Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<div class="page-header" ><h1>Holotopia</h1></div>
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<div class="page-header" ><h1>HOLOTOPIA</h1><br><br><h2>An Actionable Strategy</h2></div>
  
 
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<p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?
 
<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>  
 
<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>
 
<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>  
 
</div>  
 
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<div class="col-md-3">
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<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
<!-- AAA
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
 
<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>  
 
<blockquote>  
The core of our [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<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>
 
</blockquote>
  
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"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."
 
"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>
 
</blockquote>
<p>The objective of our proposal is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</p>
+
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">
 
<div class="col-md-3">
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<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<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 it take to <em>reconnect</em> information with action? </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>  
<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated information as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served? </p>
 
<p>What would our <em>world</em> be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"; if they attended to the other half of this picture, the use and usefulness of information, with thoroughness and rigor that distinguish academic technical work? What do the people out there actually <em>need</em> to know?</p>
 
 
 
<p>What would the academic field that develops this approach to information be like? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </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> [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of [[Holotopia:Knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], by which those and other related questions are answered. </blockquote>  
+
<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><em>Knowledge federation</em> is a [[Holotopia:Paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. Not in a specific field of science, where new paradigms are relatively common, but in "creation, integration and application of knowledge" at large.</p>  
+
<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>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as real-life <em>praxis</em>.</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>
  
</div> </div>  
+
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<p>We refer to our proposal as [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] when we want to emphasize the difference it can make. </p>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>An application</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>The situation we are in</h3>
 
<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:
 
<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>
+
<blockquote>The purpose of the [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] is to help us see things whole.</blockquote>  
<blockquote>
 
"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future."
 
</blockquote>
 
</div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">
 
[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small>Aurelio Peccei</small>
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<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's 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:</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."
 
</blockquote>
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
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>  
+
[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
 +
<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
 +
</p>
  
<h3>Can the proposed 'headlights' help us "find a way to change course"?</h3>  
+
<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>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>
+
<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>  
  
<p>If we used <em>knowledge federation</em> to 'illuminate the way'—what difference would that make? </p>  
+
<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>The Holotopia project is conceived as a <em>knowledge federation</em>-based response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action.</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>Suppose we lived in a world where knowledge is <em>federated</em>; what difference would that make? What we are about to present is an answer. Or perhaps only the first half of an answer. We don't consider an idea to be fully <em>federated</em>, before it is reflected in the social and cultural <em>order of things</em>. The goal of the Holotopia project is to complete the <em>federation</em> in <em>that</em> way.</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 draft a vision, an image of a cultural and social <em>order of things</em> where knowledge is <em>federated</em>, we do not repeat or verify what The Club of Rome did, to reach their conclusion. We simply take The Club of Rome as a <em>federation</em> project, and we <em>federate</em> further. That brings us into a wonderful realm of questions, and cultural possibilities, which are relevant and interesting on their own accord. Such as:</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>  
  
<blockquote>How can "a great cultural revival" <em>realistically</em> emerge? What do we need to do to help that happen?</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>  
  
<blockquote>How can we "change course"? How can we transform a society whose  built-in goal is an ever-growing material welfare, into a society dedicated to cultivating "human quality"?</blockquote>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>We coined the keyword [[Holotopia:Holotopia|<em>holotopia</em>]] to point to the cultural and social order of things that will result.</p>
 
 
<p>To begin the Holotopia project, we are developing an initial <em>prototype</em>. It includes a vision, and a collection of strategic and tactical assets—that will make the vision clear, and our pursuit of it actionable. </p>
 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
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<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>holotopia</em> is not a utopia</h3>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A difference to be made</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 adverse 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>
 
<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 <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</p>
 
 
 
<h3>Making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]</h3>
 
<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to change course toward the <em>holotopia</em>?</p>
 
<blockquote> From a collection of insights from which the <em>holotopia</em> emerges as a future worth aiming for, we have distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</blockquote>
 
<p>This principle is suggested by the <em>holotopia</em>'s very name. And also 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 of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the [[Wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]] of it all. </p>
 
  
<p>Imagine if academic and other knowledge-workers collaborated to serve and develop planetary wholeness – what magnitude of benefits would result!</p>
+
<blockquote>Suppose we used the <em>holoscope</em> as 'headlights'; what difference would that make?</blockquote>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A method</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We see things whole</h3>
+
<div class="col-md-6">  
<p>"The arguments posed in the preceding pages", Peccei summarized in One Hundred Pages for the Future, "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>." </p>
 
<blockquote>To make things whole—<em>we must be able to see them whole</em>! </blockquote>
 
<p>To highlight that the <em>knowledge federation</em> methodology described in the mentioned <em>prototype</em> affords that very capability, to <em>see things whole</em>, in the context of the <em>holotopia</em> we refer to it by the pseudonym <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
 
<p>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, however, must be made clear from the start.</p>  
 
  
<h3>We look at all sides</h3>
+
<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>
 
[[File:Holoscope.jpeg]]<br>
 
<small>Holoscope <em>ideogram</em></small>
 
</p> 
 
<p>If our goal would be to put a new "piece of information" into an existing "reality picture", then whatever challenges that reality picture would be considered "controversial". But when  our goal is to see whether something is <em>whole</em> or 'cracked', then this attitude must be changed.</p>
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
 
  
<p>Some of the views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to calmly enjoy this presentation, if you bear in mind that while what is being presented <em>is</em> academically rigorous, but with a different <em>idea</em> of rigor (in the <em>holoscope</em> we take no recourse to "reality"; coexistence of multiple ways of looking at any theme or issues, which are called <em>scopes</em>, is axiomatic) <em>we do not need to make that claim</em>. And we are not making it! Consider what you are looking at as a cardboard map of a city, and a construction site—deliberately and necessarily unfinished, still only sketches.  By sharing it we are not making a case for building that specific city—but for developing 'architecture', as an academic field and a real-life <em>praxis</em>. Our call to action is to use 'architecture' (not ad-hoc construction of soaring skyscrapers) to rebuild and revive whatever is presently falling apart.</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>Holotopia is not <em>our</em> project; it is the project of our generation. It is what we owe to our next generation; and to our home planet. We have only given it a name, to expedite its development. We are now creating a space for it, where so that we may develop it <em>together</em>, and make a difference.</p>  
+
<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future."
 +
</blockquote>  
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small>Aurelio Peccei</small>
 +
</div> </div>  
  
<p>Everything we are presenting is only <em>prototypes</em>. Our invitation is, to begin with, to a <em>dialog</em> about the <em>holotopia</em> vision those <em>prototypes</em>  compose together. And a <em>dialog</em>—that change of attitude that <em>already</em> brings us a significant distance into the emerging <em>paradigm</em>—is <em>genuine</em> sharing, communication and co-creation. It involves a <em>genuine</em> striving to overcome our <em>socialized</em> habits of thought, and see things in new ways. </p>
+
<div class="row">
 
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<p>To show up in that co-creative <em>dialog</em> space wearing boxing gloves, to defend old worldviews and power relationships, would be as ill-advised as claiming, in an academic setting, that a certain claim must be true, because it was revealed to the author in a vision.</p>
+
<div class="col-md-7">
 
+
<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:</p>
<h3>We modified science</h3>  
+
<blockquote>  
<p>To liberate our thinking 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>  
+
"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."
<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>  
 
</blockquote>  
 +
<p>
 +
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>
  
</div> </div>
+
<h3>A <em>different</em> way to see the future</h3>  
  
 +
<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>
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
+
<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of [[five insights|<em>five insights</em>]].</blockquote>
 +
</div> </div>  
  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[five insights|<em>Five insights</em>]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>
 
 
[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
 
[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
 
<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>  
</p>  
+
<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>
  
<h3>Before we begin</h3>
 
<p>What theme, what evidence, what "new discovery" might have the force commensurate with the momentum with which our civilization is rushing onward—and have a <em>realistic</em> chance to make it "change course"?</p>
 
<p>We offer these [[Holotopia:Five insights|<em>five insights</em>]] as a <em>prototype</em> answer. </p>
 
<p>They result when we apply the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five pivotal themes:
 
 
<ul>  
 
<ul>  
<li>Innovation (how we use our ability to create, and induce change)</li>  
+
<li><b>Innovation</b>—the way we use our growing ability to create, and induce change</li>  
<li>Communication (how information technology is being used)</li>  
+
<li><b>Communication</b>—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled</li>  
<li>Epistemology (fundamental premises on which our handling of information is based)</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>Method (how truth and meaning are created)</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>Values (how we "pursue happiness")</li>  
+
<li><b>Values</b>—the way we "pursue happiness"; or choose "course"</li>
</ul> </p>  
+
</ul>  
<p>For each of these five themes, we show that our conventional way of looking made us ignore a principle or a rule of thumb, which readily emerges when we 'connect the dots'—when we <em>combine</em> published insights. We see that by ignoring those principles, we have created deep <em>structural</em> problems ('crack in the cup')—which are causing problems, and "global issues" in particular.</p>  
 
  
<p>A 'scientific' approach to problems is this way made possible, where instead of focusing on symptoms, we understand and treat their deeper, structural causes—which <em>can</em> be remedied. </p>  
+
<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>
  
<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we only summarize each of the <em>five insights</em>—and provide evidence and details separately.</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>  
</div> </div>  
 
  
 +
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<p>We looked at the <em>social process</em> by which information is handled. </p>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>Power structure</em>]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
  
<h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
+
<p>[https://youtu.be/8ApPkTvQ4QM?t=38 Hear Neil Postman] observe:</p>
  
<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. We look at the <em>way</em> in which man uses his  power to <em>innovate</em> (create, and induce change). </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>  
  
<blockquote>We look at the way our civilization follows in its evolution; or metaphorically, at 'the itinerary' of our 'bus'. </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>  
  
<p>We readily observe that we use competition or "survival of the fittest" to orient innovation, not information and "making things whole". The popular belief that "the free competition" or "the free market" will serve us better, also makes our "democracies" elect the "leaders" who represent that view. But is that view warranted?</p>  
+
<h3><em>Socialized reality</em> insight (analogy with Enlightenment)</h3>  
  
<blockquote>Genuine revolutions include new ways to see freedom and power; <em>holotopia</em> is no exception. </blockquote>
+
<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 offer this [[Keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]], as a means to that end. Think of the <em>power structure</em> as a new way to conceive of the intuitive notion "power holder", who might take away our freedom, or be our "enemy". </p>
 
<p>While the nature of <em>power structures</em> will become clear as we go along, imagine them, to begin with, as institutions; or more accurately, as <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> (we'll here call them simply <em>systems</em>).</p>
 
<p>Notice that <em>systems</em> have an <em>immense</em> power—<em>over us</em>, because <em>we have to adapt to them</em> to be able to live and work; and <em>over our environment</em>, because by organizing us and using us in a specific ways, <em>they determine what the effects of our work will be</em>.</p>  
 
<blockquote>The <em>power structures</em> determine whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions. </blockquote> 
 
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
+
<p>We saw that a similar fundamental change, with similar consequences, is now mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds.</p>  
  
<p>How suitable are <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> for their all-important role?</p>  
+
<h3><em>Narrow frame</em> insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)</h3>  
  
<p>Evidence, circumstantial <em>and</em> theoretical, shows that they waste a lion's share of our resources. And that they <em>cause</em> problems, or make us incapable of solving them.</p>  
+
<p>We looked at the method by which truth and meaning are socially constructed.</p>  
  
<p>The reason is the intrinsic nature of evolution, as Richard Dawkins explained it in "The Selfish Gene". </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>  
  
<blockquote>"Survival of the fittest" favors the <em>systems</em> that are by nature predatory, not the ones that are useful. </blockquote>  
+
<h3><em>Convenience paradox</em> insight (analogy with Renaissance)</h3>  
  
<p>[https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg?t=920 This excerpt]  from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as law professor created to <em>federate</em> an insight he considered essential) explains how the corporation, the most powerful institution on the planet, evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, such as the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect "killing machine".  [https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?t=2780 This scene] from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how our <em>systems</em> affect <em>our own</em> condition.</p>  
+
<p>We looked at the values that determine the way we "pursue happiness"; and our society's "course".</p>  
  
<blockquote>Why do we put up with such <em>systems</em>? Why don't we treat them as we treat other human-made things—by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served?</blockquote>
+
<p>We showed that when proper 'light' illuminates the 'way'—our choices and pursuits will be entirely different.</p>  
  
<p>The reasons are interesting, and in <em>holotopia</em> they'll be a recurring theme. </p>
+
</div> </div>  
<p>One of them we have already seen: We do not <em>see things whole</em>. When we look in conventional ways, the <em>systems</em> remain invisible for similar reasons as a mountain on which we might be walking.</p>  
 
  
<p>A reason why we ignore the possibility of adapting <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> to the functions they have in our society, is that they perform for us a <em>different</em> function—of providing structure to power battles and turf strifes. Within a <em>system</em>, they provide us "objective" and "fair" criteria to compete;  and in the world outside, they give us as system <em>system</em> "competitive edge".</p>
 
  
<p>Why don't media corporations <em>combine</em> their resources to give us the awareness we need? Because they must <em>compete</em> with one another for our attention—and use only "cost-effective" means.</p>
+
<div class="row">
 
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Large</em> change is easy</h2></div>
<p>The most interesting reason, however, is that the <em>power structures</em> have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> interests. Through <em>socialization</em>, they can adapt to their interests both our culture <em>and</em> our "human quality".</p>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The "course" is a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]</h3>  
<p>
 
[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>A result is that bad intentions are no longer needed for cruelty and evil to result. The <em>power structures</em> can co-opt our sense of duty and commitment, and even our heroism and honor.</p>
 
<p>Zygmunt Bauman's key insight, that the concentration camp was only a special case, however extreme, of (what we are calling) the <em>power structure</em>, needs to be carefully digested and internalized: While our ethical sensibilities are focused on the <em>power structures</em> of yesterday, we are committing the greatest  [https://youtu.be/d1x7lDxHd-o massive crime] in human history (in all innocence, by only "doing our job" within the <em>systems</em> we belong to).</p>  
 
  
<blockquote>Our civilization is not "on the collision course with nature" because someone violated the rules—but <em>because we follow them</em>.</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>The changes the <em>five insights</em> are pointing to are inextricably co-dependent.</blockquote>  
  
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>The fact that we will not "solve our problems" unless we learned to collaborate and adapt our <em>systems</em> to their contemporary roles and our contemporary challenges  has not remained unnoticed. Alredy in 1948, in his seminal Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener explained why competition cannot replace 'headlights and steering'. Cybernetics was envisioned as a <em>transdisciplinary</em> academic effort to help us understand <em>systems</em>, so that we may adapt their structure to the functions they need to perform. </p>
+
<blockquote>We cannot make any of the required changes without making them all.</blockquote>   
 
 
<p>
 
  [[File:Jantsch-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
  
<p>The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome did after its inception in 1968 was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adopted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>The Knowledge Federation was created as a system to enable <em>federation</em> into systems. To bootstrap <em>systemic innovation</em>. The method is to create a <em>prototype</em>, and a <em>transdiscipline</em> around it to update it continuously. This enables the information created in disciplines to be woven into systems, to have real or <em>systemic</em> impact.</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>
  
<p>The <em>prototypes</em> are created by weaving together <em>design patterns</em>. Each of them is a issue-solution pair. Hence each roughly corresponds to a discovery (of an issue), and an innovation (a solution). A <em>design pattern</em> can then be adapted to other design challenges and domains. The <em>prototype</em> shows how to weave the relevant <em>design patterns</em> into a coherent whole.</p>
 
  
<p>While each of our <em>prototypes</em> is an example, the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em> is offered as a canonical example. It has about a dozen <em>design patterns</em>, solutions to questions how to make education serve transformation of society—instead of educating people for society as is.</p>  
+
<h3>"A way to change course" is in [[academia|<em>academia</em>]]'s hands</h3>  
  
<p>Each <em>prototype</em> is also an experiment, showing what works in practice. Our very first <em>prototype</em> of this kind, the Barcelona Ecosystem for Good Journalism 2011, revealed that the prominent experts in a system (journalism) cannot change the system they are part of. The key is to empower the "young" ones. We created The Game-Changing Game. And The Club of Zagreb.</p>  
+
<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>
  
</div> </div>  
+
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Collective mind|<em>Collective mind</em>]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Scope</h3>  
 
  
 +
<blockquote>We don't need to occupy Wall Street.</blockquote>
  
<p>If our next evolutionary task is to make institutions or <em>systems</em> <em>whole</em>—<b>where</b> shall we begin?</p>
+
<p><em>The university</em>, not the Wall Street, controls the systemic leverage point <em>par excellence</em>.</p>  
<p>Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>
 
<p>Norbert Wiener contributed another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. In his 1948 book Wiener talked about the communication in ants and bees to make that point. Furthermore, "the tie between information and action" is <em>the</em> key property of a system, which cybernetics invites us to focus on. The full title of Wiener's book was  "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, and to "change course" when the circumstances demand that (Wiener used the technical term "homeostasis", which we may here interpret as "sustainability")—the system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>  
 
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
+
<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>  
  
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>
+
<h3>"Human quality" <em>is</em> the key</h3>  
<p>Our society's communication-and-control is broken, and it has to be restored.</p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their own</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>  
 
  
<p>These calls to action remained, however, without effect. And it is not difficult to see why.</p>  
+
<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>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm.</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>
  
<blockquote><em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his results to the communication whose tie with action had been severed!</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>"Human development is the most important goal."</blockquote>  
  
<p>We have assembled an interesting collection of academic results that shared a similar fate, as illustration of the phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]].</p>
+
<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>It may be disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see so many best ideas of our best minds unable to benefit our society. But this sentiment quickly changes to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier this is pointing to; which Vannevar Bush pointed to in 1945. </p>  
+
<blockquote>By determining how we are as 'water', the "human quality" determines our evolutionary course.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Optimism turns into enthusiasm, when the information technology, which we all now use to communicate with the world, is taken into consideration.</p>
+
<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>  
  
<blockquote>Core elements of the contemporary information technology were <em>created to enable a paradigm change</em> on that creative frontier.</blockquote>  
+
<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>
  
<p>Vannevar Bush already pointed to this new paradigm, indeed already in the title, "As We May Think", of his 1945 article. His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that our knowledge work must be organized in such a way <em>that we may benefit from each other's "thinking"</em>—and in effect think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>  
+
<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>Douglas Engelbart, however, took this development in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar way as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. While all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be physically <em>transported</em>, this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>  
+
<p>When <em>we</em> did this thought experiment, Professor <em>X</em> moved on to his next chore without ado. </p>
  
<blockquote> We can now think and create—together!</blockquote>  
+
<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>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the <em>system</em> by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that can and needs to be achieved is not only large, it is <em>qualitative</em>— from a system that doesn't really fulfill its function, to one that does.</p>  
+
<blockquote><em>At the university too</em> we make decisions by "instrumental thinking"; by taking recourse to embodied knowledge of "what works".</blockquote>  
  
<p>By collaborating in this new way, Engelbart envisioned, we would become able to comprehend our problems and respond to them incomparably faster than we do. Engelbart foresaw that the <em>collective intelligence</em> that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially". </p>  
+
<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>But to Engelbart's dismay, this new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, which only <em>broadcast</em> data. </p>
+
<blockquote>This ethos is blatantly un-academic.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>The difference that makes a difference, which <em>knowledge federation</em> is positioned to contribute, is to organize us in knowledge work in such a way, that the result is the production of <em>meaning</em>.</blockquote>  
+
<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>The purpose of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is to
+
<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>  
+
<blockquote>So was <em>knowledge federation</em>.</blockquote>  
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact that its absence, the impact of using the technology to merely broadcast information, had on culture and "human quality".</p>
 
<p>Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>  
 
  
<p>But <em>ontological security</em> is what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
+
<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>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>
  
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
+
<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>  
  
<blockquote><em>What is to be done</em>, if we should be able to use the new technology to change our <em>collective mind</em>?</blockquote>
+
<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>  
  
<p>Engelbart left us a clear answer in the opening slides of his "A Call to Action" presentation, which were prepared for a 2007 panel that Google organized to share his vision to the world, but were not shown(!).</p>  
+
<p>The question must be asked:</p>  
  
<p>  
+
<blockquote>Does the academic institution's <em>own</em> ecology avoid this problem?</blockquote>
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
  
<p>In the first slide, Engelbart emphasized that  "new thinking" or a "new paradigm" is needed. In the second, he pointed out what this "new thinking" was. </p>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
 +
<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>  
 
<blockquote>  
<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
+
"(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."
<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
+
</blockquote> </p>
</blockquote>  
 
  
<p>There can be no doubt that <em>systemic innovation</em> was the direction Engelbart was pointing to. He indeed published an ingenious methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em> <em>already in 1962</em>, six years before Jantsch and others created theirs in Bellagio, Italy; and he used this methodology throughout his career. </p>  
+
<p>More concretely, we undertake to respond to <em>this</em> Mead's critical point:</p>  
  
<p>Engelbart also made it clear what needs to be our next step—by which the spell of the <em>Wiener's paradox</em> is to be broken. He called it "bootstrapping"—and we adopted <em>bootstrapping</em> as one of our <em>keywords</em>. The point here is that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done (the tie between information and action being broken) will not lead to a desired effect; the way out of the paradox, or <em>bootstrapping</em>, means that we <em>act</em>—and either create a new system with our own minds and bodies, or actively help others do that.</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>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is the 'collective thinking' that the new informati9on technology enables, and our society requires.</p>
+
<p>We, however, do not claim, or even assume, that "the huge problems now confronting us" <em>can</em> be solved".</p>  
 
+
</div>  
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was created by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. Originally, we were a community of knowledge media researchers and developers, developing the <em>collective mind</em> solutions that the new technology enables. Already at our first meeting, in 2008, we realized that the technology that we and our colleagues were developing has the potential to change our <em>collective mind</em>; but that to realize that potential, we need to self-organize differently.</p>
 
 
 
<p>Ever since then have been <em>bootstrapping</em>, by developing <em>prototypes</em> with and for various communities and situations.</p> 
 
 
 
<p>Among them, we highlight
 
<ul>
 
<li>Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, IEJ2011</li>
 
<li>Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015</li>
 
<li>The LIghthouse 2016</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
<p>The first, IEJ2011m, shows how researchers, journalists, citizens and creative media workers can collaborate to give the people exactly the kind of information they need—to be able to orient themselves in contemporary world, and handle its challenges correctly.</p>
 
<p>The second, TNC2015, shows how to <em>federate</em> a result of a single scientist—which is written in an inaccessible language, and has high potential relevance to other fields and to the society at large.</p>
 
<p>The third, The Lighthouse 2016, empowers a community of researchers (the concrete <em>prototype</em> was made for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences) to <em>federate</em> a single core insight that the society needs from their field. (Here the concrete insight was that "the free competition" cannot replace "communication and control" and provide "homeostasis"—as Wiener already argued in Cybernetics, in 1948.)</p>
 
 
 
<p>Together, those three <em>prototypes</em> constitute a <em>prototype</em> solution to the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>.</p>  
 
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
 +
<div class="col-md-3">
 +
[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
 +
<small>Margaret Mead</small>
 +
</div> </div> 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Socialized reality|<em>Socialized reality</em>]]</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
+
<div class="col-md-7">
<p>
+
<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>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>
+
<blockquote>  
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> the political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking for was to 'hit the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is inspected, it becomes clear that its 'brakes' too are dysfunctional.</p>  
+
"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>So <b>who</b> will lead us through the next and vitally important step on our evolutionary agenda—where we shall learn how to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>?</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored—and so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and the others who followed. </p>  
+
<blockquote>A sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. </blockquote>  
  
<p>Why?</p>  
+
<p>Small things don't matter. Business as usual is a waste of time.</p>  
  
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> too followed the general trend, and evolved as a <em>power structure</em>. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.</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>As we pointed out in the opening paragraph of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. 
+
<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>
Our tradition developed from classical philosophy, where the "philosophical" questions such as "How do we know that something is <em>true</em>?" and even "<em>What does it mean</em> to say that something is true?" led to rigorous or "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, as we, academic people tend to perceive it, is to uphold those standards. By studying at a university, one becomes capable of pursuing knowledge in an academic way in <em>any</em> domain of interest.</p>  
 
  
<p>And as we also pointed out, by bringing up the image of Galilei in house arrest, this seemingly esoteric or "philosophical" pursuit was what largely <em>enabled</em> the last "great cultural revival", and led to all those various good things that we now enjoy. The Inquisition, censorship and prison were unable to keep in check an idea whose time had come—and the new way to pursue knowledge soon migrated from astrophysics, where it originated, and transformed all walks of life. </p>  
+
<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> show that the <em>structural</em> problems now confronting us <em>can</em> be solved.</blockquote>
  
<p>We began our presentation of <em>knowledge federation</em> by asking "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" </p>  
+
<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>  
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
+
<p>And it offers to change our condition <em>now</em>—by engaging us in an unprecedentedly large and magnificent creative adventure.</p>  
  
<p>Here is why we felt confident in drafting an affirmative answer to this rhetorical question.</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>Early in the course of our modernization, we made a fundamental error whose consequences cannot be overrated.  This error was subsequently uncovered and reported, but it has not yet been corrected.</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>Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a <em>myth</em> incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the role of information is to provide us an "objectively true reality picture", so that we may distinguish truth from falsehood by simply checking whether an idea fits in. </p>  
 
 
 
<blockquote>The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.</blockquote>
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>It has turned out that <em>there is simply no way</em> to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing!</p>
 
 
 
<p>How, then, did our "reality picture" come about?</p>
 
 
 
<p>Reality, reported scientists and philosophers, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </p>
 
 
 
<p>Part of this construction is a function of our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense, and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it. Through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—as our culture defines it. As everyone knows, every "normal human being" sees the reality as it truly is. Wasn't that the reason why our ancestors often considered the members of a neighboring tribes, who saw the reality differently, as not completely normal; and why they treated them as not completely human?</p>
 
 
 
<p>Of various consequences that have resulted from this historical error, we shall here mention two. The first will explain what really happened with our culture, and our "human quality"; why the way we handle them urgently needs to change. The second will explain what holds us back—why we've been so incapable of treating our <em>systems</em> as we treat other human-made things, by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served.  </p>
 
 
 
<p>To see our first point, we invite you to follow us in a one-minute thought experiment. To join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our <em>ideograms</em>, to put things in proportion and make a point.</p>
 
 
 
<p>What strikes us instantly, as we enter, is awe-inspiring architecture. Then we hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? We see sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And then, of course, there's the ritual...</p>
 
<p>We also notice a little book on each bench. When we open it, we see that its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>  
 
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest we find in a cathedral—point to the fact that, owing to our error, our pursuit of knowledge has been focused on a relatively minor part, on <em>explaining</em> how the things we perceive originated, and how they work. And that what we've ignored is our culture as a complex ecosystem, which evolved through thousands of years, whose function is to <em>socialize</em> people in a certain specific way. To <em>create</em> certain "human quality". Notice that we are not making a value judgment, only pointing to a function.</p>
 
 
 
<p>The way we presently treat this ecosystem reminds of the way in which we treated the natural ones, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We have nothing equivalent to CO2 measurements and quotas, to even <em>try</em> to make this a scientific and political issue.</p>
 
 
 
<p>So how <em>are</em> our culture, and our "human quality" evolving? To see the answer, it is enough to just look around. To an excessive degree, the <em>symbolic environment</em>  we are immersed in is a product of advertising. And explicit advertising is only a tip of an iceberg, comprising various ways in which we are <em>socialized</em> to be egotistical consumers; to believe in "free competition"—not in "making things <em>whole</em>".</p>
 
 
 
<p>By believing that the role of information is to give us an "objective" and factual view of "reality", we have ignored and abandoned to decay core parts of our cultural heritage. <em>And</em> we have abandoned the creation of culture, and of "human quality", to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 
 
 
<p>To see our second point, that reality construction is a key instrument of the <em>power structure</em>, and hence of power, it may be sufficient to point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann explained how throughout history, the "universal theories" about the nature of reality have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme is central to <em>holotopia</em>, and here too we can only get a glimpse of a solution by looking at deeper dynamics and causes.</p>
 
 
 
<p>To be able to do that we devised a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> are strung together to compose a larger insight.</p>
 
 
 
<p>The first <em>vignette</em> describes a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors—aging Odin the Horse, and New Horse who is just being introduced to the herd where Odin is the stallion and the leader—are engaged in turf strife. It will be suffice to just imagine these two horses running side by side, with their long hairs waving in the wind, Odin pushing New Horse toward the river, and away from his pack of mares.</p>  
 
 
 
<p>
 
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
 
 
<p>The second story is about sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works; and in particular its relationship with what he called "symbolic power". Our reason for combining these two stories together is to suggest that we humans exhibit a similar turf behavior as Odin—but that this tends to remain largely unrecognized. Part of the reason is that, as Bourdieu explained, the ways in which this atavistic disposition of ours manifests itself are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of horses—indeed as more diverse so as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>  
 
  
<p>Bourdieu devised two keywords for the symbolic cultural 'turf'" "field" and "game", and used them interchangeably. He called it a "field", to suggest (1) a field of activity or profession, and the <em>system</em> where it is practiced; and (2)  something akin to a magnetic field, in which we people are immersed as small magnets, and which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random or "free" movement.  He referred to it as "game", to suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, with allowable 'moves', by which our 'turf strife' is structured in a specific way.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>To explain the dynamics of the game or the field, Bourdieu adapted two additional keywords, each of which has a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". A habitus is composed of embodied behavioral predispositions, and may be thought of as distinct 'roles' or 'avatars' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do his pages. The habitus is routinely maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too), without conscious intention or awareness. Doxa is the belief, or embodied experience, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" acknowledges that multiple "realities" coexist, of which only a single one is "right"; doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives.</p>
+
<blockquote>The risk is, however, that the actions of "small voluntary groups of concerned citizens" may remain reactive.</blockquote>
  
<p>Hence we may understand <em>socialized reality</em> as something that 'gamifies' our social behavior, by giving everyone an 'avatar' or a role, and a set of capabilities. Doxa is the 'cement' that makes such <em>socialized reality</em> relatively permanent.</p>  
+
<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>
 +
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 +
<span id="KeyPoint"></span>
  
<p>A [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] involving Antonio Damasio as cognitive neuroscientist completes this <em>thread</em>, by helping us see that the "embodied predispositions" that are maintained in this way have a <em>decisive role</em>, contrary to what the 19th century science and indeed the core of our philosophical tradition made us believe. Damasio showed that our socialized <em>embodied</em> predispositions act as a cognitive filter—<em>determining</em> not only our priorities, but also the <em>options</em> we may be able to rationally consider. Our embodied, socialized predispositions are a reason, for instance, why we don't consider showing up in public naked (which in another culture might be normal). </p>  
+
<blockquote>We have seen that <em>comprehensive</em> change must be our goal.</blockquote>  
  
<p>This conclusion suggests itself: Changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>—however rational, and necessary, that may be—is for <em>similar</em> reasons inconceivable. </p>
+
<p>It is to that strategic goal that the <em>holotopia</em> vision is pointing. </p>  
 
 
<blockquote>We are incapable of changing our <em>systems</em>, because we have been <em>socialized</em> to accept them as reality.</blockquote>
 
 
 
<p>We may now condense this diagnosis to a single keyword: <em>reification</em>. We are incapable of replacing 'candle headlights' because we have <em>reified</em> them as 'headlights'! "Science" has no systemic purpose. Science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing. Just as "journalism" is the profession we've inherited from the tradition. </p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>But <em>reification</em> reaches still deeper—to include the very <em>language</em> we use to organize our world. It includes the very concepts by which we frame our "issues". Ulrich Beck continued the above observation:</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>We may now see not only our inherited physical institutions or <em>systems</em> as 'candles'—but also our inherited or socialized concepts, which determine the very <em>way</em> in which we look at the world.</p>
 
 
 
<p><em>Reification</em> underlies <em>both</em> problems. It is what <em>keeps us</em> in 'iron cage'.</p>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 
 
 
<p>Notice the depth and the beauty of our challenge.</p>
 
 
 
<p>When we write "worldviews", our word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with the world!  <em>Whatever we say</em>, even when that is "we are constructing reality", <em>by default</em> we are making a statement <em>about</em> reality, we are saying how the things "really are" out there. But in this latter case, of course, the result is a paradox. </p>
 
 
 
<p>We <em>are</em> in a paradox; how can we ever come out?</p>
 
 
 
<p>The answer we proposed is in two steps.</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> </div>  
 
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>  
<div class="col-md-6">
+
<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>Margaret Mead left us this encouragement:
 +
<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>The first – pointed to by the metaphor of the mirror, and the Mirror <em>ideogram</em> – is to self-reflect. We are proposing the kind of self-reflection that Socrates championed, which was the academic tradition's very source, and point of inception. We believed that something was the case, and it turned out that it was not. Meanwhile, we built on that assumption our institutional organization, our ethos and our self-image. We built on it even a formal logic, which excludes the middle.</p>  
+
<p>Mead explained what exactly <em>distinguishes</em> a small group of people that is capable of making a large difference:</p>  
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> reflects the fact that we are not <em>above</em> the world, looking at it objectively. However it might have seemed otherwise, the procedures we use were not objectively existing ways to objectively see the world, which were only <em>discovered</em> by our predecessors. We cannot forever continue being busy doing the work that is <em>defined</em> by those procedures. The evolution of <em>our</em> system must be allowed to continue. </p>  
+
<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>
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> warns us that <em>we</em> are now 'keeping Galilei in house arrest'—by using only "symbolic power", of course, and without being aware of that.</p>  
+
</div>  
  
<p>Our self-reflection in front of the <em>mirror</em> is not from a power position, but in the manner of the [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]]. Which means—in a completely different tone of voice, which reflects <em>genuine</em> intention to see what goes on, correct errors, and make improvements.</p>
 
 
<p>The Mirror <em>ideogram</em> points to the nature of our contemporary academic situation, in a similar way as the Modernity <em>ideogram</em> points to our general one. The spontaneous evolution of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> has brought us here, in front of the <em>mirror</em>. Seeing ourselves in the <em>mirror</em> means seeing ourselves in the world. It means the end of <em>reification</em>—and the beginning of <em>accountability</em>. The world we see in the <em>mirror</em> is a world in dire need—for <em>new</em> ways to be creative. The role in which we see ourselves, in that world, by looking at the <em>mirror</em> is all-important.</p>
 
 
<p>Imagine what it will mean to liberate the vast academic 'army', all of us who have been selected, trained and publicly sponsored to produce new ideas—from disciplinary constraints, to empower us to see ourselves as the core part of our society's 'headlights', and to self-organize and be creative accordingly!</p> 
 
 
 
<p>But how shall we do that, how shall we step into that so much larger and freer yet more responsible role—without sacrificing the core element of our tradition; which is logical and methodological <em>rigor</em>?</p>
 
 
</div>
 
 
<div class="col-md-3">
 
<div class="col-md-3">
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
[[File:Mirror2.jpg]]<br>
+
[[File:SagradaFamilia.png]]<br>
<small>Mirror <em>ideogram</em></small>  
+
<small>Sagrada Familia (for the moment we are borrowing this beautiful photo from the Web)</small>  
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
 
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<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 answer, and the second step we are proposing, is unexpected; even seemingly impossible, or magical.</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>  
 
 
<blockquote>We can go <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—into a completely <em>new</em> academic and social reality.</blockquote>  
 
  
<p>Symbolically, that means liberating ourselves from the entrapment of <em>reification</em>—and liberating the people, the oppressed. We all must be liberated from reifying the way we see our world, from reifying our <em>systems</em> or institutions, and the very concepts we use to make sense of our world. We must all move to a world where what constitutes our society, and our culture, is given the kind of status that the technology has—of humanly created things; which must continue to evolve, by being adapted to their purposes. </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>  
 
 
<p>Academically or philosophically, this crucial step, through the <em>mirror</em>, is made possible by what philosopher Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—which we adapted as one of our <em>keywords</em>.</p> 
 
<p>
 
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
  
<p>Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:</p>
+
<blockquote>We must claim back our will to make a difference.</blockquote>  
<blockquote>  
 
"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."
 
</blockquote>
 
  
<p>But if the switch to <em>truth by convention</em> is the way in which the sciences repair their logical foundations—then why not use it to update the logical foundations of our <em>knowledge work</em> at large?</p>  
+
<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><em>Truth by convention</em>, as we use this [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let <em>x</em> be <em>y</em>. Then..." and the argument follows. Obviously, the claim that <em>x</em> "really is" <em>y</em> is unintended, and meaningless. Only a  convention has been made—which is valid <em>within the given context</em>, of an article, or a theory, or a methodology.</p>
+
<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> institutes an ecology that is a radical alternative to turf strife.</blockquote>  
  
<p>In our <em>prototype</em> we used [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] to define an <em>epistemology</em>; and a <em>methodology</em>. </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 <em>epistemology</em>, called <em>design epistemology</em>, turns the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information, as we described above) into a convention.</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>In the "Design Epistemology" research article, where we articulated this proposal, we drafted a parallel between the modernization of knowledge work we are proposing, and the emergence of modern art. By defining an <em>epistemology</em> and a <em>methodology</em> as conventions, we academic researchers can do as the artists did, when they liberated themselves from the demand to faithfully depict the reality, by using the techniques of Old Masters—we can be creative in the very way in which we practice our profession. We made it clear that the approach we proposed was a general one, and that our <em>design epistemology</em> was only an <em>example</em> showing what might be possible when the approach is developed.</p>  
+
<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>
  
<p>Notice that logically <em>anything</em> can be turned into a convention. The "proof of the pie" is that it works!  <em>truth by convention</em>. We, however, chose to use [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] to codify the state-of-the-art <em>epistemological</em> insights; the ones that now serve as anomalies, challenging the epistemological and methodological status quo, and demanding change. In this way, by weaving those insights into a <em>prototype</em> <em>methodology</em>, and configuring a system that will continuously keep them up to date (we are doing that as we speak)—we use [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to give information the agency to <em>modify</em> the <em>epistemology</em> and the <em>methods</em>; and to enable the latter to <em>evolve</em>.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>A <em>vast</em> creative frontier opens up before us on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, both academic <em>and</em> cultural. We developed the <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em> as <em>prototypes</em>, to show what might be possible if we pursued this <em>new course</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> will not grow by "push", but by "pull". </blockquote>  
  
<p>By using [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]], language too can be liberated from <em>reification</em> and tradition; and so can our professional and specifically disciplinary-academic pursuits. We conclude here by only mentioning two examples, each of which illustrates <em>both</em> possibilities (both were proposed to corresponding communities of interest, where they proved welcome, and useful). </p>
+
<p><em>We</em> will not change the world.</p>
 
 
<p>Our definition of <em>design</em>, as "the alternative to <em>tradition</em>", introduced <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> as two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>. Here <em>tradition</em> means relying on what we've inherited from the past, and relying on small changes and "the survival of the fittest"; <em>design</em> is the alternative, where we consciously and intentionally "make things <em>whole</em>". The point is that when <em>tradition</em> can no longer be relied on, <em>design</em> must be used. This pair of <em>keywords</em> allows us to understand the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our situation or the "world problematique" in simple terms: We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; and yet we are not yet <em>designing</em>. We are caught up in an unstable way of evolving, where neither of the options work. Our <em>technology</em> is developed by <em>design</em>—and progressed at an accelerated rate; our culture (represented by the <em>headlights</em>) has remained <em>traditional</em>, and fallen behind.</p>
 
 
 
<p>Our definition of <em>implicit information</em> as <em>information</em> that is not making a factual statement, but is implicit in cultural artifacts, mores etc., and of <em>visual literacy</em> (a definition for the International Visual Literacy Association), as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em>", opens up a whole realm of possibilities to be developed. While our ethics, legislature and academic production have been focused on factual, <em>explicit information</em>, we have been culturally (and ethically and politically) dominated by the subtle <em>implicit information</em>, which we have not yet learned to decode, <em>or</em> control. The creation of <em>prototypes</em>—the core activity on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, by which agency is restored to information—opens up a myriad possibilities for combining art and science. As we shall see, in the Holotopia project this will be our core approach.</p>  
 
  
 +
<blockquote><b><em>You</em> will</b>.</blockquote>
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Narrow frame|<em>Narrow frame</em>]]</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A mission</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
+
<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>  
<p>The question we'll explore here is the one posed by the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>:  <b>How</b> do we need to "look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it". </p>
 
 
 
<p>We build part of our case for the <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em> by developing an analogy between the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival", where a <em>fundamental</em> change of the way we look at the world (from traditional/Biblical, to rational/scientific) effortlessly caused nearly <em>everything</em> to change. Notice that to meet <em>that</em> sort of a change, we do not need to convince the political and business leaders, we do not need to occupy Wall Street. It is the prerogative of our, academic occupation to uphold and update and give to our society this most powertful agent of change—the standard of "right" knowledge.</p>
 
 
 
 
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 
 
 
<blockquote>So how <em>should</em> we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it? <br>
 
Nobody knows! </blockquote>
 
 
 
<p>Of course, countess books and articles have been written that could inform an answer to this most timely question. But no consensus has emerged—or even a consensus about a <em>method</em> by which that could be achieved. </p>
 
 
 
<p>That being the case, we'll begin this diagnostic process by simply sharing what <em>we</em>'ve been told while we were growing up. Which is roughly as follows.</p>
 
 
 
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to understand the world, and to make rational choices based on such understanding. Give us a correct model of the natural world, and we'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "our needs", which we of course know because we can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to the ghost to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost", and told us how 'the machine' <em>really</em> works. </p>
 
 
 
<p>"Truth", or "scientific" understanding of real-life matters, is what can be explained by using deductive reasoning from this new "reality picture", what follows logically from it, and only that. Isn't this how we, finally, understood that women can't fly on broomsticks—that this would violate some scientifically established natural laws?</p>
 
 
 
<p>Perhaps no rational person would <em>write</em> this sort of "philosophy". But—and this is one of our key points in this diagnosis—this "philosophy" has <em>not</em> been written. It simply <em>emerged</em>—around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes were replaced for so many of us by Darwin and Newton. Science originated, and shaped its disciplinary divisions and procedures <em>before</em> that time, while still the tradition and the Church had the prerogative of telling people how to see the world, and what values to uphold. When the latter lost popular trust, the people were left to their own devices—to develop a new,  "scientific" understanding of everyday matters; from whatever scraps of the 19th century science appeared to be suitable.</p>
 
 
 
<blockquote>It is this ad-hoc scrapbook of 19th century ideas, frozen into a "reality picture", that most modern people, including surprisingly many scientists, still consider as "scientific worldview".</blockquote> 
 
 
 
<p>From a collection of reasons why this popular way to create truth and meaning needs to be updated, we here mention only two.</p>
 
 
 
<p>
 
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is <em>not</em> a mechanism.</blockquote>
 
<p>The mechanistic or "classical" worldview of 19th century's science was disproved and disowned by modern science. It has turned out that even the <em>physical</em> phenomena cannot be understood by reasoning as we do when we try to understand a machine.</p>
 
 
 
<p>Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be <em>on popular culture</em>—that it would lead to (what Peccei called) a "great cultural revival", by removing (what he called) "the narrow and rigid frame"—the way of looking at the world that our popular culture adopted from the 19th century's science—which damaged culture and <em>prevented</em> it from evolving. In "Physics and Philosophy" Heisenberg described how the destruction of religious and other traditions on which the continuation of culture and "human quality" depended, and the dominance of "instrumental" thinking and values (which Bauman called "adiaphorisation") followed from the assumptions that the modern physics <em>proved</em> were wrong. </p>
 
 
 
<blockquote>True, Heisenberg might have responded to the argument (that what is popularly thought of as "scientific worldview" helped us see that women can't fly on broomsticks), the <em>narrow frame</em> enabled us to eliminate so many of the superstitions our ancestors were living with; but we also threw out the baby (culture) with the bath water!</blockquote>  
 
  
<p>Needless to say, also this <em>Heisenberg's</em> insight remained without due action—as just another casualty of the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>.</p>
+
<p>He pointed to development of ideas as the way to liberate ourselves.</p>  
  
<p>In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr, Heisenberg's intellectual "heir", co-authored the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message was "We have to learn to think in a new way". The new way of thinking, conspicuously impregnated by "seeing things whole" and seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, was shown to follow from the worldview of new physics, and the environmental and larger social crisis.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> showed that we are still in the 'cave'.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>The second reason is that even mechanisms, or more precisely the "classical" systems, when they are "complex"—as social and natural systems undoubtedly are—cannot be understood in causal terms.</blockquote>
+
<blockquote>And how we can liberate ourselves once for all!</blockquote>  
 
 
<p>We offer this as the second core insight that we the people need to acquire from the systems sciences, and from cybernetics in particular.</p>  
 
  
 +
<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>
 
<p>
[[File:MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg]]
+
[[File:Jantsch-university.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</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>It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There is a <em>scientific</em> reason for that: The "hell" (which you may imagine as the global issues, or as the destination toward which our 'bus' is currently taking us) is largely composed of "side effects" of our best efforts and "solutions"—of relationships that are obscured from us by the system's nonlinearity; of boomerang effects of our best intentions reaching us  through the system's many 'feedback loops'. To see just how consistently simple causality is popularly considered as "modern" or even "scientific" thinking, what disastrous consequences this has had, and what wonderful possibilities have remained in its shadow—is to see the <em>holotopia</em>.
+
<p>We implement this mission in two steps.</p>
<p>
 
[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, and the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:
 
<blockquote>
 
"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge <em>in general</em>. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"
 
</blockquote>
 
</p>
 
 
 
 
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 
 
 
<p>The remedy we proposed is to spell out the rules, by defining a <em>general-purpose methodology</em> as a convention; and by turning it into a <em>prototype</em> and developing it continuously—to remain consistent with the state of the art of relevant knowledge, technology, and our society's needs.</p>
 
 
 
<p>Our <em>prototype</em> is called Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>, and nicknamed <em>polyscopy</em>. </p>  
 
  
<blockquote>By defining a <em>methodology</em>, we can <em>define</em> an approach to knowledge.</blockquote>  
+
<h3>Step 1: Enabling <em>academic</em> evolution</h3>  
  
<p><em>Polyscopy</em>, for instance, specifies that for "knowledge" to be real knowledge, <em>information</em> must be <em>federated</em>. This means that we must abolish the habit of throwing out whatever fails to fit our "scientific worldview", or <em>socialized reality</em> or <em>narrow frame</em>. "Knowledge" maintained by <em>ignoring</em> counter-evidence  does not merit that name. </p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>This does not mean, of course, that anything goes. Rather, it demands a <em>praxis</em> that may be understood by analogy with constitutional democracy—in the realm of ideas. As even a hateful criminal has the right for a fair trial, so does an idea have the right to be considered. Based on this simple rule of thumb, we would, for instance, be advised to <em>not</em> ignore Buddhism because we don't find it appealing, or because we don't believe in reincarnation. The work of <em>knowledge federation</em> is here similar to the work of a dutiful attorney—it is to carefully sift through the heritage, find pieces that we <em>may</em> need to integrate; and support them with a convincing case.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to enable <em>systems</em> to evolve knowledge-based.</blockquote>  
  
<p><em>Knowledge federation</em> turns insights and data into principles and rules of thumb, which help us orient action. Especially valuable are the ones we call <em>gestalts</em>. A <em>gestalt</em> is an interpretation of a situation that suggests suitable action. "Our house is on fire" is a canonical example. This <em>keyword</em> allows us to <em>define</em> the intuitive notion "informed"—as having a <em>gestalt</em> that is appropriate to one's situation. You will easily recognize now that we'll be using this idea all along, by rendering our general situation as the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>, and our academic one as the Mirror <em>ideogram</em>. And that we are making headway toward a third—the <em>holotopia</em> vision. Suitable techniques for communicating and 'proving' or <em>justifying</em> such claims are offered, most of which are developed by generalizing the standard toolkit of science.</p>  
+
<blockquote><em>Knowledge work</em> systems to begin with.</blockquote>  
  
<p>A parabolic image will help us see some practical consequences of this approach. Imagine you are talking on the phone with your neighbor, that he's at work and you are at home, and that you see that his house is on fire. Yet you tell him about the sale in the neighborhood fishing gear store. While from a <em>factual</em> point of view nothing is wrong (your neighbor is an avid fisherman, and the sale you are telling him about will deeply interested him), in this new "reality" we are proposing you are being untruthful and dangerously deceptive, <em>because a wrong gestalt is implicit</em> in the "reality picture" you present. You will easily see how this reflects upon our conventional media informing, and the way in which it constructs the "reality" we are living in.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>The Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em> is defined as a convention. We could turn <em>anything</em> into a convention—and it would be fine as long as it serves the purpose; as long as it "works". We, however, chose to <em>federate</em> this <em>methodology</em>, and turn it into a <em>prototype</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch.</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>This gives us a way to make the idea of "right" information this <em>methodology</em> represents a function of relevant insights reached in the sciences; and to allow it to evolve.</blockquote>  
+
<h3>Step 2: Enabling <em>societal</em> evolution</h3>  
  
<p>To illustrate this approach, and to point at some further nuances that are worth highlighting, we now describe a single instance of a source that has been <em>federated</em> in this way—and to give due credit.</p>  
+
<!-- ANCHOR -->
 +
<span id="TacticalAssets"></span>
  
<p>A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming, when the buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to understand and correct.  [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#InformationHolon The story] is interesting, but here we only highlight the a couple of main points and lessons learned.</p>
+
<p>The second step is to further develop and implement the <em>holotopia</em> vision in real life.</p>
  
<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>  
[[File:Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>They are drawn from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Old-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard. The first one is that—to understand a complex system—<em>abstraction</em> must be used. We must be able to <em>create</em> concepts on distinct levels of generality, representing also distinct angles of looking (which, you'll recall, we called <em>aspects</em>). But that is exactly the core point of <em>polyscopy</em>, suggested by the methodology's very name.</p>  
 
  
<p>The second point we'd like to highlight is is the <em>accountability</em> for the method. Any sufficiently complete programming language including the native "machine language" of the computer will allow the programmers to create <em>any</em> sort of program. The creators of the "programming methodologies", however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would not only enable them, but even <em>compel</em> them to write comprehensible, reusable, well-structured code. To see how this reflects upon our theme at hand, our proposal to add systemic self-organization to the <em>academia</em>'s repertoire of capabilities, imagine that an unusually gifted young man has entered the <em>academia</em>; to make the story concrete, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. Young Bourdieu will spend a lifetime using the toolkit the <em>academia</em> has given him. Imagine if what he produces, along with countless other selected creative people, is equivalent to "spaghetti code" in computer programming! Imagine the level of improvement that this is pointing to!</p>  
+
<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Margaret Mead and Aurelio Peccei.</blockquote>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6">
 
  
  
<p>The object oriented methodology provided a template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without inspecting the details of its code! (But those details are made available for inspection; and of course also for continuous improvement.)</p>
+
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
 
 
 
 
<p>The solution for structuring information we provided in <em>polyscopy</em>, called <em>information holon</em>, is closely similar. Information, represented in the Information <em>ideogram</em> as an "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. The circle represents the point of it all (such as "the cup is whole"); the square represents the details, the side views. </p>
 
 
 
<p>When the <em>circle</em>  is a <em>gestalt</em>, it allows this to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into <em>higher-level</em> insights; and it allows various and heterogeneous insights on which it is based to remain 'hidden', but available for inspection, in the <em>square</em>. When the <em>circle</em> is a <em>prototype</em> it allows the multiplicity of insights that comprise the <em>square</em> to have a direct <em>systemic</em> impact, or agency.</p>
 
</div>
 
 
 
<div class="col-md-3">
 
 
 
[[File:Information.jpg]]<br>
 
<small>Information <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
  
</div> </div>
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7">  
+
<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>  
 
 
 
 
<p>The <em>prototype</em> <em>polyscopic</em> book manuscript titled "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" book manuscript is structured as an <em>information holon</em>. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it.</p>  
 
  
<p>It is customary in computer methodology design to propose a programming language that implements the methodology—and to <em>bootstrap</em> the approach by creating a compiler for that language in the language itself. In this book we did something similar. The book's four chapters present four angles of looking at the general issue of information, identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the <em>design patterns</em> of the proposed <em>methodology</em>. The book then uses the <em>methodology</em> to justify the claim that motivates it—that makes a case for the proposed <em>paradigm</em>, by using the <em>paradigm</em>. </p>  
+
<p>We make this 'game' smooth and [[awesomeness|<em>awesome</em>]] by supplementing a collection of tactical assets. </p>
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
Line 668: Line 460:
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]]</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Art</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
+
<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>In this last of the <em>five insights</em> we take up perhaps the most interesting question that remained:</p>
+
<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><b>Why</b> is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?</blockquote>  
 
  
<p><em>Why</em> is the <em>holotopia</em> a better alternative? What is to be gained by "changing course"—and instead of reaching out for all the fun and pleasurable <em>things</em> that an advanced material civilization has to offer—engage in something as elusive and distant as "human development"?</p>  
+
<p>The deconstruction of the tradition has been completed, and it is time to <em>create</em>.</p>  
  
<p>In Galilei's time, concern with the "original sin" and "eternal punishment" were soon to be replaced; happiness and beauty would be lived here and now, and elevated and celebrated by the arts. What might the <em>next</em> "great cultural revival" be like? </p>  
+
<blockquote>What <em>memes</em> need to be fostered, and disseminated?</blockquote>
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
+
<blockquote>In what ways will art be present on the creative frontier where the <em>new</em> "great cultural revivival" will enfold?</blockquote>  
  
<blockquote>We (the <em>power structures</em> we compose) have done the same to <em>culture</em> and to ourselves, as we did to natural environment. </blockquote>  
+
<p>In "Production of Space" Henri Lefebvre offered an answer, which we'll summarize in <em>holotopia</em>'s buddying vernacular.</p>  
  
<p>With one notable difference.</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>We do not have 'a science of culture'—which would give us the equivalent of the temperature and the CO2 measurements, so that we may even <em>hope</em> to turn this into an issue!</blockquote>  
+
<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>
  
<p>By looking at the world through the <em>narrow frame</em>, by seeing the world as a machine and focusing on immediate causality, we have made <em>convenience</em> (or "instant gratification") the value that orients our private pursuits; and <em>egotism</em> (or "egocenteredness") the value that orients our social ones.</p>  
+
<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>Our point here will be that this is not only leading us into a trap through the social and natural "feedback loops", as we have already seen—but also <em>directly</em>, by separating us from the kind of happiness and fulfillment that only culture, and "human development" can lead to. </p>  
+
<p>Where in the artist as retort, <em>new</em> ways to feel, think and act are created. </p>  
  
  
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
+
</div> </div>
 +
 
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>Holotopia's creative space is spanned by <em>five insights</em>.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Here too there is an insight, a rule of thumb, that reverses our "pursuit of happiness" quite thoroughly; and leads us to a realm of fulfillment that most of us consider possible.</p>  
+
<p>  
 +
[[File:Holotopia33.jpeg]]<br>
 +
<small>The pentagram, which represents the <em>five insights</em>, lends itself to artistic interpretations.</small>
 +
</p>
  
<p>We've called it "the best kept secret of human culture", and offered it for dialog and elaboration as one of our selected <em>ten themes</em>. </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>Long story short—there is an incomparably better way to be human, than what we've known and experienced.</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>This is what attracted our distant ancestors to persons like the Moses, the Buddha, the Christ or Mohammad. Yet always—the <em>power structure</em> managed to divert the <em>way</em> they were pointing to into something quite different, and at not rarely into <em>its very opposite</em>! </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>So what can <em>we</em> do that is different?</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>  
  
<p>We can introduce <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>; offer, and teach <em>information about information</em>. We can <em>create</em> a communication channel, which is wide enough and clear enough for these things to be seen!</p>  
+
<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> bring to the fore what is most <em>transformative</em> in our collective knowledge.</blockquote>
  
<p>As soon as we <em>begin</em> to do that, to <em>federate</em> suitable insights to illuminate that realm of possibilities, the <em>convenience paradox</em> is clearly seen.</p>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight is that <em>convenience</em> is a deceptive and useless value, behind which <em>enormous</em> cultural opportunities have remained hidden. The idea of a "couch potato" provides a common-sense illustration—but, we show, the depth and breadth of possibilities for improving our condition through long-term cultivation is beyond what most of us will dare to consider possible.</p>  
+
<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>
 
<p>
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
+
[[File:Mirror-Lab.jpeg]]<br>
 +
<small>Mirror prototypes in Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.</small>
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<p>Human <em>wholeness</em> does exist; and it feels, and looks, incomparably better than most of us will dare to imagine. It is this that drove people to the Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and other founders of religion. We represent them all here by Lao Tzu, who is often considered the founder of "Taoism". "Tao" literally means "way". The point here is to develop one's way of live, and culture, based on on <em>where the way is leading to</em>—and not (only) based on how attractive a direction may feel at the moment.</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>  
  
<p>The most fascinating insight is reached as soon as we ignore the differences in worldview, what the adherents of different religion "believe in"—and pay attention to the <em>symbolic environment</em> they produce, and the kind of values and way of being they nourish. Compare, for instance, the above Lao Tzu's observations with what Christ told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. </p>
+
<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>  
<p>
 
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
<p>Most interestingly, even a superficial <em>federation</em> (when we no longer focus on what religious traditions "believe in", but on the <em>symbolic environments</em> they create and the values they promote) the <em>transcendence</em> of <em>egotism</em> is a key element of the "way". </p>
 
<p>Lao Tzu is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies that he conquered and tamed his ego. We here quote Aldous Huxley, to point out that transcending <em>egotism</em> is so much part of our <em>wholeness</em>, that even <em>physical</em> effort and effortlessness—which we now handle exclusively by developing the technology—is conditioned by it. </p>
 
  
<p>Motivation: Bauman's "Cuture as praxis". Definition of <em>culture</em> as "<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>. </p>  
+
<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>Definition of <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with archetypes". </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>The book "Liberation" subtitled "Religion beyond Belief" is an ice breaker. It <em>federates</em> "the best kept secret", and creates a <em>dialog</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> is a symbol of cultural revival.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Movement and Qi is a template how to put the <em>language</em> of "movement" (doing something with the body) into the academic repertoire. And how to put the heritage of the world traditions such as yoga and qigong into academic repertoire.</p>  
+
<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>
  
</div> </div>  
+
<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>  
  
 +
</div> </div> 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A great cultural revival</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> have been chosen to reflect five <em>aspects</em> of the last "great cultural revival", to which we point by bringing up the image of Galilei in hose arrest. Our point is that when those five centrally important aspects of our society's 'drive into the future' are no longer looked at by using the <em>inherited</em> ways of looking at the world ('in the light of a pair of candles') but by a deliberately <em>designed</em> way (represented by the <em>holoscope</em>), or in other words when our minds and eyes are liberated from the habit and the tradition and we allow ourselves to <em>create</em> the way we look at the world—then once again the blind spots and the opportunities for creative action are seen that <em>naturally</em> lead to a deep and comprehensive change.</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>
  
<p>Hence the <em>five insights</em> together reveal a vast creative frontier, where dramatic improvements can be reached. And which <em>together</em> constitute "a great cultural revival"—each of them being a piece in the large puzzle, a mechanism that unleashes our creative potential on such major scale.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<h3>A revolution in innovation</h3>
+
<blockquote>Isn't this what the <em>mirror</em> too demands?</blockquote>  
  
<p>By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution liberated our ancestors from the toil for survival, and empowered them to devote themselves to more humane pursuits such as developing their "human quality", by developing culture. Or so we were told. The real story may, however, be entirely different. Research has shown that the hunger-gatherers used only a small fraction of their time for hunting and gathering. The <em>power structure</em> insight shows that not only today—but throughout history the improvements in effectiveness and efficiency in human work have been largely wasted by the <em>systems in which we live and work</em></p>
+
<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>We saw, by illuminating those systems and the way in which they evolve, that this age-old negative trend in our evolution can be countered by innovating differently—through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], or by "making things whole". And how this <em>socio-technical</em> innovation can, finally, liberate us from toil and empower us to engage in cultural revival.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The <em>dialog</em> changes the world by changing the way we communicate.</blockquote>
  
<h3>A revolution in communication</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.
 +
[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>The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy, and in communication.  The <em>collective mind</em> insight shows that the new information technology enables a <em>similar</em> revolution—whose effects will not be only a mass production of volumes of information, but most importantly a revolution in the production of <em>meaning</em>. A revolution where information is considered and treated as the lifeblood of human society—and enabled to make all the differences it can and needs to make, in a post-industrial society.</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>  
 
+
<h3>A revolution in vision</h3>
+
</div> </div>  
 
 
<p>The Enlightenment was a combined revolution; our ancestors were first empowered to use their reason to <em>understand</em> the world; and then to see that the royalties were not divinely ordained, but indeed part of a human-made <em>power structure</em>. The whole revolution, however, began as a relatively minor epistemological innovation in astrophysics. By putting the Sun into the center of the Solar system, a scientific explanation of the movement of the planets became possible. We have seen that a <em>continuation</em> of that revolution is now due, by which all <em>reification</em> is seen as obsolete and a product of <em>power structure</em>; and in particular the <em>reification</em> of our worldview, and of our <em>systems</em>. By liberating the <em>academia</em> from the pitfall of <em>reification</em>, we can both empower ourselves to adapt our <em>systems</em> to the purposes they need to serve <em>and</em> liberate the vast global army of academic researchers from the disciplinary constraints on creativity—and empower them to be creative in ways and on the scale that a "great cultural revival" enables and requires.</p>
 
 
 
<h3>A revolution in method</h3>
 
 
 
<p>Galilei in house arrest was really <em>science</em> in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The <em>narrow frame</em> insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that science left in the dark. </p>  
 
 
 
<h3>A revolution in culture</h3>
 
 
 
<p>The Renaissance <em>was</em> a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, and developing the arts. The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight illuminates two <em>dimensions</em> of this most fertile creative domain we've neglected—the time dimension, and the inner one. When this is done, a completely new <em>direction</em> of human pursuits readily emerge as natural—where our goal is the cultivation of inner <em>wholeness</em>, by developing culture.  </p>  
 
  
<p>This new revolution perhaps finds its most vivid expression in re-evolution of religion—by which an age-old conflict between science and religion is seen as a conflict between two <em>power structures</em>, which hindered the evolution of <em>both</em> our understanding of the world and our understanding of our selves. And how a completely <em>new</em> phase in this relationship can now begin.</p>
 
 
</div> </div>
 
  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The 6th insight</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>  
  
 +
<p>A warning reaches us from sociology.</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>These solutions compose a <em>paradigm</em></h3>  
+
<h3><em>Culture</em></h3>
  
<p>The five issues, and their solutions, are closely co-dependent; the key to resolving them is the relationship we have with information (the <em>epistemology</em> by which the proposed <em>paradigm</em> is defined). </p>  
+
<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>
  
<ul>  
+
<blockquote>We do not know what "culture" means.</blockquote>  
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue cannot be resolved (we cannot begin "guided evolution of society", as Bela H. Banathy called the new evolutionary course that is emerging) without resolving the <em>collective mind</em> issue (by creating a knowledge-work infrastructure that provides "evolutionary guidance")</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>collective mind</em> issue requires that we resolve the <em>socialized reality</em> issue (that instead of <em>reifying</em> our present institutions or systems, and the way in which we look at the world, we consider them as functional elements in a larger whole)</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>socialized reality</em> issue follows from <em>intrinsic</em> considerations—from the reported anomalies, and published epistemological insights (Willard Van Orman Quine identified the transition to truth by convention as a sign of maturing that has manifested itself in the evolution of every science)</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>narrow frame</em> issue, by developing a general-purpose <em>methodology</em>, is made possible by just mentioned <em>epistemological</em> innovation</li>
 
<li>The resolution of the <em>convenience paradox</em> issue is made possible by <em>federating</em> knowledge from the world traditions, by using the mentioned methodology</li>
 
<li>The <em>power structure</em> issue can only be resolved when we the people find strength to overcome self-serving, narrowly conceived values, and collaborate and self-organize to create radically better <em>systems in which we live and work</em></li>
 
</ul>  
 
  
<p>Hence we have an overarching new insight.</p>  
+
<p>Not a good venture point for developing culture as <em>praxis</em>!</p>  
  
<blockquote>A comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible.</blockquote>  
+
<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>The global system does maintain a self-destructive <em>homeostasis</em>. It resist the changes that are contrary to its nature.</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>  
  
<p>We have seen that, however, <em>the system as a whole</em> is ripe for change.</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>And that the key to that change, the "systemic leverage point", is to change the relationship we have with information.</p>  
+
<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>We have also seen (and called it the <em>socialized reality</em> insight) that this change is now due also for fundamental reasons, because our <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> demands it. And hence that the spontaneous evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to that point.</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>  
  
<p>This completes the analogy with Galilei's time—which is or main line of argument, in the case for developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em>.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The benefits of a functioning <em>culture</em> could be prodigious—without us seeing that.</blockquote>  
  
</div> </div>  
+
<p>This is why communication is so central to <em>holotopia</em>. </p>  
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
+
<p>This is why we must step through the <em>mirror</em> to come in.</p>
 +
 +
<h3><em>Addiction</em></h3>  
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will <em>not</em> solve "the huge problems now confronting us"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6">
 
  
<p>Already in 1964, four years before The Club of Rome was established, Margaret Mead wrote:
+
<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>  
<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>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing <em>can</em> be solved.</p>
 
</div>  
 
  
<div class="col-md-3">
+
<p>To make ourselves and our culture <em>whole</em>, even subtle addiction must be taken care of.</p>  
[[File:Mead.jpg]]<br>
 
<small>Margaret Mead</small>
 
</div> </div>
 
  
<div class="row">
+
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight showed that <em>convenience</em> is a general addiction; and the root of innumerable specific ones.</p>  
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=223 Hear Dennis Meadows] (the leader of the team that produced The Club of Rome's seminal 1972 report Limits to Growth) diagnose, based on 44 years of experience on this frontier, that our pursuit of "sustainability" falls short of avoiding the "predicament" they were 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>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). </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>  
  
<p>So no, we do not claim that our problems can be solved. Neither do we deny them. </p>  
+
<h3><em>Religion</em></h3>
  
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, of empowerment, of deep understanding that small things don't matter, that only being creative in the manner and on the scale we are proposing <em>can</em> matter—which needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
+
<p>In "Physics and Philosophy" Werner Heisenberg described some of the consequences of the <em>narrow frame</em>:</p>  
<p>We take a deep dive into that depth. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>  
 
  
<p>"The huge problems now confronting us" <em>must</em> be dealt with, conscientiously and resolutely. We, however, do not do that. We propose to add to those most necessary and timely efforts a strategy—through which the solutions may be made easy; and which may well be necessary for the solutions to even exist.</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>  
</div> </div>  
 
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a great cultural revival"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
  
<p>Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</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>  
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</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>Margaret Mead encouraged us, with her best known motto:
+
<blockquote>What serves this role in <em>modern</em> culture?</blockquote>  
<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>And she also pointed to the critical task at hand: "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."</p>
 
 
 
<p>It is that "creating" that the Holotopia project is about. We set it up as a research lab, for resolutely working on that goal. We create a transformative 'snowball', with the material of our own bodies, and we let it roll. </p>
 
 
 
 
 
<p>"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole", Mead wrote, "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>As we have seen, and will see, the "single gifted individuals" have already offered us their gifts, already a half-century ago. But their insights failed to incite the kind of self-organization and action that would enable them to make a difference.</p>
 
 
 
<p>Here the <em>holotopia</em>'s "rule of thumb", to "make things <em>whole</em>", which is really an ethical stance, plays a central role. While we are creating a small 'snowball' and letting it roll, the cohesive force that holds it together is of a paramount importance. We are not developing this project to further our careers; nor to earn some money, or get a grant. We are doing that because it's beautiful. And because it's what we need to give to our next generation.</p>
 
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
<b>To be continued...</b>
+
<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>  
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
+
<blockquote>Imagine a world where truth, love, beauty, justice... bind us to our purpose; and to each other!</blockquote>  
  
 +
<p>But isn't religion a belief system? And an institution?</p>
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><p>The Holotopia project continues to evolve as a collaborative strategy game—where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision. We bring to this 'game' a collection of tactical assets we've developed—to make it flow. </p>
 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A pilot project</h2></div>
 
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Ten themes|<em>Ten themes</em>]]</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7"><p>To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen. </p>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[Ten themes|<em>ten themes</em>]] offer relevant and engaging things to talk about.</blockquote>  
 
 
 
 
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 
<br>
 
 
 
  
<!-- YYY
+
<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> 
  
<div class="row">
+
<h3>How to put an end to war?</h3>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Before we begin</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><p>Before we share the "tactical assets" we've put together to prime the Holotopia project, a couple of notes are in order to explain how exactly we want them to be understood and received.</p>
 
 
 
<h3>A 'cardboard city'</h3>  
 
  
<p>While each of these "assets" is created, to the best of our ability, to serve as a true solution, <em>we do not need to make that claim</em>, and we are not making it. Everything here is just <em>prototypes</em>. Which means models, each made to serve as a "proof of concept", to be experimented with and indefinitely improved.</p>
+
<blockquote>What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war?</blockquote>
<p>Think of what's presented here as a cardboard model of a city. </p>
 
<p>It includes a 'school', and a 'hospital', a 'main square' and 'residential areas'. The model is complete enough for us to see that this 'city' will be a wonderful place to be in; and to begin building. But as we build—<em>everything</em> can change!</p>
 
<p>One of the points of using this keyword, <em>prototype</em>, is to consider them as placeholders. A city needs a school, and a hospital, and... The whole thing models a 'modern city' (an up-to-date approach to knowledge).</p>
 
<p>Another important point: <em>design patterns</em>. The <em>prototypes</em> * model * a multiplicity of challenge–solution pairs. <em>With</em> provisions for updating the solutions continuously. The point here is that while solutions can and need to evolve, the <em>design patterns</em> (as 'research questions') can remain relatively stable.</p>
 
<p>This will all make even more sense when one takes into consideration that the core of our proposal is not to build a city; it is <em>to develop 'architecture'</em>!</p>  
 
  
<h3>A 'business plan'</h3>  
+
<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>No, we are not doing this to start a business, or to make money. But a 'business plan' is still a useful metaphor, because we <em>do</em> "mean business". The purpose of the Holotopia project is <em>to make a difference</em>. In the social and economic reality we are living in.</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>  
<p>These "tactical assets" can then also be read as points in a business plan—which point to the realistic <em>likelihood</em> of it all to achieve its goals.</p>
+
<!-- ANCHOR -->
<p>The point here is not money, but impact. Making a <em>real</em> difference. From the business point of view, perhaps a suitable metaphor could be 'branding'. And 'strategy'. There are numerous movements, dedicated to a variety of causes. Can we unite under a single flag and mission, not as a monolithic thing but a 'federation', or a 'franchise' of sorts, so that the <em>holotopia</em> offers <em>these</em> resources.</p>
+
<span id="Education"></span>
<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>An obvious problem is the lack of a shared and effective strategy that would allow the movements to <em>really</em> make a difference. As it is, they are largely reactive and not <em>pro</em>-active. But as we have seen, the problems can only be solved when their <em>systemic</em> roots are understood and taken care of.</p>
 
<p>But there is a subtle and perhaps even more important difficulty—that our efforts at making a difference tend to be <em>symbolic</em>. We adapted this <em>keyword</em> from political scientist Murray Edelman, and attribute to it the following meaning.</p>
 
<p><em>Real</em> impact, we might now agree, is impact on <em>systems</em>. They are the 'riverbed' that directs the 'current' in which we are all swimming. We may 'swim against the current' for awhile, with the help of all our courage and faith and togetherness—but ultimately we get exhausted and give up.</p>
 
<p>The difficulty, however, is our <em>socialization</em>—owing to which we tend to take <em>systems</em> for granted; they <em>are</em> the "reality" within which we seek solutions. And so our attempts at solution end up being akin to social rituals, where we <em>symbolically</em> act out our "responsibilities" and concerns (by writing an article, organizing a conference, or a demonstration) and put them to rest.</p>
 
<p>The alternative is, of course, <em>to restore agency to information, and  power to knowledge</em>—i.e. to create a clear guiding light under which efforts can be <em>effectively</em> focused.</p>
 
<p>The <em>five insights</em>, which we'll list as our first "tactical asset", are our <em>prototype</em> placeholder in that role.</p>  
 
<p>So here we have a <em>design pattern</em>: The challenge is How to create a shared strategy, so that efforts can be coordinated and meaningfully directed? The <em>holotopia</em> is offered as a <em>prototype</em>. As all <em>prototypes</em> do, here too the solution part has provisions for updating itself continuously—with everyone's participation</p>
 
  
</div> </div>
+
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<h3>Zero to one</h3>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Five insights|Five insights]]</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><p>They provide us a frame of reference, around which the <em>city</em> is built.  They serve as foundation stones, or as 'five pillars' lifting the emerging construction up from the mundane reality, and making it stand out.</p>  
 
  
<p>In our challenge to come through the sensationalist press and reach out to people, each of them is a sensation in its own right; but a <em>real</em> sensation, which merits our attention.</p>  
+
<blockquote>This conversation is about education.</blockquote>  
  
<p>In our various artistic, research, media... projects—they provide us building material.</p>  
+
<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>
  
</div> </div>  
+
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>mirror</em></h2></div>
 
  
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<blockquote>Is <em>education</em> making us unable to change course?</blockquote>
<p>POINT: Bring in the fundamental element. CHANGE of WORLDVIEW begins with FOUNDATIONS—and here we orchestrate it carefully. BRING ACADEMIA ALONG! LIBERATE the enormous creative potential it contains. WE DO NOT NEED TO "PUBLISH OR PERISH".</p>  
 
  
<p>The appeal here is to institutionalize a FREE academic space, where this line of work can be developed with suitable support.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<h3>A way out</h3>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>That there is an unexpected, seemingly magical way into a new cultural and social reality is really good news. But is it realistic?</p>
+
<blockquote>Is our education's very <em>principle of operation</em> obsolete?</blockquote>  
<p>We here carefully develop the analogy with Galilei's time, when a new <em>epistemology</em> was ready to change the world, but still kept in house arrest. All we need to do is to set it free.</p>  
 
  
<h3>The discovery of ourselves</h3>
 
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes the ending of <em>reification</em> (when we see ourselves <em>in the world</em>, we realize that we are not above it and observing it "objectively"); and the beginning of accountability (we see the world in dire need for creative action; and we see our own role in it).</p>  
+
<h3>Alienation</h3>  
  
<p>This insight extends into ending of the <em>reification</em> of our personal preferences, feelings, tastes... <em>What we are able to</em> feel, think, create... is determined, to an astounding degree, by the degree in which our "human quality" has been developed. And our ability to develop it depends in an overwhelming degree on the way in which our culture has been developed.</p>  
+
<blockquote>This theme offers a way to reconcile Karl Marx with "the 1%", and the radical left with Christianity.</blockquote>  
  
<h3>The <em>academia</em>'s situation</h3>  
+
<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>  
  
<p>The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes also the <em>academia</em>'s situation, just as the bus with candle headlights symbolizes our civilization's situation. The point is that the hitherto development of the academic tradition brought us there, in front of the <em>mirror</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> wins without fighting—by <em>co-opting</em> the powerful.</blockquote>  
  
<p>An enormous liberation of our creative abilities results when we realize they must not be confined to traditional disciplinary pursuits and routines. </p>  
+
<h3>Enlightenment 2.0</h3>  
  
<p>Especially important is the larger understanding of <em>information</em> that the self-reflection in front of the <em>mirror</em> brings us to; <em>information</em> is no longer only printed text; it includes <em>any</em> artifacts that embody human experience, refined by human ingenuity. </p>  
+
<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>
  
<h3> Occupy the university</h3>  
+
<p>The other one applies the insights about <em>wholeness</em>—to develop media use that <em>supports</em> wholeness.</p>  
  
<p>Who holds 'Galilei in house arrest'</p>
 
  
<p>We don't need to occupy Wall Street. The key is in another place.</p>  
+
<h3>Academia quo vadis?</h3>  
  
<p>We really just need to occupy our own profession—by continuing the tradition that our great predecessors have created.</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<h3>A sand box</h3>  
+
<blockquote>Is <em>transdisciplinarity</em> the university institution's future?</blockquote>  
  
<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em> we create a 'sandbox'; that's really the <em>holotopia</em> project. </p>  
+
<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>Note: on the other side of the <em>mirror</em> the contributions of Jantsch and Engelbart are seen as <em>fundamental</em> (they were drafting, and <em>creating</em> strategically, a new 'collective mind'). </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>  
  
<p>See the description of 'sandbox' in our contribution  [https://holoscope.info/2013/06/22/enabling-social-systemic-transformations-2/ Enabling Social-Systemic Transformations] to the 2013 conference "Transformations in a Changing Climate"</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> </div>  
 
 
 
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Ten themes|Ten themes]]</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>  
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The stories are a way to make insights accessible and clear.</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>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>  
  
<h3>How to put an end to war</h3>  
+
<p>We illustrate this technique by a single example, [[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart]].</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>The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart is a <em>modern</em> version of 'Galilei in house arrest'.</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>It shows who, or <em>what</em>, holds 'Galilei in house arrest' today.</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>
 
 
 
<h3>The ten themes cover the <em>holotopia</em></h3>
 
<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>
 
</div> </div>  
 
  
 +
<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>
  
<div class="row">
+
<blockquote>Engelbart contributed means to secure <em>decisive</em> victories in those "decisive battles".</blockquote>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>dialogs</em></h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an art form</h3>
 
<p>We make conversation themes alive through dialogs.</p> 
 
<p>We turn conversations into artistic and media-enabled events (see the Earth Sharing <em>prototype</em> below).</p>
 
<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>The attitude of the <em>dialog</em> may be understood as an antidote.</p>
 
  
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an age-old tradition</h3>
+
<p>Even <em>more</em> relevant and interesting is, however, what this story tells about ourselves.</p>  
<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>  
 
  
 +
<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>
  
<h3>We employ contemporary media</h3>
+
<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>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>We couldn't even hear him.</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>  
 
  
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is an instrument of change</h3>
+
<blockquote>This 'experiment' showed how <em>incredibly</em> idea-blind we've become.</blockquote>  
<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>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>elephant</em></h2></div>
 
<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>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
 
[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
Line 1,053: Line 760:
 
</p>  
 
</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>  
 
 
<h3>A spectacle</h3>
 
<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>
 
 
 
<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>
 
<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>
+
<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>  
<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>  
 
  
 +
<p>We make it possible to 'connect the dots' and <em>see</em> the <em>elephant</em>.</p> 
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>holoscope</em></h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Seeing things whole</h3>
+
<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>Peccei concluded his analysis in "One Hundred  Pages for the Future":
 
<blockquote>
 
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>.
 
</blockquote>
 
</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>  
 
  
 +
<blockquote>We propose to consider cultural artifacts as 'dots' to be connected.</blockquote> 
  
 +
<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>
 +
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Books and publishing</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<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>We bring together stories (elsewhere called <em>vignettes</em>)—which share the core insights of leading contemporary thinkers. We tell their stories.</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>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>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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Ideograms</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Art meets science</h3>  
 
  
<p>Placeholder. The point is enormous—<em>federation</em> of insights, connecting the dots, not only or even primarily results in rational insights. It results in <em>implicit information</em>; we are undoing our <em>socialization</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>  
<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>  
 
  
 +
<h3>Liberation</h3>
  
<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>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>
</div> </div>
+
<!-- ANCHOR -->
 +
<span id="Prototypes"></span>
 +
<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>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>  
  
<div class="row">
+
<blockquote>The age-old conflict between science and religion is resolved by <em>evolving</em> both science and religion.</blockquote>  
<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>  
 
</div> </div>  
Line 1,121: Line 803:
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>
<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>
+
[[prototype|<em>Prototypes</em>]] <em>federate</em> insights by weaving them into the fabric of reality.</blockquote>  
</div> </div>  
 
  
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Earth Sharing <em>prototype</em></h2></div>
+
<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>  
  
  
<div class="row">
+
<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>  
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>These titles will change</h2></div>
 
  
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<blockquote>What difference would be made, if the principle "make things <em>whole</em>" guided innovation?</blockquote>  
<h3>Art leads science</h3>
 
  
<p>How the action began... </p>  
+
<p>We point to an answer by these examples.</p>  
  
<h3>Seeing differently</h3>  
+
<h3>Education</h3>
  
<p>Up and down</p>  
+
<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>  
  
<h3>The vault</h3>  
+
<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>Precious space for reflection—where the stories are told, and insights begin to take shape.</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>  
  
<h3>Holotopia is an art project</h3>
+
<blockquote>Learning is by "pull", by 'connecting the dots'.</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>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>
+
<p>The students learn <em>what</em> they need, <em>when</em> they need it.</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>Going online</h3>  
+
<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>Debategraph was not yet implemented. But David was there!</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>  
  
</div> </div>
+
<blockquote>Economies of scale result, which drastically reduce workload. </blockquote>  
  
<!-- CUTS
+
<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>
  
<p>
+
<blockquote>This <em>prototype</em> models a <em>new</em> "social life of information"—alternative to peer reviews.</blockquote>  
  
  
The key novelty in the <em>holoscope</em> is the capability it affords to deliberately choose the way in which we look at an issue or situation, which we call <em>scope</em>. Just as the case is when inspecting a hand-held cup to see if it is whole or cracked, and in projective geometry, the art of using the <em>holoscope</em> will to a large degree consist in finding suitable ways of looking—which show the <em>whole</em> from all sides, and afford a correct "big picture"</em>  
+
<h3>Scientific communication 2</h3>
  
<p>Especially valuable will be those <em>scopes</em> that illuminate what our habitual ways of looking left in the dark.</p>  
+
<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>
  
<p>This capability, to create <em>views</em> by choosing <em>scopes</em> on any desired level of detail, adds to our work with contemporary issues a whole new 'dimension' or "degree of freedom"—where we <em>choose</em> what we perceive as issues; so that the issues <em>can</em> be resolved, and <em>wholeness</em> can be restored. </p>  
+
<blockquote>Isn't this <em>the very first</em> question our society's 'headlights' must illuminate?</blockquote>  
  
  
<h3>Thinking outside the box</h3>
 
<p>That we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them is a commonplace. But this presents a challenge when academic rigor needs to be respected.</p>
 
<
 
<p>While we did our best to ensure that the presented views accurately represent what might result when we 'connect the dots' or <em>federate</em> published insights and other relevant cultural artifacts, <em>we do not need to make such claims</em>; and we are not making them. It is a <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing; it is the <em>methodology</em> by which our views are created that gives them rigor—as "rigor" is understood in the <em>paradigm</em>.</p>
 
<p>The <em>methodology</em> itself is, to the best of our knowledge, flawlessly rigorous and coherent. But we don't need to make that claim either.</p>
 
<p><em>Everything</em> here is offered as a collection of [[Holotopia:Prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]]. The point is to show <em>what might result</em> if we changed the relationship we have with information, and developed, both academically and on a society-wide scale, the approach to information and knowledge we are proposing.</p>
 
<p>Our goal when presenting them is to initiate the <em>dialogs</em> and other social processes that constitute that development.</p>
 
  
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+
<h3>Public informing</h3>
  
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>prototype</em> is conceived as a portfolio of about forty smaller <em>prototypes</em>, which cover the range of questions that define an academic field—from epistemology and methods, to social organization and applications.</p>  
+
<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>We use our main keyword, <em>knowledge federation</em>, in a similar way as the words "design" and "architecture" are used—to signify both a <em>praxis</em> (informed practice), and an academic field that develops it and curates it.</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>  
  
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+
<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>
  
  
 +
<h3>Culture</h3>
  
 +
<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>
  
<p>To see what all this practically means, in the context of our theme (we are <em>federating</em> Peccei), we invite you to follow us in a brief thought experiment. We'll pay a short visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we are using the image of a cathedral as an <em>ideogram</em>—to correct the proportions, and  "see things whole".</p>
 
<p>So there is architecture, which inspires awe. We hear music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And there is the ritual...</p>
 
<p>But there is also a little book on each bench. Its first few paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
 
<p>Let this difference in size, between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—the cathedral as a whole, with its physical objects and the activities it provides a space for—point to the difference in <em>importance</em> between the factual explanations of the mechanisms of nature and <em>our culture as a whole</em>, relative to our theme, the "human quality". For <em>there can be no doubt</em> that a function of the cathedral—<em>and</em> of culture—is to nourish the "human quality" in a certain specific ways.  By providing a certain <em>symbolic environment</em>, in which certain ethical and emotional dispositions can grow. Notice that we are only pointing to a <em>function</em>, without making any value judgement of its results. </p>
 
<p>The question is—How, and by whom, is the evolution of culture secured today? <em>Who</em> has the prerogative of <em>socializing</em> people in our own time?</p>
 
<p>The answer is obvious; it suffices to look around. All the advertising, however, is only a tip of an iceberg—comprised by various instruments of <em>symbolic power</em>, by which our choices are directed and our values modified—to give us the "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow.</p>
 
<p>The ethical and legal norms we have do not protect us from this dependence. </p>
 
<p>The humanities researchers are, of course, well aware of this. But the "objective observer" role to which the academic researchers are confined, and the fact that "the tie between information and action is broken",  makes this all but irrelevant.</p>
 
<p>While most of us still consider ourselves as "rational decision makers", who can simply "feel" their "real interests" or "needs" and bring them to the market of goods, or as voters to the market of political agendas (which will like a perfect scale secure justice by letting the largest ones prevail), the businesses and the politicians know better. <em>Scientific</em> means are routinely used by their advisers, to manipulate our choices.</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>
  
  however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.
+
<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>
  
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+
<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>
  
 +
<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="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
 
  
<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
+
<h3>Art</h3>   
<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
 
<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p>   
 
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>
 
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 
  
<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
+
<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>  
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
 
<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>  
 
  
<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<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>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </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>  
  
<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<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>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of  publicly supported intellectuals. </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>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>  
+
<p>
 +
[[File:B2018-Stairs.jpg]]
 +
</p>  
  
<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</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>  
<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>
+
[[File:Local-Global.jpg]]
 
+
</p>  
<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>
 
 
 
<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>  
 
  
<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>  
+
<p>The BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool then suggested to transcend fixed ways of looking, and <em>combine</em> worldviews and perspectives.</p>  
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
+
[[File:SafeSpace02.png]]
</p>
+
</p>  
  
<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>  
+
<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>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>  
+
<p>
 +
[[File:Babel2.jpeg]]
 +
</p>  
  
<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
+
<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>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>  
+
<blockquote>The creation that took place in this space was the Holotopia project's inception.</blockquote>  
  
 
+
</div> </div>
 
 
 
 
<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 
 
 
<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
 
<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
 
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
 
<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
 
<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
 
<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
 
 
 
<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>
 
<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
 
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>
 
<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.
 
 
 
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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.jpg 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."

Postman.jpg
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.jpeg
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."

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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.


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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.

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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".

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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".

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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.

B2018-Building.JPG

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.

B2018-Stairs.jpg

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.

Local-Global.jpg

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

SafeSpace02.png

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.

Babel2.jpeg

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.