Prototypes: Holotopia

Prototypes: Holotopia

Holotopia as prototype.

What we before all need to know

The Holotopia prototype is knowledge federation's proof of concept application.

Imagine that you had in your hand a flashlight, which you could point at any question or issue, and see it in new light. See it as a whole. Your task is to show what your flashlight can do, show what difference it can make. What question would you ask? What issue would you choose to illuminate?

Or let us put this a bit differently. Knowledge federation is conceived as a way to knowledge that can give us the people the know-what we need. That can help us direct our efforts. Imagine that you had all the world's knowledge at your disposal. And that your task was to extract from it a single insight, a 'mountain top view' of a felicitous new direction. What insight would you choose to offer?

Insight

There is an elephant in the room

There is an elephant in the room – which we have, incredibly, failed to notice!

Holotopia becomes manifest as soon as we begin to connect the dots.

The huge, exotic animal is seen in the light of day as soon as we connect the dots.

Before we saw the elephant, we heard our visionary thinkers talk about "the fan", the "hose" and the "rope". But since that didn't make much sense, we ignored them. Now that we've caught a glimpse of this spectacularly large thing, specific insights begin to acquire a whole new meaning. Knowledge acquires power, it begins to make a difference!

We can aspire beyond the utopia

As a vision of a new societal order of things, the holotopia differs from the common utopias by being more congenial, and at the same time readily realizable. It sets its aim so high, because the authors of common utopias lacked the data to see what is really possible. And it is realizable, because we already own all the knowledge we need to secure its fulfillment.

What makes the holotopia such astonishingly good news is a paradox:

Comprehensive change can be easy – even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may be impossible.

Reversals

It is time to be daringly creative

A glimpse of the holotopia is enough to make us thoroughly redirect our efforts. To make them effective, we need to focus on rebuilding, not fixing. Instead of struggling with "problems" within the existing order of things, instead of trying to solve them "by thinking as we did when we created them", we see that we need to change our order of things. That we must think and act in a new way.

It's the opportunities we must focus on

Holotopia reverses the very tone of our engagement with the future. And even with our present! An Enlightenment-like change is ready to begin! And although many of us may not live to experience the new order that will result – it is now, it is before the fulfillment, that the creative opportunities abound!

Undeniably our condition is laden with problems. But we can now see them as only symptoms – pointing to necessary changes; which will radically improve our condition!

We need different knowledge to be informed

This question naturally follows: Are we uninformed – in spite of the staggering overabundance of media information, or even because of it? The answer to this question too becomes obvious.

Federation

The story

We consider the giant that corresponds to an insight to be the icon for the insight. The icon for holotopia is Aurelio Peccei.

Based on a decade of The Club of Rome's research into the future prospects of mankind, Peccei was led to conclude:

It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course.

Peccei also left us this hint, how the course is to be changed:

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

Aurelio Peccei

The five insights

How shall we "change course"? How shall we begin "a great cultural revival"?

By beginning to communicate. By using knowledge to understand our world. By doing what good sense demands that we do anyway.

The federation of the holotopia insight is conceived in terms of five insights, in five pivotal domains of interest. Each of them has been carefully federated. Each of them is alone sufficient to see what we've grown accustomed to see as "the reality", as "just normal" – as similarly obsolete and absurd as some of the things that people considered normal in Galilei's time. Each of the insights alone is sufficient to shift the paradigm.

And yet far more interesting are their relationships. The black arrows represent causal relationships; they show how "one thing leads to another". And how together the five large anomalies in five entirely distinct areas form a vicious cycle, by continuously creating each other.

The orange arrows are synergies. They show how resolving one anomaly naturally requires, or leads to, the resolution of another. Hence we see how a benign cycle can naturally be incited, leading to a domino effect, and to comprehensive change.

Action

Knowledge federation is not completed by seeing things. Knowledge is not federated before it is embodied by people, and turned into action. Before it is reflected in the order of things, in the systems in which we live and work

In its developed form, the Holotopia will have five transformative spaces – implemented both online and offline, as virtual spaces and as transformative situations involving with concrete people and in real places – through which its mission will be fulfilled.

The fireplace

The fireplace is the dialog space. We engage everyone's collective intelligence. The fire is always burning. May just drop in. Or schedule regular meetings, to deepen the understanding of a theme, or to co-create a project.

The library

Our dialogs will be knowledge-based. The library will provide the access to underlying insights. Venues to explore them further.

The workshop

We co-create prototypes.

The gallery

We exhibit earlier developed prototypes.

The stage

We stage events. Transformative. Informative. Interventions.

The bottom line

A single axiom

All of hologopia follows from a single axiom: Galilei should not be in house arrest. Knowledge needs to be listened to, and acted on. Or in a word – Knowledge must be federated.

We can sum up this message, simply, by saying that holoscope leads to holotopia. That when we begin to see things as whole – we become able to also make them whole.

A single rule of thumb

Hence this federation exercise results in a single value, a single rule of thumb – the value of wholeness. Holotopia emerges most naturally, as soon as we no longer look at things through the myopic lense of "our own interests"; when we see them as related; when we comprehend that our true interest is to make things whole. It is this simplest yet all-important and all-inclusive value, wholeness, that gave the holotopia its name.

Related prototypes

The Holotopia prototype is being developed based upon the results and experiences of a number of our earlier prototypes.

Earth Sharing

See this description on Vibeke's blog.

The Game-Changing Game

It's described here.

The Club of Zagreb

See it described here.

The Key Point Dialog

Summarized here.