsch and the OECD called this issue  "technological planning". Is it only the market? Or is there some way we can more effectively <em>direct</em> the development and use of the rapidly growing muscles of our technology? </p>
 +
<p>So when The Club of Rome (a global think tank where a hundred selected international and interdisciplinary members do research into the future prospects of mankind) was about to be initiated, in 1968, it was natural to invite Jantsch to give the opening keynote. </p>
 +
<p>Immediately after the opening of The Club of Rome Jantsch made himself busy crafting solutions. By following him through three steps of this process, we shall be able to identify three core insights, three key pieces in our 'elephant puzzle', for which Jantsch must be credited.</p>
 +
<p>But before we do that, we'll give due credit to a couple of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] whose insights helped Jantsch see further.</p></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Jantsch.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Erich Jantsch]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>What our systems must be like</h3>
 +
<p>A scientific reader may have noticed that Engelbart's innocent metaphor in Slide 2 has a technical or scientific interpretation. In cybernetics, which is a scientific study of (the relationship between information and) control, "feedback"  and "control" are household terms. Just as the bus must have functioning headlights and steering and braking controls, so must <em>any</em> system have suitable feedback (inflow of suitable information), and suitable control (a way to apply the incoming information to correct its course or functioning or behavior) – if it is to be steerable or viable or "sustainable".</p>
 +
<p>Norbert Wiener is a suitable iconic [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] to represent (the vision that inspired) cybernetics for us. Wiener studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and finally got his doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard – when he was only 17!  Then he went on to do seminal work in a number of fields – one of which was cybernetics.</p>
 +
<p>In the final chapter of his 1948 book Cybernetics, titled "Information, Language and Society", Wiener puts forth two insights that are of central interest to our story.</p>
 +
<p>The first is that our communication (or feedback loop) is broken. Wiener does that by citing Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", which – as we have seen – also inspired Engelbart. And also in another way, as we'll see next.</p>
 +
<p>Wiener's second insight is that the market won't give us control. Wiener [[knowledge federation|<em>federates</em>]] this insight by citing another [[giants|<em>giant</em>]], John von Neumann (whose many seminal contributions include the design of the basic architecture of the digital computer, which is still in use), and his results (with Oskar Morgenstern) in the theory of games. And by discussing common experience. Wiener's argument has the form "see what my estimable colleagues have found out; doesn't this explain the dynamics we have been witnessing daily? Here we have further evidence that indeed our communication is broken!"</p>
 +
<p>But let's listen to Wiener's tone. Isn't he suggesting that some deep and power-related prejudices are at play (recall Galilei...):
 +
<blockquote>
 +
There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market, the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end of a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor, and has thus earned the great reward with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory.
 +
</blockquote >
 +
You may understood Wiener's technical keyword "homeostatic process" as what a system must maintain to be (as we now call it) "sustainable". It's been defined as "feedback mechanism inducing measures to keep a system continuing".</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Wiener.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Norbert Wiener]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Planning as feedback, systemic innovation as control</h3>
 +
<p>With a doctorate in physics, it was not difficult to Jantsch to put two and two together and see what needed to be done. If our civilization is on a disastrous course, and if it lacks suitable "headlights and braking and steering controls) or (to use a cybernetician's more scientific tone) "feedback and control" – then there's a single capability that we as society are lacking, which can correct this problem – the capability to look into the future, and steer the way by correcting our systems.</p>
 +
<p>So right after The Club of Rome's first meeting, Jantsch gathered a group of creative leaders and researchers, mostly from the systems community, in Bellagio, Italy, to put together necessary insights and methods.  The result was so basic that Jantsch called it "rational creative action". The message is obvious and central to our interest: Certainly there are many ways in which we can be creative. But if our creative action is to be <em>rational</em> – then these essential ingredients must be present. </p>
 +
<p>Rational creative action begins with forecasting, which explores different future scenario; it ends with an action selected to enhance the likelihood of the <em>desired</em> scenario or scenarios. So what they called "planning" (notice that this had nothing to do with the kind of planning that was at the time used in the Soviet Union) was envisioned as the new and enhanced feedback that our society lacked in order to have control over its future:
 +
<blockquote>[T]he pursuance of orthodox planning is quite insufficient, in that it seldom does more than touch a system through changes of the variables. Planning must be concerned with the structural design of the system itself and involved in the formation of policy.”
 +
</blockquote>
 +
Policies, which are the objective of planning (as the authors of the Bellagio Declaration envisioned it) specify both the institutional changes and the norms and value changes that might be necessary to make our goal-oriented action in a true sense rational and creative (Jantsch, 1970):
 +
<blockquote>Policies are the first expressions and guiding images of normative thinking and action. In other words, they are the spiritual agents of change—change not only in the ways and means by which bureaucracies and technocracies operate, but change in the very institutions and norms which form their homes and castles.”</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
<h3>The emerging role of the university</h3>
 +
<p>The next question in Jantsch's stream of thought and action was roughly this: If [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] is a necessary new capability that our systems and our civilization at large now require, then who – that is, what institution – may be the most natural and best qualified to foster this capability? Jantsch concluded that the university (institution) will have to be the answer. And that to be able to fulfill this role, the university itself will need to update its own system.
 +
<blockquote>[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society’s capacity for continuous self-renewal. It may have to become a political institution, interacting with government and industry in the planning and designing of society’s systems, and controlling the outcomes of the introduction of technology into those systems. This new leadership role of the university should provide an integrated approach to world systems, particularly the ‘joint systems’ of society and technology.” </blockquote>
 +
In 1969  Jantsch spent a semester at the MIT, writing a 150-page report about the future of the university, from which the above excerpt was taken, and lobbying with the faculty and the administration to begin to develop this new way of thinking and working in academic practice.</p>
 +
<h3>Evolution is the key</h3>
 +
<p>In the 1970s Jantsch lived in Berkeley, wrote prolifically, and taught occasional seminars at the U.C. Berkeley. This period of his life and work was marked by a new insight, which was triggered by his experiences with working on global / systemic change, and some profound scientific insights brought to him, initially, by Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel laureate scientist who visited Berkeley in 1972. Put very briefly, this involves two closely related insights:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li> we cannot – that is, nobody can – recreate the large systems including the largest, our civilization, in any way directly; where we <em>can</em> make a difference – and hence where we must focus on – is their evolution;</li>
 +
<li>the living and evolving systems are governed by an entirely different dynamic than physical systems – which needs to be understood</il>
 +
</ul></p>
 +
<p>Jantsch was especially interested in understanding the relationship between our – that is, people's values and ways of being, and our evolution. He saw us as entering the "evolutionary paradigm". Bela Banathy cited him extensively in "Guided Evolution of Society". The title of Jantsch's 1975 book "Design for Evolution" points unequivocally in the same direction as our four core keywords. The keyword [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] we adopted from him directly.</p>
 +
<h3>The incredible part</h3>
 +
<p>Norbert Wiener was of course not alone in observing that a meta-discipline was needed, that would (1) provide a common language and body of knowledge for communication among and beyond the sciences and (2) provide us an understanding of systems, so that we may secure that they the core socio-technical systems we are creating are suitably structured, and thereby also "sustainable". Von Bertalanffy reached similar conclusions from the venture point of mathematical biology; and so did a number of others, in their own way. In 1954 Bertalanffy was joined by  biologist Ralph Gerard, economist Kenneth Boulding and mathematician Anatol Rapoport at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences – and they created an organization that later included (as a federation) most of the others including cybernetics, and became the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Realizing the importance of this new frontier, many brave young women and men joined the systems movement, and the body of research grew immensely.</p>
 +
<p>The research in the part of games theory that Wiener found especially interesting also subsequently exploded. During the 1950s more than a thousand research articles were published on the so-called "prisoner's dilemma". The message from this research that will be for our story can be found in the opening of the corresponding Wikipedia page: It is that perfectly rational competition, where everyone maximizes the personal gain, can lead to a condition where <em>everyone</em> is worth off than what would be reached through cooperation. </p>
 +
<p>Erich Jantsch spent the last decade of his life living in Berkeley, teaching sporadic seminars at U.C. Berkeley and writing prolifically. Ironically, the man who with such passion and insight wrote about how the university would need to change to help us master our future, and lobbied for such change – never found a home and sustenance for his work at the university. </p>
 +
<p>In 1980 Jantsch published two books with a wealth of insights on "evolutionary paradigm" – whose purpose was to inform the evolutionary path of our society; he  passed away after a short illness, only 51 years old. An obituarist commented that his unstable income and inadequate nutrition might have been a factor. In his will Jantsch asked that his ashes be tossed into the ocean, "the cradle of evolution".</p>
 +
<p>In that same year Ronald Reagan became the 40th U.S. president on the agenda that the market, or the free competition, is the <em>only</em> thing we can rely on. That same "simple-minded theory", as Norbert Wiener called it, marks our political life still today. It is also what directs our technological innovation and creative work in general, and hence also our travel into the future.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Wiener's paradox</h3>
 +
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem," David Bohm wrote, "it can never be dissolved." We must recognize that what we are witnessing is a paradox and not a problem. Indeed, this paradox might well be identified as "the mother of all problems" – or at least the characteristic problems that mark our era.</p>
 +
<p>In her 2014 keynote to the American Society for Cybernetics, Mary Catherine Bateson – the daughter of two prominent forefathers of cybernetics and of the systems movement, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson – observed that cybernetics should not really organize itself as a scientific discipline; that its main reason for existence is "cognitive therapy" – to help us the people overcome a cognitive illusion we acquire in early childhood, namely that the direct cause-effect relationships we perceive are the only thing that matters.</p>
 +
<p>At the 2015, at the 59th yearly meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, with Mary Cathrine Bateson also present, we presented a talk titled "Wiener's paradox – we can dissolve it together". Our point was that <em>the very first thing</em> that the world needed to hear from the systems movement, the one that Wiener reported already in 1948 (that we cannot and should not trust "the market" to direct our ride into the future; that systemic insights and action must necessarily be used if we want this ride to be "sustainable"), the one that is necessary for the whole opus of the systems sciences to become socially relevant and impactful – has not yet been communicated. And that to dissolve the paradox, the traditional-academic organization and activities (that evolved within traditional academic disciplines for an entirely different purpose) will not be sufficient – and that some systemic self-organization, or what Engelbart called "bootstrapping" (see below) will be necessary.</p>
 +
<p>But we also use this keyword, [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]], in a broader sense – to signify that <em>the entire academic enterprise</em> might now find itself in a similarly paradoxical situation.</p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bateson2.jpeg]]<br><small><center>[[Mary Catherine Bateson]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The future of innovation</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A way of looking</h3>
 +
<p>By [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] we mean creative action that makes a difference in the world, that induces change. We have adapted this most common business concept to our needs – when an idea (insight, invention...) becomes hard-wired in our daily reality, when it has made a difference, then it becomes an "innovation". </p>
 +
<p>Notice that [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] is what drives our societal and cultural evolution; it's the movement of our metaphorical 'bus' or Engelbart's 'common economic-political vehicle' in which we ride into the future.</p>
 +
<p>[[innovation|<em>Innovation</em>]] has a result which we have hitherto ignored. This thing has  been a kind of a casualty, a collateral damage, a side effect... of our "successes in business", of the present way in which we've been evolving and innovating and conducting affaires.  Not because it's a small detail – on the contrary! It's because it's so <em>large</em> that we don't see it! Like a mountain on which we may be walking, it determines what and how we see things – but it's not something we can see from the place where we stand. It's what Banathy called "the systems in which we live and work". </p>
 +
<p>So we have a maaaaajor challenge – to make that thing visible to us the people! We gave our communication design team that challenge, and here is what they came up with. </p>
 +
[[File:System.jpeg]]<br><small><center>System ideogram</center></small>
 +
<p>The original image was partly animated. But anyhow, this image is a placeholder for a core [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] challenge.</p>
 +
<p>The insight that this System [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] is meant to convey is to help us see ourselves as parts or clogs or nuts and bolts in those large systems. Seen as the systems in which we work, they are those large economic-political 'mechanisms' whose purpose is to take our daily work as input, and produce socially useful effects as output. Seen as the systems in which we live, they determine not only the quality of our lives – but also the very course, the very nature of our lives.</p>
 +
<p>How are those systems? How have they been evolving?</p>
 +
<p>And this is where – to acquire and complete the insight we are talking about here – we need quite a bit more courage, more presence of spirit, more patience to stay focused, than what most of us are able to gather at this point. Those large things are not only our "reality" – they even determine how we see reality, and <em>what</em> we consider to be real. How can we dare to question them, to examine them? And yet that is what we must do.</p>
 +
<h3>An insight</h3>
 +
<p>A likely result, when we've gone through this exercise – and you'll find ample material and evidence on these pages to get us started – is a two-sided coin. And the value of this coin is beyond astronomical – it's our future, and our world!
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them," said Einstein. Systemic thinking – or perhaps better said [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] as systemic thinking in action – offers itself as a natural or <em>informed</em> alternative. If we now follow this alternative for just one step, if we begin to apply it – as we just did – then Einstein's most famous word of wisdom can be paraphrased as "We cannot solve our problems with the same <em>systems</em> we used when we created them." If you are still frowning, more evidence – a lot more evidence will be provided on these pages; and an invitation to resolve the remaining hesitancies in a conversation. And so on the one side we find that learning to see and update those systems is a <em>necessary</em> condition for our future. Like evil masters, those gigantic things have been flagrantly and mercilessly misusing our daily work, and turning it <em>against</em> us! And this is true not only for the 99%, but also for the 1%! </li>
 +
<li>On the other side we find something even much <em>more</em> spectacular – something which truly requires daring, unusual independence of spirit... to see. And that is that the possibilities for improvement are properly speaking <em>enormous</em>! We don't need to work so hard (not at all)! We don't need to stress and strive and compete. Imagine – just imagine – that 90%, perhaps even 99% of our work may be spent for not better purpose than spinning the wheels of an obsolete and largely dysfunctional "economic-political" 'machinery'! <p>If you follow this line of thought just a few steps further, perhaps with the help of the links provided below and all the rest that's been said on these pages – you will have no difficulty understanding why improvements in our condition, in the efficiency and effectiveness of our work, similar to the ones that have been reached through the Industrial Revolution, may be reached by this approach. You will also have no difficulty – especially with the help of the extensive portfolio of examples or [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] provided in Federation through Applications – seeing how this new creative frontier will open up a wealth of new possibilities for a broad variety of creative contributions including social entrepreneurship, business and research. You may then indeed be (and you perhaps already are) perplexed by another question – why has this possibility been so consistently ignored, and for such a long time? This indeed most interesting question too can be answered by [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] knowledge – by putting together insights from the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities. We have initiated this exercise by developing The Paradigm Strategy Poster, which we'll use to initiate our conversations.</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>So the insight we are talking about is properly speaking a civilizational, or evolutionary, turning point!</p>
 +
<p>This turning point begins to act on us and grow into a sweeping change as soon as we begin to look still deeper, and (with the help of the insights of last century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]) – begin to probe into the nature of our evolutionary and systemic blindness. What we've hitherto perceived as "objective reality" becomes seen as a result of our socialization – and an instrument of our socialization by which our systems, our  unseen and incompassionate 'masters', are keeping us at bay. Paradigmatic changes naturally and readily follow.</p>
 +
<h3>A rule of thumb</h3>
 +
<p>We are here talking about first of all liberating creative work from that obsolete 'machinery', from being caught up in it – and then using it in an informed way, directing it, so that it may TRULY serve a good purpose.</p>
 +
<p>See (once again – we may be repeating ourselves, but we'll fix that...) how [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] is done today. In the sciences we obey to our disciplines. In public informing we learn to do certain kind of reporting. Those things evolve slowly, as the market (the modern 'god' to which we the people pay allegiance) dictates. Then technological innovation  comes in, driven by the same market, and asks: What is it that the scientists are doing? And the journalists? We can make that incomparably faster and cheaper for them! The result is, of course, that information becomes a commodity, and we all end up competing over how much of that of that thing we can produce even more, cheaper and faster, and still make a living! But OK, that's just a small example.</p>
 +
<p>So what we are converging toward is a rule of thumb. "Innovation must be [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic</em>]]!" We must innovate with the view toward improving "the systems in which we live and work". We are not accustomed to having this sort of 'rule of thumb'. Yet we may now begin to see that <em>anything</em> can be improved, and even <em>radically</em> improved, when it becomes informed – even our work with information, and even our creative work and work in general!</p>
 +
<h3>An example</h3>
 +
<p>In Federation through Images we saw that the goal of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is an evolving hierarchy of insights, principles, rules of thumb... that can inform and guide our handling of basic things in life. We federate basic knowledge, basic insights. What we've just seen is an example. But already this single example shows how this <em>systemic</em> creation and use of knowledge can be a scaffolding for a whole new phase in our evolution – and the beginning of it.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Engelbart's legacy</h2></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Engelbart and the invisible elephant</h3>
 +
<p>So what is Engelbart's key insight? What is his core contribution to the emerging paradigm? There are several. But here's perhaps the most spectacular or breath-taking one. Yes, it's the one that gives the "nervous system" to the elephant, so that this huge and mighty animal may not go rampant and destroy everything around...</p>
 +
<p>Imagine yourself walking toward a wall.</p>
 +
<p>You may be thinking your own thoughts. Listening to music. Looking around. But then something happened: And suddenly you see yourself standing still, a wall is in front of you. As your conscious mind is becoming aware of the situation, you realize that your muscles have already reacted to it! </p>
 +
<p>So Doug's insight, in 1951!!!, was that the digital technology, connected in a network, provides this capability – we can think together just as the cells do in an organism!</p>
 +
<h3>The printing press could not do that</h3>
 +
<p>The printing press is a suitable metaphor here – many authors saw it as one of the key contributing factors for the Enlightenment. Suddenly knowledge became widely available, and reproducible! But still the printing press could only mass-produce and BROADCAST data. </p>
 +
<h3>Engelbart was not a technology inventor</h3>
 +
<p>In the reality 'on the other side of the mirror', where we [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] basic and most useful insights as guiding principles for directing our daily lives and our evolution, there can hardly be a more basic and more useful guiding principle than a one by which the use of our creative capabilities is directed. It is therefore worth emphasizing that  Engelbart (while being perceived as a technology inventor, and hence never really receiving any serious academic credit or attention or support for his work and ideas) contributed not only the <em>principle</em> of systemic innovation, but also a suitable methodology – and published it six years before Erich Jantsch and others met in Bellagio to create their own version of such a methodology. </p>
 +
<p>Engelbart's methodology, which he called "augmentation",  governed also his own work throughout his long career. It is therefore best to understand his real contributions by explaining them in the context of his very approach to innovation.</p>
 +
<h3>Augmenting human capabilities</h3>
 +
<p>[[File:Augmentation.jpeg]]<br><small><center>The slide in Doug's 2007 presentation at Google, which he used to explain "augmentation" – his systemic innovation methodology.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>So here's the "new thinking". </p>
 +
<h3>Engelbart's technical contributions</h3>
 +
<p>The meaning and the value of everything that Engelbart created, or dreamed of, must be understood in the context just presented.</p>
 +
<p>Even the technical pieces that he received the credit for, the interactive user interface, collaboration on a distance... Doug experimented with linking people together in a seamless way. With a mouse in the right hand and the chorded keyset in the left, and the eyes fixed on the screen – one does not even need to move his hands to do most of the instant processing...</p>
 +
<p>Similarly the Open Hyperdocument System, which was the design philosophy underlying the NLS system that was demonstrated in 1968. People thinking together will not necessarily create... old-fashioned books and articles! Why not let the new hypermedia documents freely evolve, or even better, be loose conglomerations of a variety of media pieces, assembled together according to need... But the Word and the Powerpoint and the email and the Photoshop... – they are all just reproducing the processing of the pre-Web kind of documents. Each in its own document format, not interoperable... Can't create new workflows!</p>
 +
<p>And then there are higher-level constructs, quite a few of them. Let's just mention a couple: the Networked Improvement Community (NIC) is a basic new socio-technical system for a (generic) discipline – the B-level improvement activity... But there's another, C level – improving the improvers, organized as a NIC of NICs. But that's exactly what we are calling the [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]]; and that's quite precisely what the cybernetics, and the systems sciences, are about.</p>
 +
<p>It is most interesting in the larger context we are exploring to see that Engelbart developed an original <em>methodology</em> for [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] – already in 1962, i.e. six years before the systems scientists did that in Bellagio! The methodology is based on "augmentation system"... (explain?)</p>
 +
<h3>The future of innovation</h3>
 +
<p>[[File:Capabilities.jpg]]<br><small><center>The slide Engelbart used in his early 1990s "Bootstrap Seminar" to explain his approach to innovation.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>So we may see Engelbart's key insight as this "P" in the above slide: Something was possible with the new technology that was not possible before!</p>
 +
<p>But what is "N"? What is still needed, so that we may become "collectively intelligent"?</p>
 +
<p>The answer is "systemic innovation"...</p>
 +
<p>Engelbart also saw an original solution to the Wiener's paradox. He called it [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]]. The point is to not (only) tell the world how the systems should be, but engage in re-creating systems hands-on. Typically, but not exclusively, this is achieved when the developers of the system use themselves as the initial human part of the system. This idea was the core of Doug's all action in the last two decades of his career. When in the late 1980s he and his daughter Christina created an institute to share his gift to the world, the institute was first called "Bootstrap Institute", and it was later renamed "Bootstrap Alliance". The idea is clear – to bootstrap, the key will be to create alliances with businesses and universities and other institutions, and [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] the systemic change together with them.</p></div>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
-----
 +
 +
 +
 +
<h3>The 20th century printing press</h3>
 +
<p>The printing press is a suitable metaphor for explaining the substance of of Engelbart's vision, as put forth in his third slide – and its role in the larger picture, in the emerging larger paradigm. Gutenberg's invention is sometimes mentioned as <em>the</em> main factor that led to the Enlightenment – by making knowledge sharing incomparably more efficient. What invention might play a similar role today?</p>
 +
<p>"The answer is obvious", we imagine you say, "It's the Web!"  "Of course it's the Web", Engelbart might have answered, as he indeed did in his very first slide. "But we've also got to change our way of thinking." Doug's second slide pointed to <em>systemic</em> thinking as the new thinking that needs to be used. His third slide was there to explain exactly why this new thinking is the key to making a radically better use of information technology. Considering the importance of this matter, you'll grant us the time and the pleasure of taking a closer look at each of its three paragraphs.</p>
 +
<p>The first paragraph sets the stage for Doug's core discovery.
 +
<blockquote>Many years ago I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems.</blockquote>
 +
Doug's observation posited on his second slide, that our civilization was rushing into the future at an accelerating speed, led him to identify the accelerated or "exponential" growth of a single factor, "complexity times urgency", as a core challenge to be tackled by "augmenting our collective intelligence". </p>
 +
<p>The second paragraph frames the core of Engelbart's vision.
 +
<blockquote>Computers, high-speed communications, displays, interfaces—as if suddenly, in an evolutionary sense, we are getting a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms.</blockquote>
 +
"A super new nervous system!" The reference here is to the completely new capability that the new media technology affords us. Doug called it CoDIAK (for Concurrent Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge). The key point is in the word "concurrent". We are linked together in such a way that we can think together and create together – as if we were nerve cells in a single organism. You put something on the Web and <em>instantly</em> anyone in the world can see it! People can be subscribed and be notified. You may have a question – someone else may have an answer... Compare this to the printing press – which could only vastly speed up what the people (the scribes, or the monks in the monasteries) were <em>already</em> doing – copying manuscripts. But the principle of operation remained the same – publishing! But when we are all connected to each other through interactive media technology – <em>completely new</em> processes become possible. And as we shall see – also <em>necessary</em>!</p>
 +
<p>To see how this may help us deal with complexity and urgency of problems, imagine your own organism going toward a wall. (You may think this matter is simple – but we know <em>scientifically</em> that there is some quite complex processing of sensory data that leads to this gestalt.) Imagine now that your eyes see that something is wrong, but are trying to communicate it to the brain by publishing research articles in some specialized field of science. Imagine furthermore that the cells in your nervous system have not specialized and organized themselves to make sense of impulses, filter out the less relevant ones... Imagine that everyone in your body is using the nervous system to merely <em>broadcast</em> information! Would you be confused? Well that's exactly the condition in which the development of information technology has brought us to. </p>
 +
<p>The third paragraph points to the unfulfilled part, which remained only a dream.
 +
<blockquote>I dreamed that people could seriously appreciate the potential of harnessing the technological and social nervous system to improve the collective IQ of our various organizations.</blockquote>
 +
Technological <em>and</em> social nervous system. Doug never tired of emphasizing that what the technology does and what the people do must evolve together. And that progress of  the "tools system" has not been paralleled with a similar progress of the "human system".  </p>
 +
<h3>The incredible part</h3>
 +
<p>There are several points that make this history of Doug in a true sense incredible. The first one is that he had this epiphany already in  1951, when there were only a handful of computers in the world, and (practically) nobody had seen one. Those computers were gigantic monsters made out of old-fashioned radio tubes; and they served exclusively for scientific calculations in large labs such as Los Alamos. At that point Doug saw people linked to computers via interactive video terminals, and through computers to each other, through an interactive network. </p>
 +
<p>The other incredible point is that he tried for more than a half-century to explain his insight to the Silicon Valley – and failed!</p>
 +
<p>We like to point out that on the many occasions where Engelbart was talking, or being celebrated, there was an 'invisible elephant' in the room (we use this metaphor, of an [[invisible elephant]], to point to the large societal paradigm that is emerging from the fog of our awareness). What Engelbart was pointing toward (just look at the above photo), where he wanted to take us by issuing his "call to action" (as we shall see in more detail below) was a whole new paradigm – first of all in IT innovation, then in creative work, and then in the evolution of our knowledge, and by extension in the evolution of our society at large. What he ended up with was a mere little mouse!</p>
 +
<p>If you now google Engelbart's 2007 presentation at Google and watch the recording of the event and its presentation on Youtube, you will see that Doug is introduced as "the inventor of the computer mouse"; that no call to action was mentioned; and that the four slides we showed above – which were (as we shall see below) needed to understand the meaning and the value of his technical contributions, not to speak of those not yet seen and implemented ones – <em>were not even shown</em> on this event!</p>
 +
<h3>The invisible elephant</h3>
 +
<p>And so it turned out that every time Doug was giving a talk, or being celebrated, there was (metaphorically speaking – we use single quotes to enclose our metaphors) an 'invisible elephant' in the room. A huge exotic animal in the midst of an urban lecture hall – should this not be a major sensation? But alas, the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] remained invisible! And so while our hero was enthusiastically describing this yet unseen animal's ears and trunk and tail, the audience heard him only talk about a fan and a hose and a rope. Naturally, they failed to make the connections.</p>
 +
<h3>A story worth telling</h3>
 +
<p>You may now see some of the reasons why we found this history worth telling. One of them is that it's a true sensation when we properly understand it, and also a most relevant one – because it points to paradigm-related cognitive impediments, which hinder even the smartest and most successful among us to understand or even to <em>hear</em> (for an entire half-century!)  an insight whose nature is to challenge and shift  the prevailing paradigm (think of Galilei in prison).</p>
 +
<p>Another reason – why we told this story on multiple occasions, for example as a springboard story at the opening of the Leadership and Systemic Innovation PhD program at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, which we'll come back to further below. So many economies and regions around the globe tried, and often failed, to transplant the entrepreneurial culture and activity of the Silicon Valley to their own soil. This story shows that something else – something much larger indeed – may be not only possible but also easy; something that the Silicon Valley <em>failed</em> to achieve or even understand – owing to the idiosyncrasies of its culture. </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
-----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The future has already begun</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Be the systems you want to see in the world</h3>
 +
<p>Fortunately, our story has a happy ending. (...) </p>
 +
<p>Less than two weeks after Douglas Engelbart passed away – on July 2, 2013 – his dream was coming true in an academic community. AND the place could not be more potentially impactful than it was! As the President of the ISSS, on the yearly conference of this largest organization of systems scientists, which was taking place in Haiphong, Vietnam, Alexander Laszlo initiated a self-organization toward collective intelligence. </p>
 +
 +
<p>He really had two pivotal ideas. One was to make the community intelligent. The other one was to make an intelligent system for coordinating change initiatives around the globe. (An extension of.... TBA).</p>
 +
<p>Alexander was practically born into systemic innovation. Didn’t his father Ervin, himself a creative leader in the systems community,  point out that our choice was “evolution or extinction” in the very title of one of his books? And so evolution naturally became Alexander’s choice (we are here talking, of course, about the evolution of our knowledge-work and other systems, so that they may give a suitable orientation to the technological and cultural and social-systemic and other important aspects of our evolution). Alexander’s PhD advisor, Hasan Özbekhan, wrote the first 150-page systemic innovation theory (as part of a project initiated by Jantsch), at the point (in 1968), when systemic innovation was recognized (by the creative elite) as a necessary step toward the resolution of the global issues (which the same elite already then recognized as urgent).  Later Alexander worked closely in the circle of Bela Banathy, who for a period of a couple of decades held the torch of the systemic innovation–related developments in the systems community.</p>
 +
<p>Last not least, as a prominent member of the systems community, as the leader of the International Society for the Systems Sciences Advisory Board and of the Bertalanffy Center in Vienna, Alexander is well positioned to [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]]  the state-of-the-art of the systems sciences into these initiatives.  </p></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Laszlo.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Alexander Laszlo]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We are here to build a bridge</h3>
 +
<p>We came to Haiphong with the story about Jantsch and Engelbart; and with the proposal "We are here to build a bridge"...</p>
 +
<p>And indeed – the bridge has been built! The two initiatives have federated their activities most beautifully!</p>
 +
<p>Prototypes include LaSI SIG & PHD program, the SIL... And The Lighthouse project, among others.</p>
 +
<p>The meaning of [[The Lighthouse]] (although it belongs really to prototypes, and to Applications): It breaks the spell of the Wiener's paradox. It creates a lighthouse, for the systems community, to attract stray ships to their harbor. It employs strategic - political thinking, systemic self-organization in a research community, and contemporary communication design, to create impactful messages about a single issue, and placing them into the orbit:  CAN WE TRUST "THE MARKET"? or do we need systemic understanding and innovation and design?</p></div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>See</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Evangelizing systemic innovation.</h3>
 +
<p>The emerging societal paradigm is often seen as a result of some specific change, for example to "the spiritual outlook on life", or to "systemic thinking". A down-on-earth, life-changing insight can, however, more easily be reached by observing the stupendous inadequacy of our various institutions and other systems, and understanding it as a consequence of our present values and way of looking at the world. The "evangelizing prototypes" are real-life histories and sometimes fictional stories, whose purpose is to bring this large insight or [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] across.  They point to uncommonly large possibilities for improving our condition by improving the systems. A good place to begin may be the blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/ode-to-self-organization-part-one/ Ode to Self-Organization – Part One], which is a finctional story about how we got sustainable. What started the process was a scientist observing that even though we have all those incredible time-saving and labor-saving gadgets – we seem to be more busy than the people ever were! What happened with all that time we saved? (What do you think...?) [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/toward-a-scientific-understanding-and-treatment-of-problems/ Toward a Scientific Understanding and Treatment of Problems] is an argument for the systemic approach that uses the metaphor of scientific medicine (which cures the unpleasant symptoms by relying on its understanding of the underlying anatomy and physiology) to point to an analogous approach to our societal ills. The [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2342lis6oqs4gg4/SI%20Positively.m4v?dl=0 Systemic Innovation Positively] recording of a half-hour lecture points to some larger-than-life benefits that may result. The already mentioned introductory part (and Vision Quest) of [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/2574/ The Game-Changing Game] is  a different summary of those benefits. The blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/information-age-coming-of-age/ Information Age Coming of Age] is the history of the creation and presentation (at the Bay Area Future Salon) of The Game-Changing Game, which involves Doug Engelbart, Bill and Roberta English and some other key people from the Engelbart's intimate community.</p>
 +
<h3>Evangelizing knowledge federation.</h3>
 +
<p>The wastefulness and mis-evolution of our financial system is of course notorious. Yet perhaps even more spectacular examples of mis-evolution, and far more readily accessible possibilities for contribution through improvement, may be found in our own system – knowledge-work in general, and academic research, communication and education in particular. (One might say that the bankers are doing a good job making money for the people who have money...) That is what these evangelizing prototypes for knowledge federation are intended to show. On several occasions we began by asking the audience to imagine meeting a fairy and being approached by (the academic variant of) the usual question "Make a wish – for the largest contribution to human knowledge you may be able to imagine!" What would you wish for? We then asked the audience to think about the global knowledge work as a mechanism or algorithm; and to imagine what sort of contribution to knowledge a significant improvement to this algorithm would be. We then re-told the story about the post-war sociology, as told by Pierre Bourdieu, to show that even enormously large, orders-of-magnitude improvements are possible! Hear the beginning of our 2009  [http://folk.uio.no/dino/KF/KF.swf evangelizing talk at the Trinity College, Dublin], or read (a milder version) at the beginning of [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-552/Karabeg-Lachica-KF08.pdf this article].</p>
 +
<p>[[Knowledge Work Has a Flat Tire]] is a springboard story we told was the beginning of one of our two 2011 Knowledge Federation introductory talks to Stanford University, Silicon Valley and the world of innovation (see the blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/knowledge-federation-an-enabler-of-systemic-innovation/ Knowledge Federation – an Enabler of Systemic Innovation], and the article linked therein). [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/eight-vignettes-to-evangelize-a-paradigm/ Eight Vignettes to Evangelize a Paradigm] is a collection of such stories.</p>
 +
<h3>Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
 +
<p>When the above stories are heard and digested, not only the story of Engelbart must seem incredible, but really the entire big thing: How can it be possible that we the people have ignored insights whose importance literally cannot be overstated? Why don't we innovate on the level of our basic institutions or systems – just as we innovate in technology? Why is there this surreal gap between our cleverness in the small (think of your smart phone) and our lack of attention to the infinitely larger and incomparably more imortant (our knowledge work at large)? What is really going on? Perhaps there is something we need to understand about ourselves, something very basic, that we haven't seen before? It turns out – and isn't this what the large paradigm changes really are about – that the heart of the matter will be in an entirely different perception of the human condition, with entirely new issues... Here is where the real story begins – and it involves weaving together the research and the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities. That is what The Paradigm Strategy poster aims to model, as one of our prototypes. Here is where the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] are woven together into all those higher-level constructs: [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], and ultimately to a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]], showing what is to be done. The [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] here represent sociology, linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy... They include Bauman, Bourdieu, Chomsky, Damasio, Nietzsche... We'll say more about the substance of this conversation piece in Federation through Conversations. For now you may just explore [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The Paradigm Strategy poster] on your own.
 +
</p>
 +
<h3>Systemic Innovation book</h3>
 +
<p>"Systemic Innovation" is the title of the book manuscript in the making, which is intended to be the second book in [[Knowledge Federation Trilogy]] (a small book series with which we intend to break the news about [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to the general public – and initiate the corresponding dialog). The tentative subtitle of this book is "Democracy for the Third Millennium".</p>
 +
<p>A note about the subtitle: In the present and so stubbornly persisting order of things or paradigm, "democracy" is the institutions and processes that we associate with this word ("free elections", "free press"...). It is commonly assumed that when all this is in place, then so is democracy – and we the people are in control. The nightmare scenario in this order of things is a dictatorship – where a dictator has taken from the people all those affordances of control and tokens of freedom. But there's a <em>worse</em> scenario – and that's what Engelbart's second slide at Google was pointing to – where <em>nobody</em> has control, simply because the system or systems in which we ride into the future do not afford the possibility of control <em>by design</em>. The dictator may come to his senses; his more reasonable son may succeed him. But if our ride into the future is such that <em>nobody</em> can control it – then we really have a problem!</p>
 +
<p>The book narrative weaves together the histories of Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch, as two visionary thinkers who lived and worked in close vicinity to each other, near the two ends of the Golden Gate bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay. Each of them needed the other one to complete his dream (give us the people the vision and control we need to steer safely into the future); and yet they never met or collaborated – and it is uncertain whether at all they knew about each other. This story is of course a metaphor for the two lines of activity that those two unordinary men represent as interests and as icons – technological innovation / knowledge media / [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] (Engelbart), and systems science / contemporary issues / [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] (Jantsch). And for the need to combine those two lines of activity.</p>
 +
<p>While this book is being written, let's just share here another story and [[thread|<em>thread</em>]] – which will both touch upon a theme from Engelbart's 2007 presentation at Google which we've so far ignored ("the breaking controls" on his second slide), and give a hint that may explain the subtitle.</p>
 +
<p>So imagine a bright young man, Jørgen Randers by name, traveling from Oslo to Boston, in 1969, to do a doctorate in physics at the MIT. And who – having heard a talk by Jay Forrester (systems scientist and founding father of "system dynamics") decided (just as Jantsch did a bit earlier in time and a bit later in his career) that it would not be physics but systems sciences that his career would be devoted to.</p>
 +
<p>Jørgen ended up being one of the four authors, all just as young as he was, of what is still most sold and most talked about book on the environmental issues – The Club of Rome report "The Limits to Growth". So imagine now that this bright young man reached the conclusion that our civilization would eventually come to a bitter end – unless... </p>
 +
<p>What followed was a series of nonsensical public debates, which marked Jørgen's life. </p>Much later he would bring his experiences to the conclusion that "The need is for ..." – see him say that in [https://youtu.be/SzUKVqD-xKs?t=4m27s the trailer of The Last Call documentary] (the entire six-minute trailer is of course well worth you time and attention). All that really needed to be said – and that is difficult to argue with <em>even without</em> the simulation study – is that our civilization needs 'brakes' – see
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>The article [http://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings57th/article/view/2080/727 Bootstrapping Social-Systemic Evolution], by which Knowledge Federation introduced itself to the systems community at the above-mentioned ISSS57 conference in Haiphong.</li>
 +
<li>The [https://www.dropbox.com/s/sirn5scutkgrm6w/Democracy%202.0.m4v?dl=0 recording of a lecture] where this is told as a springboard story in Democracy 2.0 lecture series at Buenos Aires Institute of Technology</li>
 +
</ul></p>
 +
<p>The book then sets the stage for a short survey of the contemporary developments, including the development of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], as we briefly pointed out above. </p>
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>The Incredible History of Doug continues. We proposed to some of the leaders at Google and at Stanford University, who knew us from before, to take advantage of this year's 50th anniversary of Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" and correct the historical errors by (1) explaining his vision and contributions, and giving him proper credit; (2) extending that line of action into institutionalizing his work and vision – and thereby "completing Engelbart's unfinished revolution" see [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1isj9-vsEkjikt9wYG9xYhj8az9904CaFl-Ko9qxzjXw/edit?usp=sharing this Google document].</li>
 +
 +
</ul>
 +
</div></div>
 +
 +
<!-- OLD BEGINNING
 +
 +
<p>[[File:Elephants.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Presentation slide pointing to our goal.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Glimpses of an emerging paradigm</h2></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Our goal is to see the whole</h3>
 +
<p>Although we shall not talk about him directly, the elephant in the above [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] is the main protagonist of our stories. It is a glimpse of him that we want to give by talking about all those people and events. This visual metaphor represents the whole big thing – the Renaissance-like change that now wants to emerge. The elephant is invisible, but we will have glimpses of him as soon as we begin to 'connect the dots'. And that's what we are about to do.</p>
 +
<p>Recall once again Galilei in house prison, the image which we are using here to point to repressed, or not-yet-heard voices of change. Galilei was not tried for his belief in Heliocentricity; that's just a minor technical detail. The big point was that he dared to state in public that when the reason contradicts the scriptures, it is still legitimate to be open to the possibility that the reason might be right. Today there is no Inquisition, and practically no censorship – and yet (as Italo Calvino observed decades ago, when still only the printed text was competing for our attention) the overabundance of our unorgarnized information will do the censoring just as well. And there are also other factors in play, which we will come back to. </p>
 +
<h3>What the visionaries see</h3>
 +
<p>It has been said that a visionary is a person who looks at the same things all of us look at, and sees something different. What we here call [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] are the people with an uncommon ability. You may call it intuition, or creative imagination. We think of it as <em>soaring intelligence</em>: Where the rest of might be painstakingly trying to fit the pieces together, they appear to somehow <em>see through</em> the pieces, and anticipate how they might fit together in a completely new way.</p>
 +
<p>Some difficulties are, however, inherent in this kind of seeing. Even a visionary can see (metaphorically) only a part of the elephant. This is because [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]], or the elephant, is so large and complex that anyone can look at it only from a certain angle, which is defined by his or her field of interest and background. And when a visionary tries to explain what he sees to the rest of us, then there's another problem – even suitable words are lacking. So we may hear him talk about a rope, a fan or a hose – when really what he's talking about is the large animal's tail, or ear, or trunk.</p>
 +
<h3>Why visionaries fail to communicate</h3>
 +
<p>The reasons are complex, and the phenomenon is fascinating. We shall look into deeper reasons as we go along. But the large and obvious reason is that they are trying to show us the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], or some of its specific parts. And that our communication, presently, is conceived as fitting things into a (old) paradigm! And so naturally we only hear what fits in, and ignore what doesn't. But (and you will see some quite wonderful examples in a moment) – the real value of the giants' insight is exactly that it <em>changes</em> (improves) the conventional order of things.</p>
 +
<p>And so we undertake to enable us to take advantage of the heritage, the jewels we have – by materializing the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] sufficiently so that new things can be understood in its context, and fitted in.</p>
 +
<p>You will now easily understand why our primary interest is not to find out what some [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] "really saw" (even he would not be able to tell us that). What we are above all interested in is to use their views as signs on the road, and ultimately find and see 'the elephant'.</p>
 +
<h3>The substance of our project</h3>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br><small><center>Our goal is to organize this activity, and foster this collective capability - of federating knowledge or 'connecting the dots'.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>Seeing the whole thing is of course fascinating as a spectacle – 'a large exotic animal grazing at our universities, or visiting our lecture halls without being seen'. But the view of it becomes life-changing and essential, when what we are talking about is not really an animal, and not even a finished thing, but something that <em>we</em> need to create together.</p>
 +
<p>So our goal is first of all a liberation from a certain fixed way of looking at things, which we acquired while growing up and through education. And then to – not exactly connect all the dots (which may be something each of us will have to do on our own), but foster this whole art, this capability we have all but lost, of connecting dots in general. We undertake to organize it as an academic, and real-world activity. We undertake to institutionalize it, give it the status of "knowledge creation" – which is what it really is, as we have already seen, and as we are about to see. </p>
 +
</div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>The substance of this page</h3>
 +
<p>So we are about to see only one small part of 'the elephant'. But this will be a crucial part. It will also be a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in its own right – a paradigm in knowledge work. In the large puzzle we need to put together, there is a piece we need to create and place in first, because it will show us what all the rest is going to look like.</p>
 +
<p>In what follows we will looking at exactly the same 'piece in the puzzle' that we saw in Federation through Images. There we used keywords such as [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], and [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]], and the image of the bus with candle headlights to describe it. But while there our angle of looking and focus was on the foundations or  <em>epistemology</em>), here our point of view will be the society's new needs, and the capabilities of new technology. We will then have covered all the three main motivations for [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] that were mentioned on the  front page.</p>
 +
<p>We'll tell the stories of two [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] – Douglas Engelbart as the icon of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], and Erich Jantsch as the icon of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. But we'll also put on our map just a couple of the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] on whose shoulders <em>they</em> stood.</p></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:2Elephants.jpeg]]<br><small><center>The smaller elephant will call the larger one into existence.</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
------
 +
<p>Here is one of the ways in which Peccei later framed the answer (in 1977, in The Human Quality,  his personal reflections on the human condition and his recommendation for handling it):
 +
<blockquote>
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Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world.
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]</center></small></div>
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Revision as of 09:20, 26 October 2018

Federation through Stories



The next big thing

A sneak preview of the next Renaissance

We approach the genesis of a large, Renaissance-like change from a specific angle. Think about the invention of the printing press; it allowed knowledge to spread so much faster, that it is often considered to be the major contributing factor to the deep societal changes that follow. Or think about the steam engine; it not only powered the Industrial Revolution, but also served as a precursor to innumerable inventions that saved us work and effort. What ideas, and what inventions, may have a similar impact today?

We tell the stories of the giants who made such ground-breaking insights. We then explain why the application of those insights will lead to comprehensive change.

An informed approach to contemporary issues

What can we do that can make a large-enough difference? We show that when we begin to weave the insights across the academic disciplines and other relevant fields, not only do the problems and the answers become clear – but we also begin to see solutions and courses of action that are surprising, that bring vibrance and new life into our struggle with problems. But isn't that what the large paradigm shifts have always been about?

Vignettes

How to lift up an idea from undeserved anonymity

We tell vignettes – engaging, lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories, to distill the core ideas of the most daring thinkers from the vocabulary of their field, and to give them the power of impact. We then show how to join the vignettes together into threads, and threads into patterns and patterns into a gestalt – an overarching view of our situation, which shows how the situation may (need to) be handled.

While it is the ideas that lead to the gestalt, it is the gestalt that gives the ideas their relevance, and their deeper reason for existence.

The 21st century printing press

Of course it's the Web – but...

Having decided, as a novice engineer in December of 1950, to direct his career so as to maximize its benefits to the mankind, Douglas Engelbart thought intensely about the best way to do that. After three months he had an epiphany.

On a convention of computer professionals in 1968 Engelbart and his SRI-based lab demonstrated the computer technology we are using today – computers linked together into a network, people interacting with computers via video terminals and a mouse and the windows, and through them with one another.

In the late 1990s the Silicon Valley found out that it was not Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who invented the technology, or even the XEROS Palo Alto Research Center from which they took it. Engelbart became a celebrity. He received all the imaginable honors that an inventor can get. And yet he made it obvious, and everyone around him knew, that he felt celebrated for a wrong reason; and that the gist of his vision had not yet been understood, or put to use.

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Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Engelbart's unfinished revolution

In 2007, with his career coming to an end, Engelbart was honored one more time with a panel at Google, to give his last message to the world. Doug gave his slides the title "A Call to Action!". His his first slide – equipped with his photo to suggest that this was really his message to the world – read "Digital technology could help make this a better world. But we've also got to change our way of thinking." But during the panel the title slide and the three slides that followed – which explained the substance of his vision, and the deeper reason for the technology he invented – were not even shown!

Engelbart passed away in 2013, celebrated as the man whose ideas created "the revolution in the Valley", yet feeling that he had failed.

The 21st century steam engine

You'll never guess what it is

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Erich Jantsch

Erich Jantsch's unfinished revolution

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Systemic Innovation

The key insight that Engelbart and Jantsch both shared

What is it that Engelbart saw, that he was unable to communicate? What is "the Web that wasn't" (to use XY's apt phrase)? What is the new thinking that could enable the digital technology to help make this a better world? What was Jantsch's unfinished revolution?

A detailed answer will be given in the book titled "Systemic Innovation" and subtitled "Democracy for the Third Millennium". While this book is being written, you may pick up the answer from the page we've created for him, and from the notes provided here at the bottom.

But here it is, in a nutshell.

A better way to think

We asked our communication design team to create an ideogram that would show the people that they are part of a system. And that the structure of that system, or systems, determines both the quality of their life and the value .The ideogram shown on the right is what they came up with. So imagine a system as a large machine, comprising technology and people. Think of its role as taking everyone's daily work as input, and producing socially useful results as output. How well is it performing in this all-important task? How well is it suitable for that task? How much would its function improve by changing it?

Consider these questions for a moment, and the systemic innovation proposal will begin to emerge in full clarity before your eyes.

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System ideogram


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