Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

Latest revision as of 12:37, 30 September 2021

Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

The Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.

Modernity ideogram

Our proposal

Its essence

The core of our proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.

What is our relationship with information presently like?

Here is how Neil Postman described it:

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

Neil Postman

Its substance

What would our handling of information be like, if we treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we took advantage of our best knowledge and technology, and adapted it to the purposes that need to be served?

By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And academic communication, and education?

The substance of our proposal is a complete prototype of the handling of information we are proposing—by which initial answers to relevant questions are given, and in part implemented in practice.

We call the proposed approach to information knowledge federation when we want to point to the activity that distinguishes it from the common practices. We federate knowledge when we make what we "know" information-based; when we examine, select and combine all potentially relevant resources. When also the way in which we handle information is federated.

The purpose of knowledge federation is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.

Like architecture and design, knowledge federation is both an organized set of activities, and an academic field that develops them.

Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop knowledge federation as an academic field and real-life praxis (informed practice).

Its method

We refer to our proposal as holoscope when we want to emphasize the difference it can make.

The purpose of the holoscope is to help us see things whole.

Holoscope ideogram

We use the Holoscope ideogram to point to this purpose. The ideogram draws on the metaphor of inspecting a hand-held cup, in order to see whether it is broken or whole. We inspect a cup by choosing the way we look; and by looking at all sides.

While the characteristics of the holoscope—the design choices or design patterns, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.

In the holoscope, the legitimacy of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.

The ways of looking are called scopes. The scopes and the resulting views have similar role and meaning as projections do in technical drawing.

This modernization of our handling of information, distinguished by purposeful, free and informed choice or creation of the way we look at the world, has become necessary, suggests the Modernity ideogram. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with one other and with the conventional ones.

To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of scopes, we used the scientific method as venture point, and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy.

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

A way of looking or scope—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct assessment of an object of study or situation—is a new kind of result that is made possible by (the general-purpose science that is modeled by) the holoscope.

We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something is as stated, that X is Y—although it would be more accurate to say that X can or needs to be perceived (also) as Y. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered scope); and to do that collectively and collaboratively, in a dialog.

A vision

A difference to be made

Suppose we used the holoscope as 'headlights'; what difference would that make?

The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in provided us a benchmark challenge for putting our proposal to a test.

Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—Aurelio Peccei issued the following call to action:

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

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

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

Aurelio Peccei

This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology".

In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:

"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."

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

A different way to see the future

Holotopia is a vision of a future that becomes accessible when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.

Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. In view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.

As the optimism regarding our future waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" were offered as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.

The holotopia is different in spirit from them all. It is more attractive than the futures the utopias projected—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not exist. And yet the holotopia is readily attainable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.

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

Five insights

Five Insights ideogram

The five insights resulted when we applied the holoscope to illuminate five pivotal themes; "pivotal" because they determine the "course":

Innovation—the way we use our growing ability to create, and induce change
Communication—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled
Foundation—the fundamental assumptions based on which truth and meaning are socially constructed; which serve as foundation to the edifice of culture; which determine the relationship we have with information
Method—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life; or the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it
Values—the way we "pursue happiness"; or choose "course"

In each case, when we 'connected the dots' (combined the available insights to reach a general one), we were able to identify a large structural defect. We demonstrated practical ways, partly implemented as prototypes, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We showed that such structural interventions lead to benefits that are well beyond curing problems.

The five insights establish an analogy between the comprehensive change that was germinating in Galilei's time, and what is in store for us now.

Power structure insight (analogy with Industrial Revolution)

We looked at the systems in which we live and work as gigantic socio-technical 'mechanisms'—which determine how we live and work; and what the effects of our efforts will be.

When "free competition" or the market controls our growing capability to create and induce change, the systems in which we live and work evolve as power structures—and we lose the ability to steer a viable course. A dramatic improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of human work, and of the human condition at large, can result from systemic innovation, where we innovate by making things whole on the large scale, where socio-technical systems or institutions are made whole.

Collective mind insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)

We looked at the social process by which information is handled.

Hear Neil Postman observe:

“We’ve entered an age of information glut. And this is something no culture has really faced before. The typical situation is information scarcity. (…) Lack of information can be very dangerous. (…) But at the same time too much information can be dangerous, because it can lead to a situation of meaninglessness, of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you.”

We saw that the new media technology is still being used to make the social process that the printing press made possible (publishing or broadcasting) more efficient; which breeds glut! In spite of the fact that core elements of the new technology have been created to enable a different social process—whose results are function and meaning; where technology enables us to think and create together, as cells in a single mind do.

Socialized reality insight (analogy with Enlightenment)

We looked at the foundation on which truth and meaning are socially constructed, which we also call epistemology. It was the epistemology change—from the rigidly held Biblical worldview of Galilei's prosecutors—that made the Enlightenment possible; that triggered comprehensive change.

We saw that a similar fundamental change, with similar consequences, is now mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds.

Narrow frame insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)

We looked at the method by which truth and meaning are socially constructed.

Science eradicated prejudice and expanded our knowledge—where the methods and interests of its disciplines could be applied. We showed how to extend the scientific approach to knowledge, to questions we need to answer.

Convenience paradox insight (analogy with Renaissance)

We looked at the values that determine the way we "pursue happiness"; and our society's "course".

We showed that when proper 'light' illuminates the 'way'—our choices and pursuits will be entirely different.

Large change is easy

The "course" is a paradigm

The changes the five insights are pointing to are inextricably co-dependent.

We cannot, for instance, replace 'candles' with 'lightbulbs' (as the collective mind insight demands), unless systemic innovation (demanded by the power structure insight) is in place. And without having a general-purpose method for creating insights (which dissolves the narrow frame). We will remain unknowing victims of the convenience paradox, as long as we use 'candles' to illuminate the way.

We cannot make any of the required changes without making them all.

We may use Wiener's keyword "homeostasis" negatively—to point to the undesirable property of systems to maintain a course, even when the course is destructive. The system springs back, it nullifies attempted change.

It is because of this property of our global system that comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may be impossible.

"A way to change course" is in academia's hands

Paradigm changes, however, have an inherent logic and way they need to proceed.

A "disease" is a living system's stable pathological condition. And we only call that a "remedy" which has the power to flip the system out of that condition. In systems terms, a remedy of that kind, a true remedy, is called "systemic leverage point". And when a social system is to be 'healed', then the most powerful "leverage point" is "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise"; and we must seek to restore "the power to transcend paradigms", as the Donella Meadows pointed out.

By changing the relationship we have with information, we restore to our society its power to transcend its present paradigm.

That simple change, the five insights showed, will trigger all other requisite changes follow. We abolish reification—of worldviews and institutions in general, and of journalism, science and other inherited ways of looking at the world in particular—and we instantly see the imperative of changing them by adapting them to the purposes that must be served.

Furthermore, as the socialized reality insight showed, this change is mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds. It follows as a logical consequence of what we already "know".

This "way to change course" should be particularly easy because—being a fundamental change—it is entirely in control of publicly sponsored intellectuals, the academia.

We don't need to occupy Wall Street.

The university, not the Wall Street, controls the systemic leverage point par excellence.

And for us who are in academic positions already, who are called upon to make this timely change—there is nothing we need to occupy. What we must do to "change course" is demanded by our occupation already.

"Human quality" is the key

But what about culture? What about the "human quality", which, as we have seen, Aurelio Peccei considered to be the key to reversing our condition?

On the morning of March 14, 1984, the day he passed away, Peccei dictated to his secretary from a hospital bed (as part of "Agenda for the End of the Century"):

"Human development is the most important goal."

We can put this "humanistic" perspective on our map by looking at it in the "evolutionary" way, as Erich Jantsch suggested. Jantsch explained this way of looking through the metaphor of a boat (representing a system, which may be the natural world, or our civilization) on a river. The traditional science would position us above the boat, and have us look at it "objectively". The traditional systems science would position us on the boat, to seek ways to steer it effectively and safely. The "evolutionary" perspective invites us to see ourselves as—water. To acknowledge that we are the evolution!

By determining how we are as 'water', the "human quality" determines our evolutionary course.

The power structure insight showed that when we navigate the evolutionary stream by aiming to advance "our own" position—we unavoidably become part of the power structure; we create the systems that create problems.

To put our two pivotal themes together, notice that changing the relationship we have with information should be dramatically easier for us than it was in Galilei's time—when it meant risking one's life or worse. The academia, not the Inquisition, is in change. But here's the rub: By being in charge, the academia is also part of the power structure!

To see what this means practically and concretely, follow us through a thought experiment: Imagine that an academic administrator, let's call him Professor X, has just received a knowledge federation proposal. (We say "a" proposal, because proposals of this kind were advanced well before we were born.) What would be his reaction?

When we did this thought experiment, Professor X moved on to his next chore without ado.

We have an amusing collection of anecdotes to support that prognosis. And anyhow, why would Professor X invest time in comprehending a proposal of this kind, when he knows right away, when his body knows (see the socialized reality insight), that his colleagues won't like it. When there is obviously nothing to be gained from it.

At the university too we make decisions by "instrumental thinking"; by taking recourse to embodied knowledge of "what works".

We have seen (while developing the power structure insight) that this ethos breeds the power structure; that it binds us to power structure.

This ethos is blatantly un-academic.

If Galilei followed it, the Inquisition would still be in charge; if Socrates did that, there would be no academia.

The academic tradition was conceived as a radical alternative to this way of making choices—where we develop and use ideas as guiding light.

So was knowledge federation.

We coined several keywords to point to some of the ironic sides of academia's situation—as food for thought, and to set the stage for the academic dialog in front of the mirror.

From Newton we adapted the keyword giant, and use it for visionary thinkers whose ideas must be woven together to see the emerging paradigm (Newton reportedly "stood on the shoulders of giants" to "see further"). But as our anecdotes illustrate, the giants have in recent decades been routinely ignored. Is it because the academic 'turf' is minutely divided? Because a giant would take too much space?

From Johan Huizinga we adapted the keyword homo ludens, and use it to point out that (as we saw while discussing the socialized reality insight) we are biologically equipped for two kinds of knowing and evolving. The homo ludens in us does not seek guidance in the knowledge of ideas and principles; it suffices him to learn his social roles, as one would learn the rules of a game. The homo ludens does not need to to comprehend the world; it's the ontological security he finds comfort in.

We addressed our proposal to academia, which we defined as "institutionalized academic tradition". It goes without saying that the academic tradition's all-important role has been to keep us on the homo sapiens track. But as we have seen, the power structure ecology has the power to sidetrack institutional evolution toward the homo ludens devious course.

The question must be asked:

Does the academic institution's own ecology avoid this problem?

A strategy

We will not solve our problems

A role of the holotopia vision is to fulfill what Margaret Mead identified as "one necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence" (in "Continuities in Cultural Evolution", in 1964—four years before The Club of Rome was founded):

"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."

More concretely, we undertake to respond to this Mead's critical point:

"Although tremendous advances in the human sciences have been made in the last hundred years, almost no advance has been made in their use, especially in ways of creating reliable new forms in which cultural evolution can be directed to desired goals."

We, however, do not claim, or even assume, that "the huge problems now confronting us" can be solved".

Margaret Mead

Hear Dennis Meadows (who coordinated the team that produced The Club of Rome's seminal 1972 report "Limits to Growth") diagnose, recently, that our pursuit of "sustainability" falls short of avoiding the "predicament" that The Club of Rome was warning us about back then:

"Will the current ideas about "green industry", and "qualitative growth", avoid collapse? No possibility. Absolutely no possibility of that. (...) Globally, we are something like sixty or seventy percent above sustainable levels."

We wasted precious time pursuing a dream; hear Ronald Reagan set the tone for it, when he was "the leader of the free world".

A sense of sobering up, and of catharsis, needs to reach us from the depth of our problems.

Small things don't matter. Business as usual is a waste of time.

Our very "progress" must acquire a new—cultural—focus and direction. Hear Dennis Meadows say:

"Will it be possible, here in Germany, to continue this level of energy consumption, and this degree of material welfare? Absolutely not. Not in the United States, not in other countries either. Could you change your cultural and your social norms, in a way that gave attractive future? Yes, you could."

Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as symptoms of much deeper cultural and structural defects.

The five insights show that the structural problems now confronting us can be solved.

The holotopia offers more than "an atmosphere of hope". It points to an attainable future that is strictly better than our present.

And it offers to change our condition now—by engaging us in an unprecedentedly large and magnificent creative adventure.

Peccei wrote in One Hundred Pages for the Future (the boldface emphasis is ours):

For some time now, the perception of (our responsibilities relative to "problematique") has motivated a number of organizations and small voluntary groups of concerned citizens which have mushroomed all over to respond to the demands of new situations or to change whatever is not going right in society. These groups are now legion. They arose sporadically on the most variend fronts and with different aims. They comprise peace movements, supporters of national liberation, and advocates of women's rights and population control; defenders of minorities, human rights and civil liberties; apostles of "technology with a human face" and the humanization of work; social workers and activists for social change; ecologists, friends of the Earth or of animals; defenders of consumer rights; non-violent protesters; conscientious objectors, and many others. These groups are usually small but, should the occasion arise, they can mobilize a host of men and women, young and old, inspired by a profound sense of te common good and by moral obligations which, in their eyes, are more important than all others.

They form a kind of popular army, actual or potential, with a function comparable to that of the antibodies generated to restore normal conditions in a biological organism that is diseased or attacked by pathogenic agents. The existence of so many spontaneous organizations and groups testifies to the vitality of our societies, even in the midst of the crisis they are undergoing. Means will have to be found one day to consolidate their scattered efforts in order to direct them towards strategic objectives.

Diversity is good and useful, especially in times of change. Systems scientists coined the keyword "requisite variety" to point out that a variety of possible responses make a system viable, or "sustainable".

The risk is, however, that the actions of "small voluntary groups of concerned citizens" may remain reactive.

From Murray Edelman we adapted the keyword symbolic action, to make that risk clear. We engage in symbolic action when we act within the limits of the socialized reality and the power structure—in ways that make us feel that we've done our duty. We join a demonstration; or an academic conference. But symbolic action can only have symbolic effects!

We have seen that comprehensive change must be our goal.

It is to that strategic goal that the holotopia vision is pointing.

By supplementing this larger strategy, we neither deny that the problems we are facing must be attended to, nor belittle the heroic efforts of our frontier colleagues who are working on their solution.

The Holotopia project complements the problem-based approaches—by adding what is systemically lacking to make solutions possible.

We will not change the world

Like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, holotopia is a trans-generational construction project.

Our generation's job is to begin it.

Margaret Mead left us this encouragement:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Mead explained what exactly distinguishes a small group of people that is capable of making a large difference:

"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole, but the small group of interacting individuals who, together with the most gifted among them, can take the next step; then we can set about the task of creating the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution. That is, rather than isolating potential "leaders," we can purposefully produce the conditions we find in history, in which clusters are formed of a small number of extraordinary and ordinary men and women, so related to their period and to one another that they can consciously set about solving the problems they propose for themselves."

Sagrada Familia (for the moment we are borrowing this beautiful photo from the Web)

This capability—to self-organize and do something because it's right, because it has to be done—is where "human quality" is needed. That's what we've been lacking.

The five insights showed that again and again. Our stories were deliberately chosen to be a half-century old—and demonstrate that "the appropriately gifted" have offered us their gifts. But that "the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution" have been absent.

It is not difficult to see that our culture's systemic ecology is to blame. As this excerpt from the animated film "The Incredibles" might illustrate, it gives us power only if we consent to make ourselves small, and be "well-lubricated cogs" in an institutional clockwork.

We must claim back our will to make a difference.

By writing the "Animal Farm" allegory, George Orwell pointed to a pattern that foiled humanity's attempts at change: By engaging in turf strife, revolutions tended to reproduce the conditions they aimed to change.

Holotopia institutes an ecology that is a radical alternative to turf strife.

While we'll use all creative means at our disposal to disclose turf behavior, we will self-organize to prevent ourselves from engaging in it.

The Holotopia project will not try to engineer its "success" by adapting to "the survival of fittest" ecology. On the contrary—we will engineer the change of that ecology, by accentuating our differences.

We know from chemistry that a crystal submerged in a solution of the same substance will make the substance crystallize according to its shape. Our strategy is to be that 'crystal'.

We build on the legacy of Gandhi's "satyagraha" (adherence to truth), and non-violently yet firmly uphold the truth that change is everyone's imperative. Our strategy is to empower everyone to make the change; and be the change.

Holotopia will not grow by "push", but by "pull".

We will not change the world.

You will.

A mission

Centuries ago a philosopher portrayed the human condition by telling a parable. He proposed to imagine us humans chained in a cave, able to look only at the wall of the cave where a projection of shadows is at play. He in this way portrayed what we dubbed socialized reality—that we live in a "reality" shaped by power play and calcified perception.

He pointed to development of ideas as the way to liberate ourselves.

The five insights showed that we are still in the 'cave'.

And how we can liberate ourselves once for all!

"A great cultural revival"—a change of evolutionary course that will lead to comprehensive improvement of our condition—is ready to begin as an academic revival; just as in Galilei's time.

When we say that the university needs to make structural changes within itself, and guide our society in a new phase of evolution, we are not saying anything new. We are echoing what others have said.

But the tie between information and action being severed—calls to action of this kind remained without effect.

Our mission is to change that.

We implement this mission in two steps.

Step 1: Enabling academic evolution

The first step is to institutionalize knowledge federation as an academic field. This step is made actionable by a complete prototype—which includes all that constitutes an academic field, from an epistemology to a community.

The purpose of knowledge federation is to enable systems to evolve knowledge-based.

Knowledge work systems to begin with.

By reconfiguring academic work on design epistemology as foundation, knowledge federation fosters an academic space where creativity can be applied and careers can be pursued by creating knowledge work. By changing our collective mind.

This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch.

Step 2: Enabling societal evolution

The second step is to further develop and implement the holotopia vision in real life.

By offering an attractive future vision, and a feedback structure around it to update it continuously; and by making tactical steps toward the realization of this vision—we restore to our society the faculty of vision; and the ability to "change course".

This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Margaret Mead and Aurelio Peccei.

The Holotopia project is conceived as a collaborative strategy game, where we make tactical moves toward the holotopia vision.

We make this 'game' smooth and awesome by supplementing a collection of tactical assets.

Art

Holotopia is an art project.

Where "art" is a way of being, not a profession.

The transformative space created by our "Earth Sharing" pilot project, in Kunsthall 3.14 art gallery in Bergen, Norway.

The idea of "a great cultural revival" brings to mind the image of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the midst of an old order of things manifesting a new one. When Duchamp exhibited the urinal, he challenged the traditional limits of what art is and may be.

The deconstruction of the tradition has been completed, and it is time to create.

What memes need to be fostered, and disseminated?

In what ways will art be present on the creative frontier where the new "great cultural revivival" will enfold?

In "Production of Space" Henri Lefebvre offered an answer, which we'll summarize in holotopia's buddying vernacular.

The crux of our problem, Lefebvre observed, is that past activity (historical 'turf strifes' calcified as power structure) keeps us in check. "What is dead takes hold of what is alive". Lefebvre proposed to reverse that.

"But how could what is alive lay hold of what is dead? The answer is: through the production of space, whereby living labour can produce something that is no longer a thing, nor simply a set of tools, nor simply a commodity."

Holotopia project is a space and a production of spaces, where what is alive in us can overcome what makes us dead.

Where in the artist as retort, new ways to feel, think and act are created.

Five insights

Holotopia's creative space is spanned by five insights.

The pentagram, which represents the five insights, lends itself to artistic interpretations.

Creation takes place in the context of the five insights. That makes holotopia's creative acts knowledge based.

Like five pillars, the five insights lifts up the Holotopia prototype as creative space, from what socialized reality might allow. We see "reality" differently in that space; we learn to perceive reification as a problem, which made us willing slaves to institutions. We no longer buy into the self-image and values that the power structure gave us.

Art meets science in that space; and curated knowledge in general. Not for a visit, but to live and work together. By sharing five insights, science tells art "Here is how far I've gotten; here is where you take over."

The five insights are a prototype—of a minimal collection of insight that can overturn the paradigm. With provision to evolve continuously—and reflect what we know collectively.

The five insights bring to the fore what is most transformative in our collective knowledge.

The mirror

The mirror is the entrance to holotopia.

Mirror prototypes in Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.

As these snapshots might illustrate, the mirror is an object that lends itself to endless artistic creations. And it is also an inexhaustible source of metaphors. One of them, or perhaps a common name for them, is self-reflection.

It is through genuine self-reflection and self-reflective dialog that holotopia can be reached.

We are contemplating to honor this fact by adopting holotopia hypothesis as keyword. Not because it is hypothetical (it is not!), but to encourage us all to have a certain attitude when entering holotopia. We are well aware that "the society" has problems. The key here is to see ourselves as products of that society. Let the mirror symbolize the self-reflection we willingly undergo, to become able to co-create a better society.

As always, we enter a new reality by looking at the world differently; this time it is by putting ourselves into the picture.

"Know thyself" has always been the battle cry of humanity's teachers. The mirror teaches us that our ideas, our emotional responses and our desires and preferences are not objectively given. That they take shape inside of us—as consequences of living in a culture.

The mirror is a symbol of cultural revival.

The convenience paradox insight showed that we can radically improve the way we feel; and the way we are. And that this can only be achieved through long-term cultivation.

The mirror is also a symbol of academic revival.

It invites the academia to revive its ethos through self-reflective dialog. To see itself in the world, and adapt to its role. And to then liberate the oppressed, which we all are, from reification and its consequences—by leading us through the mirror.

The dialog

The dialog is holotopia's signature approach to communication.

The philosopher who saw us as chained in a cave used the dialog as way to freedom. Since then this technique has been continuously evolving.

David Bohm gave this evolutionary stream a new direction, by turning the dialog into an antidote to 'turf strife'. Instead of wanting to impose our "reality" on others, Bohm insisted, we must use "proprioception" (mindfully watch ourselves) and inhibit such desires.

Isn't this what the mirror too demands?

A whole new stream of development was initiated by Kunst and Rittel, who proposed "issue-based information systems" in the 1960s, as a way to tackle the "wickedness" of complex contemporary issues. Jeff Conklin later showed how such tools can be used to transform collective communication into a collaborative dialog, through "dialog mapping". Baldwin and Price extended this approach online, and already transformed parts of our global mind through Debategraph.

The dialog changes the world by changing the way we communicate.

The theory and the ethos of dialog can furthermore be combined by situation design and artful camera work—to phase out turf behavior completely. This four-minute digest of the 2020 US first presidential debate will remind us that the dialog is not part of our political discourse. This subtler example shows the turf behavior that thwarted The Club of Rome's efforts: The homo ludens will say whatever might serve to win an argument; and with a confident smile! He knows that his "truth" suits the power structure—and therefore will prevail.

To point to the dialog's further tactical possibilities, we contemplate adapting "reality show" as keyword. When the dialog brings us together to daringly create, we see a new social reality emerge. When it doesn't, we witness the grip that socialized reality has on us.

Keywords

Keywords enable us to speak and think in new ways.

A warning reaches us from sociology.

Beck explained:

"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of categories and basic assumptions of classical social, cultural and political sciences."

Imagine us in this "iron cage", compelled, like mythical King Oedipus, to draw closer to a tragic destiny as we do our best to avoid it—by the "categories and basic assumptions" that have been handed down to us.

We offered truth by convention and creation of keywords as a way out of "iron cage".

While we've been seeing examples all along, we here share three more—to illustrate the exodus.

Culture

In "Culture as Praxis", Zygmunt Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and concluded that they are too diverse to be reconciled.

We do not know what "culture" means.

Not a good venture point for developing culture as praxis!

We defined culture as "cultivation of wholeness"; and cultivation by analogy with planting and watering a seed—in accord with the etymology of that word.

In that way we created a specific way of looking at culture—which reveals where 'the cup is broken'; and where enormous progress can be made. As no amount of dissecting and analyzing a seed will suggest that it should be planted and watered, so does the narrow frame obscure from us the benefits that the culture can provide. As the cultivation of land does, the cultivation of human wholeness too requires that subtle cultural practices be phenomenologically understood; and integrated in our culture.

Holotopia will distill the essences of human cultivation from the world traditions—and infuse them into a functional post-traditional culture.

Our definition of culture points to the analogy that Béla H. Bánáthy brought up in "Guided Evolution of Society"—between the Agricultural Revolution that took place about twelve thousand years ago, and the social and cultural revolution that is germinating in our time. In this former revolution, Bánáthy explained, our distant ancestors learned to consciously take care of their biophysical environment, by cultivating land. We will now learn to cultivate our social environment.

There is, however, a point where this analogy breaks down: While the cultivation of land yields results that everyone can see, the results of human cultivation are hidden within. They can only be seen by those who have already benefited from it.

The benefits of a functioning culture could be prodigious—without us seeing that.

This is why communication is so central to holotopia.

This is why we must step through the mirror to come in.

Addiction

The traditions identified activities such as gambling, and things such as opiates as addictions. But selling addictions is a lucrative business. What will hinder businesses from using new technologies to create new addictions?

By defining addiction as a pattern, we made it possible to identify it as an aspect of otherwise useful activities and things.

To make ourselves and our culture whole, even subtle addiction must be taken care of.

The convenience paradox insight showed that convenience is a general addiction; and the root of innumerable specific ones.

We defined pseudoconsciousness as "addiction to information". To be conscious of one's situation is, of course, a genuine need and part of our wholeness. But consciousness can be drowned in images, facts and data. We can have the sensation of knowing, without knowing what we really need to know.

Religion

In "Physics and Philosophy" Werner Heisenberg described some of the consequences of the narrow frame:

It was especially difficult to find in this framework room for those parts of reality tht had been the object of the traditional religion and seemed now more or less only imaginary. Therefore, in those European countries in which one was wont to follow the ideas up to their extreme consequences, and open hostility of science toward religion developed (...). Confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind.

If you too were influenced by the narrow frame, consider our way of defining concepts as 'recycling'—as a way to give old words new meanings; as thereby restoring them to the function they need to have "in the post-traditional cosmopolitan world".

A role of religion in world traditions has been to connect an individual to an ethical ideal, and individuals together in a community. This role is pointed to by the etymological meaning of this concept, which is "re-connection".

What serves this role in modern culture?

We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined religion as "reconnection with the archetype". We further adapted Carl Jung's keyword, and defined archetype as whatever in our psychological makeup may compel us to transcend the narrow limits of self-interest; to overcome convenience. "Heroism", "justice", "motherhood", "freedom", "beauty", "truth" and "love" are examples.

Imagine a world where truth, love, beauty, justice... bind us to our purpose; and to each other!

But isn't religion a belief system? And an institution?

"The Agony and the Ecstasy" is Irving Stone's biographical novel and a film, where the agony and the ecstasy are what accompanied Michelangelo's creative process while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And of course what accompanies a deep creative process of any kind. Pope Julius II appears in the story as he was—as "Warrior Pope". He, however, did exercise piety—by enabling Michelangelo to complete his work. Pope Julius created a space where the artist could deliver his gifts. Julius knew, and so did Michelangelo, that it is the artist that God speaks through.

Ten themes

The ten themes offer relevant and engaging things to talk about.

At the same time they illustrate how different our conversations will be, when 'the light' has been turned on.

We selected ten themes to prime and energize the dialogs. They correspond to the ten lines that join the five insights pairwise in a pentagram. Here are some highlights.

How to put an end to war?

What would it take to really put an end to war?

In the context of power structure and socialized reality, this conversation about the age-old theme is bound to be completely different from the ones we've had before.

The socialized reality insight allows us to recognize the war as an extreme case of the general dynamic it describes—where one person's ambition to expand "his" 'symbolic turf' is paid for with hacked human bodies, destroyed homes, and unthinkable suffering. This conversation may then focus on the various instruments of socialization (through which our duty, love, heroism, honor,... are appropriated), which have always been core elements of "culture". The socialized reality insight may then help us understand—and also deconstruct—the mechanism that makes the unlikely bargain of war possible.

The power structure insight illuminates the same scene from a different angle—where we see that the war's insane logic does make sense; that the war does make the power structure (kings and their armies; or the government contractors and the money landers) more powerful.

A look at a science fiction movie may show the limits of our imagination—which allow only the technology to advance. And keep culture and values on the "dark side"—although we've already past well beyond what such one-sided evolution can sustain.

The history too will need to be rewritten—and instead of talking about the kings and their "victories", tell us about sick ambition and suffering; and about the failed attempts to transform humanity's evolution.

Zero to one

This conversation is about education.

It is through the medium of education that a culture reproduces itself and evolves. Education is a systemic leverage point that holotopia must not overlook.

By placing it in the context of narrow frame and convenience paradox, we look at education from this specific angle:

Is education socializing us into an obsolete worldview?

What would education be like if it had human development as goal?

By giving it this title, "zero to one", we want to ask the question that Sir Ken Robison posed at TED:

Do schools kill creativity?

The title we borrowed from Peter Thiel, to look at this question from an angle that the holotopians are most interested in: We've been prodigiously creative in taking things 'from one to many' (improving things that already exist, and replicating them in large numbers); ye we are notoriously incapable of conceiving things that do not exist. But isn't that what changing a paradigm is about?

Is education making us unable to change course?

The most interesting question, in holotopia context, is about education's principle of operation. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity prototype showed that creative imagination (the ability to constructs complex things that don't exist) seems to depend on a gradual, annealing-like process. What if the ability to comprehend complex things too demands that we let the mind construct?

Of course"pushing" information on students (instead of letting them acquire it through "pull") was the only way possible when information was scarce, and people had to come to a university to access it. But that is no longer the case! Hear Michael Wesch, and then join us in co-creating an answer to this pivotal question:

Is our education's very principle of operation obsolete?

Alienation

This theme offers a way to reconcile Karl Marx with "the 1%", and the radical left with Christianity.

By having the convenience paradox and the power structure insights as context, this theme allows us to understand that power play distanced all of us from wholeness.

Holotopia wins without fighting—by co-opting the powerful.

Enlightenment 2.0

By placing the conversation about the impending Enlightenment-like change in the context of the convenience paradox insight and the collective mind insight, two opportunities for transdisciplinary cross-fertilization are opened up.

One of them takes advantage of the media technology—to create media material that helps us "change course", by making the convenience paradox transparent.

The other one applies the insights about wholeness—to develop media use that supports wholeness.

Academia quo vadis?

This title is reserved for the academic self-reflective dialog in front of the mirror.

By placing that conversation between the socialized reality and the narrow frame, the imperative of academic transformation (that "the university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing society's capability for continuous self-renewal", as Erich Jantsch pointed out) is made transparent.

Is transdisciplinarity the university institution's future?

This conversation should not avoid to look at the humanistic side of its theme.

The homo ludens academicus is a subspecies whose existence is predicted by the theory advanced with the socialized reality insight, which contradicts the conventional wisdom. Its discovery—for which a genuine self-reflective dialog in front of the mirror could be a suitable experiment—would confirm the principle that the evolution of human systems must not be abandoned to "the survival of fittest". Then the university could create "a way to change course"—by making "structural changes with itself".

Two millennia ago, when the foundations of the Roman Empire were shaking, the Christian Church stepped into the role of an ethical guiding light.

Can the university enable our next ethical transformation—by liberating us from an antiquated way of comprehending the world?

Stories

The stories are a way to make insights accessible and clear.

These stories are vignettes. This in principle journalistic technique helps us render academic and other insights in a way that makes them palatable to public, and usable to artists and journalists. Being a meme, a vignette can do more than convey ideas.

We illustrate this technique by a single example, The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart.

The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart is a modern version of 'Galilei in house arrest'.

It shows who, or what, holds 'Galilei in house arrest' today.

As summarized in the article, Engelbart's contributions to the emerging paradigm were crucial. Erich Jantsch wrote:

"The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the “joint systems” of society and technology."

Engelbart contributed means to secure decisive victories in those "decisive battles".

Even more relevant and interesting is, however, what this story tells about ourselves.

As part of the mirror, The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart reflects what we must see and change about ourselves to be able to "change course".

The setting was like of an experiment: The Silicon Valley's giant in residence, already recognized and celebrated as that, offered the most innovative among us the ideas that would change the world.

We couldn't even hear him.

This 'experiment' showed how incredibly idea-blind we've become.

The elephant

The elephant points to a quantum leap in relevance and interest—when academic and other insights are presented in the context of "a great cultural revival".

Elephant ideogram

There is an "elephant in the room", waiting to be discovered.

The frontier thinkers have been touching him, and describing him excitedly in the jargon of their discipline. We heard them talk about "the fan", "the water hose" and "the tree trunk". But they didn't make sense and we ignored them.

This thoroughly changes when we realize that they described 'the ear', 'the trunk' and 'the leg' of an 'exotic animal'—which nobody has as yet seen!

We make it possible to 'connect the dots' and see the elephant.

By combining the elephant with design epistemology we offer a new notion of rigor to the study of cultural artifacts.

The structuralists attempted that in a different way. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts by successfully arguing that cultural artifacts have no "real meaning"; and making meanings open to interpretation.

We propose to consider cultural artifacts as 'dots' to be connected.

We don't, for instance, approach Bourdieu's theory by fitting it into a "reality picture". We adapt it as a piece in a completely new 'puzzle'.

Books and publishing

Book launches punctuate the laminar flow of events, draw attention to a theme and begin a dialog.

Does the book still have a future?

In "Amuzing Ourselves to Death", Neil Postman (who founded "media ecology") left us a convincing argument why the book is here to stay. His point was that the book creates a different "ecology of the mind" (to borrow Gregory Bateson's similarly potent idea) than the audio-visual media do: It gives us a chance to reflect.

We, however, embed the book in an 'ecosystem' of media. By publishing a book we 'break ice' and place a theme—which may or may not be one of our ten themes—into the focus of the public eye. We then let our collective mind digest and further develop the proposed ideas; and by doing that—develop itself!

In this way, a loop is closed through which an author's insights are improved by collective creativity and knowledge—leading, ultimately, to a new and better edition of the book.

Liberation

The book titled "Liberation", with subtitle "Religion beyond Belief", is scheduled to be completed during the first half of 2021, and serve as the first in the series.

A metaphor may help us see why this particular theme and book are especially well suited as a tactical asset, for breaking ice and launching the holotopia dialogs. The recipe for a successful animated feature film is to make it for two audiences: the kids and the grownups. As the excerpt from The Incredibles we shared above might illustrate, the kids get the action; the grownups get the metaphors and the dialogs.

So it is with this book. To the media it offers material that rubs so hard against people's passions and beliefs that it can hardly be ignored. And to more mature audiences—it offers the holotopia meme.

The age-old conflict between science and religion is resolved by evolving both science and religion.

Prototypes

Prototypes federate insights by weaving them into the fabric of reality.

They

restore the connection between information and action, by creating a feedback loop through which information can impact systems
restore systemic wholeness, by sowing design patterns together

By rendering results of creative work as challenge—resolution pairs, design patterns make them adaptable to new applications. Each design pattern constitutes a discovery—of a specific way in which a system, and world at large, can be made more whole.

What difference would be made, if the principle "make things whole" guided innovation?

We point to an answer by these examples.

Education

The Collaborology 2016 educational prototype, to whose subject and purpose we pointed by this course flyer, exhibited solutions to a number of challenges that were repeatedly voiced by education innovators. In addition, its design patterns showed how education can be adapted to holotopia's purpose.

Most of Collaborology's design patterns were developed and tested within its precursor, University of Oslo Information Design course.

Education is flexible. In a fast-changing world, education cannot be a once-in-a-lifetime affair. And in a world that has to change, it cannot teach only traditional professions. In Collaborology, the students learn an emerging profession.

Learning is by "pull", by 'connecting the dots'.

The students learn what they need, when they need it.

Education is active. The course is conceived as a design project, where the students and the instructors co-create learning resources. Collaboration toward systemic wholeness is not only taught, but also practiced. Instead of only receiving knowledge, students become a component in a knowledge-work ecosystem —where they serve as 'bacteria', recycling 'nutrients' from academic 'deposits'.

Education is internationally federated. Collaborology is created and taught by an international network of instructors and designers, and offered to learners worldwide. An instructor creates a lecture, not a course.

Economies of scale result, which drastically reduce workload.

It becomes cost-effective to power learning by new technologies—why should only the game manufacturers use them?

Collaborology provides a sustainable business model for creating and disseminating transdisciplinary knowledge of any theme.

Re-design of education is technology enabled. The enabling technology is called the domain map object. It offers solutions to a number of challenges that designers of flexible education have to face:

structure the curriculum and organize the learning resources—in a manner that is not a linear sequence of lectures or book chapters
help the students orient themselves and create a personal learning plan—before they have taken the course
customize the exam—by displaying the student's learning trajectory

Educational model too is internationally federated. We developed close ties with Global Education Futures Initiative—"an international collaborative platform that brings together shapers and sherpas of global education to discuss and implement the necessary transformations of educational ecosystems for thrivable futures". Following their first international co-creative event in Palo Alto (where international reformers and theorists of education gathered to map the directions and challenges), we shared a one-day workshop in Mei Lin Fung's house, to coordinate our collaboration. In 2017, the Collaborology model was presented and discussed at the World Academy of Art and Science conference Future Education 2 in Rome. The Information Design course model, and the corresponding domain map (which was then called "polyscopic topic map") technology were presented and discussed at the 2005 Topic Maps Research and Applications conference in Linz; and at the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning conference in Taipei, where they were invited for journal publication.

Scientific communication 1

Tesla and the Nature of Creativity (TNC 2015) is a prototype showing how a researcher's insight can be federated to benefit the public.

We described it in blog posts, A Collective Mind – Part One and Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, and here only highlight two of its design patterns.

Unraveling the narrow frame. Heisenberg, as we have seen, pointed out that the narrow frame (the "narrow and rigid" way of looking at the world that our ancestors adopted from 19th century science) made us misapprehend core elements of culture. In the federated article, Dejan Raković explained how creativity too has been mishandled—specifically the kind of creativity on which our ability to "create a better world" and shift the paradigm depends. This prototype showed how the narrow frame can be broadened, academic creativity can be raised, and collective creativity can be fostered—by combining the fundamental and technical interventions proposed in five insights.

Federating an author's idea. An article written in an academic vernacular, of quantum physics, was transformed into a multimedia object—where its core idea was communicated by intuitive diagrams, and explained in recorded interviews with the author. A high-profile event was then organized to make the idea public, and discuss it in a dialog of experts. The idea was then embedded in a technology-enabled collective mind, implemented on Debategraph, where collective 'connecting the dots' continued.

This prototype models a new "social life of information"—alternative to peer reviews.

Scientific communication 2

Lightnouse 2016 prototype shows how an academic community can federate an insight. We offered it as a resolution to Wiener's paradox.

Federating an academic community's core insight. An academic community might produce "tons of information every hour"—while the public ignores even its most basic achievements. The federation here is in three phases. In the first, the community distills and substantiates an insight. In the second, state of the art communication design is applied, to make the insight accessible. In the third, the insight is strategically made impactful. In the actual prototype, the first phase was performed by the International Society for the Systems Sciences, the second by Knowledge Federation's communication design team, and the third by the Green Party of Norway.

Unraveling the Wiener's paradox. The specific question, which was posed for academic federation, was whether our society can rely on "free competition" or "survival of the fittest" in setting directions. Or whether information and systemic understanding must be used, as Norbert Wiener claimed—and the Modernity ideogram echoed.

Isn't this the very first question our society's 'headlights' must illuminate?

Public informing

Barcelona Innovation System for Good Journalism, BIGJ 2011, is a prototype of federated journalism. Journalism, or public informing, is of course directly in the role of 'headlights'.

Federated journalism. A journalist working alone has no recourse but to look for sensations. In BIGJ 2011 the journalist works within a 'collective mind', in which readers, experts and communication designers too have active roles—see this description.

Designed journalism. What would public informing be like, if it were not reified as "what the journalists are doing", but designed to suit its all-important social role? We asked "What do the people really need to know—so that the society may function, and the democracy may be real?" And we drafted a public informing that applies the time-honored approach of science to society's problems—see this explanation.

Culture

A culture is of course not only, and not even primarily explicit information. We sought ways in which essential memes ('cultural genes') can be saved from oblivion, and supported and strengthened through cross-fertilization (see this article).

We illustrate this part of knowledge federation by three prototypes in travel or tourism. Historically, travel was the medium for meme exchange. But the insuperable forces of economy changed that—and now travel is iconized by the couple on an exotic beach. The local culture figures in it as souvenir sellers and hotel personnel.

Dagali 2006 prototype showed that successful high-budget tourism can be created anywhere—by bringing travelers in direct contact with the locals. By allowing them to experience what the real life in a country is like—see this description.

UTEA 2003 is a re-creation of the conventional corporate model in tourism industry to support authentic travel and meme exchange. We benefited from a venture cup to secure help from an academic adviser and a McKinsey adviser in creating the business plan. The information technology's enabling role was explained in the appendix.

Authentic Herzegovina 2014 showed how to revitalize and support a culture that was destroyed by war—see this description.

Art

As journalism, art too can be transformed. And it may need to be transformed, if it should take its place on the creative frontier; fulfill its role in the collective mind. We highlight two design patterns.

Art as space. The artist no longer only creates, but creates a space where the public can create.

Art and science. The artist no longer works in isolation, but in a space illuminated by information—where memes that are most vital come to the fore, to be given a voice.

Our Earth Sharing pilot event, which we offer as illustration, took place in June of 2018, in Kunsthall 3,14 of Bergen. Vibeke Jensen, the artist who led us, avoids interpreting her creations. They are to be used as prompts, to allow meaning to emerge. The interpretation we share here is a possible one.

The physical space where the event took place symbolized holotopia's purpose: This building used to be a bank, and later became an art gallery. It remained to turn the gallery into a space for social transformation.

The gallery was upstairs—and Vibeke turned the stairs into a metaphor. Going up, the inscription read "bottom up"; going down, it read "top down". From the outset, the visitors were sensitized to those two ways to connect ideas.

The BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool then suggested to transcend fixed ways of looking, and combine worldviews and perspectives.

A one-way mirror served as entrance to the deepest transformative space, which used to be a vault. The treasury could only be reached by stepping through the mirror. The 'treasure' in it were ideas, and a "safe space" to reflect. The inside of the vault was only dimly lit, by the light that penetrated from outside. A pair of speakers emitted edited fragments of past dialogs—offered for contemplation, and re-creation.

Think of the objects that populated the installation as 'furniture': When we enter a conventional room, its furniture tells us how the room is to be used, and draws us into a stereotype. This 'furniture' was unlike anything we've seen! It invited us to invent the way we use the space; to co-create the way we are together.

The creation that took place in this space was the Holotopia project's inception.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-<div class="page-header" ><h1>Holotopia</h1></div>
+<div class="page-header" ><h1>HOLOTOPIA</h1><br><br><h2>An Actionable Strategy</h2></div>
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@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 <div class="col-md-6">
 <p>You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? <em>As headlights</em>? </p>
-<p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it? Because <em>on a much larger scale</em> this absurdity has become reality.</p>
+<p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?
+<blockquote> Because <em>on a much larger scale</em> this absurdity has become reality.</blockquote> </p>
 <p>The Modernity <em>ideogram</em> renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.</p>
 </div>
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@@ Line 12: / Line 15: @@
 <small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-6"><h3>In a nutshell</h3>
+<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Its essence</h3>
 <blockquote>
-The core of our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
+The core of our proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
 </blockquote>
@@ Line 28: / Line 29: @@
 "The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
 </blockquote>
 </div>
 <div class="col-md-3">
 [[File:Postman.jpg]]<br><small>Neil Postman</small>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3>In detail</h3>
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Its substance</h3>
-<p>What would information and our handling of information be like if we treated them as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted them to the purposes that need to be served?</p>
+<p>What would our handling of information be like, if we treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we took advantage of our best knowledge and technology, and adapted it to the purposes that need to be served?</p>
-<blockquote>The substance of our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is a <em>complete</em> <em>prototype</em>—by which the proposed <em>modernization</em> of information is made concrete, and practically realizable. </blockquote>
-<p>What consequences will <em>knowledge federation</em> have? How will information be different? How will it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom will it be created? What new information formats will emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How will information technology be adapted? What will public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? The proposed <em>prototype</em> includes detailed answers to those and other related questions.</p>
+<p>By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>
+<blockquote>The substance of our proposal is a <em>complete</em> <em>prototype</em> of the handling of information we are proposing—by which initial answers to relevant questions are given, and in part implemented in practice. </blockquote>
+<p>We call the proposed approach to information [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] when we want to point to the <em>activity</em> that distinguishes it from the  common practices. We <em>federate</em> knowledge when we make what we "know" information-based; when we examine, select and combine all potentially relevant resources. When also the <em>way</em> in which we handle information is <em>federated</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>
+<p>Like architecture and design, <em>knowledge federation</em> is both an organized set of activities, and an academic field that develops them.</p>
+<blockquote>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field and real-life <em>praxis</em> (informed practice).</blockquote>
+<h3>Its method</h3>
+<p>We refer to our proposal as [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] when we want to emphasize the difference it can make. </p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of the [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] is to help us see things whole.</blockquote>
+<p>
+[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
+<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
+</p>
+<p>We use the Holoscope [[ideogram|<em>ideogram</em>]] to point to this purpose. The <em>ideogram</em> draws on the metaphor of inspecting a hand-held cup, in order to see whether it is broken or whole. We inspect a cup by <em>choosing</em> the way we look; and by looking at all sides.</p>
+<p>While the characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.</p>
+<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>
+<p>The ways of looking are called <em>scopes</em>. The <em>scopes</em> and the resulting <em>views</em> have similar role and meaning as projections do in technical drawing. </p>
+<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information, distinguished by purposeful, free and informed choice or <em>creation</em> of the way we look at the world, has become necessary, suggests the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with one other and with the conventional ones.</p>
+<p>To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point, and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>
+<blockquote>
+Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em> is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
+</blockquote>
+<p>A way of looking or [[scope|<em>scope</em>]]—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct assessment of an object of study or situation—is a new <em>kind of result</em> that is made possible by (the general-purpose science that is modeled by) the <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
+<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or needs to be perceived (also) as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scope</em>); and to do that collectively and collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>
 </div> </div>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A difference to be made</h3>
+<blockquote>Suppose we used the <em>holoscope</em> as 'headlights'; what difference would that make?</blockquote>
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>An application</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-6"><h3>The situation we are in</h3>
+<div class="col-md-6">
-<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test. Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—[[Aurelio Peccei]] issued the following call to action:
+<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in provided us a benchmark challenge for putting our proposal to a test.</p>
+<p>Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—[[Aurelio Peccei]] issued the following call to action: </p>
 <blockquote>
 "It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
 </blockquote>
-</p>
 <p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
@@ Line 65: / Line 116: @@
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
-<p>This conclusion, that our present crisis has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". </p>
+<p>This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". </p>
-<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action as follows:</p>
+<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:</p>
 <blockquote>
 "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."
@@ Line 73: / Line 124: @@
 The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".</p>
-<h3>Can the proposed 'headlights' help us "find a way to change course"?</h3>
+<h3>A <em>different</em> way to see the future</h3>
-<p>Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's regular institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> is a vision of a future that becomes accessible when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.</blockquote>
+<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. In view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
+<p>As the optimism regarding our future waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" were offered as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>
+<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is <em>more</em> attractive  than the futures the utopias projected—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily attainable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>
-<p>If we used <em>knowledge federation</em> to 'illuminate the way'—what difference would that make? </p>
+<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of [[five insights|<em>five insights</em>]].</blockquote>
+</div> </div>
-<blockquote>The Holotopia project, which is our theme here, is conceived as a <em>knowledge federation</em>-based response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action.</blockquote>
-<p>The mission of the Holotopia project is to evolve (a <em>prototype</em> of) a pair of 'headlights', in actual practice, by which this new course will become visible; and to initiate the kind of transformation in our cultural and social order of things, which is necessary for this vision to be realized. We coined this keyword, <em>holotopia</em> as a placeholder for the vision, and the cultural and social order of things that will result from this quest.</p>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[five insights|<em>Five insights</em>]]</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7">
+[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
+<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> resulted when we applied the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes; "pivotal" because they <em>determine</em> the "course":</blockquote>
-<p>To prime this process, we have developed the <em>initial</em> Holotopia <em>prototype</em>, which includes both an initial vision, and a project structure. This <em>prototype</em> is described on these pages.</p>
+<ul>
+<li><b>Innovation</b>—the way we use our growing ability to create, and induce change</li>
+<li><b>Communication</b>—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled</li>
+<li><b>Foundation</b>—the fundamental assumptions based on which truth and meaning are socially constructed; which serve as foundation to the edifice of culture; which <em>determine</em> the relationship we have with information</li>
+<li><b>Method</b>—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life; or the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it</li>
+<li><b>Values</b>—the way we "pursue happiness"; or choose "course"</li>
+</ul>
+<p>In each case, when we 'connected the dots' (combined the available insights to reach a general one), we were able to identify a large structural defect. We demonstrated practical ways, partly implemented as <em>prototypes</em>, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We showed that such structural interventions lead to benefits that are well beyond curing problems.</p>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> establish an analogy between the comprehensive change that was germinating in Galilei's time, and what is in store for us now.</blockquote>
+<h3><em>Power structure</em> insight (analogy with Industrial Revolution)</h3>
+<p>We looked at <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> as gigantic socio-technical 'mechanisms'—which determine <em>how</em> we live and work; and what the effects of our efforts will be. </p>
+<p>
+[[File:Castells-vision.jpeg]]
+</p>
+<p>When "free competition" or the market controls our growing capability to create and induce change, <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> evolve as <em>power structures</em>—and we <em>lose</em> the ability to steer a viable course. A dramatic improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of human work, and of the human condition at large, can result from <em>systemic innovation</em>, where we innovate by <em>making things whole</em> on the <em>large</em> scale, where socio-technical systems or institutions are made [[wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</p>
+<h3><em>Collective mind</em> insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)</h3>
+<p>We looked at the <em>social process</em> by which information is handled. </p>
+<p>[https://youtu.be/8ApPkTvQ4QM?t=38 Hear Neil Postman] observe:</p>
+<blockquote> “We’ve entered an age of information glut. And this is something no culture has really faced before. The typical situation is information scarcity. (…) Lack of information can be very dangerous. (…) But at the same time too much information can be dangerous, because it can lead to a situation of meaninglessness, of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you.”</blockquote>
+<p>We saw that the new media technology is still being used to make the social process that the printing press made possible (publishing or broadcasting) more efficient; which <em>breeds</em> glut!  In spite of the fact that core elements of the new technology have been created to enable a <em>different</em> social process—whose results are function and meaning; where technology enables us to think and create <em>together</em>, as cells in a single mind do.</p>
+<h3><em>Socialized reality</em> insight (analogy with Enlightenment)</h3>
+<p>We looked at the [[foundation|<em>foundation</em>]] on which truth and meaning are socially constructed, which we also call [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]]. It was the [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]] change—from the rigidly held Biblical worldview of Galilei's prosecutors—that made the Enlightenment possible; that triggered comprehensive change.</p>
+<p>We saw that a similar fundamental change, with similar consequences, is now mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds.</p>
+<h3><em>Narrow frame</em> insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)</h3>
+<p>We looked at the method by which truth and meaning are socially constructed.</p>
+<p> Science eradicated prejudice and expanded our knowledge—where the methods and interests of its disciplines could be applied. We showed how to <em>extend</em> the scientific approach to knowledge, to questions we <em>need to</em> answer. </p>
+<h3><em>Convenience paradox</em> insight (analogy with Renaissance)</h3>
+<p>We looked at the values that determine the way we "pursue happiness"; and our society's "course".</p>
+<p>We showed that when proper 'light' illuminates the 'way'—our choices and pursuits will be entirely different.</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Large</em> change is easy</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>holotopia</em> is not a utopia</h3>
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The "course" is a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]</h3>
-<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of harsh and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
-<p>As the optimism regarding our future faded, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.</p>
+<blockquote>The changes the <em>five insights</em> are pointing to are inextricably co-dependent.</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is a <em>more</em> attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily realizable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>
-<p>The goal of the Holotopia project is to begin to implement this vision in practice—by creating a suitable real-life instance or <em>prototype</em>. </p>
+<p>We cannot, for instance, replace 'candles' with 'lightbulbs' (as the <em>collective mind</em> insight demands), unless <em>systemic innovation</em> (demanded by the <em>power structure</em> insight)  is in place. And without having a general-purpose method for <em>creating</em> insights (which dissolves the <em>narrow frame</em>). We will remain unknowing victims of the <em>convenience paradox</em>, as long as we use 'candles' to illuminate the way. </p>
+<blockquote>We cannot make any of the required changes without making them all.</blockquote>
+<p>We may use Wiener's keyword "homeostasis" negatively—to point to the <em>undesirable</em> property of systems to maintain a course, even when the course is destructive. The system springs back, it nullifies attempted change.</p>
+<blockquote>It is because of this property of our global system that comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may be impossible.</blockquote>
+<h3>"A way to change course" is in [[academia|<em>academia</em>]]'s hands</h3>
+<p>Paradigm changes, however, have an inherent logic and way they need to proceed.</p>
+<p>A "disease" is a living system's stable <em>pathological</em> condition. And we only call that a "remedy" which has the power to flip the system out of that condition. In systems terms, a remedy of that kind, a <em>true</em> remedy, is called "systemic leverage point". And when a <em>social</em> system is to be 'healed', then the most powerful "leverage point" is "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise"; and we must seek to restore "the power to transcend paradigms", as [http://holoscope.org/CONVERSATIONS#Donella <em>the</em> Donella Meadows pointed out].</p>
+<blockquote>By changing the relationship we have with information, we restore to our society its power to transcend its present [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]].</blockquote>
+<p>That simple change, the <em>five insights</em> showed,  will trigger all other requisite changes follow. We abolish <em>reification</em>—of worldviews and institutions in general, and of journalism, science and other inherited ways of looking at the world in particular—and we instantly see the imperative of changing them by adapting them to the purposes that must be served. </p>
+<p>Furthermore, as the <em>socialized reality</em> insight showed, this change is mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds. It follows as a logical consequence of what we already "know". </p>
+<p>This "way to change course" should be particularly easy because—being a <em>fundamental</em> change—it is entirely in control of publicly sponsored intellectuals, the [[academia|<em>academia</em>]].</p>
+<blockquote>We don't need to occupy Wall Street.</blockquote>
-<h3>Making things whole</h3>
+<p><em>The university</em>, not the Wall Street, controls the systemic leverage point <em>par excellence</em>.</p>
-<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to change course toward the <em>holotopia</em>?</p>
-<p>From a comprehensive body of insights from which the <em>holotopia</em> emerges as a realistic new course, we have distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things <em>whole</em>. And we suggested that principle by the <em>holotopia</em>'s very name.</p>
-<blockquote>
-We must  <em>see ourselves as parts in a larger whole</em>; and act in ways that make this larger whole more [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].
-</blockquote>
-<p>You will recognize that this principle is also suggested by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>:  Instead of <em>reifying</em> our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system or systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit their, and our, <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
-<p>Imagine if academic and other knowledge-workers collaborated to serve and develop planetary wholeness – what magnitude of benefits would result!</p>
+<p>And for us who are in academic positions already, who are called upon to make this timely change—there is nothing we need to occupy. What we must do to "change course" is  demanded by our occupation <em>already</em>.</p>
-<h3>Seeing things whole</h3>
+<h3>"Human quality" <em>is</em> the key</h3>
-<p>To make things whole, we must be able to <em>see</em> things whole. </p>
-<p>To highlight that the approach to information we are proposing affords that very capability, it In the context of the <em>holotopia</em> we refer to it by its pseudonym <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
-<p>The specific characteristics of this approach—the design choices, how they follow from published insights, and why they are necessary to 'illuminate the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation. One of them, however, must be made clear from the start.</p>
-<p>
-[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
-<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</p>
-<p>If we consider as "true" only that which fits into our conventional "reality picture" or <em>paradigm</em>, then whatever challenges it will be perceived as "controversial". In the <em>holoscope</em>, the co-existence of a multiplicity of views, even when they might appear to contradict one another, is axiomatic. Those views are not considered as competing or contradictory "reality pictures", but as legitimate ways to look the whole, necessary if we should see it from all sides, and correctly assess its condition.</p>
-<p>By allowing for a multiplicity of views, we also give ignored but potentially transformative ideas 'citizenship rights'.</p>
-<p><em>Knowledge federation</em> can then be understood as collective thinking or sense making, or as a social process that keeps those multiple views coherent with one another; and of course also with academic and other insights; and with the people's and the society's contemporary needs.</p>
-<h3>Thinking differently</h3>
+<p>But what about culture? What about the "human quality", which, as we have seen, Aurelio Peccei considered to be <em>the</em> key to reversing our condition?</p>
-<p>That “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" is a commonplace. The key novelty in the <em>holoscope</em> is free and deliberate choice of what we look at and how, which in our technical jargon is called <em>scope</em>. </p>
+<p>On the morning of March 14, 1984, the day he passed away, Peccei dictated to his secretary from a hospital bed (as part of "Agenda for the End of the Century"):</p>
-<p>To liberate our thinking from the <em>narrow frame</em> of inherited concepts and habits, or metaphorically, to replace 'candle headlights' by a method that allows for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used "the scientific method" as venture point, and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in the sciences. </p>
+<blockquote>"Human development is the most important goal."</blockquote>
-<blockquote>
-Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em>  is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
-</blockquote>
-<h3>Looking at all sides</h3>
+<p>We can put this "humanistic" perspective on our map by looking at it in the "evolutionary" way, as Erich Jantsch suggested. Jantsch explained this way of looking through the metaphor of a boat (representing a system, which may be the natural world, or our civilization) on a river. The traditional science would position us <em>above</em> the boat, and have us look at it "objectively". The traditional systems science would position us <em>on</em> the boat, to seek ways to steer it effectively and safely. The "evolutionary" perspective invites us to see ourselves as—water. To acknowledge that we <em>are</em> the evolution! </p>
-<p><em>Scopes</em> that illuminate the entire whole from a specific angle are called <em>aspects</em>. As suggested by the Holoscope <em>ideogram</em>, the art of using the <em>holoscope</em> will to a large degree consist in finding a suitable collection of <em>aspects</em>—so that each of them alone gives a simple and clear view of the <em>whole</em>; while when combined together, they show the whole from all sides, and reveal its structure and condition.</p>
+<blockquote>By determining how we are as 'water', the "human quality" determines our evolutionary course.</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
+<p>The <em>power structure</em> insight showed that when we navigate the evolutionary stream by aiming to advance "our own" position—we unavoidably become part of the <em>power structure</em>; we <em>create</em> the systems that create problems.</p>
-<div class="row">
+<p>To put our two pivotal themes together, notice that changing the relationship we have with information should be <em>dramatically</em> easier for us than it was in Galilei's time—when it meant risking one's life or worse. The <em>academia</em>, not the Inquisition, is in change. But here's the rub: By being in charge, the <em>academia</em> is also <em>part of</em> the <em>power structure</em>!</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Five insights|Five insights]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>
-[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
-<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</p>
-<h3>A vision made concrete</h3>
+<p>To see what this means practically and concretely, follow us through a thought experiment: Imagine that an academic administrator, let's call him Professor <em>X</em>, has just received a <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal. (We say "a" proposal, because proposals of this kind were advanced well before we were born.) What would be his reaction?</p>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of  [[Holotopia:Five insights|<em>five insights</em>]]. They are the 'engine' that 'drives' the Holotopia project to its destination.</p>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em> are the result of looking at five selected main <em>aspects</em> of our contemporary condition. Of looking beyond the apparent problems, and illuminating deeper structural defects that either created them, or prevented us from solving them. </p>
-<p>We could have also called them "five issues"—which we are proposing as completely <em>new</em> ways to direct our efforts, incomparably more effective and productive than the still common "problem solving" in the context of the <em>existing</em> systemic solutions (or metaphorically, by driving with 'candle headlights'). As we shall see, each of them is an issue that <em>can</em> be resolved.</p>
-<blockquote>Our proposal is <em>not</em> to replace the problem-based approaches—but to dramatically increase their chances to succeed.</blockquote>
+<p>When <em>we</em> did this thought experiment, Professor <em>X</em> moved on to his next chore without ado. </p>
-<p>We might have also called them "five anomalies"—since each demands a deep or "paradigm" change in its specific domain.</p>
-<p>We shall see that each of those issues has been reported—and that the solutions have at least in principle been proposed—characteristically a half-century ago.</p>
+<p>We have an amusing collection of anecdotes to support that prognosis. And anyhow, why would Professor <em>X</em> invest time in comprehending a proposal of this kind, when he knows right away, when <em>his body</em> knows (see the <em>socialized reality</em> insight), that his colleagues won't like it. When there is obviously nothing to be gained from it. </p>
-<p>And consequently that Postman was right in observing that "the tie between information and action has been severed". </p>
+<blockquote><em>At the university too</em> we make decisions by "instrumental thinking"; by taking recourse to embodied knowledge of "what works".</blockquote>
-<h3><em>Power structure</em></h3>
+<p>We have seen (while developing the <em>power structure</em> insight) that this ethos <em>breeds</em> the <em>power structure</em>; that it <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>.</p>
-<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. We look at <em>the way</em> in which man uses his newly acquired and rapidly growing power—to create, and induce change. We illuminate <em>the way</em> our <em>culture</em> has been following. (Let's agree to attribute to <em>culture</em> a general meaning that includes <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>, as culture's 'hardware'. "The way" our culture is following can then be understood as the way in which those systems are evolving.)</p>
+<blockquote>This ethos is blatantly un-academic.</blockquote>
-<p>More concretely, we look at the institutions, or more generally <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>—which have the power to organize us together in ways that empower us to achieve great results; or as the case may be—organize us in ways that are dysfunctional, or even  damaging and destructive; without us noticing that.</p>
+<p>If Galilei followed it, the Inquisition would still be in charge; if Socrates did that, there would <em>be</em> no <em>academia</em>. </p>
-<p>Revolutions often involve a new understanding of the issues of power and freedom; the <em>holotopia</em> is no exception. So imagine if some sinister power took control over our <em>culture</em>'s evolutionary course, and drives us toward disaster. <em>Power structure</em> is that power. We shall see that the <em>power structures</em> wasted a lion's share of our time, money and other resources; that they <em>created</em> the perceived problems.</p>
+<p>The academic tradition was <em>conceived</em> as a radical alternative to this way of making choices—where we develop and use <em>ideas</em> as guiding light.</p>
-<p>A salient characteristic of this new way of perceiving this perennial issues of power and justice is that no conspiracy is needed, no evil intention or even <em>awareness</em> of adverse effects. On the contrary—<em>our best intentions</em>, our usual "values" of "doing our job", of "minding our own business", has given our professions or institutions the sinister <em>ability of organizing us together</em> in ways that are self-destructive, and damaging. </p>
-<p>
-[[File:Jantsch-vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>
+<blockquote>So was <em>knowledge federation</em>.</blockquote>
-The solution—to self-organize differently, and make things whole" at the level of institutions (by adapting them to the contemporary purposes and conditions)—was identified as a necessary response to the "problematique" right after The club of Rome's inception, in 1968. Erich Jantsch, one of The Club's co-founders, proposed it academically, and undertook to initiate the process of implementing it in practice.</p>
-<h3><em>Collective mind</em></h3>
+<p>We coined several [[keyword|<em>keywords</em>]] to point to some of the ironic sides of <em>academia</em>'s situation—as food for thought, and to set the stage for the academic [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] in front of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]].</p>
-<p>If our key evolutionary task is to learn make things whole at the level of institutions—<em>where</em> should we begin? What "joint system of society and technology" is the one that is both the most ready to be changed—<em>and</em> most likely to have a decisive impact?</p>
+<p>From Newton we adapted the keyword [[giant|<em>giant</em>]], and use it for visionary thinkers whose ideas must be woven together to see the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] (Newton reportedly "stood on the shoulders of giants" to "see further"). But as our anecdotes illustrate, the <em>giants</em> have in recent decades been routinely <em>ignored</em>. Is it because the academic 'turf' is minutely divided? Because a <em>giant</em> would take too much space?</p>
-<p>The answer is obvious; to reach the <em>collective mind</em> insight, we focus on the 'headlights'.</p>
-<p>The evidence we'll present in support of this insight will show just how much "the tie between information and action has been severed". It may feel disheartening, especially to our academic colleagues, to see that academic publishing influences the public opinion and policy only exceptionally; and as a rule—not at all!</p>
+<p>From Johan Huizinga we adapted the keyword [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]], and use it to point out that (as we saw while discussing the <em>socialized reality</em> insight) we are biologically equipped for <em>two</em> kinds of knowing and evolving. The <em>homo ludens</em> in us does not seek guidance in the knowledge of ideas and principles; it suffices him to learn his social roles, as one would learn the rules of a game. The <em>homo ludens</em> does not need to to <em>comprehend</em> the world; it's the [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/Five_insights#Giddens <em>ontological</em> security] he finds comfort in.  </p>
-<p>Our mood, however, will change to <em>holotopian</em> positive, as soon as we look at the other side of this coin, i.e. at possible <em>improvements</em> that are ready to be reached by self-organizing differently. No changes are necessary at the level of the individual disciplines, in any case at the beginning—since <em>dramatic progress in restoring agency to information, and power to knowledge can be reached</em> by creating a <em>trans-disciplinary</em> infrastructure that connects them together. As Erich Jantsch proposed.</p>
-<p>
+<p>We addressed our proposal to [[academia|<em>academia</em>]], which we defined as "institutionalized academic tradition". It goes without saying that the academic tradition's all-important role has been to keep us on the <em>homo sapiens</em> track. But as we have seen, the <em>power structure</em> ecology has the power to sidetrack institutional evolution toward the <em>homo ludens</em> devious course. </p>
-[[File:DE-dream.jpeg]]<br>
-<small>Engelbart's own slide explaining his vision, slightly adapted to our standard format. </small>
-</p>
-<p>Our optimism is likely to turn into enthusiasm when we realize that characteristic parts of contemporary information technology (the network-interconnected, interactive digital media) have been <em>created</em> as enabling technology, or metaphorically as "collective nervous system" to change our collective mind by making us capable of thinking and creating together. Or by <em>federating knowledge</em>, as we would say it. That Doug Engelbart conceived this vision <em>already in 1951</em>—and demonstrated the technical solutions <em>already in 1968</em>. </p>
-<p>We shall see that also <em>Engelbart's</em> call to action is still waiting to be heard, and honored.</p>
+<p>The question must be asked:</p>
+<blockquote>Does the academic institution's <em>own</em> ecology avoid this problem?</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
-<!-- XXX
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-6"><h3>We will <em>not</em> solve our problems</h3>
+<p>A role of the <em>holotopia</em> vision is to fulfill what Margaret Mead identified as "one necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence" (in "Continuities in Cultural Evolution", in 1964—four years before The Club of Rome was founded):
+<blockquote>
+"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
+</blockquote> </p>
+<p>More concretely, we undertake to respond to <em>this</em> Mead's critical point:</p>
+<blockquote>"Although tremendous advances in the human sciences have been made in the last hundred years, almost no advance has been made in their use, especially in ways of creating reliable new forms in which cultural evolution can be directed to desired goals."</blockquote>
+<p>We, however, do not claim, or even assume, that "the huge problems now confronting us" <em>can</em> be solved".</p>
+</div>
-<!-- XXX
+ <div class="col-md-3">
+[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
+<small>Margaret Mead</small>
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
+<div class="col-md-7">
-<h3>The "solutionatique"</h3>
+<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=223 Hear Dennis Meadows] (who coordinated the team that produced The Club of Rome's seminal 1972 report "Limits to Growth") diagnose, recently, that our pursuit of "sustainability" falls short of avoiding the "predicament" that The Club of Rome was warning us about back then:</p>
+<blockquote>
+"Will the current ideas about "green industry", and "qualitative growth", avoid collapse? No possibility. Absolutely no possibility of that. (...) Globally, we are something like sixty or seventy percent <em>above</em> sustainable levels."
+</blockquote>
+<p>We wasted precious time pursuing a dream; [https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, when he was "the leader of the free world". </p>
+<blockquote>A sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. </blockquote>
+<p>Small things don't matter. Business as usual is a waste of time.</p>
+<p>Our very "progress" must acquire a new—cultural—focus and direction. [https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Dennis Meadows say]:</p>
+<blockquote>
+"Will it be possible, here in Germany, to continue this level of energy consumption, and this degree of material welfare? Absolutely not. Not in the United States, not in other countries either. Could you <em>change</em> your cultural and your social norms, in a way that gave attractive future? Yes, you could."
+</blockquote>
+<p>Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper cultural and structural defects.</p>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> show that the <em>structural</em> problems now confronting us <em>can</em> be solved.</blockquote>
+<p>The <em>holotopia</em> offers <em>more than</em> "an atmosphere of hope". It points to an attainable future that is strictly <em>better</em> than our present.</p>
+<p>And it offers to change our condition <em>now</em>—by engaging us in an unprecedentedly large and magnificent creative adventure.</p>
+<p>Peccei wrote in One Hundred Pages for the Future (the boldface emphasis is ours):</p>
+<blockquote><p>For some time now, the perception of (our responsibilities relative to "problematique") has motivated a number of organizations and small voluntary groups of concerned citizens which have mushroomed all over to respond to the demands of new situations or to change whatever is not going right in society. These groups are now legion. They arose sporadically on the most variend fronts and with different aims. They comprise peace movements, supporters of national liberation, and advocates of women's rights and population control; defenders of minorities, human rights and civil liberties; apostles of "technology with a human face" and the humanization of work; social workers and activists for social change; ecologists, friends of the Earth or of animals; defenders of consumer rights; non-violent protesters; conscientious objectors, and many others. These groups are usually small but, should the occasion arise, they can mobilize a host of men and women, young and old, inspired by a profound sense of te common good and by moral obligations which, in their eyes, are more important than all others.</p>
+<p>They form a kind of popular army, actual or potential, with a function comparable to that of the antibodies generated to restore normal conditions in a biological organism that is diseased or attacked by pathogenic agents. The existence of so many spontaneous organizations and groups testifies to the vitality of our societies, even in the midst of the crisis they are undergoing. <b>Means will have to be found one day to consolidate their scattered efforts in order to direct them towards strategic objectives.</b></p> </blockquote>
+<p>Diversity is good and useful, especially in times of change. Systems scientists coined the keyword "requisite variety" to point out that a <em>variety</em> of possible responses make a system viable, or "sustainable".</p>
+<blockquote>The risk is, however, that the actions of "small voluntary groups of concerned citizens" may remain reactive.</blockquote>
+<p>From Murray Edelman we adapted the keyword [[symbolic action|<em>symbolic action</em>]], to make that risk clear. We engage in <em>symbolic action</em> when we act <em>within</em> the limits of the <em>socialized reality</em> and the <em>power structure</em>—in ways that make us <em>feel</em> that we've done our duty. We join a demonstration; or an academic conference. But <em>symbolic action</em> can only have <em>symbolic</em> effects!</p>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="Hypothesis"></span>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="KeyPoint"></span>
+<blockquote>We have seen that <em>comprehensive</em> change must be our goal.</blockquote>
+<p>It is to that strategic goal that the <em>holotopia</em> vision is pointing. </p>
+<p>By supplementing this larger strategy, we neither deny that the problems we are facing must be attended to, nor belittle the heroic efforts of our frontier colleagues who are working on their solution.</p>
+<blockquote>The Holotopia project <em>complements</em> the problem-based approaches—by adding what is systemically lacking to make solutions <em>possible</em>.</blockquote>
+</div> </div>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+<div class="col-md-6"><h3><em>We</em> will not change the world</h3>
+<blockquote>Like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, <em>holotopia</em> is a trans-generational construction project.</blockquote>
+<p><em>Our</em> generation's job is to begin it.</p>
-<p>Already in 1964, four years before The Club of Rome was established, Margaret Mead wrote:
+<p>Margaret Mead left us this encouragement:
 <blockquote>
-"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that ourwhole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
+"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
 </blockquote> </p>
-<p>But what <em>is</em> "the solution"? Can we even conceive of a form it may have?</p>
+<p>Mead explained what exactly <em>distinguishes</em> a small group of people that is capable of making a large difference:</p>
-</div>
- <div class="col-md-3">
+<blockquote>"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole, but <em>the small group of interacting individuals</em> who, together with the most gifted among them, can take the next step; then we can set about the task of creating the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution. That is, rather than isolating potential "leaders," we can purposefully produce the conditions we find in history, in which clusters are formed of a small number of extraordinary and ordinary men and women, so related to their period and to one another that they can consciously set about solving the problems they propose for themselves."</blockquote>
-[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
-<small>Margaret Mead</small>
+</div>
-</div> </div>
+<div class="col-md-3">
+<p>
+[[File:SagradaFamilia.png]]<br>
+<small>Sagrada Familia (for the moment we are borrowing this beautiful photo from the Web)</small>
+</p>
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
+<p><em>This</em> capability—to self-organize and do something <em>because it's right</em>, because it <em>has to</em> be done—is where "human quality" is needed. That's what we've been lacking.</p>
+<p>The <em>five insights</em> showed that again and again. Our stories were deliberately chosen to be a half-century old—and demonstrate that "the appropriately gifted" have offered us their gifts. But that "the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution" have been absent.</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to see that our culture's  systemic ecology is to blame. As [https://youtu.be/mC_97F2Zn9k?t=24 this excerpt] from the animated film "The Incredibles" might illustrate, it gives us power only if we consent to make ourselves small, and be "well-lubricated cogs" in an institutional clockwork.</p>
+<blockquote>We must claim back our will to make a difference.</blockquote>
+<p>By writing the "Animal Farm" allegory, George Orwell pointed to a pattern that foiled humanity's attempts at change: By engaging in turf strife, revolutions tended to reproduce the conditions they aimed to change. </p>
-<p>The course of action that follows is to make structural changes that led to problems. Or to make structural changes in institutions that will enable solutions.</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> institutes an ecology that is a radical alternative to turf strife.</blockquote>
-<p>When that is done, the result is far more than just solutions to problems; it is a dramatic and sweeping improvement in the condition we've learned to perceive as "the reality". And an unleashing of creativity in a completely new direction.</p>
+<p>While we'll use all creative means at our disposal to <em>disclose</em> turf behavior, we will self-organize to prevent <em>ourselves</em> from engaging in it. </p>
-<p>The [[Holotopia:Five insights|five insights]] are conceived as a <em>prototype</em> answer.</p>
+<p>The Holotopia project will <em>not</em> try to engineer its "success" by adapting to "the survival of fittest" ecology. On the contrary—we will engineer the <em>change</em> of that ecology, by accentuating our differences.</p>
-<p>Each of the insights reveals a deep structural problem, or technically an "anomaly", dwarfing our efforts to improve our condition, in a pivotal area:
-<ul>
+<p>We know from chemistry that a crystal submerged in a solution of the same substance will make the substance crystallize according to its shape. Our strategy is to be that 'crystal'.</p>
-<li>The way we use our creativity, our capacity to induce change through technology and innovation</li>
-<li>The way in which knowledge is created, and information technology used</li>
+<p>We build on the legacy of Gandhi's "satyagraha" (adherence to truth), and non-violently yet firmly uphold the truth that change is <em>everyone's</em> imperative. Our strategy is to empower <em>everyone</em> to make the change; and <em>be</em> the change.</p>
-<li>The foundations on which we handle and evaluate information and knowledge, and create truth and meaning</li>
-<li>The method by which truth and meaning are created</li>
-<li>The values we serve, which we use to "pursue happiness"</li>
-</ul> </p>
-<p>By discussing the <em>five insights</em>, we see how completely new ideas about power and politics, democracy (...) are ready to emerge.</p>
-<h3>Great cultural revival</h3>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> will not grow by "push", but by "pull". </blockquote>
-<p>Each of them is <em>solvable</em>—and we indeed show steps already made toward its solution, as specific <em>prototypes</em> within the Knowledge Federation <em>prototype</em>. </p>
-<p>When Peccei talked about "a great cultural revival", he was referring to the Renaissance—the historical moment when a comprehensive change of the human systems was under way. We refer to it by using the symbolic image of Galilei in house arrest—and carefully develop an analogy between that and our present condition. </p>
+<p><em>We</em> will not change the world.</p>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em> show why a similar change is ready to take place once again, by elaborating on the analogy between our time and conditions, and the five specific changes the historical comprehensive change was composed of:
+<blockquote><b><em>You</em> will</b>.</blockquote>
-<ul>
-<li>The Industrial Revolution, made possible by a revolution in science and innovation</li>
-<li>The revolution in communication, made possible by the printing press</li>
-<li>The revolution in <em>epistemology</em>, enabled by the empowerment of human reason to explore and comprehend the world</li>
-<li>The revolution in our ability to explore and comprehend the world, made possible by the emergence of science</li>
-<li>The revolution in lifestyle and in arts, happened as the preoccupation with the afterlife lost its hold</li>
-</ul>
-</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A mission</h2></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
+<p>Centuries ago a philosopher portrayed the human condition by telling a parable. He proposed to imagine us humans chained in a cave, able to look only at the wall of the cave where a projection of shadows is at play. He in this way portrayed what we dubbed <em>socialized reality</em>—that we live in a "reality" shaped by power play and calcified perception.</p>
-<h3>The sixth insight</h3>
+<p>He pointed to development of ideas as the way to liberate ourselves.</p>
-<p>The anomalies the <em>five insights</em> point to, and the corresponding solutions, are so closely inter-related that taking care of one necessitates resolving the others. In this way the sixth insight is reached:
-<blockquote> Comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> showed that we are still in the 'cave'.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>And how we can liberate ourselves once for all!</blockquote>
+<p>"A great cultural revival"—a change of evolutionary course that will lead to comprehensive improvement of our condition—is ready to begin as an <em>academic</em> revival; just as in Galilei's time.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Jantsch-university.jpeg]]
 </p>
+<p>When we say that the university needs to make structural changes within itself, and guide our society in a new phase of evolution, we are not saying anything new. We are echoing what others have said. </p>
+<blockquote>But the tie between information and action being severed—calls to action of this kind remained without effect.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>Our mission is to change that.</blockquote>
+<p>We implement this mission in two steps.</p>
+<h3>Step 1: Enabling <em>academic</em> evolution</h3>
+<p>The first step is to institutionalize <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field. This step is made actionable by a complete <em>prototype</em>—which includes all that constitutes an academic field, from an epistemology to a community.</p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to enable <em>systems</em> to evolve knowledge-based.</blockquote>
+<blockquote><em>Knowledge work</em> systems to begin with.</blockquote>
+<p>By reconfiguring academic work on <em>design epistemology</em> as foundation, <em>knowledge federation</em> fosters an academic space where creativity can be applied and careers can be pursued by <em>creating</em> knowledge work. By <em>changing</em> our <em>collective mind</em>.</p>
-<h3>The <em>holotopia</em> strategy</h3>
+<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch.</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> strategy, as suggested by its name, is to focus on changing the entire <em>order of things</em> from which our problems emanate. Exactly as The Club of Rome recommended.</p>
+<h3>Step 2: Enabling <em>societal</em> evolution</h3>
-<h3>We begin with information</h3>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
-<p>Just as building a house must begin with the foundations, changing the whole order of things has its own natural order in which it needs to proceed. As the Modernity ideogram suggested, to change course, we must begin by changing the illumination source, so that the new course may become visible. In the "Age of Information", re-branded "Anthropocene", we urgently need the kind of information that can illuminate the way.</p>
+<span id="TacticalAssets"></span>
-<p>When the evidence offered on these pages has been considered, it will be clear why <em>holotopia</em> is not only "the new black"—but also <em>the new red</em>; and <em>the new green</em>!</p>
+<p>The second step is to further develop and implement the <em>holotopia</em> vision in real life.</p>
+<p>By offering an attractive future vision, and a feedback structure around it to update it continuously; and by making tactical steps toward the realization of this vision—we restore to our society the faculty of vision; and the ability to "change course". </p>
-<h3>We transcend the borderlines</h3>
+<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Margaret Mead and Aurelio Peccei.</blockquote>
-[[File:Holotopia33.jpeg]]<br>
+</div> </div>
-<small>Holotopia turns the <em>five insights</em> into art.</small>
-<p>Imagine Michelangelo in Sistine Chapel—in the midst of the old planting seeds for the new. The Holotopia is an art project—where art once again recreates itself to recreate the world.</p>
-<p>The key turns out to be to transform the 'candles'.</p>
+<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
-<blockquote>The key is the relationship we have with information</blockquote>
-<p>We transcend the borderlines between academic disciplines, and other cultural traditions. Also—between art and science. We combine and engage all resources.</p>
-<p>In the context of our proposal—the Holotopia <em>prototype</em> completes it—by giving it an agency. A way to impact the world, and make a difference.</p>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The Holotopia project is conceived as a collaborative strategy game, where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision.</blockquote>
-<h3>We create a 'showball'</h3>
+<p>We make this 'game' smooth and [[awesomeness|<em>awesome</em>]] by supplementing a collection of tactical assets. </p>
-<p>Well before Peccei, Mead pointed to the critical task at hand:</p>
+</div> </div>
-<blockquote>
-"Although tremendous advances in the human sciences have been made in the last hundred years, almost no advance has been made in their use, especially in ways of creating reliable new forms in which cultural evolution can be directed to desired goals."
-</blockquote>
-<p>Mead's best known motto is encouraging:
-<blockquote>
-"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-</blockquote> </p>
-<p>Mead's most important legacy to the Holotopia project is the "small print"—her more sober words, regarding what constitutes "a small group of... citizens" that are capable of making such a large difference:</p>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Art</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>Holotopia is an art project.</blockquote>
+<p>Where "art" is a way of being, not a profession.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
+</p>
+<br>
+<small>The transformative space created by our "Earth Sharing" pilot project, in Kunsthall 3.14 art gallery in Bergen, Norway.</small>
+<p>The idea of "a great cultural revival" brings to mind the image of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the midst of an old <em>order of things</em> manifesting a new one. When Duchamp exhibited the urinal, he challenged the traditional limits of what art is and may be. </p>
-<blockquote><p>(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole but <em>the small group of interacting individuals</em> who, together with the most gifted among them, can take the next step; then we can set about the task of creating the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution. That is, rather than isolating potential "leaders," we can purposefully produce the conditions we find in history, in which clusters are formed of a small number of extraordinary and ordinary men [and women], so related to their period and to one another that they can consciously set about solving the problems they propose for themselves."</p>
+<p>The deconstruction of the tradition has been completed, and it is time to <em>create</em>.</p>
-</blockquote>
-<p>As the <em>five insights</em> show, we <em>already</em> "know" what needs to be done—and we've "known" that for a half-century. The problem we have is that we, the rest of us, have been wet wood refusing to catch fire. And that our communication is such that we <em>do not</em> really know what we are supposed to know.</p>
+<blockquote>What <em>memes</em> need to be fostered, and disseminated?</blockquote>
-<p>The immediate goal of Holotopia project is to change that.</p>
-<p>We are creating a 'snowball'—where the dynamic is entirely different. <em>And</em> we are implementing a strategy by which this dynamic can spread, and scale globally.</p>
-<p>The Holotopia project can be understood as a co-creative strategy game—to <em>induce</em> change.</p>
-<p>Our immediate call to action is an invitation to make an <em>inner</em> all-important step: To consider <em>holotopia</em> as <em>your</em> project, not ours. By seeing yourself as part of the larger whole—and contributing accordingly—you will <em>already</em> be in <em>holotopia</em></p>
+<blockquote>In what ways will art be present on the creative frontier where the <em>new</em> "great cultural revivival" will enfold?</blockquote>
-<p>In Norwegian language there is a word, "dugnad" (pronounced as "dügnad"), for the kind of collective event that may be organized by the people in the neighborhood, to collect fallen branches and trash and do small repairs in the commons—and then share a meal and get to know each other.</p>
-<p>It is the spirit of <em>dugnad</em> we are inviting you to emulate.</p>
-</div> </div>
+<p>In "Production of Space" Henri Lefebvre offered an answer, which we'll summarize in <em>holotopia</em>'s buddying vernacular.</p>
+<p>The crux of our problem, Lefebvre observed, is that past activity (historical 'turf strifes' calcified as <em>power structure</em>) keeps us in check. "What is dead takes hold of what is alive". Lefebvre proposed to <em>reverse</em> that.</p>
+<blockquote>"But how could what is alive lay hold of what is dead? The answer is: through the production of space, whereby living labour can produce something that is no longer a thing, nor simply a set of tools, nor simply a commodity."</blockquote>
-<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
+<blockquote>Holotopia project is a space and a production of spaces, where what is alive in us can overcome what makes us dead.</blockquote>
+<p>Where in the artist as retort, <em>new</em> ways to feel, think and act are created. </p>
-<!-- XXX
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>holoscope</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Seeing things whole</h3>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>Holotopia's creative space is spanned by <em>five insights</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>Peccei concluded his analysis in "One Hundred  Pages for the Future":
-<blockquote>
+<p>
-The arguments posed in the preceding pages [...] point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost <em>the sense of the whole</em>.
+[[File:Holotopia33.jpeg]]<br>
-</blockquote>
+<small>The pentagram, which represents the <em>five insights</em>, lends itself to artistic interpretations.</small>
 </p>
-<p>In the context of Holotopia, we refer to <em>knowledge federation</em> by its pseudonym [[Holotopia: Holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]], to highlight one of its distinguishing characteristics—it helps us see things whole. </p>
-<p>Different from the sciences that have been "zooming in" (toward finer technical details); and promoting a <em>fixed</em> way of looking at the world (a domain of interest, a terminology and a set of methods being what <em>defines</em> a scientific discipline); and the informing media's focus on specific spectacular events,  the <em>holoscope</em> allows us to <em>chose</em> our <em>scope</em> –"what is being looked at and how".</p>
+<p>Creation takes place <em>in the context of</em> the <em>five insights</em>. That makes <em>holotopia</em>'s creative acts knowledge based.</p>
+<p>Like five pillars, the <em>five insights</em> lifts up the Holotopia <em>prototype</em> as creative space, from what <em>socialized reality</em> might allow. We see "reality" differently in that space; we learn to perceive <em>reification</em> as a problem, which made us willing slaves to institutions. We no longer buy into the self-image and values that the <em>power structure</em> gave us.</p>
+<p>Art meets science in that space; and curated knowledge in general. Not for a visit, but to live and work together. By sharing <em>five insights</em>, science tells art "Here is how far I've gotten; here is where <em>you</em> take over." </p>
+<p>The <em>five insights</em> are a <em>prototype</em>—of a minimal collection of insight that can overturn the <em>paradigm</em>. With provision to evolve continuously—and reflect what we know collectively.</p>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> bring to the fore what is most <em>transformative</em> in our collective knowledge.</blockquote>
-<h3><em>Scope</em> and <em>perspective</em></h3>
+</div> </div>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>mirror</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] is the entrance to <em>holotopia</em>.</blockquote>
 <p>
-[[File:Perspective-S.jpg]]
+[[File:Mirror-Lab.jpeg]]<br>
-<small>Perspective <em>ideogram</em></small>
+<small>Mirror prototypes in Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.</small>
 </p>
+<p>As these snapshots might illustrate, the <em>mirror</em> is an object that lends itself to endless artistic creations. <em>And</em> it is also an inexhaustible source of metaphors. One of them, or perhaps a common name for them, is self-reflection.</p>
+<blockquote>It is through genuine self-reflection and self-reflective [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] that <em>holotopia</em> can be reached.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>
+<p>We are contemplating to honor this fact by adopting <em>holotopia hypothesis</em> as <em>keyword</em>. Not because it is hypothetical (it is not!), but to encourage us all to have a certain attitude when entering <em>holotopia</em>. We are well aware that "the society" has problems. The key here is to see <em>ourselves</em> as products of that society. Let the <em>mirror</em> symbolize the self-reflection we willingly undergo, to become able to co-create a <em>better</em> society.</p>
-Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the <em>tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention</em>. The <em>holoscope</em>  is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see <em>any</em> chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.
-</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>holoscope</em> combines and connects information in a dynamic way, to illuminate what remained obscure or hidden, so that we may uncover the whole, and assess its shape, dimensions and condition fully (adjust our <em>perspective</em>).</p>
-<p>The <em>holoscope</em> complements the usual approach in the sciences.</p>
-<h3>Insights, principles, rules of thumb</h3>
+<blockquote>As always, we enter a new reality by looking at the world differently; this time it is by putting <em>ourselves</em> into the picture.</blockquote>
-<p>By deliberately <em>creating</em> <em>scopes</em>, and using methods provided within our <em>prototype</em>, we are able to create insights, principles, rules of thumb—relevant to any issue; and on any level of detail, or abstraction. </p>
+<p>"Know thyself" has always been the battle cry of humanity's teachers. The <em>mirror</em> teaches us that our ideas, our emotional responses and our desires and preferences are not objectively given. That they take shape <em>inside</em> of us—as consequences of living in a culture. </p>
-<p>When we point the <em>holoscope</em> to some of the most basic (to human life and culture) themes and interests, what result are surprising and sometimes shocking, even scandalous realizations—of the extent in which our "conventional wisdom" deviate from what is "known" in academic disciplines, and other relevant cultural traditions.</p>
-<p>A collection of five main insights constitute the motor that drives the Holotopia initiative onward, toward its destination.</p>
+<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> is a symbol of cultural revival.</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
+<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight showed that we can <em>radically</em> improve the way we feel; and the way we are. And that this can only be achieved through long-term <em>cultivation</em>. </p>
+<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> is also a symbol of <em>academic</em> revival.</blockquote>
+<p>It invites the [[academia|<em>academia</em>]] to revive its ethos through self-reflective <em>dialog</em>. To see itself <em>in</em> the world, and adapt to its role. And to then liberate the oppressed, which we all are, from <em>reification</em> and its consequences—by leading us <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>. </p>
-((I propose to cut this - until "The ten thesmes))
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Ten themes|Ten themes]]</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] is <em>holotopia</em>'s signature approach to communication.</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em>, and the ten direct relationships between them, provide us reference—in the context of which some of the age-old challenges are understood and handled in entirely new ways.</p>
+<p>The philosopher who saw us as chained in a cave used the dialog as way to freedom. Since then this technique has been continuously evolving.</p>
-<h3>How to put an end to war</h3>
+<p>David Bohm gave this evolutionary stream a new direction, by turning the <em>dialog</em> into an antidote to 'turf strife'. Instead of wanting to impose our "reality" on others, Bohm insisted, we must use "proprioception" (mindfully watch ourselves) and <em>inhibit</em> such desires.</p>
-<p>Consider, for instance, this age-old question: "How to put an end to war?" So far our progress on this all-important frontier has largely been confined to palliative measures; and ignored those far more interesting <em>curative</em> ones. What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war, once and for all?</p>
+<blockquote>Isn't this what the <em>mirror</em> too demands?</blockquote>
-<p>When this question is considered in the context of two direction-changing insights, <em>power structure</em> and <em>socialized reality</em>, we become ready to see the whole compendium of questions related to justice, power and freedom in a <em>completely</em> new way. We then realize in what way exactly, throughout history, we have been coerced, largely through cultural means, to serve renegade power, in the truest sense our enemy, by engaging our sense of duty, heroism, honor and other values and traits that constitute "human quality". We then become ready to redeem the best sides of ourselves from the <em>power structure</em>, and apply them toward true betterment of our condition.</p>
-<h3>Religion beyond belief</h3>
+<p>A whole new stream of development was initiated by Kunst and Rittel, who proposed "issue-based information systems" in the 1960s, as a way to tackle the "wickedness" of complex contemporary issues. Jeff Conklin later showed how such tools can be used to transform collective communication into a collaborative dialog, through "dialog mapping". Baldwin and Price extended this approach online, and <em>already</em> transformed parts of our global mind through Debategraph.</p>
-<p>Or think about religion—which has in traditional societies served to bind each person with "human quality", and the people together into a culture or a society. But which is in modern times all too often associated with dogmatic beliefs, and inter-cultural conflicts.</p>
-<p>When religion is, however, considered in the context provided by <em>socialized reality</em> and <em>convenience paradox</em>, a whole <em>new</em> possibility emerges—where <em>religion</em> no longer is an instrument of <em>socialization</em>—but of <em>liberation</em>; and as an essential way to cultivate our personal and communal <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
-<p>A <em>natural</em> strategy for remedying religion-related dogmatic beliefs and inter-cultural conflicts emerges—to <em>evolve</em> religion further!</p>
-((cut stops here))
+<blockquote>The <em>dialog</em> changes the world by changing the way we communicate.</blockquote>
-<h3>The ten themes cover the <em>holotopia</em></h3>
+<p>The theory and the ethos of [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] can furthermore be combined by situation design and artful camera work—to phase out turf behavior completely. [https://youtu.be/C7Gw--6t3s4 This four-minute digest of the 2020 US first presidential debate] will remind us that the <em>dialog</em> is not part of our political discourse.
-<p>Of course <em>any</em> theme can be placed into the context of the <em>five insights</em>, and end up being seen and handled radically differently. To prime these eagerly sought-for conversations, we provided a selection of ten themes (related to the future of education, business, science, democracy, art, happiness...)  that—together with the <em>five insights</em>—cover the space of <em>holotopia</em> in sufficient detail to make it transparent and tangible.</p>
+[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0141gupAryM&feature=youtu.be&t=135 This subtler example] shows the turf behavior that thwarted The Club of Rome's efforts: The <em>homo ludens</em> will say <em>whatever</em> might serve to win an argument; and with a confident smile! He knows that <em>his</em> "truth" suits the <em>power structure</em>—and therefore <em>will</em> prevail. </p>
+<p>To point to the <em>dialog</em>'s further tactical possibilities, we contemplate adapting "reality show" as  [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]]. When the <em>dialog</em> brings us together to daringly create, we see a new social reality emerge. When it doesn't, we witness the grip that <em>socialized reality</em> has on us.</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>dialog</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Keywords</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>[[keyword|<em>Keywords</em>]] enable us to speak and think in new ways.</blockquote>
-<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an attitude</h3>
-<p>The <em>dialog</em> is an integral part of the <em>holoscope</em>. Its role will be understood if we consider the human inclination to hold onto a certain <em>way</em> of seeing things, and call it "reality". And how much this inclination has been misused by various social groups to bind us to themselves, and more recently by various modern <em>power structures</em>. (Think, for instance, about the animosity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.)</p>
+<p>A warning reaches us from sociology.</p>
-<p>The attitude of the <em>dialog</em> may be understood as an antidote.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
+</p>
+<p>Beck explained:</p>
+<blockquote>
+"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of <em>categories and basic assumptions</em> of classical social, cultural and political sciences."
+</blockquote>
+<p>Imagine us in this "iron cage", compelled, like mythical King Oedipus, to draw closer to a tragic destiny as we do our best to avoid it—by the "categories and basic assumptions" that have been handed down to us.</p>
+<blockquote>We offered [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] and creation of [[keyword|<em>keywords</em>]] as a way out of "iron cage". </blockquote>
+<p>While we've been seeing examples all along, we here share three more—to illustrate the exodus.</p>
+<h3><em>Culture</em></h3>
+<p>In "Culture as Praxis", Zygmunt Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and concluded that they are too diverse to be reconciled.</p>
+<blockquote>We do not know what "culture" means.</blockquote>
+<p>Not a good venture point for developing culture as <em>praxis</em>!</p>
+<p>We defined  <em>culture</em> as "<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>"; and <em>cultivation</em> by analogy with planting and watering a seed—in accord with the etymology of that word.</p>
+<p>In that way we created a specific <em>way of looking</em> at culture—which reveals where 'the cup is broken'; and where enormous progress can be made. As no amount of dissecting and analyzing a seed will suggest that it should be planted and watered, so does the <em>narrow frame</em> obscure from us the benefits that the <em>culture</em> can provide. As the cultivation of land does, the <em>cultivation</em> of human <em>wholeness</em> too requires that subtle cultural practices be <em>phenomenologically</em> understood; and integrated in <em>our</em> culture. </p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> will distill the essences of human <em>cultivation</em> from the world traditions—and infuse them into a <em>functional</em> post-traditional culture.</blockquote>
+<p>Our definition of <em>culture</em> points to the analogy that Béla H. Bánáthy brought up in "Guided Evolution of Society"—between the Agricultural Revolution that took place about twelve thousand years ago, and the social and cultural revolution that is germinating in our time. In this former revolution, Bánáthy explained, our distant ancestors learned to consciously take care of their biophysical environment, by cultivating land. We will now learn to cultivate our <em>social</em> environment.</p>
+<p>There is, however, a point where this analogy breaks down: While the cultivation of land yields results that everyone can see, the results of <em>human</em> cultivation are hidden within. They can only be seen by those who have already benefited from it.</p>
+<blockquote>The benefits of a functioning <em>culture</em> could be prodigious—without us seeing that.</blockquote>
+<p>This is why communication is so central to <em>holotopia</em>. </p>
+<p>This is why we must step through the <em>mirror</em> to come in.</p>
+<h3><em>Addiction</em></h3>
+<p>The traditions identified <em>activities</em> such as gambling, and <em>things</em> such as opiates as addictions. But selling addictions is a lucrative business. What will hinder businesses from using new technologies to create <em>new</em> addictions?</p>
+<blockquote>By defining <em>addiction</em> as a <em>pattern</em>, we made it possible to identify it as an <em>aspect</em> of otherwise useful activities and things.</blockquote>
+<p>To make ourselves and our culture <em>whole</em>, even subtle addiction must be taken care of.</p>
+<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight showed that <em>convenience</em> is a general addiction; and the root of innumerable specific ones.</p>
+<p>We defined <em>pseudoconsciousness</em> as "<em>addiction</em> to information". To be conscious of one's situation is, of course, a genuine need and part of our <em>wholeness</em>. But consciousness can be drowned in images, facts and data. We can have the <em>sensation</em> of knowing, without knowing what we really <em>need</em> to know.</p>
+<h3><em>Religion</em></h3>
+<p>In "Physics and Philosophy" Werner Heisenberg described some of the consequences of the <em>narrow frame</em>:</p>
+<blockquote>It was especially difficult to find in this framework room for those parts of reality tht had been the object of the traditional religion and seemed now more or less only imaginary. Therefore, in those European countries in which one was wont to follow the ideas up to their extreme consequences, and open hostility of science toward religion developed (...). Confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind.</blockquote>
+<p>If you too were influenced by the <em>narrow frame</em>, consider our way of defining concepts as 'recycling'—as a way to give old words new meanings; as thereby restoring them to the function they need to have "in the post-traditional cosmopolitan world". </p>
+<p>A role of religion in world traditions has been to connect an individual to an ethical ideal, and individuals together in a community. This role is pointed to by the etymological meaning of this concept, which is "re-connection".</p>
-<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an age-old tradition</h3>
+<blockquote>What serves this role in <em>modern</em> culture?</blockquote>
-<p>The dialogues of Socrates marked the very inception of the academic tradition. More recently, David Bohm gave the evolution of the dialogue a new and transformative direction. Bohm's dialogues are a form of collective therapy. Instead of arguing their points, the participants practice "proprioception" (mindfully observe their reactions), so that they may ultimately listen without judging, and co-create a space where new and transformative ideas can emerge.</p>
-<p>We built on this tradition and developed a collection of <em>prototypes</em>—which <em>holotopia</em> will use as construction material, and build further.</p>
-((I PROPOSE TO CUT HERE - this needs more work - until "The dialog is an instrument..."))
+<p>We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with the <em>archetype</em>". We further adapted Carl Jung's keyword, and defined <em>archetype</em> as whatever in our psychological makeup may compel us to <em>transcend</em> the narrow limits of self-interest; to overcome [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]]. "Heroism",  "justice", "motherhood", "freedom", "beauty", "truth" and "love" are examples. </p>
-<h3>We employ contemporary media</h3>
+<blockquote>Imagine a world where truth, love, beauty, justice... bind us to our purpose; and to each other!</blockquote>
-<p>The use of contemporary media opens up a whole new chapter, or dimension, in the story of the <em>dialog</em>. </p>
-<p>Through suitable use of the camera, the <em>dialog</em> can be turned into a mirror—mirroring our dysfunctional communication habits; our turf strifes.</p>
-<p>By using Debategraph and other "dialog mapping" online tools, the <em>dialog</em> can be turned into a global process of co-creation of meaning.</p>
-<h3>The <em>dialog</em> as <em>spectacle</em></h3>
+<p>But isn't religion a belief system? And an institution?</p>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> dialogs will have the nature of <em>spectacles</em>—not the kind of spectacles fabricated by the media, but <em>real</em> ones. To the media spectacles, they present a real and transformative alternative.</p>
-<p>The <em>dialogs</em> we initiate are a re-creation of the conventional "reality shows"—which show the contemporary reality in ways that <em>need</em> to be shown. The relevance is on an entirely different scale. And the excitement and actuality are of course larger! We engage the "opinion leaders" to contribute their insights to the cause.</p>
-<p>When successful, the result is most timely and informative: We are <em>witnessing</em> the changing of our understanding and handling of a core issue.</p>
-<p>When unsuccessful, the result is most timely and informative in a <em>different</em> way: We are witnessing our resistances and our blind spots, our clinging to the obsolete forms of thought.</p>
-<p>Occasionally we publish books about those themes, based on our <em>dialogs</em>, and to begin new ones.</p>
-((CUT STOPS HERE))
+<p>"The Agony and the Ecstasy" is Irving Stone's biographical novel and a film, where the agony and the ecstasy are what accompanied Michelangelo's creative process while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And of course what accompanies a deep creative process of any kind. Pope Julius II appears in the story as he was—as "Warrior Pope". He, however, <em>did</em> exercise piety—by enabling Michelangelo to complete <em>his</em> work. Pope Julius created a <em>space</em> where the artist could deliver his gifts. Julius knew, and so did Michelangelo, that it is <em>the artist</em> that God speaks through. </p>
-<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an instrument of change</h3>
-<p>This point cannot be overemphasized: Our <em>primary</em> goal is not to warn, inform, propose a new way to look at the world—but <em>to change our collective mind</em>. Physically. The <em>dialog</em> is the medium for that change. </p>
-<blockquote>
-We organize public dialogs about the <em>five insights</em>, and other themes related to change, in order to <em>make</em> change.</blockquote>
-<p>Here the medium in the truest sense is the message: By developing <em>dialogs</em>, we re-create our <em>collective mind</em>—from something that only receives, which is dazzled by the media... to something that is capable of weaving together academic and other insights, and by engaging the best of our "collective intelligence" in seeing what needs to be done. And in <em>inciting, planning and coordinating action</em>.</p>
-<p>In the <em>holotopia</em> scheme of things everything is a <em>prototype</em>. The <em>prototypes</em> are not final results of our efforts, they are a means to an end—which is to <em>rebuild</em> the public sphere; to <em>reconfigure</em> our <em>collective mind</em>. The role of the <em>prototypes</em> is to prime this process.</p>
 </div> </div>
-((CUT AGAIN - this needs more work))
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Ten themes|<em>Ten themes</em>]]</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[Ten themes|<em>ten themes</em>]] offer relevant and engaging things to talk about.</blockquote>
+<p>At the same time they illustrate <em>how different</em> our conversations will be, when 'the light' has been turned on.</p>
+<p>We selected [[Ten themes|<em>ten themes</em>]] to prime and energize the <em>dialogs</em>. They correspond to the ten lines that join the <em>five insights</em> pairwise in a pentagram. Here are some highlights.</p>
+<h3>How to put an end to war?</h3>
+<blockquote>What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war?</blockquote>
+<p>In the context of <em>power structure</em> and <em>socialized reality</em>, this conversation about the age-old theme is bound to be <em>completely</em> different from the ones we've had before.</p>
+<p>The <em>socialized reality</em> insight allows us to recognize the war as an extreme case of the general dynamic it describes—where one person's ambition to expand "his" 'symbolic turf' is paid for with hacked human bodies, destroyed homes, and unthinkable suffering. This conversation may then focus on the various instruments of <em>socialization</em> (through which our duty, love, heroism, honor,... are appropriated), which have always been core elements of "culture". The <em>socialized reality</em> insight may then help us understand—and also deconstruct—the mechanism that makes the unlikely bargain of war possible.</p>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="Education"></span>
+<p>The <em>power structure</em> insight illuminates the same scene from a different angle—where we see that the war's insane logic <em>does</em> make sense; that the war <em>does</em> make the <em>power structure</em> (kings and their armies; or the government contractors and the money landers) more powerful.</p>
+<p>A look at a science fiction movie may show the limits of our imagination—which allow only the technology to advance. And keep culture and values on the "dark side"—although we've  <em>already</em> past well beyond what such one-sided evolution can sustain.</p>
+<p>The history too will need to be rewritten—and instead of talking about the kings and their "victories", tell us about sick ambition and suffering; and about the failed attempts to <em>transform</em> humanity's evolution.</p>
+<h3>Zero to one</h3>
+<blockquote>This conversation is about education.</blockquote>
+<p>It is through the medium of education that a culture reproduces itself and evolves. Education is a [http://holoscope.org/CONVERSATIONS#Donella systemic leverage point] that <em>holotopia</em> must not overlook. </p>
+<p>By placing it in the context of <em>narrow frame</em> and <em>convenience paradox</em>,  we look at education from <em>this</em> specific angle:</p>
+<blockquote>Is education socializing us into an obsolete worldview?</blockquote>
+<blockquote>What would education be like if it had human development as goal?</blockquote>
+<p>By giving it this title, "zero to one", we want to ask the question that Sir Ken Robison posed at TED: </p>
+<blockquote> Do schools kill creativity?</blockquote>
+<p>The title we borrowed from Peter Thiel, to look at this question from an angle that the <em>holotopians</em> are most interested in: We've been prodigiously creative in taking things 'from one to many' (improving things that already exist, and replicating them in large numbers); ye we are notoriously incapable of conceiving things that <em>do not</em> exist. But isn't <em>that</em> what changing a paradigm is about?</p>
+<blockquote>Is <em>education</em> making us unable to change course?</blockquote>
+<p>The most <em>interesting</em> question, in <em>holotopia</em> context, is about education's principle of operation. The [https://holoscope.info/2020/01/01/tesla-and-the-nature-of-creativity/ Tesla and the Nature of Creativity <em>prototype</em>] showed that creative imagination (the ability to constructs complex things that don't exist) seems to depend on a gradual, annealing-like process. What if the ability to <em>comprehend</em> complex things too demands that we <em>let the mind</em>  construct? </p>
+<p>Of course"pushing" information on students (instead of letting them acquire it through "pull") was the only way possible when information was scarce, and people had to come to a university to access it. But that is no longer the case! [https://youtu.be/LeaAHv4UTI8?t=832 Hear Michael Wesch], and then join us in co-creating an answer to <em>this</em> pivotal question:</p>
+<blockquote>Is our education's very <em>principle of operation</em> obsolete?</blockquote>
+<h3>Alienation</h3>
+<blockquote>This theme offers a way to reconcile Karl Marx with "the 1%", and the radical left with Christianity.</blockquote>
+<p>By having the <em>convenience paradox</em> and the <em>power structure</em> insights as context, this theme allows us to understand that power play distanced <em>all of us</em> from <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> wins without fighting—by <em>co-opting</em> the powerful.</blockquote>
+<h3>Enlightenment 2.0</h3>
+<p>By placing the conversation about the impending Enlightenment-like change in the context of the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>collective mind</em> insight, two opportunities for transdisciplinary cross-fertilization are opened up.</p>
+<p>One of them takes advantage of the media technology—to create media material that helps us "change course", by making the <em>convenience paradox</em> transparent. </p>
+<p>The other one applies the insights about <em>wholeness</em>—to develop media use that <em>supports</em> wholeness.</p>
+<h3>Academia quo vadis?</h3>
+<p>This title is reserved for the <em>academic</em> self-reflective <em>dialog</em> in front of the <em>mirror</em>.</p>
+<p>By placing that conversation between the <em>socialized reality</em> and the <em>narrow frame</em>, the imperative of academic transformation (that "the university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing society's capability for continuous self-renewal", as Erich Jantsch pointed out) is made transparent.</p>
+<blockquote>Is <em>transdisciplinarity</em> the university institution's future?</blockquote>
+<p>This conversation should not avoid to look at the humanistic side of its theme.</p>
+<p>The <em>homo ludens academicus</em> is a subspecies whose existence is predicted by the theory advanced with the <em>socialized reality</em> insight, which contradicts the conventional wisdom. Its discovery—for which a genuine self-reflective <em>dialog</em> in front of the <em>mirror</em> could be a suitable experiment—would confirm the principle that the evolution of human <em>systems</em> must <em>not</em> be abandoned to "the survival of fittest". Then the university could <em>create</em> "a way to change course"—by making "structural changes with itself".</p>
+<p>Two millennia ago, when the foundations of the Roman Empire were shaking, the Christian Church stepped into the role of an ethical guiding light. </p>
+<blockquote>Can <em>the university</em> enable our next ethical transformation—by liberating us from an antiquated way of comprehending the world?</blockquote>
+</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Art  and new media</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Holotopia is an art project</h3>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The stories are a way to make insights accessible and clear.</blockquote>
-<p>The Holotopia is an art project. We are reminded of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the heart of the old world order planting the seeds of the new one.</p>
+<p>These stories are [[vignette|<em>vignettes</em>]]. This in principle journalistic technique helps us render academic and other insights in a way that makes them palatable to public, and usable to artists and journalists. Being a <em>meme</em>, a <em>vignette</em> can do more than convey ideas.</p>
-<p>Duchamp's (attempted) exhibition of a urinal challenged what art may be, and contributed to the legacy that the modern art was built on. Now our conditions demand that we deconstruct the deconstruction—and begin to <em>construct</em> anew. </p>
-<p>What will the art associated with the <em>next</em> Renaissance be like? We offer <em>holotopia</em> as a creative space where the new art can emerge.</p>
+<p>We illustrate this technique by a single example, [[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart]].</p>
+<blockquote>The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart is a <em>modern</em> version of 'Galilei in house arrest'.</blockquote>
+<p>It shows who, or <em>what</em>, holds 'Galilei in house arrest' today.</p>
+<p>As summarized in [[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart|the article]], Engelbart's contributions to the emerging <em>paradigm</em> were crucial. Erich Jantsch wrote:</p>
+<blockquote>"The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the “joint systems” of society and technology."</blockquote>
+<blockquote>Engelbart contributed means to secure <em>decisive</em> victories in those "decisive battles".</blockquote>
+<p>Even <em>more</em> relevant and interesting is, however, what this story tells about ourselves.</p>
+<blockquote>As part of the <em>mirror</em>, The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart reflects what we must see and change about <em>ourselves</em> to be able to "change course".</blockquote>
+<p>The setting was like of an experiment: The Silicon Valley's [[giant|<em>giant</em>]] in residence, already recognized and celebrated as that, offered <em>the</em> most innovative among us the <em>ideas</em> that would change the world.</p>
+<p>We couldn't even hear him.</p>
-<h3>Art as production of space</h3>
+<blockquote>This 'experiment' showed how <em>incredibly</em> idea-blind we've become.</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
-<br>
-<small>A snapshot of Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen.</small>
-</p>
-<p>Henri Lefebvre summarized the most vital of Karl Marx's objections to capitalism, by observing that capital (machines, tools, materials...) or "investments" are products of past work, and hence represent "dead labour". That in this way past activity "crystalyzes, as it were, and becomes a precondition for new activity." And that under capitalism, "what is dead takes hold of what is alive"</p>
-<p>Lefebvre proposes to turn this relationship upon its head. "But how could what is alive lay hold of what is dead? The answer is: through the production of space, whereby living labour can produce something that is no longer a thing, nor simply a set of tools, nor simply a commodity.</p>
-<p>As the above image may suggest, the <em>holotopia</em> artists still produce art objects; but they are used as pieces in a larger whole— which is a <em>space</em> where transformation happens. A space where the creativity of the artist can cross-fertilize with the insights of the scientist, to co-create a new reality that none of them can create on her own.  Imagine it as a space, akin to a new continent or a "new world" that's just been discovered—which combines physical and virtual spaces, suitably interconnected. </p>
-<h3><em>Holotopia</em> gives new life to new media</h3>
-<p>The Holotopia project combines contemporary art with contemporary media (tools for "augmenting our collective intellect", creative video recording and editing etc.), to evolve our <em>collective mind</em>.</p>
-<p>We use those tools to <em>create</em> a new <em>collective mind</em></p>
 </div> </div>
-((CUT UNTIL HERE))
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>elephant</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[elephant]] points to a quantum leap in relevance and interest—when academic and other insights are presented <em>in the context of</em> "a great cultural revival".</blockquote>
 <p>
 [[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
@@ Line 445: / Line 760: @@
 </p>
-<h3>The <em>elephant</em></h3>
+<p>There is an "elephant in the room", waiting to be discovered.</p>
-<p>Imagine the 20th century's visionary thinkers as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear them talk about things like "a fan", "a water hose" and "a tree trunk". But they don't make sense, and we ignore them.</p>
-<p>Everything changes when we realize that they are really talking about the ear, the trunk and the leg of an imposingly large exotic animal, which nobody has yet had a chance to see—a whole new <em>order of things</em>, or cultural and social <em>paradigm</em>! </p>
+<p>The frontier thinkers have been touching him, and describing him excitedly in the jargon of their discipline. We heard them talk about "the fan", "the water hose" and "the tree trunk". But they didn't make sense and we ignored them.</p>
+<blockquote>This thoroughly changes when we realize that they described 'the ear', 'the trunk' and 'the leg' of an 'exotic animal'—which nobody has as yet seen!</blockquote>
-<h3>A spectacle</h3>
+<p>We make it possible to 'connect the dots' and <em>see</em> the <em>elephant</em>.</p>
-<p>The effect of the <em>five insights</em> is to <em>orchestrate</em> this act of 'connecting the dots'—so that the spectacular event we are part of, this exotic 'animal', the new 'destination' toward which we will now "change course" becomes clearly visible.</p>
-<p>A side effect is that the academic results once again become interesting and relevant. In this newly created context, they acquire a whole new meaning; and <em>agency</em>!</p>
-<h3>Post-post-structuralism</h3>
+<blockquote>By combining the <em>elephant</em> with [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] we offer a new notion of rigor to the study of cultural artifacts.</blockquote>
+<p>The structuralists attempted that in a different way. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts by successfully arguing that cultural artifacts <em>have no</em> "real meaning"; and making meanings open to interpretation. </p>
-<p>The structuralists undertook to bring rigor to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts, by observing that <em>there is no</em> such thing as "real meaning"; and that the meaning of cultural artifacts is open to interpretation.</p>
+<blockquote>We propose to consider cultural artifacts as 'dots' to be connected.</blockquote>
-<p>This evolution may be taken a step further. What interests us is not what, for instance, Bourdieu "really saw" and wanted to communicate. We acknowledge (with the post-structuralists), that even Bourdieu would not be able to tell us that, if he were still around. We  acknowledge, however, that Bourdieu <em>saw something</em> that invited a different interpretation and way of thinking than what was common; and did what he could to explain it within the <em>old</em> paradigm. Hence we give the study of cultural artifacts not only a sense of rigor, but also a new degree of relevance—by considering them as signs on the road, pointing to an emerging <em>paradigm</em></p>
-<h3>A parable</h3>
+<p>We don't, for instance, approach Bourdieu's theory by fitting it into a "reality picture". We adapt it as a piece in a completely <em>new</em> 'puzzle'.</p>
-<p>While the view of the <em>elephant</em> is composed of a large number of stories, one of them—the story of Doug Engelbart—is epigrammatic. It is not only a spectacular story—how the Silicon Valley failed to understand or even hear its "giant in residence", even after having recognized him as that; it is also a parable pointing to many of the elements we want to highlight by telling these stories—not least the social psychology and dynamics that 'hold Galilei in house arrest'.</p>
-<p>This story also inspired us to use this metaphor: Engelbart saw 'the elephant' <em>already in 1951</em>—and spent a six decades-long career to show him to us. And yet he passed away with only a meager (computer) mouse in his hand (to his credit)!</p>
 </div> </div>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Books and publishing</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>Book launches punctuate the laminar flow of events, draw attention to a theme and begin a <em>dialog</em>.</blockquote>
+<p>Does the book still have a future?</p>
+<p>In "Amuzing Ourselves to Death", Neil Postman (who founded "media ecology") left us a convincing argument why the book is here to stay. His point was that the book creates a different "ecology of the mind" (to borrow Gregory Bateson's similarly potent idea) than the audio-visual media do: It gives us a chance to <em>reflect</em>. </p>
+<p>We, however, embed the book in an 'ecosystem' of media. By publishing a book we 'break ice' and place a theme—which may or may not be one of our <em>ten themes</em>—into the focus of the public eye. We then let our <em>collective mind</em> digest and further develop the proposed ideas; and by doing that—develop <em>itself</em>!</p>
+<p>In this way, a loop is closed through which an author's insights are improved by <em>collective</em> creativity and knowledge—leading, ultimately, to a new and better edition of the book.</p>
-<div class="row">
+<h3>Liberation</h3>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>mirror</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>
-[[File:SafeSpace02.png]]<br>
-<small>A detail from Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14 Bergen, where the mirror was used as an entry point into a "safe space" for reflection; from which <em>holotopia</em> can be seen, and contributed to.</small>
-</p>
-<p>The <em>mirror</em> is a complex symbol, in which a number of streams of thought and lines of development that constitute the <em>holotopia</em> are woven together.</p>
-<h3>End of "objectivity"</h3>
+<p>The book titled "Liberation", with subtitle "Religion beyond Belief", is scheduled to be completed during the first half of 2021, and serve as the first in the series.</p>
-<p>Or the "discovery of ourselves"—will have a range of consequences.</p>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
-<p>One of them is to understand just how much our <em>perception</em> of things is subject to "human development"...</p>
+<span id="Prototypes"></span>
-<p>The end of "objectivity" is the beginning of <em>accountability</em>—where instead of seeing ourselves as "objective observers" of the world, we recognize that we are its responsible creators. "We have seen the enemy, and he is us." </p>
+<p>A metaphor may help us see why this particular theme and book are especially well suited as a tactical asset, for breaking ice and launching the <em>holotopia</em> dialogs. The recipe for a successful animated feature film is to make it for <em>two</em> audiences: the kids <em>and</em> the grownups. As the excerpt from The Incredibles we shared above might illustrate, the kids get the action; the grownups get the metaphors and the dialogs.</p>
-<p>This is also an <em>epistemology</em> change—with profound consequences on how we valuate information, and what we do.</p>
+<p>So it is with this book. To the media it offers material that rubs so hard against people's passions and beliefs that it can hardly be ignored. And to more mature audiences—it offers the <em>holotopia</em> <em>meme</em>. </p>
-<h3>A theme for academic revival</h3>
+<blockquote>The age-old conflict between science and religion is resolved by <em>evolving</em> both science and religion.</blockquote>
-<p>A key point here is that the evolution of <em>academia</em>—that is, of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—has brought us here, in front of this <em>mirror</em>. The next step in <em>academia</em>'s development is to (instead of being so busy with business as usual) <em>stop</em> and self-reflect. When we do that, a whole new <em>self-identity</em> will emerge—where we are no longer the "objective observers of reality", but its creators. That is the <em>epistemology</em> that produces the <em>holotopia</em>.</p>
-<h3>The <em>academia</em> must guide our society 'through the <em>mirror</em>'</h3>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> and the <em>holoscope</em> (alias <em>knowledge federation</em>) are respectively the social and the academic reality on the other side. By presenting the suitable <em>prototypes</em>, we facilitate the all-important step, through the <em>mirror</em>. </p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>
+[[prototype|<em>Prototypes</em>]] <em>federate</em> insights by weaving them into the fabric of reality.</blockquote>
+<p><em>They</em>
+<ul>
+<li>restore the connection between information and action, by creating a feedback loop through which information can impact <em>systems</em></li>
+<li>restore systemic <em>wholeness</em>, by sowing [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]] together</li>
+</ul> </p>
+<p>By rendering results of creative work as challenge—resolution pairs, <em>design patterns</em> make them adaptable to new applications. Each [[design pattern|<em>design pattern</em>]] constitutes a discovery—of a specific way in which a <em>system</em>, and world at large, can be made more <em>whole</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>What difference would be made, if the principle "make things <em>whole</em>" guided innovation?</blockquote>
+<p>We point to an answer by these examples.</p>
+<h3>Education</h3>
+<p>The Collaborology 2016 educational <em>prototype</em>, to whose subject and purpose we pointed by [https://iuc.hr/IucAdmin/Server/downloads/Collaborology2016.pdf this course flyer], exhibited solutions to a number of challenges that were repeatedly voiced by education innovators. In addition, its [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]] showed how education can be adapted to <em>holotopia</em>'s purpose. </p>
+<p>Most of Collaborology's <em>design patterns</em> were developed and tested within its precursor, [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/ID-flyer.pdf University of Oslo Information Design course]. </p>
+<p><b>Education is flexible</b>. In a fast-changing world, education cannot be a once-in-a-lifetime affair. And in a world that <em>has to</em> change, it cannot teach only traditional professions. In Collaborology, the students learn an <em>emerging</em> profession. </p>
+<blockquote>Learning is by "pull", by 'connecting the dots'.</blockquote>
+<p>The students learn <em>what</em> they need, <em>when</em> they need it.</p>
+<p><b>Education is active</b>. The course is conceived as a design project, where the students and the instructors co-create learning resources. Collaboration toward systemic <em>wholeness</em> is not only taught, but also <em>practiced</em>. Instead of only receiving knowledge, students become a component in a knowledge-work ecosystem —where they serve as 'bacteria', recycling 'nutrients' from academic 'deposits'.</p>
+<p><b>Education is internationally <em>federated</em></b>. Collaborology is created and taught by an international network of instructors and designers, and offered to learners worldwide. An instructor creates a lecture, not a course.</p>
+<blockquote>Economies of scale result, which drastically reduce workload. </blockquote>
+<p>It becomes cost-effective to power learning by <em>new</em> technologies—why should only the game manufacturers use them?</p>
+<blockquote>Collaborology provides a sustainable business model for creating and disseminating transdisciplinary knowledge of <em>any</em> theme.</blockquote>
+<p><b>Re-design of education is technology enabled</b>. The enabling technology is called the [[domain map|<em>domain map</em>]] object. It offers solutions to a number of challenges that designers of flexible education have to face:
+<ul>
+<li>structure the curriculum and organize the learning resources—in a manner that is not a linear sequence of lectures or book chapters</li>
+<li>help the students orient themselves and create a personal learning plan—<em>before</em> they have taken the course</li>
+<li>customize the exam—by displaying the student's learning trajectory </li>
+</ul> </p>
+<p><b>Educational <em>model</em> too is internationally <em>federated</em></b>. We developed close ties with [https://milapopovich.com/global-education-futures/ Global Education Futures Initiative]—"an international collaborative platform that brings together shapers and sherpas of global education to discuss and implement the necessary transformations of educational ecosystems for thrivable futures".  Following their first international co-creative event in Palo Alto (where international reformers and theorists of education gathered to map the directions and challenges), we shared a one-day workshop in Mei Lin Fung's house, to coordinate <em>our</em> collaboration. In 2017, the Collaborology model was presented and discussed at the World Academy of Art and Science conference Future Education 2 in Rome. The Information Design course model, and the corresponding <em>domain map</em> (which was then called "polyscopic topic map") technology were presented and discussed at the 2005 Topic Maps Research and Applications conference in Linz;  and at the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning conference in Taipei, where they were invited for journal publication.</p>
+<h3>Scientific communication 1</h3>
+<p>Tesla and the Nature of Creativity (TNC 2015) is a <em>prototype</em> showing how <em>a researcher's</em> insight can be <em>federated</em> to benefit the public. </p>
+<p>We described it in blog posts, [https://holoscope.info/2015/06/28/a-collective-mind-part-one/ A Collective Mind – Part One] and [https://holoscope.info/2020/01/01/tesla-and-the-nature-of-creativity/ Tesla and the Nature of Creativity], and here only highlight two of its [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]].</p>
+<p><b>Unraveling the <em>narrow frame</em></b>. Heisenberg, as we have seen, pointed out that the <em>narrow frame</em> (the "narrow and rigid" way of looking at the world that our ancestors adopted from 19th century science) made us misapprehend core elements of culture. In the federated article, Dejan Raković explained how creativity too has been mishandled—specifically <em>the kind of</em> creativity on which our ability to "create a better world" and shift the [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] depends. This <em>prototype</em> showed how the <em>narrow frame</em> can be broadened, <em>academic</em> creativity can be raised, and <em>collective</em> creativity can be fostered—by combining the fundamental and technical interventions proposed in <em>five insights</em>.</p>
+<p><b>Federating an author's idea</b>. An article written in an academic vernacular, of quantum physics, was transformed into a multimedia object—where its core idea was communicated by intuitive diagrams, and explained in recorded interviews with the author. A high-profile event was then organized to make the idea public, and discuss it in a dialog of experts. The idea was then embedded in a technology-enabled collective mind, implemented on Debategraph, where collective 'connecting the dots' continued.</p>
+<blockquote>This <em>prototype</em> models a <em>new</em> "social life of information"—alternative to peer reviews.</blockquote>
+<h3>Scientific communication 2</h3>
+<p>[http://knowledgefederation.net/TLabstract.pdf Lightnouse 2016] <em>prototype</em> shows how an <em>academic community</em> can <em>federate</em> an insight. We offered it as a resolution to [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/WP.pdf Wiener's paradox].</p>
+<p><b>Federating an academic community's core insight</b>. An academic community might produce "tons of information every hour"—while the public ignores even its most <em>basic</em> achievements. The <em>federation</em> here is in three phases. In the first, the community distills and substantiates an insight. In the second, state of the art communication design is applied, to make the insight accessible. In the third, the insight is strategically made impactful. In the actual <em>prototype</em>, the first phase was performed by the International Society for the Systems Sciences, the second by Knowledge Federation's communication design team, and the third by the Green Party of Norway.</p>
+<p><b>Unraveling the Wiener's paradox</b>. The specific question, which was posed for academic <em>federation</em>, was whether our society can rely on "free competition" or "survival of the fittest" in setting directions. Or whether information and systemic understanding must be used, as Norbert Wiener claimed—and the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> echoed.</p>
+<blockquote>Isn't this <em>the very first</em> question our society's 'headlights' must illuminate?</blockquote>
+<h3>Public informing</h3>
+<p>Barcelona Innovation System for Good Journalism, BIGJ 2011, is a <em>prototype</em> of <em>federated</em> journalism. Journalism, or public informing, is of course <em>directly</em> in the role of 'headlights'. </p>
+<p><b><em>Federated</em> journalism.</b> A journalist working alone has no recourse but to look for sensations. In BIGJ 2011 the journalist works within a 'collective mind', in which readers, experts and communication designers too have active roles—see [https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=132084&vt=ngraph&dc=focus this description].</p>
+<p><b><em>Designed</em> journalism.</b> What would public informing be like, if it were not <em>reified</em> as "what the journalists are doing", but <em>designed</em> to suit its all-important social role? We asked "What do the people <em>really</em> need to know—so that the society may function, and the democracy may be real?" And we drafted a public informing that applies the time-honored approach of science to <em>society</em>'s problems—see [https://holoscope.info/2013/06/05/toward-a-scientific-understanding-and-treatment-of-problems/ this explanation].</p>
-<p>We bring together stories (elsewhere called <em>vignettes</em>)—which share the core insights of leading contemporary thinkers. We tell their stories.</p>
+<h3>Culture</h3>
-<p>They become 'dots' to connect in our <em>dialogs</em>.</p>
-<p>They also show what obstructed our evolution (the emergence of <em>holotopia</em>). </p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
+<p>A culture is of course not only, and not even primarily <em>explicit information</em>. We sought ways in which essential <em>memes</em> ('cultural genes') can be saved from oblivion, and supported and strengthened through cross-fertilization (see [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/ATI/ME.pdf this article]).</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Ideograms</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>
-[[File:H side.png]]<br>
-<small>A paper model of a sculpture, re-imaging the <em>five insights</em> and their relationships.</small>
-</p>
-<p>The <em>ideograms</em> condense lots of insights into a simple image, ready to be grasped. </p>
-((CUT HERE))
-<p>The existing <em>ideograms</em> are only a place holder—for what may be developed through suitable combinations of art and new media.</p>
-<p>The <em>ideograms</em> employ the vast arsenal of artistic and suggestive tools, to affect us <em>directly</em></p>
-((CUT UNTIL HERE))
-<p>As the above image may suggest, the pentagram—as the basic icon or 'logo' of <em>holotopia</em>—lends itself to a myriad re-creations. We let the above image suggest that a multiplicity of ideas can be condensed to a simple image (the pentagram); and how this image can be  expanded into a multiplicity of artistic creations.</p>
+<p>We illustrate this part of <em>knowledge federation</em> by three <em>prototypes</em> in travel or tourism. Historically, <em>travel</em> was the medium for <em>meme</em> exchange. But the insuperable forces of economy changed that—and now travel is iconized by the couple on an exotic beach. The local culture figures in it as souvenir sellers and hotel personnel.</p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
+<p><b>Dagali 2006</b> <em>prototype</em> showed that successful high-budget tourism can be created <em>anywhere</em>—by bringing travelers in direct contact with the locals. By allowing them to <em>experience</em> what the real life in a country is like—see [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/ATI/DAGALI/DagaliProject.pdf  this description].</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Keywords</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>The Renaissance, and also science, brought along a whole new way of speaking—and hence a new way to look at the world. With each of the <em>five insights</em> we introduce a collection of <em>keywords</em>, in terms of which we come to understand the core issues in new ways.</p>
-<p>The <em>keywords</em> will also allow us to propose solutions to the anomalies that the <em>five insights</em> bring forth.</p>
-</div> </div>
+<p><b>UTEA 2003</b> is a re-creation of the conventional corporate model in tourism industry to support <em>authentic</em> travel and <em>meme</em> exchange. We benefited from a venture cup to secure help from an academic adviser and a McKinsey adviser in creating [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/ATI/UTEA-bp.pdf the business plan]. The information technology's enabling role was explained in [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/ATI/UTEAportal.pdf the appendix].</p>
-<div class="row">
+<p><b>Authentic Herzegovina 2014</b> showed how to revitalize and support a culture that was destroyed by war—see [http://holoscope.org/Authentic_Hercegovina this description].</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>Information has agency only when it has a way to impact our actual physical reality. A goal of the Holotopia project is to co-create <em>prototypes</em>—new elements of our new reality. We share the <em>prototypes</em> we've already developed, to put the ball in play.</p>
-</div> </div>
+<h3>Art</h3>
-<div class="row">
+<p>As journalism, art too can be transformed. And it may <em>need</em> to be transformed, if it should take its place on the creative frontier; fulfill its role in the <em>collective mind</em>. We highlight two <em>design patterns</em>.</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Completing the KF <em>prototype</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><p>
-The academic cause is presently obstructed ('Galilei is held in house arrest') by a most interesting challenge, which we have called the Wiener's paradox: Our <em>collective mind</em> is <em>structured</em> in a way that leaves the <em>academia</em> disconnected, from the public opinion and from the policy. As we have seen, the core mission of our <em>knowledge federation</em> initiative is to remedy that split.</p>
-<p>This paradox, however, means that <em>whatever we may say</em> in an academic publication—<em>is likely to remain without effect</em>! But what else can we do? The Holotopia project is our <em>prototype</em> answer. Its purpose within the Knowledge Federation <em>prototype</em> is to complete the <em>prototype</em> by <em>federating</em> knowledge federation!</p>
-<!-- CLIPPINGS
+<p><b>Art as space</b>. The artist no longer only creates, but creates a <em>space</em> where the public can create.</p>
+<p><b>Art <em>and</em> science</b>. The artist no longer works in isolation, but in a space illuminated by information—where <em>memes</em> that are most vital come to the fore, to be given a voice.  </p>
+<p>Our Earth Sharing pilot event, which we offer as illustration, took place in June of 2018, in Kunsthall 3,14 of Bergen. Vibeke Jensen, the artist who led us, avoids interpreting her creations. They are to be used as prompts, to <em>allow</em> meaning to emerge. The interpretation we share here is a <em>possible</em> one.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:B2018-Building.JPG]]
+</p>
+<p>The physical space where the event took place symbolized <em>holotopia</em>'s purpose: This building used to be a bank, and later became an art gallery. It remained to turn the gallery into a space for <em>social</em> transformation. </p>
+<p>
+[[File:B2018-Stairs.jpg]]
+</p>
+<p>The gallery was upstairs—and Vibeke turned the stairs into a metaphor. Going up, the inscription read "bottom up"; going down, it read "top down". From the outset, the visitors were sensitized to those two ways to connect ideas.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Local-Global.jpg]]
+</p>
-<p><em>Knowledge federation</em> may be understood as the principle of operation of an entirely different pair of 'headlights'—by which this core purpose of our proposal is achieved.</p>
+<p>The BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool then suggested to transcend fixed ways of looking, and <em>combine</em> worldviews and perspectives.</p>
-<p> As our logo suggests—<em>knowledge federation</em> means 'connecting the dots'. Political federation combines smaller political units together, to give them visibility and impact. <em>Knowledge federation</em> does that to information. </p>
-<p>We 'connect the dots' to reach a new insight; to see an issue or situation in a new way—which reveals how it may need to be handled. When we do that, the academic results and other cultural artifacts that are combined together under such an insight acquire a completely new meaning, and practical impact.</p>
-<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to restore agency to information; and power to knowledge.</blockquote>
+<p>
+[[File:SafeSpace02.png]]
+</p>
-<h3>The details of our proposal have been <em>federated</em></h3>
+<p>A one-way mirror served as entrance to the <em>deepest</em> transformative space, which used to be a vault. The treasury could only be reached by stepping through the mirror. The 'treasure' in it were ideas, and a "safe space" to reflect. The inside of the vault was only dimly lit, by the light that penetrated from outside. A pair of speakers emitted edited fragments of past dialogs—offered for contemplation, and re-creation.</p>
-<p>We have not invented <em>knowledge federation</em>. We have only given it this name—to call a long existing and long overdue course of action into existence. </p>
+<p>
-<p>The researchers who either pointed to its necessity, or contributed technical solutions, include an impressive part of the 20th century's hall of fame. But also others, whose contributions are yet to be understood, and acknowledged.</p>
+[[File:Babel2.jpeg]]
-<p><em>Our</em> contribution to this timely course of action has been to 'connect the dots', and combine the existing ideas into a coherent and comprehensive system—the Knowledge Federation <em>prototype</em>. </p>
+</p>
-<h3>Our call to action</h3>
+<p>Think of the objects that populated the installation as 'furniture': When we enter a <em>conventional</em> room, its furniture tells us how the room is to be used,  and draws us into a stereotype. <em>This</em> 'furniture' was unlike anything we've seen! It invited us to <em>invent</em> the way we use the space; to <em>co-create</em> the way we are together.</p>
-<p>We completed our proposal by the following call to action.</p>
-<blockquote>We are proposing to establish and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field; and as a real-life <em>praxis</em> (informed practice).</blockquote>
-.......
+<blockquote>The creation that took place in this space was the Holotopia project's inception.</blockquote>
-<p>In that context, what we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> can be understood as a collection of methods and social processes by which this multiplicity and relative hierarchy of views is kept coherent. And of course also in sync with the state of the art in academic disciplines, and the society's needs. </p>
+</div> </div>
-<p>In what follows, we provide only the big picture; we only <em>summarize</em> the general insights that motivate the <em>holotopia</em> vision—and we indicate how they follow from specific insights and results in the more detailed pages or <em>views</em>.</p>
-<p>Please bear in mind that we are trying to communicate across <em>paradigms</em>, and must step with care. And that our goal is <em>not</em> to replace the existing "reality picture" by a different one. What we are aiming at is at once more modest and more ambitious—it is <em>to create a social process</em>, in actual practice, by which the way we as people see the world is kept in sync with academic insights, and real-world realities.</p>
-<p>What we shall see next is intended to prime that process.</p>

Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

Latest revision as of 12:37, 30 September 2021

Contents

HOLOTOPIA

An Actionable Strategy

Imagine...

Our proposal

Its essence

Its substance

Its method

A vision

A difference to be made

A different way to see the future

Five insights

Power structure insight (analogy with Industrial Revolution)

Collective mind insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)

Socialized reality insight (analogy with Enlightenment)

Narrow frame insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)

Convenience paradox insight (analogy with Renaissance)

Large change is easy

The "course" is a paradigm

"A way to change course" is in academia's hands

"Human quality" is the key

A strategy

We will not solve our problems

We will not change the world

A mission

Step 1: Enabling academic evolution

Step 2: Enabling societal evolution

Tactical assets

Art

Five insights

The mirror

The dialog

Keywords

Culture

Addiction

Religion

Ten themes

How to put an end to war?

Zero to one

Alienation

Enlightenment 2.0

Academia quo vadis?

Stories

The elephant

Books and publishing

Liberation

Prototypes

Education

Scientific communication 1

Scientific communication 2

Public informing

Culture

Art