Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

Latest revision as of 12:37, 30 September 2021

Imagine...

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

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

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

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

Modernity ideogram

Our proposal

Its essence

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

What is our relationship with information presently like?

Here is how Neil Postman described it:

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

Neil Postman

Its substance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its method

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

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

Holoscope ideogram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A vision

A difference to be made

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aurelio Peccei

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

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

"Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world."

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

A different way to see the future

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

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

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

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

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

Five insights

Five Insights ideogram

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

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

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

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

Power structure insight (analogy with Industrial Revolution)

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

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

Collective mind insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)

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

Hear Neil Postman observe:

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

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

Socialized reality insight (analogy with Enlightenment)

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

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

Narrow frame insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)

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

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

Convenience paradox insight (analogy with Renaissance)

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

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

Large change is easy

The "course" is a paradigm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don't need to occupy Wall Street.

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

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

"Human quality" is the key

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

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

"Human development is the most important goal."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This ethos is blatantly un-academic.

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

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

So was knowledge federation.

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

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

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

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

The question must be asked:

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

A strategy

We will not solve our problems

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Mead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have seen that comprehensive change must be our goal.

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

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

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

We will not change the world

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

Our generation's job is to begin it.

Margaret Mead left us this encouragement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must claim back our will to make a difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We will not change the world.

You will.

A mission

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

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

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

And how we can liberate ourselves once for all!

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

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

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

Our mission is to change that.

We implement this mission in two steps.

Step 1: Enabling academic evolution

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

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

Knowledge work systems to begin with.

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

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

Step 2: Enabling societal evolution

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

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

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

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

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

Art

Holotopia is an art project.

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

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

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

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

What memes need to be fostered, and disseminated?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five insights

Holotopia's creative space is spanned by five insights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mirror

The mirror is the entrance to holotopia.

Mirror prototypes in Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.

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

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

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

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

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

The mirror is a symbol of cultural revival.

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

The mirror is also a symbol of academic revival.

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

The dialog

The dialog is holotopia's signature approach to communication.

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

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

Isn't this what the mirror too demands?

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

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

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

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

Keywords

Keywords enable us to speak and think in new ways.

A warning reaches us from sociology.

Beck explained:

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

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

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

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

Culture

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

We do not know what "culture" means.

Not a good venture point for developing culture as praxis!

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is why communication is so central to holotopia.

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

Addiction

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

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

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

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

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

Religion

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

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

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

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

What serves this role in modern culture?

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

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

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

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

Ten themes

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

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

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

How to put an end to war?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zero to one

This conversation is about education.

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

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

Is education socializing us into an obsolete worldview?

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

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

Do schools kill creativity?

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

Is education making us unable to change course?

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

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

Is our education's very principle of operation obsolete?

Alienation

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

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

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

Enlightenment 2.0

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

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

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

Academia quo vadis?

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

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

Is transdisciplinarity the university institution's future?

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

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

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

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

Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We couldn't even hear him.

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

The elephant

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

Elephant ideogram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books and publishing

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

Does the book still have a future?

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

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

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

Liberation

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

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

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

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

Prototypes

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

They

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

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

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

We point to an answer by these examples.

Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Economies of scale result, which drastically reduce workload.

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

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

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

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

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

Scientific communication 1

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

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

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

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

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

Scientific communication 2

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

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

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

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

Public informing

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

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

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

Culture

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

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

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

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

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

Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 <p>Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?
 <blockquote> Because <em>on a much larger scale</em> this absurdity has become reality.</blockquote> </p>
 <p>The Modernity <em>ideogram</em> renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.</p>
 </div>
 <div class="col-md-3">
@@ Line 17: / Line 19: @@
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our proposal</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
+<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Its essence</h3>
 <blockquote>
-The core of our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
+The core of our proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.
 </blockquote>
@@ Line 35: / Line 37: @@
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Its substance</h3>
-<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated them as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted them to the purposes that need to be served? </p>
+<p>What would our handling of information be like, if we treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we took advantage of our best knowledge and technology, and adapted it to the purposes that need to be served?</p>
 <p>By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>
-<blockquote>The substance of our proposal is a <em>complete</em> <em>prototype</em> of <em>knowledge federation</em>, where initial answers to relevant questions are proposed, and in part implemented in practice. </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>
-<blockquote>Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em> (informed practice).</blockquote>
-<blockquote>Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>
+<p>We call the proposed approach to information [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] when we want to point to the <em>activity</em> that distinguishes it from the  common practices. We <em>federate</em> knowledge when we make what we "know" information-based; when we examine, select and combine all potentially relevant resources. When also the <em>way</em> in which we handle information is <em>federated</em>.</p>
-<p>All elements in our proposal are deliberately left unfinished, rendered as a collection of <em>prototypes</em>. Think of them as composing a 'cardboard model of a city', and a 'construction site'.  By sharing them we are not making a case for a specific 'city'—but for 'architecture' as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em>. </p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.</blockquote>
+<p>Like architecture and design, <em>knowledge federation</em> is both an organized set of activities, and an academic field that develops them.</p>
-</div> </div>
+<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>
-<div class="row">
+<h3>Its method</h3>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A proof of concept application</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
-<p>The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test.</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>
+<p>We refer to our proposal as [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] when we want to emphasize the difference it can make. </p>
-<blockquote>
-"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."
-</blockquote>
-<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>
-<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 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>
-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>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<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 a <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>
-<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision is made concrete in terms of <em>five insights</em>, as explained below.</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A principle</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p><em>What do we need to do</em> to "change course" toward <em>holotopia</em>?</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> point to a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things  [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]].</blockquote>
-<p>This principle is suggested by <em>holotopia</em>'s 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>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A method</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<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 [[Wholeness|<em>whole</em>]]—<em>we must see things whole</em>! </blockquote>
-<p>To highlight that the <em>knowledge federation</em> methodology described and implemented in the proposed <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>While the characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.</p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of the [[holoscope|<em>holoscope</em>]] is to help us see things whole.</blockquote>
 <p>
@@ Line 128: / Line 63: @@
 </p>
-<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>
+<p>We use the Holoscope [[ideogram|<em>ideogram</em>]] to point to this purpose. The <em>ideogram</em> draws on the metaphor of inspecting a hand-held cup, in order to see whether it is broken or whole. We inspect a cup by <em>choosing</em> the way we look; and by looking at all sides.</p>
+<p>While the characteristics of the <em>holoscope</em>—the design choices or <em>design patterns</em>, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.</p>
-<p>The <em>holoscope</em> distinguishes itself by allowing for <em>multiple</em> ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called <em>scopes</em>. The <em>scopes</em> and the resulting <em>views</em> have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing. The <em>views</em> that show the entire <em>whole</em> from a certain angle are called <em>aspects</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>
-<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed <em>creation</em> of the ways in which we look at a theme or issue—has become <em>necessary</em> in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. 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 our conventional ones.</p>
+<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>
-<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>
+<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information, distinguished by purposeful, free and informed choice or <em>creation</em> of the way we look at the world, has become necessary, suggests the Modernity <em>ideogram</em>. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with one other and with the conventional ones.</p>
-<p>To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>
+<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.
@@ Line 143: / Line 80: @@
 <p>A way of looking or [[scope|<em>scope</em>]]—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct assessment of an object of study or situation—is a new <em>kind of result</em> that is made possible by (the general-purpose science that is modeled by) the <em>holoscope</em>.</p>
-<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or needs to be perceived (also) as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scopes</em>); and to do that collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>
+<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or needs to be perceived (also) as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scope</em>); and to do that collectively and collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="page-header" ><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Scope</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<blockquote>What is wrong with our present "course"? In what ways does it need to be changed? What benefits will result?</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
-<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</p>
-<p>We apply the <em>holoscope</em> and illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes, which <em>determine</em> the "course":</p>
-<ul>
-<li><b>Innovation</b>—the way we use our ability to create, and induce change</li>
-<li><b>Communication</b>—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled</li>
-<li><b>Epistemology</b>—the fundamental assumptions we use to create truth and meaning; which determine "the relationship we have with information"</li>
-<li><b>Method</b>—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life; or "the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it"</li>
-<li><b>Values</b>—the way we "pursue happiness"; our values <em>determine</em> the course</li>
-</ul>
-<p>In each case, we see a structural defect, which led to perceived problems. We demonstrate practical ways, partly implemented as <em>prototypes</em>, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We see that their removal naturally leads to improvements that are well beyond the elimination of problems.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>holotopia</em> vision results.</blockquote>
-<p>In the spirit of the <em>holoscope</em>, we here only summarize the <em>five insights</em>—and provide evidence and details separately.</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>Power structure</em>]]</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A vision</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A difference to be made</h3>
-<h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
-<blockquote><b>What</b> might constitute "a way to change course"?</blockquote>
-<p>"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. Imagine if some malevolent entity, perhaps an insane dictator, took control over that power! </p>
-<blockquote>The [[Power structure|<em>power structure</em>]] insight is that no dictator is needed.</blockquote>
-<p>While the nature of the <em>power structure</em> will become clear as we go along, imagine it, to begin with, as our institutions; or more accurately, as <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> (which we simply call <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 certain specific ways, <em>they decide what the effects of our work will be</em>. </p>
-<blockquote>The <em>power structure</em> determines whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions. </blockquote>
-<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
-<p>How suitable are <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> for their all-important role?</p>
-<blockquote>Evidence shows that the <em>power structure</em> wastes a lion's share of our resources. And that it either <em>causes</em> problems, or makes us incapable of solving them.</blockquote>
-<p>The root cause of this malady is in the way <em>systems</em> evolve. </p>
-<blockquote>Survival of the fittest favors the <em>systems</em> that are predatory, not those that are useful. </blockquote>
-<p>[https://youtu.be/zpQYsk-8dWg?t=920 This excerpt]  from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as a law professor created to <em>federate</em> an insight he considered essential) explains how the most powerful institution on our planet evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, notably the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect predator.  [https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?t=2780 This scene] from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how the <em>power structure</em> affects <em>our own</em> condition.</p>
-<p>The  <em>systems</em> provide an ecology, which in the long run shapes our values and "human quality". They have the power to <em>socialize</em> us in ways that suit <em>their</em> survival interests. "The business of business is business"; if our business is to succeed in competition, we <em>must</em> act in ways that lead to that effect. To the <em>system</em> it makes no difference whether we bend and comply, or get replaced.</p>
-<p>
-[[File:Bauman-PS.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>A consequence, Zygmunt Bauman diagnosed, is that bad intentions are no longer needed for bad things to happen. Through <em>socialization</em>, the <em>power structure</em> can co-opt our duty and commitment, and even heroism and honor.</p>
-<p>Bauman's insight that even the holocaust was a consequence and a special case, however extreme, of  the <em>power structure</em>, calls for careful contemplation: Even the concentration camp  employees, Bauman argued, were only "doing their job"—in a <em>system</em> whose character and purpose was beyond their field of vision, and power to change. </p>
-<p>While our focus is on the <em>power structures</em> of the past, we are committing—in all innocence, by acting only through the <em>power structures</em> we are part of—the greatest  [https://youtu.be/cIM0Y_7Zxyg massive crime] in human history.</p>
-<blockquote>Our children may not have a livable planet to live on.</blockquote>
-<p>Not because someone broke the rules—<em>but because we follow them</em>.</p>
-<h3>Remedy</h3>
-<p>The fact that we will not solve our problems unless we develop the capability to update our <em>systems</em> has not remained unnoticed. </p>
-<p>
- [[File:Jantsch-vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>The very first step that the The Club of Rome's founders made 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>The work and the conclusions of this team were based on results in the systems sciences. In the year 2000, in "Guided Evolution of society", systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy surveyed relevant research, and concluded in a true <em>holotopian</em> tone:</p>
-<blockquote>We are the <em>first generation of our species</em> that has the privilege, the opportunity and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed <em>chosen people</em>. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These two are core requirements, because <em>what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.</em></blockquote>
-<p>In 2010 Knowledge Federation began to self-organize to enable progress on this frontier. </p>
-<p>The method we use is simple: We create a [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] of a system, and a <em>transdisciplinary</em> community and project around it to update it continuously. The insights in participating disciplines can in this way have real or <em>systemic</em> effects.</p>
-<p>Our very first <em>prototype</em> of this kind, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism in 2011, was of a public informing that identifies systemic causes and proposes corresponding solutions (by involving academic and other experts) of perceived problems (reported by people directly, through citizen journalism). </p>
-<p>A year later we created [https://holoscope.info/2013/05/31/2574/ The Game-Changing Game] as a generic way to change <em>systems</em>—and hence as a "practical way to craft the future"; and based on it The Club of Zagreb, an update of The Club of Rome.</p>
-<p>Each of about forty [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] in our portfolio is a result of applying [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] in a specific domain.  Each of them is conceived in terms of [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—problem-solution pairs, ready to be adapted to other applications and domains.</p>
-<p>The Collaborology <em>prototype</em>, in education, will illustrate the advantages of <em>systemic innovation</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>Suppose we used the <em>holoscope</em> as 'headlights'; what difference would that make?</blockquote>
-<p> An education that prepares us only for traditional professions, once in a lifetime, is an obvious obstacle to <em>systemic</em> change. Collaborology implements an education that is in every sense flexible (self-guided, life-long...), and in an <em>emerging</em> area of interest (collaborative knowledge work, as enabled by new technology). By being collaboratively created itself (Collaborology is created and taught by a network of international experts, and offered to learners world-wide), the economies of scale result that <em>dramatically</em> reduce effort. This in addition provides a sustainable business model for developing and disseminating up-to-date knowledge in <em>any</em> domain of interest. By conceiving the course as a design project, where everyone collaborates on co-creating the learning resources, the students get a chance to exercise and demonstrate "human quality". This in addition gives the students an essential role in the resulting 'knowledge-work ecosystem' (as 'bacteria', extracting 'nutrients') .</p>
 </div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Collective mind|<em>Collective mind</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Scope</h3>
-<p>We have just seen that our key evolutionary task is to make institutions <em>whole</em>.</p>
-<blockquote><b>Where</b>—with what institution or <em> system</em>—shall we begin?</blockquote>
-<p>The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for two reasons. </p>
-<p>One of them is obvious: If information and not competition will be our guide, then our information will need to be different.</p>
-<p>In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication—which turns a collection of independent individual into a coherently functioning entity— <em>is</em> in effect the system. It is the communication system that determines how the system as a whole will behave. Wiener made that point by talking about the colonies of ants and bees.  Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", but let us here use this more contemporary one) the system's <em>sustainability</em>. 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, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have <em>suitable</em> communication-and-control.</p>
-<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
-<p>Presently, our core systems, and with our civilization as a whole, do not have that.</p>
-<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>
-<p>Our society's communication-and-control is broken; it needs 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 pointed to the broken connection between <em>scientific</em> information, and public awareness and policy. Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>
-<blockquote>These calls to action remained without effect.</blockquote>
-<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm. <em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his insight to the communication whose tie with action had been severed. We have assembled a collection of examples of similarly important academic results that shared a similar fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we call [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. </p>
-<blockquote>As long as the connection between communication and action is broken—<em>the academic results that challenge the present "course"</em> or point to a new one <em>will be ignored</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>An academic researcher may feel disheartened to see so many best ideas of our best minds ignored. What's the use of all the hard work and publishing—when even <em>the most basic</em> insights from our field, which are necessary for understanding the <em>relevance</em> of the nuances we are working on—have not been communicated to the public?</p>
-<p>This sentiment is, however, transformed to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, as soon we look at the vast creative frontier that is opening up. We are empowered to, we are indeed <em>obliged</em> to reinvent the <em>academic</em> system that determines how we collaborate, and what the effects of our work will be. </p>
-<p>And optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> ignored fact:</p>
-<blockquote>The network-interconnected interactive digital media technology, which is in common use, was created to <em>enable</em> a new paradigm on that frontier.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>The 'lightbulb' has already been created—<em>for the purpose of</em> providing our society the vision it needs.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>We, however, still use 'candles'.</blockquote>
-<p>Vannevar Bush pointed to this new paradigm, which we call <em>collective mind</em>, already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that given our vast volumes of information—technology and processes must be devised to enable us to "connect the dots" or think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", based on microfilm as technology.</p>
-<p>Douglas Engelbart took Bush's idea in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected into a network—then the overall result is that we are interconnected as the cells in a human organism are, by the organism's nervous system. </p>
-<p>All earlier innovations in this area—from the clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium with the message be physically <em>transported</em>.</p>
-<blockquote>This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in the human organism do.</blockquote>
-<p>We can develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em>.</p>
-<blockquote>We can be "collectively intelligent".</blockquote>
-<p>Engelbart conceived this new technology to enable us, and our <em>systems</em>, to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate. </p>
-<p>
-[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>But this, Engelbart observed, requires that we think differently; It requires that we use the technology to make <em>systems</em> whole.</p>
-<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we dubbed "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", will give us a chance to pause and reflect; see what all this <em>practically</em> means. Think about the prospects of improving our institutional and civilizational <em>collective minds</em>. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingertips on his forehead and looked up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..."  The improvement that is both necessary and possible is not just stupendously large; it is <em>qualitative</em>—from communication that doesn't work, and <em>systems</em> that don't work, to ones that do.</p>
-<p>To Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to do no better than make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that <em>broadcast</em> data, and overwhelm us with information.</p>
-<p>Anthony Giddens pointed to the effect our dazzled and confused <em>collective mind</em> had on culture; and on "human quality".</p>
-<p>
-[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>Our sense of meaning having been drowned in an overload of data, in a reality that's become too complex to comprehend—we resort to "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it competitively.</p>
-<blockquote>Information, and the way we handle it, <em>bind us</em> to <em>power structure</em>.</blockquote>
-<h3>Remedy</h3>
-<p>How can we repair the severed tie between communication and action?</p>
-<blockquote><em>How can we change our collective mind</em>—as our situation demands, and our technology enables?</blockquote>
-<p>Engelbart left us a simple answer: [[bootstrapping|<em>Bootstrapping</em>]].</p>
-<p><em>Writing</em> what needs to be done will not lead to solution (the tie between information and action being broken). <em>Bootstrapping</em> demands that we <em>self-organize</em>, and <em>act</em>, as it may best serve to restore <em>systems</em> to <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
-<blockquote><em>Bootstrapping</em> means that we either <em>create</em> functional systems with the material of our own minds and bodies, or <em>help others</em> do that.</blockquote>
-<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was conceived by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. </p>
-<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is an umbrella term for a variety of activities and social processes that together comprise a well-functioning <em>collective mind</em>. Their development and dissemination obviously requires a new body of knowledge, and a new institution.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>critical</em> task, however, is to weave the state of the art knowledge and technology <em>directly into systems</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:BCN2011.jpg]]<br>
-<small>Paddy Coulter, Mei Lin Fung and David Price speaking at our "An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism" workshop in Barcelona</small>
-</p>
-<p>We use the above triplet of photos ideographically, to highlight that we <em>are</em> doing that.</p>
-<p>In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers of <em>collective mind</em> technology and processes). The featured participants of our 2011 workshop in Barcelona, where our public informing <em>prototype</em> was created, are Paddy Coulter (the Director of Oxford Global Media and Fellow of Green College Oxford, formerly the Director of Oxford University's Reuter Program in Journalism) Mei Lin Fung (the founder of Program for the Future) and David Price (who co-founded both the Global Sensemaking R & D community and Debategraph—which is now the leading global platform for collective thinking).
-</p>
-<p>Other <em>prototypes</em> contributed other <em>design patterns</em> for restoring the severed tie between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 <em>prototype</em> showed how to <em>federate</em> a research result that has general interest for the public, which is written in an academic vernacular (of quantum physics). The first phase of this <em>prototype</em>, where the author collaborated with our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile live streamed dialog, where the result was announced and discussed. The third phase was online collective thinking about the result, by using Debategraph.</p>
-<p>The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> is conceived as a <em>direct</em> remedy for the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This <em>prototype</em> models a system by which <em>an academic community</em> can <em>federate</em> an answer to a socially relevant question (combine their resources in making it reliable and clear, and communicate it to the public). </p>
-<p>The question in this case was whether can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the operation of our <em>systems</em>; or whether the alternative—the information developed in the systems sciences—should be used. </p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Socialized reality|<em>Socialized reality</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
-<p>
-<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>
-Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> political leaders love their children—don't we all? But Greta was asking them to 'hit the brakes'; and when the 'bus' they are believed to be 'driving' is inspected, it becomes clear that its 'brakes' too are dysfunctional. </p>
-<p>The job of a political leader is to keep 'the bus on course' (the economy growing) for yet another four years. <em>Changing</em> 'course', by changing the <em>system</em>, is beyond what politicians can do, or even imagine doing.</p>
-<p>The COVID-19 pandemic may demand systemic changes <em>now</em>.</p>
-<blockquote><b>Who</b>—what institution or <em>system</em>—will lead us through our unprecedentedly large creative challenges?</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:Jantsch vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>Both Erich Jantsch and Doug Engelbart believed "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them. </p>
-<blockquote> Why?</blockquote>
-<p>There are evidently two ways in which the social role of the university can be perceived: The role the university <em>must</em> fulfill (claim the new-paradigm thinkers) if our civilization is to continue; and the role that we, academic professionals, consider ourselves to be in.</p>
-<p>We shall see that the roots of this dichotomy are in our institution's history. And that the key to resolving it is to admit the <em>historicity</em> of the academic ethos—as Stephan Toulmin pointed out in "Return to Reason", and we summarized and commented in [https://holoscope.info/2010/02/07/return-to-reason/ this blog post].</p>
-<p>We shall <em>not</em> argue that the contemporary-academic self-perception needs to change. Our point will be that, on the contrary, <em>acting in accord with the way in which we, academic people perceive our social role</em> requires a <em>fundamental</em> change—of the kind that can ignite a more comprehensive social and cultural change. In other words, we shall see that the academic tradition is in a similar situation today as it was at the time when Galilei was in house arrest.</p>
-<blockquote>We shall see why changing the relationship we have with information, which is presently in <em>academia</em>'s custody, is mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>We shall see why changing the relationship we have with information is the natural and easy "way to change course"—being something that we, academic professionals, have to do <em>anyway</em>. </blockquote>
-<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
-<p>This diagnosis will be an assessment of the contemporary university's situation, and its causes. </p>
-<p>We will come to understand the university's situation as a consequence of three events or points in this institution's evolution. The first two will allow us to understand the origins of academic self-perception; the third to see why this self-perception demands that we <em>change</em> the relationship we have with information.</p>
-<p>The first event is the university institution's point of inception, within the antique philosophical tradition, and concretely as Plato's Academy. John Marenbon described the mindset of the Academy as follows (in "Early Medieval Philosophy"; the boldface emphasis is ours):</p>
-<blockquote>Plato is justly regarded as a philosopher (and the earliest one whose works survive in quantity) because his method, for the most part, was to proceed to his conclusions by rational argument based on premises self-evident from observation, experience and thought. For him, it was the mark of a philosopher to move from the particular to the general, from the perceptions of the senses to the abstract knowledge of the mind. Where the ordinary man would be content, for instance, to observe instances of virtue, the philosopher asks himself about the nature of virtue-in-itself, by which all those instances are virtuous. Plato did not develop a single, coherent theory about universals (for example, Virtue, Man, the Good, as opposed to an instance of virtue, a particular man, a particular good thing); but the Ideas, as he called universals, play a fundamental part in most of his thought and, through all his different treatments of them, one tendency remains constant. <b>The Ideas are considered to exist in reality</b>; and the particular things which can be perceived by the senses are held to depend, in some way, on the Ideas for being what they are. One of the reasons why Plato came to this conclusion and attached so much importance to it lies in a preconception which he inherited from his predecessors. <b>Whatever really <em>is</em></b>, they argued, <b>must be changeless</b>; otherwise it <em>is</em> not something, but is always becoming something else. All the objects which are perceived by the senses can be shown to be capable of change: what, then, really <em>is</em>? Plato could answer confidently that the Ideas were unchanging and unchangeable, and so really <em>were</em>. Consequently, they—and not the world of changing particulars—were the object of true knowledge. The philosopher, by his ascent from the particular to the general, discovers not facts about the objects perceptible to the senses, but a new world of true, changeless being.</blockquote>
-<p>The highlights we made in Marenbon's text allow us to formulate the first point of this diagnosis:</p>
-<blockquote>The university has its roots in a philosophical tradition whose goal was to pursue <em>true knowledge</em>—assumed to be the knowledge of unchanging and unchangeable reality.</blockquote>
-<p><em>Any</em> rational method must ultimately rest on premises or axioms that are not rationally provable, which are considered "self-evident from observation, experience and thought". The fundamental axiom here was that <em>true knowledge</em> is "the knowledge of reality". The only question was <em>how</em> that knowledge was to be reached.</p>
-<p>Subsequent developments determined the way in which this question is now answered—and hence the academic ethos, and institutional structure.</p>
-<p>It was Aristotle, Plato's star student, who applied the Academia's rational method to a variety of themes. The recovery of Aristotle was a milestone in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages; but the Scholastics used his method to argue the truth of the Scripture. </p>
-<p>Aristotle's physics was common sense: Objects tend to fall down; heavier objects tend to fall faster. Galilei proved him wrong by throwing stones of varying size from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He devised a mathematical formula, by which the speed of a falling object could be calculated <em>exactly</em>. To the human mind about to become modern, Galilei (and the forefathers of science he here represents) demonstrated the <em>superiority</em> of the scientific way to truth. </p>
-<p>
-[[File:Toulmin-Vision2.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>We may now interpret Toulmin's above cryptic observations as follows: How could the rational method of Galilei and Newton, which was <em>conceived for exploring the questions that "had no day-to-day relevance to human welfare"</em>—assume such an all-important role and become the model and the foundation for pursuing knowledge <em>in general</em>? </p>
-<p>As the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest might suggest, when science was taking shape, the Church and the tradition had the prerogative of determining how people thought and behaved—which they held onto most firmly! The scientists were allowed to pursue their interests <em>because</em> they "had no day-to-day relevance to human welfare". But the educated, <em>modern</em> mind considered the fundamental axiom to be self-evident; so when the scientists proved that the "earlier theological accounts of Nature" were wrong, and offered to replace them by mathematically <em>exact</em> and experimentally demonstrable "natural laws", it seemed equally self-evident that <em>theirs</em> was the way to <em>true knowledge</em>, of unchanging and unchangeable reality. </p>
-<p>We may now formulate our second point:</p>
-<blockquote>During the Enlightenment, science replaced the classical philosophy and the Scripture in the role of our society's trusted way to <em>true knowledge</em>. </blockquote>
-<p>This allows us to comprehend the way in which we, academic people, perceive our role: We are (according to our self-perception) not the producers of practical knowledge, but the custodians the <em>standard</em> of <em>true knowledge</em>. And also the way in which this role is implemented:</p>
-<blockquote>We tend to take it for granted that the standard of <em>true knowledge</em> is constituted by the laboratories and departments of "basic science".</blockquote>
-<p>This is reflected both in academic ethos, and in the structure of the traditional European university—which favored "fundamental" fields such as mathematics, physics and philosophy; and relegated the more practical pursuits like architecture and design to "professional schools".</p>
-<p>And now our third and last point, why the state of the art of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> demands that we change <em>both</em> our ethos <em>and</em> institutional structure:</p>
-<blockquote>The assumption that science is the way to the knowledge of unchanging and unchangeable reality has been challenged and disowned <em>by science itself</em>. </blockquote>
-<p>While we <em>federated</em> this fact carefully, to see it, it is sufficient to read Einstein. (In our condensed or <em>high-level</em> manner of speaking, Einstein has the role of the <em>icon</em> of "modern science". Quoting Einstein is our way to say "here is what modern science has been telling us".) </p>
-<p>
-[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p><em>It is simply impossible</em>, Einstein remarked (while writing about "Evolution of Physics" with Leopold Infeld), to open up the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our ideas and models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing. We cannot even <em>conceive of</em> such a comparison!  Science is only an "attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought".</p>
-<p>In a moment we shall propose an altogether different approach to founding truth and meaning—<em>completely</em> independent of "reality" or "correspondence theory". Instead of calcifying the <em>foundations</em> as what science <em>is</em>, we'll show how to make it a function of what science <em>knows</em>! We'll introduce an art and science of <em>constructing</em> foundations for cultural artifacts, so that our culture may grow large and strong.</p>
-<blockquote>We shall point to a way to allow the <em>foundations</em> of truth and meaning to evolve <em>continuously</em>—so that our <em>culture</em> may evolve in sync with academic and other insights. </blockquote>
-<p>But before we do that, let us illustrate the depth and the breadth of the  <em>epistemological</em> gulf that now separates our popular understanding of "language, truth and reality" (to borrow Whorf's timely title, already 80 years old), and what we actually <em>know</em> about those matters. A vast and profoundly creative [https://holoscope.info/2011/09/08/the-foundations-frontier/ <em>foundations frontier</em>] is opening up. Let us visit it, however briefly, to see how profoundly our handling of everyday matters is likely to change, when we make the overdue <em>fundamental</em> changes.</p>
-<p>We condense a spectrum of academic insights to a handful of engaging stories or <em>vignettes</em>; and we combine [[vignette|<em>vignettes</em>]] into <em>threads</em>—where they enhance one another, and sometimes produce an overall dramatic effect.</p>
-<p>The Piaget–Lakoff–Oppenheimer <em>thread</em> illustrates how profoundly the 20th century scientific results challenge the naive idea of <em>right knowledge</em> that marked the <em>academia</em>'s ascent. The Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio <em>thread</em> shows that we need to understand the relationship between information and power in a completely new way.</p>
-<blockquote>We shall see who, or what, keeps 'Galilei in house arrest' today <em>today</em>—without any need for censorship or prison.</blockquote>
-<p>As a cognitive psychologist studying "the construction of reality in the child", Jean Piaget observed that children develop their conception of reality by manipulating physical objects. By studying "the metaphors we live by" as a cognitive linguist, George Lakoff concluded that abstract thinking is largely metaphorical—that it uses our experiences with physical objects as templates. By exploring why quantum physics is so difficult to comprehend, Robert Oppenheimer concluded (in "Uncommon Sense") that the small quanta of matter-energy defy common sense by behaving in ways that are <em>different from anything we have in experience</em>. </p>
-<p>Scientific truth is not and cannot be confined to what "makes sense". Richard Feynman observed (in "The Character of Physical Law"):</p>
-<blockquote>"It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions."</blockquote>
-<p>But this turns Plato's conception of <em>true knowledge</em> on its head, doesn't it?</p>
-<blockquote>Even <em>more</em> dramatic are the changes in our understanding of power and freedom—which the available insights now demand.</blockquote>
-<p>In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann described the social process by which "reality" is constructed. They pointed to the role that a certain <em>kind of</em> reality construction called "universal theories" (theories about the nature of reality, which determine how truth and meaning are to be created) play in maintaining a given social and political <em>order of things</em>. The Biblical worldview of Galilei's prosecutors—which invested the monarch with some of Almighty's absolute power— is a familiar historical example.</p>
-<p>The Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio [[thread|<em>thread</em>]] reveals something <em>essential</em> about ourselves, which we must know to be able to able to untangle the cultural knot we are in and "change course".</p>
-<p>This <em>thread</em> offers the data we need to be able to resolve a mystery: How we could be loving our children "above all else"—and still continue destroying the living substrate of our planet, and committing them to a dystopian future? And also Why we could have been  Alexander's mercenaries and Hitler's soldiers, or "cogs that mesh perfectly" of a modern corporation.</p>
-<blockquote>The Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio <em>thread</em> allows us to understand the inner, social-psychological workings of the <em>power structure</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>Since we already offered [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#Bourdieu an outline of this <em>thread</em>], we here only <em>highlight</em> the 'dots' that need to be connected.</p>
-<p>Through the turf behavior of horses as metaphor, Odin the Horse [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] points to an instinctive drive that we humans also share—to dominate and control; and to expand our 'turf', whatever it may be. Even if we may not want to take part in the human 'turf strife', we still live in the <em>ecology</em> that is created by it, and suffer the consequences.</p>
-<blockquote>The second <em>vignette</em> allows us to perceive culture, and the societal order of things we are socialized to accept as reality, as symbolic 'turf'.</blockquote>
-<p>As an alert witness of Algeria's war for independence,  Pierre Bourdieu saw how power morphed in modernity—from the "classical" instruments such as censorship and prison, to the "symbolic" ones, woven in modern economy and culture.</p>
-<p>And to understand the process, which we call <em>socialization</em>, by which that 'turf', and the "reality picture" that holds it together, are created. </p>
-<p>
-[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<blockquote>Bourdieu's "theory of practice" explains how power play can be rampant <em>without anyone's awareness</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>Bourdieu used two keywords—"field" and "game"—to refer to the symbolic or cultural 'turf'. By calling it a field, he suggested something akin to  a magnetic field, which orients our seemingly random or free behavior, without us noticing. By calling it a game, he portrayed it as something that structures or 'gamifies' our social existence, by giving each of us a certain set of 'action capabilities',  in accordance with our role. "The boss" has a certain body language and tone of voice; and so does "his secretary". Bourdieu used the keyword "habitus" to point to 'action capabilities'. The "habitus", according to Bourdieu, tends to be transmitted from body to body <em>directly</em>. Everyone kneels down when the king enters the room; so naturally we do too.</p>
-<p>Bourdieu's repeated emphasis that a "habitus" is "both structured and structuring" needs to be carefully considered. His point was that the <em>human</em> turf is completely unlike the leveled meadow of the horses; it is indeed as more sophisticated as our culture is compared to the culture of the horses.  </p>
-<blockquote>The human 'turf' is a structured result of historical 'turf strifes'.</blockquote>
-<p>Bourdieu keyword "doxa" points to the role that our "reality picture" plays in turning us into willing participants in this often so profoundly unjust and so infamously destructive 'game'. (This keyword has a rich and interesting history in social studies, which through Max Weber reaches at least as far back as Aristotle.) "Doxa" is a specific and widely common <em>experience</em>—that our social <em>order of things</em> is as immutable and as real as the physical reality we live in. "Orthodoxy" admits that other possible "reality pictures" exists, but claims that only a single one is the "right" one. "Doxa" ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives.</p>
-<blockquote>The third [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]], whose lead protagonist is the cognitive neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, allows us to understand why "doxa", or <em>socialized reality</em>, has such an uncanny cognitive grip on us humans. </blockquote>
-<p>As a cognitive neuroscientist, Damasio explained the anatomy and the physiology of the doxic experience. Damasio's is a simple result with profound consequences: When a certain nerve that connects the brain with the body is severed, the patient preserves the capability to reason rationally—and loses the capability to perceive relevance and set priorities. Damasio concluded that while the brain does the thinking, <em>the body</em> determines <em>what</em> we are capable of thinking.</p>
-<p>In a book titled "Descartes' Error", Damasio explained why the "homo sapiens" self-image that the modernity gave us is profoundly misleading: We are <em>not only</em>, and not even primarily the rational decision makers, as we tend to believe. Our rational decision making, and our consciously maintained reality picture in general, are largely controlled by an <em>embodied cognitive filter</em>, which <em>determines what options</em> we are able to rationally consider. </p>
-<blockquote>Damasio explained how we may be living in two "realities", and have two disparate sets of values—the ones we uphold rationally; and the <em>socialized</em> or embodied ones.</blockquote>
-<p> To honor this new self-conception, we adapted Johan Huizinga's the keyword, to point to our alternative identity, as  <em>homo ludens</em>. </p>
-<p>Damasio's research allows us to understand why we civilized humans don't rationally consider taking off our clothes and walking out in the street naked; <em>and</em> why we don't consider changing <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> either.</p>
-<blockquote>This <em>reverses</em> the common idea of power.</blockquote>
-<p>We may now condense the above cognitive and <em>epistemological</em> insights to a single point.</p>
-<blockquote>The relationship we have with information is a result of a historical error. </blockquote>
-<blockquote>This error has been detected and reported, but not corrected.</blockquote>
-<p>Its practical consequences include:</p>
-<ul>
-<li><b>Stringent limits to creativity</b>. A vast global army of selected, trained and publicly sponsored creative men and women are obliged to confine their work to <em>only observing</em> the world—<em>by looking at it through the lenses of traditional disciplines</em>. </li>
-<li><b>Severed tie between information and action</b>. The perceived purpose of information being to complete the 'reality puzzle'—every new "piece of information" appears to be just as relevant as any other; and also <em>necessary</em> for completing the 'puzzle'. Enormous amounts of information are produced "disconnected from usefulness"—as Postman diagnosed. </li>
-<li><b><em>Reification</em> of institutions</b>. Our "science", "democracy", "public informing" and other institutions have no explicitly stated purposes, against which their <em>implementations</em> may be evaluated; they simply <em>are</em> their implementations. It is for this reason that we use 'candles as headlights'.</li>
-<li><b>Destruction of culture</b>. To see it, join us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral: There is awe-inspiring architecture; Michelangelo's Pietà meets the eye, and his frescos are near by. Allegri's Miserere is reaching us from above. And then there is the ritual. This, and <em>a lot</em> more, comprises the human-made 'ecosystem' called "culture", where the "human quality" grows. The myths of old, including the myth that "truth" means "correspondence with reality", were mere <em>means</em> by which the cultural traditions pursued this all-important end. We discarded this 'ecosystem' because we discredited its "reality picture". But "reality" is not—and it has never been—what the culture is about. The 'cultural species' are rapidly going extinct. In culture we don't have 'the temperature and the CO2 measurements', to be able to diagnose problems and propose policies.</li>
-<li><b>Culture abandoned to <em>power structure</em>.</b> It is sufficient to to look around: Advertising is everywhere. And <em>explicit</em> advertising is only a tip of an iceberg. Variuos <em>kinds of</em> "symbolic power" are being used to <em>socialize</em> us as unaware consumers or willing voters—as [https://youtu.be/lOUcXK_7d_c the story of Edward Bernays] (Freud's American nephew who became "the pioneer of modern public relations and propaganda") might show.</li>
-</ul>
-<p>The following conclusion suggests itself:</p>
-<blockquote>The Enlightenment did not liberate us from power-related reality construction.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>Our <em>socialization</em> only changed hands—from the kings and the clergy, to the corporations and the media.</blockquote>
-<h3>Remedy</h3>
-</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-6">
-<blockquote>The Mirror <em>ideogram</em> characterizes the <em>academic</em> situation we are in,  and points to the way in which that situation must be handled.</blockquote>
-<p>Twenty-five centuries of evolution of our tradition have brought us here, in front of this metaphorical <em>mirror</em>. Our situation demands that we restore the original academic ethos, and engage in self-reflective <em>dialog</em>.</p>
+<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>A purpose of this <em>dialog</em> is to rid ourselves of <em>socialized</em> and inflated "knowing". But instead of appealing to common sense and logic, as Socrates did with his contemporaries, at the point of Academia's inception—we now have all the <em>epistemological</em> insights of the 20th century science and philosophy to work with. The taste bits we have just seen might already be enough to see why such a <em>dialog</em> is likely to be a game changer.</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>
-<blockquote>An <em>informed</em> self-reflective <em>dialog</em> will thoroughly change the academic self-image and self-identity!</blockquote>
+<p>Peccei also specified <em>what</em> needed to be done to "change course":</p>
+<blockquote>
-</div>
+"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">
-<p>
+[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small>Aurelio Peccei</small>
-[[File:Mirror2.jpg]]<br>
-<small>Mirror <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
-<p>When we see ourselves in the <em>mirror</em>, we see ourselves <em>in the world</em>. The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes self-awareness; it points to the need to put ourselves into the picture.</p>
+<p>This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". </p>
-<p>The world we see ourselves in, when we look at the <em>mirror</em>, is a world in dire need—for the kind of integrity, creativity and daring that our academic forefathers manifested, and gave our tradition the high esteem that we now enjoy. We see that now our tradition has a pivotal, vitally important role in that world.</p>
+<p>In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes the downfall of <em>reification</em>, and the ascent of <em>accountability</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>But its <em>main</em> message is an unexpected way in which the evolution of the academic tradition needs to continue. The <em>mirror</em> is right in front of us. The continuation of the <em>academia</em>'s evolution appears to have come to a standstill. But there is a straight and natural way to continue—however surprising or even 'magical' it might appear at first glance. </p>
-<blockquote>The academic tradition must continue its evolution by stepping <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>—and guiding our society accordingly!</blockquote>
-<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, a whole new academic and cultural <em>order of things</em> is waiting to be inhabited and develop. The <em>academia</em> must guide and liberate the oppressed—which at this point includes all of us;  <em>both</em> "the 99%" <em>and</em> "the 1%".</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em> model the academic and the social-cultural <em>order of things</em> on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>. </blockquote>
-<p>What makes this key step, through the <em>mirror</em>, academically or technically possible is what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—and 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>
-"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."
+"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>But if <em>truth by convention</em> has been the way in which <em>the sciences</em> improve their logical foundations—why not use it to update the logical foundations of <em>knowledge work</em> at large?</p>
-<p>[[truth by convention|<em>Truth by convention</em>]] is common in mathematics: "Let <em>X</em> be <em>Y</em>. Then..." and the argument follows. Insisting that <em>X</em> "really is" <em>Y</em> is obviously meaningless. A  convention is valid <em>within a given context</em>—which may be an article, or a theory, or a <em>methodology</em>.</p>
-<blockquote><em>Truth by convention</em> allows us to <em>build</em> a completely new <em>foundation</em> for truth and meaning—by defining a <em>methodology</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>Our <em>methodology</em> <em>prototype</em>, of which the <em>holoscope</em> is an extension, is formally called Polyscopic Modeling and nicknamed <em>polyscopy</em>. </p>
-<p>The <em>epistemology</em> of <em>polyscopy</em>, which is defined <em>by convention</em>, is called <em>design epistemology</em>. We defined [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] by rendering the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information) as a convention.</p>
-<p>In the "Design Epistemology" research article (published in the special issue of the Information Journal titled "Information: Its Different Modes and Its Relation to Meaning", edited by Robert K. Logan; see [https://holoscope.info/2012/11/17/design-epistemology/ this blog highlight ]with a link to the article) where we articulated this proposal, we made it clear that the <em>design epistemology</em> is only one of the many ways to implement the proposed <em>methodological</em> approach to information and knowledge. We drafted a parallel between the <em>modernization</em> of science that can result in this way, and the advent of modern art; by defining a <em>methodology</em> by convention, we can do in the sciences as the artists did, when they liberated themselves from the demand to mirror reality, by emulating the technique of Old Masters. </p>
-<blockquote>As the founders of science did, and as contemporary artists do—on the other side of the <em>mirror</em> we can <em>create</em> the ways in which we practice our profession.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>The advantages of the <em>methodological</em> approach to truth and meaning include:</blockquote>
-<ul>
-<li><b><em>Real</em> academic freedom</b>: When we no longer <em>reify</em> the worldview and the methods of our disciplines, we become empowered to be creative in entirely new ways. But to get there, we must face an interesting <em>technical</em> obstacle:  <em>Whatever we say</em> within the traditional-academic and cultural <em>order of things</em>, even when that is "we are constructing reality"—<em>by default</em> we are saying how the things "really are", out there in "reality". <em>Truth by convention</em> allows us to liberate ourselves from <em>reification</em> completely, with no residues left.</li>
-<li><b><em>Real</em> academic rigor</b>. <em>Truth by convention</em> is the natural antidote to "relativism", which the 20th century epistemological insights have led us to ("if even <em>science</em> is constructing reality—what makes you believe that <em>your</em> constructed reality is any better than mine?"). <em>Truth by convention</em> is  a practical way to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.  If we imagine the <em>methodological</em> approach to knowledge as 'lever' that can empower us to 'move the world' forward—then <em>truth by convention</em> is the requisite 'Archimedean point'. </li>
-<li><b><em>Real</em> accountability</b>. When we reflect in front of the <em>mirror</em>, we learn to disassociate information from "reality", and to see it as <em>the</em> core element of power.  A written <em>methodology</em> is to work with information as a constitution is to social organization.  </li>
-<li><b>The capability for continuous self-renewal</b>. A <em>methodology</em> is a <em>prototype</em>. And as all <em>prototypes</em> do, a <em>methodology</em> evolves continuously—by <em>federating</em> relevant knowledge.</li>
-</ul>
-<p>The <em>polyscopy</em> definition comprises eight aphorismic conventions called <em>postulates</em>; by using [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]], each of them is given an interpretation. We illustrate the power of this approach by discussing briefly the first two—by which Einstein's "epistemological credo" is turned into a convention. Here is how Einstein defined it (in Autobiographical Notes):</p>
-<blockquote>
-I shall not hesitate to state here in a few sentences my epistemological credo. I see on the one side the totality of sense experiences and, on the other, the totality of the concepts and propositions that are laid down in books. (…) The system of concepts is a creation of man, together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure of the conceptual system. (…) All concepts, even those closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen posits, just as is the concept of causality, which was the point of departure for this inquiry in the first place.
 </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>
-<p>A brief <em>vignette</em>, explaining how this all started, will enable us to contextualize this proposal in contemporary-academic order of things, and give it a reality touch. </p>
+<h3>A <em>different</em> way to see the future</h3>
-<p>To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Brussels Free University invited scientists and artists to "an interdisciplinary reflection on science, society, art and human action", called "Einstein Meets Magritte". To a section called "Worldviews and the Problem of Synthesis", we contributed a prospectus article for <em>polyscopy</em>, explaining how the <em>methodological</em> approach to information, modeled by <em>polyscopy</em>, can enable us to do that.</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> is a vision of a future that becomes accessible when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.</blockquote>
+<p>Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. In view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.</p>
-<p>
+<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>
-[[File:Einstein-Magritte.jpeg]]
+<p>The <em>holotopia</em> is different in spirit from them all. It is <em>more</em> attractive  than the futures the utopias projected—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not exist. And yet the <em>holotopia</em> is readily attainable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.</p>
-</p>
-<p>We showed a variant of the above slide, with a fragment of Einstein's "epistemological credo" and Magritte's "The Treachery of Images (<em>This Is not a pipe</em>) side by side; and explained that the 'meeting point' that Einstein and Magritte shared with so many of their contemporary creative thinkers was a groundbreaking insight—that we must learn to distinguish between "real" things and <em>our representations</em> of them.</p>
-<p>We then introduced the <em>methodological</em> approach, enabled by <em>truth by convention</em>, as a practical way to overcome the division and the confusion that disparate languages, traditions, disciplines and worldviews introduced, and 'complete the Tower of Babel'.</p>
-<p>The <b>first <em>postulate</em></b> of <em>polyscopy</em> defines <em>information</em>:</p>
-<blockquote><em>Information</em> is recorded experience.</blockquote>
-<p> It is thereby made explicit that the substance communicated by information is not "reality", but human experience. Hence we have "human experience" as 'common denominator', to which cultural artifacts across ages and traditions can be reduced—and then combined together.</p>
-<p>Furthermore, as experience can be recorded in a variety of ways (a chair, for instance, records experience about sitting and chair making)—objects, customs, myth... become valid carriers of <em>information</em>, and we see it as our duty to <em>extract and preserve</em> whatever is of relevance, by making it accessible to people in <em>our</em> time.<em>We become empowered to use or create other ways</em> to record and communicate <em>information</em>—in addition to academic books and articles.</p>
-<p>The <b>second <em>postulate</em></b> explains how <em>polyscopy</em> handles the worldviews, and the methods by which they are created.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>scope</em> determines the <em>view</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>By this convention, "reality" (or whatever is "objectively" causing our experience) has no a priori structure. The "aha experience", when we grasp an object of interest in a certain specific way, such as when we've understand its "causes", does not mean that w've seen and understood its "reality". By convention, the object of our representation is considered to be similar to an ink block in the Rorschach test—i.e. as something to which we <em>ascribe</em> meaning.</p>
-<p>Different ways to assign meaning are possible, and legitimate. With Piaget, we postulate that "the mind organizes the world by organizing itself". Instead of basing the legitimacy of our worldview <em>on a certain way of looking</em>—we extend the requirement that our ideas should be coherent and make sense, by insisting that <em>they must also serve their systemic purposes</em>, whatever those may be. </p>
-<p>This <em>postulate</em> is also a definition of <em>scope</em>—as whatever determines what we see. This definition empowers us to <em>create</em> <em>scopes</em>, to represent all levels of detail, and angles of looking. The way of looking that defines the <em>holoscope</em> is thereby made possible. We'll say more about this while elaborating on the <em>narrow frame</em> insight.</p>
-<p>Finally, the second <em>postulate</em> points to an attitude in communication, which we've associated with the keyword <em>dialog</em>. This attitude is a direct antidote to <em>doxic</em> arrogance; we <em>genuinely do our best</em> to let go of "our reality", and to listen and stay open to new ways of perceiving and comprehending.</p>
-<blockquote>What <em>practical</em> difference can this make?</blockquote>
-<p>To answer that question, we submitted a preliminary version of the <em>convenience paradox</em> result to "Worldviews and the Problem of Synthesis", showing how relevant experiences can be combined across historical periods and cultural traditions, to inform and thoroughly redirect our "pursuit of happiness". Since <em>convenience paradox</em> is the theme of our fifth insight, we here answer by presenting another example.</p>
+<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="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
-<blockquote>"What's Going on" is the title of our first book <em>prototype</em>, with subtitle "A Cultural Renewal", which exists as a rough manuscript. The book answers its title question in an entirely uncommon way—by pointing to a slow-developing but centrally important event, which is taking place in our time, in the context of which a variety of other events needs to be understood. </blockquote>
-<p>The Cultural Revival <em>ideogram</em> interprets the nature of our contemporary situation, and points to the way in which it needs to be handled. Our visible problems are a reflection of a <em>fundamental</em> error—which needs to be remedied before our problems can be corrected, and building can be resumed. </p>
-<p>It is argued that instead of 'building on whatever terrain we are', we must consciously <em>create</em> the foundations for what we uphold as "truth", and act on.</p>
-<blockquote>The book presents a careful argument for 'architecture' in <em>information</em> and <em>culture</em> construction.</blockquote>
-<p>Which is, of course, what we've been talking about all along.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="col-md-3">
-[[File:Whats Going On.gif]]<br><small>Cultural Renewal <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[five insights|<em>Five insights</em>]]</h2></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
+[[File:FiveInsights.JPG]]<br>
+<small>Five Insights <em>ideogram</em></small>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> resulted when we applied the <em>holoscope</em> to illuminate five <em>pivotal</em> themes; "pivotal" because they <em>determine</em> the "course":</blockquote>
-<p>Two concrete examples—our definitions of <em>design</em> and of <em>visual literacy</em>—will illustrate some of the advantages of using <em>truth by convention</em> to <em>found</em> academic work. Each of them is an example of substituting <em>truth by convention</em> for <em>reification</em> in an already existing academic field—and thereby giving the existing <em>praxis</em> an explicitly stated and up-to-date direction and purpose. The fact that those proposals were welcomed by the target communities suggests that this line of work may not need a new <em>paradigm</em> to become practical.</p>
-<p>The example of design illustrates how the approach we are proposing can be used to provide <em>both</em> a rigorous academic foundation <em>and</em> a timely new direction to an academic field ([https://holoscope.info/2009/09/14/an-academic-foundation-for-design/ this chronological summary] provides links for in-depth exploration).</p>
-<blockquote>The definition of "design" gives us also a way to understand our contemporary situation, and our proposal.</blockquote>
-<p>We defined <em>design</em> as "the alternative to <em>tradition</em>", where <em>design</em> and <em>tradition</em> are (by convention) two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>. <em>Tradition</em> relies on spontaneous and incremental Darwinian-style evolution. Change is resisted; small changes are tested and assimilated through generations of use. We practice <em>design</em> when we consider ourselves <em>accountable</em> for <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
-<blockquote><em>Design</em> must be used when <em>tradition</em> cannot be relied on.</blockquote>
-<p><em>Design</em> must be in place when the rate change is too fast; or when the <em>traditional</em> order of things is no longer respected and maintained. </p>
-<p>The situation we are in, which we pointed to by the bus with candle headlights metaphor, can now be understood as a result of a transition: We are no longer <em>traditional</em>; and we are not yet <em>designing</em>. Our call to action can be understood as the call to <em>complete</em> modernization—and become able to evolve in a new way. </p>
-<p><em>Reification</em> can now be understood as the <em>foundation</em> that suits <em>tradition</em>; <em>truth by convention</em> as the one that suits <em>design</em>.</p>
-<p>The second example: Our definition of <em>implicit information</em>, and of <em>visual literacy</em> as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em>, for the International Visual Literacy Association, was in spirit similar—but its point was different (see [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#VL this summary]).</p>
-<p>
-[[File:Whowins.jpg]]
-</p>
-<p>We showed the above <em>ideogram</em> to highlight that again and again, on our contemporary-cultural scene, two kinds of information meet each other in a direct duel: The <em>explicit information</em>, represented by the explicit, factual and verbal warning in a black-and-white rectangle, and the <em>implicit information</em>, represented by the colorful and "cool" rest. The <em>implicit information</em> wins "hands down", this <em>ideogram</em> shows (or else this would not be a cigarette advertising). Our larger point was that while legislation, ethical sensibilities and "official" culture are focused on <em>explicit information</em>, our culture is dominated and <em>created</em> by <em>implicit information</em>. </p>
-<blockquote>We need <em>visual</em> literacy—to
 <ul>
-<li>understand our heritage</li>
+<li><b>Innovation</b>—the way we use our growing ability to create, and induce change</li>
-<li>understand how subtle messages affect us</li>
+<li><b>Communication</b>—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled</li>
-<li>be able to <em>create</em> <em>implicit information</em>—and redeem culture from <em>power structure</em></li>
+<li><b>Foundation</b>—the fundamental assumptions based on which truth and meaning are socially constructed; which serve as foundation to the edifice of culture; which <em>determine</em> the relationship we have with information</li>
+<li><b>Method</b>—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life; or the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it</li>
+<li><b>Values</b>—the way we "pursue happiness"; or choose "course"</li>
 </ul>
-</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Narrow frame|<em>Narrow frame</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
-<p>We have just seen that the academic tradition—instituted as the modern university—finds itself in a much larger and more central social role than it was originally conceived for. We look up to the <em>academia</em>, and not to the Church and the tradition, for answers to <em>the</em> pivotal question:</p>
-<blockquote><b>How</b> should we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it?</blockquote>
-<p>That role, and that question, carry an immense power!</p>
-<p>It was by providing a completely <em>new</em> answer to that question, that the last "great cultural revival" came about.</p>
-<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
-<blockquote>So how <em>should</em> we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it? </blockquote>
+<p>In each case, when we 'connected the dots' (combined the available insights to reach a general one), we were able to identify a large structural defect. We demonstrated practical ways, partly implemented as <em>prototypes</em>, in which those structural defects can be remedied. We showed that such structural interventions lead to benefits that are well beyond curing problems.</p>
-<blockquote>No one knows! </blockquote>
-<p>Of course, countess books and articles have been written about this theme since antiquity. But in spite of that—or should we say <em>because</em> of that—no consensus has been reached.</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>
-<p>Since nobody felt accountable for supplying it, the way we the people look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it, shaped itself spontaneously—from odds and ends of science as they appeared to the public around the middle of the 19th century, when Darwin and Newton as cultural heroes were replacing Adam and Moses. What is today popularly considered as the "scientific worldview" took shape then—and remained largely unchanged.</p>
-<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, this worldview would make us believe, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to comprehend the world in causal terms, and make rational choices. Give us a correct model of the world, and we'll know exactly how to satisfy our needs (which we also know, because we can experience them directly). But the traditional cultures got it all wrong: Having been unable to explain the natural phenomena, they put a "ghost in the machine", and made us pray to him to give us what we needed. Science corrected that error—and now we can satisfy our needs by manipulating the mechanisms of nature directly, with the help of technology. </p>
-<p>It is this causal or "scientific" understanding of the world that made us modern. Isn't that how we understood that women cannot fly on broomsticks?</p>
-<p>While it is undoubtedly correct that the 19th century "scientific" worldview enabled us to wash away a wonderful amount of prejudice—it is also true that we have thrown out the 'baby' (culture) with the bath water.</p>
-<p>From our collection of reasons why this way of looking at the world is obsolete and needs to be changed, we here mention only two.</p>
-<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>
-<p>The mechanistic way of looking at the world that Newton and his contemporaries developed in physics, which around the 19th century shaped the worldview of the masses, was later disproved and disowned by modern science. Research in physics showed that even the <em>physical</em> phenomena exhibit the <em>kinds of</em> interdependence that cannot be understood in "classical" or causal terms.</p>
-<p>In "Physics and Philosophy", Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, described how "the narrow and rigid" way of looking at the world that our ancestors adapted from the 19th century science damaged culture—and in particular its parts on on which the "human quality" depended, such as ethics and religion. And how as a result the "instrumental" or (as Bauman  called them) "adiaphorized" thinking and values became prominent. As we have seen, it is those values that bind us together into wasteful and destructive <em>power structures</em>.</p>
+<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:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
+[[File:Castells-vision.jpeg]]
 </p>
-<p>[https://youtu.be/hxsYbVK-tE0 Hear Heisenberg say] that he expected that in the long run the philosophical and cultural consequences of atomic physics—the change of how we see <em>everyday</em> problems, and of culture—would be more important than the technical ones.</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>
-<blockquote>Heisenberg believed that the most valuable gift of modern physics to humanity would not be nuclear energy or semiconductor technology—but a <em>cultural</em> change, which would result from the dissolution of the <em>rigid frame</em>.</blockquote>
+<h3><em>Collective mind</em> insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)</h3>
-<p>The theme we are touching upon is <em>more</em> than the relationship we have with information; what we are talking about determines the relationship we have with the world, and with each other. A suitable context for understanding its broader import is what Erich Jantsch called the "evolutionary paradigm". Jantsch explained the evolutionary paradigm via the metaphor of a boat in a river, representing a system (which may at the limit be the natural world, or our civilization). When we use the classical scientific paradigm, we position ourselves <em>above</em> the boat, and aim to look at it "objectively". The classical systems paradigm would position us <em>on</em> the boat, and we would seek ways to steer the boat effectively and safely. But when we use the evolutionary paradigm, we perceive ourselves as—water. We <em>are</em> evolution. </p>
+<p>We looked at the <em>social process</em> by which information is handled. </p>
-<blockquote>The <em>narrow frame</em> determines <em>the way we are</em> as 'water'—and hence our evolutionary "course", and our future. </blockquote>
+<p>[https://youtu.be/8ApPkTvQ4QM?t=38 Hear Neil Postman] observe:</p>
-<p>In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr (considered in Germany as Heisenberg's scientific "heir") co-wrote the Potsdam Manifesto, whose subtitle and message read "We need to learn to think in a new way". The reasons offered include scientific <em>epistemological</em> insights, and the global condition. The proposed new thinking is closely similar to the one that defines <em>holotopia</em>: </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> "The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. (...) We need to reach a fundamentally new way of thinking and a more comprehensive understanding of our <em>Wirklichkeit</em> ["reality", or what we consider as "true"], in which we, too, see ourselves as a thread in the fabric of life, without sacrificing anything of our special human qualities. This makes it possible to recognize humanity in fundamental commonality with the rest of nature (...)"</blockquote>
-<blockquote>The second reason is that even complex mechanisms ("classical" nonlinear dynamic systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:MC-Bateson-vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>It has been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Research in cybernetics explained this <em>scientifically</em>: The "hell" (which you may imagine as global issues, or the 'destination' toward which the 'bus' we are riding in is reportedly headed) tends to be a "side effect" of our best efforts and "solutions", reaching us through "nonlinearities" and "feedback loops" in the natural and social complex systems we are part of.</p>
-<p>
-[https://youtu.be/nXQraugWbjQ?t=57 Hear Mary Catherine Bateson] (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, 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>
-<blockquote><em>Truth by convention</em> allows us to explicitly <em>define</em> and academically <em>develop</em> new ways to look at the world.</blockquote>
-<p>We called the result a <em>methodology</em>, and our <em>prototype</em> the Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em> or [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. </p>
-<blockquote><em>Polyscopy</em> is a <em>general-purpose methodology</em>; it provides methods for creating insights about any chosen theme—on any level of generality.</blockquote>
-<p>Since the main purpose of the Polyscopic Modeling <em>prototype</em> is to point to the advantages of the <em>methodological</em> approach to <em>general</em> knowledge compared to both the <em>narrow frame</em> and  the disciplinary approach, we here outline several of its [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]. </p>
-<ul>
+<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>
-<li>Polyscopy is a <b>general-purpose</b> <em>methodology</em>. As Abraham Maslow observed, to a person with a hammer in his hand everything looks like a nail. A scientific discipline is a 'hammer'. By virtue of being <em>general-purpose</em>, <em>polyscopy</em> allows for turning the traditional-academic approach to knowledge and to the world inside-out: Instead of having a <em>fixed</em> set of concepts and a method, and applying them where they <em>can</em> be applied (and thus sacrificing purpose to "objectivity")—we provide  completely <em>flexible</em> concepts and methods, to be applied <em>wherever reliable information is needed</em> (while continuing to improve the methods).   <em>Polyscopy</em> demands that we <em>choose themes and ways of looking according to relevance</em>; and that we <em>create the corresponding information <b>as well as we can</b></em>. According to sociologists, we live in a <em>post-traditional culture</em> (where we no longer follow in the footsteps of our ancestors), in <em>reflexive modernity</em> (where we make lifestyle and other core choices rationally, by reflecting about them) and in <em>risk society</em> (impregnated by awareness of existential risks, which we don't know how to handle). Our situation <em>demands</em> that we create reliable information about life's basic issues. Reliability, and rigor, here are not in the process, but in (as Erich Jantsch called it) "process of process"—i.e. in the way in which the methods and processes <em>evolve</em>. </li>
-<li>Polyscopy is a <b>prototype</b>; it is <em>explicitly defined</em> by a collection of principles that are defined <em>by convention</em>. Hence <em>it provides explicit guidelines</em> for creating and using information. Those guidelines are themselves <em>federated</em>—and hence subject to change, when the society's needs or the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> demand that. The formulation of a <em>methodology</em> gives us a way to spell out the assumptions and the rules—and provide the much-needed scientifically-based criteria and methods by which information is handled in our society. </li>
-<li>The method of <em>polyscopy</em> too are <em>federated</em>—by distilling and combining methodological insights in relevant traditions.</li>
-</ul>
+<h3><em>Socialized reality</em> insight (analogy with Enlightenment)</h3>
+<p>We looked at the [[foundation|<em>foundation</em>]] on which truth and meaning are socially constructed, which we also call [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]]. It was the [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]] change—from the rigidly held Biblical worldview of Galilei's prosecutors—that made the Enlightenment possible; that triggered comprehensive change.</p>
-<p>The <em>methodological</em> approach allows us to extend the project science to encompass all themes that are of interest—and give priority to the most urgent or vital ones.</p>
+<p>We saw that a similar fundamental change, with similar consequences, is now mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds.</p>
-<p>A <em>methodology</em> is in essence a toolkit; anything that does the job would do. We, however, defined <em>polyscopy</em> by turning state of the art <em>epistemological</em> and methodological insights into conventions.</p>
+<h3><em>Narrow frame</em> insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)</h3>
-<blockquote>By doing hat, we showed how the severed evolutionary tie—between fundamental and methodological insights, and the way we the people look at the world—can be restored.</blockquote>
+<p>We looked at the method by which truth and meaning are socially constructed.</p>
+<p> Science eradicated prejudice and expanded our knowledge—where the methods and interests of its disciplines could be applied. We showed how to <em>extend</em> the scientific approach to knowledge, to questions we <em>need to</em> answer. </p>
+<h3><em>Convenience paradox</em> insight (analogy with Renaissance)</h3>
-<p>The <em>methodology</em> definition allows us to state explicitly the <em>criteria</em> that orient everyday handling of information. We used this approach to define, for instance, what being "informed" means. We modeled this intuitive notion with the keyword [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]]. To be "informed", one needs to have a <em>gestalt</em> that is appropriate to one's situation. "Our house is on fire" is a canonical example. The knowledge of a <em>gestalt</em> is profoundly different from only knowing the data (such as the room temperatures and the CO2 levels.). To have an appropriate <em>gestalt</em> means to be moved to do the action that the situation at hand is calling for.</p>
+<p>We looked at the values that determine the way we "pursue happiness"; and our society's "course".</p>
-<blockquote>Are we misinformed—in spite of all the information and information technology we own? </blockquote>
+<p>We showed that when proper 'light' illuminates the 'way'—our choices and pursuits will be entirely different.</p>
-<blockquote>Could we be living in a misapprehended "reality"—which <em>obscures</em> from us the true nature of our situation, and the way we need to act?</blockquote>
-<p>"One cannot not communicate", reads one of Paul Watzlawick's axioms of communication. Even when everything in a media report is <em>factually</em> correct, the <em>gestalt</em> it conveys <em>implicitly</em> can entirely miss the mark—because we are told what Donald Trump has said; and not Aurelio Peccei.</p>
-<p><em>Polyscopy</em> offers a collection of techniques for 'proving' or <em>justifying</em>, and also communicating, the <em>gestalts</em> and other general or <em>high-level</em> insights and claims. Those techniques are, of course, also <em>federated</em>:</p>
-<ul>
-<li>[[pattern|<em>Patterns</em>]], defined as "abstract relationships", are <em>federated</em> from science and mathematics; they have a similar role as mathematical functions do in traditional sciences; by being generally applicable and defined <em>by convention</em>, they no longer constitute a <em>narrow frame</em></li>
-<li>[[ideogram|<em>Ideograms</em>]] allow us to adapt the techniques from the arts, advertising and communication design, and give expressive power to <em>gestalts</em>, <em>patterns</em> and other insights</li>
-<li>[[vignette|<em>Vignettes</em>]] implement the basic technique from media informing, where an insight or issue is made accessible by telling illustrative and "sticky"  real-life people and situation stories</li>
-<li>[[thread|<em>Threads</em>]] implement Vannevar Bush's technical idea of "trails", and provide a way to combine specific insights into higher-level units of meaning</li>
-</ul>
-<blockquote>In the manner of a fractal, the following [[vignette|<em>vignette</em>]] will further explain <em>why</em> we need to <em>federate</em> the we look at the world, to be able to comprehend and handle it—both in the <em>academia</em> and in general; and illustrate the benefits that will result.</blockquote>
-<p>A situation with overtones of a crisis arose in the early days of computer programming. The buddying computer industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which no-one could understand and correct.</p>
-<p>The solution was found in creating "computer programming methodologies", of which the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard, is a prime example.  [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#InformationHolon The longer story] is interesting but we already shared it, so here we only highlight its main point, and offer a conclusion.</p>
-<p>Any sufficiently complete programming language will allow the programmers to create <em>any</em> application program. The creators of the object oriented methodology, however, made themselves accountable for providing the programmers the conceptual and programming tools that would enable them, or even <em>compel</em> them, to write comprehensible, reusable and well-structured code. </p>
-<p>When a team of programmers can no longer understand the program they have created, their problem is easily detected—because the program will not compile or run on the computer. But when a human generation can no longer understand the information they have created, or the world this information is supposed to explain—isn't that exactly the situation that The Club of Rome and Aurelio Peccei have diagnosed?</p>
-<p>We may conclude from this parallel, and from the <em>socialized reality</em> insight:</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>academia</em> too must consider itself accountable for the tools and processes it gives to its members; and to our society at large.</blockquote>
-<p>The structuring template the creators of the object oriented methodology conceived and gave to the programmers is called "object". The core purpose of an "object" is to "encapsulate" or "hide" implementation, and provide or "export" function. "Object" is a piece of code that interfaces with the rest of the program through a collection of functions  it provides. A printer may provide the function "print"; a scanner the function "scan"—and only <em>those functions</em> are visible in the "higher-level" code. The code by which those functions are implemented is made available <em>separately</em>.</p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
-<p>The solution for information structuring we proposed within <em>polyscopy</em> is called <em>information holon</em> (we adapted the keyword "holon" from Arthur Koestler, who used it as a name for something that is both a whole, and a part in a larger whole). An <em>information holon</em> is closely similar to the "object" in object oriented methodology. The information, represented by the "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. This suggests the structuring principle, where the <em>square</em> represents a multiplicity of ways of looking, and contributing data and insights, and the <em>circle</em> represents the point of it all (such as 'the cup is broken'). As the case is with the "object", the <em>information holon</em> "encapsulates" the data within the <em>square</em>, and makes only the <em>function</em> available to the rest of the world as the <em>circle</em>.</p>
-</div> <div class="col-md-3">
-[[File:Information.jpg]]<br>
-<small>Information <em>ideogram</em></small>
 </div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>When the <em>circle</em>  is a general insight or a <em>gestalt</em>, the details that comprise the <em>square</em> are given the power to influence our awareness of issues, and the way in which we handle them. When the <em>circle</em> is a <em>prototype</em>, the multiplicity of insights that comprise the <em>square</em> are given direct <em>systemic</em> impact, and hence agency.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>information holon</em> allows us to implement also the structuring principle, which the creators of the object oriented methodology conceived as the solution to their challenge.</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<blockquote>Dahl's point, that "precise thinking is possible only in terms of a <em>small</em> number of elements at a time", <em>must</em> be <em>federated</em> and applied in our work with knowledge at large.</blockquote>
-<p>This means that we must be able to <em>create</em> small, manageable snapshots of "reality" (or whatever may be its part or issue we are considering), on any desired level of detail or generality; and that we must devise ways of organizing and inter-relating such <em>views</em> to compose a coherently structured whole.</p>
-<p>We adapted or <em>federated</em> Dahl's insight by declaring a collection of principles that define <em>polyscopy</em>. We point to them by the metaphor of the mountain—and visually by the triangle in the Information <em>ideogram</em>. </p>
-<p>To understand them, imagine taking a mountain walk: We may look at the valley down below, and see lakes, forests and villages; or at the trees that surround us; or zoom in on a flower and inspect its details. In each case, what we see is a simple and <em>coherent</em> view ("coherent" because it represents a single level of detail). It is in the nature of our perception that we are always given a <em>coherent</em> view—along with the awareness of the position our <em>view</em> occupies relative to other views, and to the world at large. The aim of <em>polyscopy</em> is to preserve that basic quality of our perception, which enables us to make sense of our <em>views</em>—by comprehending each of them <em>and</em> by contextualizing them correctly—also in the work with human-made and abstract information.</p>
-<p>It is clear that this way of organizing and maintaining knowledge requires on the one side a new collection of social processes, by which the <em>high-level views</em> or <em>circles</em> are kept consistent with the corresponding <em>squares</em>, and with each other. And on the other side a <em>general-purpose methodology</em>, by which we can <em>create</em> new <em>high-level</em> concepts (corresponding to 'village', 'forest' and 'lake'), on any level of generality. </p>
-<blockquote>The required social processes are modeled by <em>knowledge federation</em>; the <em>methodology</em> by <em>polyscopy</em>. </blockquote>
-<p>The Holotopia <em>prototype</em> may now be understood as the <em>circle</em> that completes our <em>knowledge federation</em> proposal; which <em>federates</em> the proposal. </p>
-<p>It is customary in programming methodology design to showcase the programming language that implements the methodology by creating its first compiler in the language itself. We applied the same approach and created a <em>polyscopic</em> book manuscript, titled "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>". </p>
-<p>In this book we described the <em>paradigm</em> that is modeled by <em>polyscopy</em>;  and used <em>polyscopy</em> to make a case for that <em>paradigm</em>. The book's [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ze9jolszv8epzaz/IDBook.pdf?dl=0 introduction] provides a summary. </p>
-<p>What we at the time this manuscript was written called <em>information design</em>, has subsequently been completed and rebranded as <em>knowledge federation</em>. </p>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
-<p>We turn to culture and "human quality", and ask: </p>
-<blockquote>
-<b>Why</b> is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?</blockquote>
-<p>What insight, and what strategy, may divert our "pursuit of happiness" from material consumption and egocentricity to human cultivation?</p>
-<p>We approach this theme also from another angle: Suppose we developed the <em>praxis</em> of <em>federating</em> knowledge—and used it to combine the heritage and insights from the sciences, world traditions, therapy schools... </p>
-<blockquote>If we used <em>federated</em> knowledge instead of advertising to guide our choices—what changes would develop? What difference would that make?</blockquote>
-<p>The Renaissance liberated our ancestors from worries about the original sin and the eternal reward, and they began to pursue happiness and beauty, here and now.</p>
-<blockquote> What values might the <em>next</em> "great cultural revival" bring to the fore? </blockquote>
-<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
-<blockquote>In the course of <em>modernization</em> we made a <em>cardinal</em> error—by adopting [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]] as our cardinal value.</blockquote>
-<p>By [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]] we mean the unwavering faith—now so common—in <em>direct experience</em> as way to determine what is to be considered as "good", "desirable" and "worthy of being pursued". We define [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]] rather broadly, and let it subsume also the closely related value egocenteredness or egocentricity—which we use, for instance, to decide what parties and policies to vote for, based on how their stated agendas affect our own personal needs and desires.</p>
-<p>This error can easily be understood as a consequence of the <em>narrow frame</em>—the fact that we've been <em>socialized</em> to mistake the rewarding "aha" emotion when we understand how a certain cause leads to a certain effect as a sign that we've seen the very "reality" of that phenomenon. And so naturally, what <em>feels</em> attractive or pleasant gets <em>reified</em> as "the cause" of happiness. The scientists have the experiment to provide them the reality touch and the data for reasoning and action; the rest of us have <em>convenience</em>.</p>
-<p>But [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]] is, of course, also a product of our <em>socialized reality</em>. Advertising may promote all kinds of products; but on a more basic level—it always promotes <em>convenience</em>, by appealing to convenience.</p>
-<p>And so since we believe that we already <em>know</em> what our goals and purposes should be, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom has no practical value for us, and no esteem. We not seek information to orient our choices.</p>
-<blockquote><em>Convenience</em> orients even our choice of information!</blockquote>
-<h3>Remedy</h3>
-<p>To comprehend the remedy we are about to propose, it is best to imagine that we are already living on the other side of the metaphorical <em>mirror</em>—that we handle information as we now handle other human-made things, by adapting it to the purposes that need to be served. That, furthermore, the <em>narrow frame</em> has been unraveled, and that we are capable of creating basic insights about all basic things in life; not the least—about values.</p>
-<blockquote>Imagine that the [[convenience paradox|<em>convenience paradox</em>]] is common knowledge, that everyone learns it at school, as we now learn "Newton's laws".</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Large</em> change is easy</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
+<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The "course" is a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]</h3>
-<p>We use the Convenience Paradox <em>ideogram</em> to explain the [[convenience paradox|<em>convenience paradox</em>]].</p>
-<p>Like most of us, the person in the <em>ideogram</em> wants his life to be <em>convenient</em>. But he made a wise choice: Instead of simply following the direction downwards, which <em>feels</em> more convenient, he paused to see whether that direction also leads to a more convenient <em>condition</em>. </p>
-<p>It doesn't.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>convenience paradox</em> is a <em>pattern</em>, where a more convenient direction leads to a less convenient situation.</blockquote>
-</div>
-<div class="col-md-3">
-[[File:Convenience Paradox.jpg]]
-<small>Convenience Paradox <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>The iconic image of a "couch potato" is an obvious instance of this [[pattern|<em>pattern</em>]]: <em>Convenience</em> as value separates us from the rewards that the cultivation of "human quality" can bring. And isn't that what "culture" is really all about?</p>
-<p>The image of a child eating her favorite chocolate cake until her tummy hurts will points to another blind spot of <em>convenience</em>: It makes us ignore how <em>our ability to feel</em> changes as a consequence of our choices. When we stimulate our senses in a certain way, a certain pleasant emotion results. But with time and exposure, our senses become desensitized. For all we know, <em>abstaining</em> from <em>convenience</em>, and developing <em>sensitivity</em>, could be a <em>better</em> way to go.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight has also some non-obvious, game-changing messages. One of them is that there is an entire realm of happiness, or of fulfillment, or simply a far better way to be human than what our culture permits us to experience. We point to it by using [[wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]] as goal—and propose it as an informed, or further evolved, alternative to [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]].</blockquote>
-<blockquote>[[Wholeness|<em>Wholeness</em>]] <b>feels better</b> than pleasurable things.</blockquote>
-<p>We can see that when we set aside cultural biases, and <em>federate</em> relevant insights—across cultures, geographical regions, and historical periods. </p>
-<p>To begin, we don't need to seek out the enlightened yogis on the foothills of Himalayas; a careful examination of almost <em>any</em> cultural tradition will do, including good old Christianity.  Here is, for instance, how C.F. Andrews described the original Christian community (in "Sermon on the Mount"):</p>
-<blockquote>"[Through their practice, the early disciples of Jesus found out] that the Way of Life, which Jesus had marked out for them in His teaching, was revolutionary in its moral principles. It turned the world upside down (Acts 17. 6). (...) They found in this new 'Way of Life' such a superabundance of joy, even in the midst of suffering, that they could hardly contain it. Their radiance was unmistakable. When the Jewish rulers saw their boldness, they 'marvelled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus' (Acts 4. 13). (...) It was this exuberance of joy and love which was so novel and arresting. It was a 'Way of Life' about which men had no previous experience. Indeed, at first those who saw it could not in the least understand it; and some mocking said, 'These men are full of new wine' (Acts 2. 13)."</blockquote>
-<p>A closely similar message is reaching us from the biography of Muhammad that Martin Lings composed, also based on earliest testimonies. And of course from other cultures, geographical regions and historical periods. What we see again and again is that the <em>origins</em> of religious or spiritual traditions were <em>not</em>  in erroneous beliefs about the origin of the universe—but in an <em>experience</em> that people had when they engaged in a certain kind of practice; or when they were <em>around</em> the people who by engaging in practice came close to <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
-<blockquote>The second message of the [[convenience paradox|<em>convenience paradox</em>]] <em>ideogram</em> is that the <em>way</em> to [[wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]]  is counter-intuitive or paradoxical, and needs to be illuminated by suitable information.</blockquote>
-<p>In the <em>ideogram</em> this point is suggested by rendering the way as "yin" (dark or obscure) in the traditional Chinese "yin-yang" ideogram (which is a symbol of [[wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]]). </p>
-<p>Here too Sermon on the Mount ("turn the other cheek") may provide an illustration; by <em>federating</em> across cultures and traditions, we <em>justify</em> or 'prove' this culturally all-important fact.</p>
-[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
-<p>Lao Tzu is often credited as the founder of Taoism ("tao" literally means "way"). The legendary sage is often portrayed as riding the bull—which signifies that he conquered egotism; that he held <em>convenience</em> by its horns!</p>
+<blockquote>The changes the <em>five insights</em> are pointing to are inextricably co-dependent.</blockquote>
-<p>In the [[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]] article we offer further points of reference that will illustrate the breadth and the depth of the creative <em>frontier</em> that the <em>convenience paradox</em> insights is pointing to—and here only highlight several <em>prototypes</em> that will illustrate some of the <em>research directions</em> on this frontier.</p>
+<p>We cannot, for instance, replace 'candles' with 'lightbulbs' (as the <em>collective mind</em> insight demands), unless <em>systemic innovation</em> (demanded by the <em>power structure</em> insight)  is in place. And without having a general-purpose method for <em>creating</em> insights (which dissolves the <em>narrow frame</em>). We will remain unknowing victims of the <em>convenience paradox</em>, as long as we use 'candles' to illuminate the way. </p>
-<h3>Convenience Paradox <em>prototype</em></h3>
+<blockquote>We cannot make any of the required changes without making them all.</blockquote>
-<p>The Convenience Paradox was the very first <em>prototype</em> of application of <em>polyscopy</em> and <em>knowledge federation</em>, presented at the Einstein Meets Magritte transdisciplinary conference in 1995. </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 Convenience Paradox was then offered as a <em>prototype</em> result of the research direction that this [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] makes possible.</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>ideogram</em>, as we explained above, only points to a question; its main point is to show that our natural and necessary direction is <em>wholeness</em>; and that <em>we do not know</em> how to get there, that direct experience will only deceive us; that we must use <em>suitable</em> information to show us the way. </p>
-<p>The <em>ideogram</em> is, however, only the main point, the 'dot of the i' of a large <em>information holon</em>—whose details combine, in an orderly form, a broad variety of insights, ranging from heterogeneous sources and time periods and cultures, that both support the basic insight <em>and</em> show how exactly <em>wholeness</em> is to be pursued. </p>
+<h3>"A way to change course" is in [[academia|<em>academia</em>]]'s hands</h3>
-<blockquote>The Convenience Paradox result showed how <em>polyscopy</em> can be applied to synthesize culturally-relevant insights across cultural tradition—and use them to inform and further evolve our contemporary culture.</blockquote>
+<p>Paradigm changes, however, have an inherent logic and way they need to proceed.</p>
-<p>The details were organized in terms of four <em>aspects</em> of human <em>wholeness</em>: physical (effort and effortlessness), emotional (happiness), cognitive (creativity) and biochemical (nutrition and metabolism). </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>
-<p>Already the physical <em>aspect</em>, in a fractal-like or parabolical way, illustrates the nature of this result, and the power of the approach it introduces: While we try to eliminate effort by developing the technology, the heaviest thing we ever lift up and carry we can <em>never</em> get rid of. We combined the insights of F.M. Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais and other pioneers of mind-and-body therapy, to show that a lion's share of our sensation of effort resides in our body as patterns of tension and tensing, <em>which can be eliminated through suitable practice</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>By changing the relationship we have with information, we restore to our society its power to transcend its present [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]].</blockquote>
+<p>That simple change, the <em>five insights</em> showed,  will trigger all other requisite changes follow. We abolish <em>reification</em>—of worldviews and institutions in general, and of journalism, science and other inherited ways of looking at the world in particular—and we instantly see the imperative of changing them by adapting them to the purposes that must be served. </p>
-<h3>Nature-Culture-Health – Information Design</h3>
+<p>Furthermore, as the <em>socialized reality</em> insight showed, this change is mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds. It follows as a logical consequence of what we already "know". </p>
-<p>The Nature-Culture-Health – Information Design was a project developed in collaboration with the European Public Health Association, through Prof. Gunnar Tellnes who was then its president.</p>
+<p>This "way to change course" should be particularly easy because—being a <em>fundamental</em> change—it is entirely in control of publicly sponsored intellectuals, the [[academia|<em>academia</em>]].</p>
-<p>Aaron Antonovsky is usually considered as the iconic progenitor of "salutogenesis" (creation of health—where instead of seeking to find and eliminate "disease causes",  research is focused on factors that contribute to health). Tellnes developed this research further, by applying its results to lifestyle change. In Norway Tellnes developed an organization called Nature-Culture-Health, whose goal is to further health by bringing people into nature, and through cultural activities and lifestyle habits. Our collaboration resulted in several <em>prototypes</em>:</p>
+<blockquote>We don't need to occupy Wall Street.</blockquote>
-<ul>
-<li>Together we initiated the Nature-Culture-Health International, see this [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/NaCuHeal/NaCuHealIntStrategy.pdf strategy proposal]</li>
-<li>Use of <em>polyscopy</em> to <em>federate</em> the salutogenetic insights, values and practices in everyday life,  see this [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Projects/NaCuHeal/NCH-IDinMichael.pdf prospectus article]</li>
-<li>We developed the <em>key point dialog</em> as a method for empowering awareness and lifestyle change, and applied it as a <em>prototype</em> in three Norwegian municipalities, see [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Articles/Renaissance.pdf this article]</li>
-</ul>
-<p>At the inaugural meeting of the European Scientific Holistic Medicine Association, organized in 2004 in Copenhagen (by Søren Ventegodt, who in Copenhagen established and led the [https://qualityoflife.dk Quality of Life research insstitute]), we showed [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/COPHG-04-POSTER.jpg this <em>information holon</em>] and explained that holistic medicine, just as <em>any</em> holistic approach, depends on a <em>different</em> approach to science—which can help us see things whole.</p>
+<p><em>The university</em>, not the Wall Street, controls the systemic leverage point <em>par excellence</em>.</p>
+<p>And for us who are in academic positions already, who are called upon to make this timely change—there is nothing we need to occupy. What we must do to "change course" is  demanded by our occupation <em>already</em>.</p>
-<blockquote>Why is "healthcare" conceived as curing diseases, not as curating health?</blockquote>
+<h3>"Human quality" <em>is</em> the key</h3>
-<p>At the 2005 conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health in Paris we contributed a result called "Healthcare as a Power Structure", where the <em>power structure</em> theory is applied to elucidate this question. The historiographical data were <em>vignettes</em> about ignored research of Weston Price, Werner Kollath, Francis Pottenger and other pioneers of salutogenesis. By describing our method, we offered a <em>methodological</em> contribution—a way to complement the usual detailed and historiographic practice in this field by developing general "law of change" results. See this [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Abstracts/HAPS.pdf abstract].</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>
-<h3>Movement and Qi</h3>
+<p>On the morning of March 14, 1984, the day he passed away, Peccei dictated to his secretary from a hospital bed (as part of "Agenda for the End of the Century"):</p>
-<p>Movement and Qi is a <em>prototype</em> course developed and taught through the University of Oslo PE Department. Since education is a theme of special interest to <em>holotopia</em>, and since this <em>prototype</em> introduced a number of innovations that could be developed further, we here mention some of its [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]].</p>
+<blockquote>"Human development is the most important goal."</blockquote>
-<p><b>Body as medium</b>. Education tends to focus on books and facts; it tends to favor verbal knowledge, and neglect the work with "human quality". This course works directly with the human 'instrument'. <em>Movement</em> is a [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]] interpreted as doing something—anything—with the physical self, ranging from work with nutrition and values, to practices such as yoga. </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><b><em>Federating</em> the heritage of the traditions</b>. A vast body of knowledge relevant to "human quality" is waiting to be given citizenship rights in our culture. <em>Qi</em> here is a [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]], which allows for understanding in a simple way that the insights developed in disparate cultural traditions and therapy schools such as shiatsu masage, Alexander technique and qigong all point to the same simple image of human <em>wholeness</em>, and how to work with it. Each class meeting focused on a single technique. The goal was to both introduce a specific way of working with oneself, and often a tradition bringing forth a spectrum of insights—and also illustrate how the specific technique fits into the general <em>qi</em> model, in its own specific way. Notice that no "reality" claims are involved; <em>qi</em> is simply a <em>created</em> general concept, which allows us to make sense of and use the <em>experience</em> of cultural and therapeutic traditions in everyday life and practice.</p>
+<blockquote>By determining how we are as 'water', the "human quality" determines our evolutionary course.</blockquote>
-<p><b>Overcoming cultural barriers</b>. Cultural barriers still need to be overcome; academic people still tend to consider all that fails to fit the <em>narrow frame</em> as "alternative". To bridge this gap, we devised a marketing strategy, centered around [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/M&Qi-posters.pdf six posters]—each bringing forth an entirely different aspect of this course, and work. We placed them in pairs, paired at random, on various bulletin boards around the university. The point here is that <em>although most people who see the posters will not come to the course</em>, their curiosity is still aroused, and the intended positive effect has been made.</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>
-</div> </div>
+<p>To put our two pivotal themes together, notice that changing the relationship we have with information should be <em>dramatically</em> easier for us than it was in Galilei's time—when it meant risking one's life or worse. The <em>academia</em>, not the Inquisition, is in change. But here's the rub: By being in charge, the <em>academia</em> is also <em>part of</em> the <em>power structure</em>!</p>
-<div class="row">
+<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>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Large</em> change is <b>possible</b></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>We now summarize the <em>five insights</em>, and show how they point to "a way to change course".</blockquote>
-<p>To establish an analogy between our contemporary cultural situation and the situation at the dawn of the historical "great cultural revival", when Galilei was in house arrest, we looked at five pivotal issues, which are the main <em>aspects</em> of that analogy:</p>
-<ul>
-<li>Innovation (analogy with the Industrial Revolution, which revolutionized the efficiency of labor)</li>
-<li>Communication (analogy with the advent of the printing press, which revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge)</li>
-<li>Epistemology (analogy with the Enlightenment, which enthroned direct experience and reason)</li>
-<li>Methodology (analogy with the advent of science, as an informed and effective way to knowledge)</li>
-<li>Values (analogy with the Renaissance, which empowered our ancestors to seek happiness on the earthly realm)</li>
-</ul>
-<p>In each case, we saw that the way we comprehend and handle the issue is ripe to be <em>fundamentally</em> changed.</p>
-<h3>Innovation (<em>power structure</em> insight)</h3>
+<p>When <em>we</em> did this thought experiment, Professor <em>X</em> moved on to his next chore without ado. </p>
-<p>When "free competition" or "the market" steer our growing capability to create and induce change, <em>the systems in which we live and work</em> become <em>power structures</em>—which obstruct natural and human <em>wholeness</em>. A dramatic improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of our work, and of the human condition in general, will result from <em>systemic innovation</em>—when we learn to innovate by <em>making things whole</em> on every scale, and especially on the large scale where changes of institutions or <em>systems</em> are the effect.</p>
+<p>We have an amusing collection of anecdotes to support that prognosis. And anyhow, why would Professor <em>X</em> invest time in comprehending a proposal of this kind, when he knows right away, when <em>his body</em> knows (see the <em>socialized reality</em> insight), that his colleagues won't like it. When there is obviously nothing to be gained from it. </p>
-<h3>Communication (<em>collective mind</em> insight)</h3>
+<blockquote><em>At the university too</em> we make decisions by "instrumental thinking"; by taking recourse to embodied knowledge of "what works".</blockquote>
-<p>We cannot make things whole without <em>seeing</em> them whole.</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>Our challenge is no longer to mass-produce information, which the printing press made possible, but to co-create <em>meaning</em>.  Neil Postman observed:</p>
+<blockquote>This ethos is blatantly un-academic.</blockquote>
-<blockquote> “We’ve entered an age of information glut. And this is something no culture has really faced before. The typical situation is information scarcity. (…) Lack of information can be very dangerous. (…) But at the same time too much information can be dangerous, because it can lead to a situation of meaninglessness, of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you.”</blockquote>
+<p>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>We have seen that the new media technology enables us to self-organize differently, and and think <em>together</em>, as cells in a human mind do.</p>
+<p>The academic tradition was <em>conceived</em> as a radical alternative to this way of making choices—where we develop and use <em>ideas</em> as guiding light.</p>
-<h3>Epistemology (<em>socialized reality</em> insight)</h3>
+<blockquote>So was <em>knowledge federation</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>We will only be able to change our knowledge-work systems when we learn to treat information as we treat other human-made things—by adapting it to the purposes that need to be served.</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>We have seen that this pivotal and all-important <em>eistemological</em> leap is now mandated on both fundamental and pragmatic grounds. <em>Reification</em>—of worldviews, and of institutions or <em>systems</em>—has been the key instrument of <em>socialization</em> throughout history, by which the <em>power structures</em> imposed <em>their</em> order of things, contrary to our interests, and without our awareness. During the 20th century our self-awareness has evolved dramatically, and we are now able to self-reflect—<em>about</em> the social and cognitive processes by which "realities" are created. We are ready to liberate ourselves—abolishing <em>reification</em> and becoming accountable for the functions or roles that what we do has in our society.</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>Methodology (<em>narrow frame</em> insight)</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>
-<p>Science eradicated prejudice and vastly expanded our knowledge—but only there where the methods and interests of its disciplines could be applied. The epistemology change makes it possible to <em>extend</em> the project "science" to include <em>all</em> questions where knowledge can make a difference.</p>
+<p>We addressed our proposal to [[academia|<em>academia</em>]], which we defined as "institutionalized academic tradition". It goes without saying that the academic tradition's all-important role has been to keep us on the <em>homo sapiens</em> track. But as we have seen, the <em>power structure</em> ecology has the power to sidetrack institutional evolution toward the <em>homo ludens</em> devious course. </p>
-<h3>Values (<em>convenience paradox</em> insight)</h3>
+<p>The question must be asked:</p>
-<p>When we illuminate the pivotal issue of values by <em>real</em> information—we see that <em>wholeness</em>, not <em>convenience</em>, must be our goal.</p>
+<blockquote>Does the academic institution's <em>own</em> ecology avoid this problem?</blockquote>
-<p>The pursuit of <em>wholeness</em> most naturally leads to "a great cultural revival".</p>
-<p>It is also the value that makes the competition unfeasible—and empowers us to innovate in a <em>systemic</em> way.</p>
-<h3>We can begin a <em>comprehensive</em> change</h3>
-<p>The <em>holotopia</em> vision, which results from the <em>five insights</em>, offers more than what Peccei asked for: Not only "a great cultural revival", but a <em>sweeping and comprehensive change</em>, similar in all respects as the change that developed after Galilei was in house arrest, is now both necessary and possible.</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Large</em> change is <b>easy</b></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-6"><h3>We will <em>not</em> solve our problems</h3>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em> confirm also The Club of Rome's and Peccei's strategic point—to <em>not</em> focus on individual problems, but on the general condition from which they all stem.</p>
-<p>As we pointed out, also in the above summary, the courses of action he <em>five insights</em> point to are so co-dependent, that any of them requires that we do them all. Norbert Wiener's keyword "homeostasis" can here be used <em>negatively</em>—to point out that an <em>undesirable</em> condition or configuration can also be held in check by the system's tendency to maintain a stable condition,  by springing back and nullifying change. A <em>pathological</em> condition can be stable—isn't that what we call "disease"? And isn't that why we don't call a drug a "remedy"—unless it is strong enough to <em>change</em> the body's pathological condition, to <em>reverse</em> its downward course.</p>
-<p>Hence what is demanded is a <em>comprehensive</em> and <em>coherent</em> change—of our cultural [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] as a whole.</p>
-<blockquote>To "change course" means to change the <em>paradigm</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>The Club of Rome's strategy is further supported by the insight reached in systems sciences—that restoring the <em>ability</em> to shift paradigms is "the most powerful" way to intervene into systems, [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#Donella as Donella Meadows summarized].</p>
-<p>Our quest has thereby been reduced to the question:</p>
-<blockquote><em>What do we need to do</em> to restore our society's ability to shift paradigms?</blockquote>
-<p>What "systemic leverage point" should we 'put our shoulders on'?</p>
-<p>Presently, we have two strong candidates for the role.</p>
-<p>One of them is "changing the relationship we have with information". To repair the broken tie between information and action; and between information and <em>meaning</em>. Each of the <em>five insights</em> is, before all—an <em>insight</em>. To see the new course, we must be able to create insights.</p>
-<p>The other candidate is the one Peccei was pointing to, the "human quality". To be able to make the <em>change</em> to the new course, once we've seen it, we must see ourselves as parts in a larger whole, and prioritize <em>making things whole</em> to "our own interests". </p>
-<blockquote>To "change course", we must make both of those changes.</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="page-header" ><h2>A strategy</h2></div>
-<div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will <em>not</em> solve our problems</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-6">
 <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>
@@ Line 1,111: / Line 284: @@
 </blockquote> </p>
-<p>Still more concretely, as we have just seen, we undertake to respond to <em>this</em> Mead's call to action, by <em>federating</em> the "tremendous advances in the human sciences":</p>
+<p>More concretely, we undertake to respond to <em>this</em> Mead's critical point:</p>
 <blockquote>"Although tremendous advances in the human sciences have been made in the last hundred years, almost no advance has been made in their use, especially in ways of creating reliable new forms in which cultural evolution can be directed to desired goals."</blockquote>
-<p>We, however, do not claim, or even assume, that "the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved".</p>
+<p>We, however, do not claim, or even assume, that "the huge problems now confronting us" <em>can</em> be solved".</p>
 </div>
@@ Line 1,126: / Line 299: @@
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
-<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 five decades ago:</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>
 "Will the current ideas about "green industry", and "qualitative growth", avoid collapse? No possibility. Absolutely no possibility of that. (...) Globally, we are something like sixty or seventy percent <em>above</em> sustainable levels."
 </blockquote>
-<p>We wasted precious time pursuing a dream; [https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, as "the leader of the free world". </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>
-<blockquote>A sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, now needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. </blockquote>
+<blockquote>A sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. </blockquote>
 <p>Small things don't matter. Business as usual is a waste of time.</p>
-<p>Our very "progress" must now acquire a new—cultural—focus and direction. [https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Dennis Meadows say]:</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."
@@ Line 1,154: / Line 327: @@
 <p>They form a kind of popular army, actual or potential, with a function comparable to that of the antibodies generated to restore normal conditions in a biological organism that is diseased or attacked by pathogenic agents. The existence of so many spontaneous organizations and groups testifies to the vitality of our societies, even in the midst of the crisis they are undergoing. <b>Means will have to be found one day to consolidate their scattered efforts in order to direct them towards strategic objectives.</b></p> </blockquote>
-<p>Diversity is good and useful, especially in times of change. The 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>Diversity is good and useful, especially in times of change. Systems scientists coined the keyword "requisite variety" to point out that a <em>variety</em> of possible responses make a system viable, or "sustainable".</p>
 <blockquote>The risk is, however, that the actions of "small voluntary groups of concerned citizens" may remain reactive.</blockquote>
-<p>From Murray Edelman we adapted the keyword [[symbolic action|<em>symbolic action</em>]], to make that risk more 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 have only <em>symbolic</em> effects!</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 -->
-<blockquote>We have seen, however, that <em>comprehensive</em> change must be our shared goal.</blockquote>
+<span id="Hypothesis"></span>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="KeyPoint"></span>
+<blockquote>We have seen that <em>comprehensive</em> change must be our goal.</blockquote>
 <p>It is to that strategic goal that the <em>holotopia</em> vision is pointing. </p>
-<p>By supplementing this larger strategy, we neither deny that the problems we are facing <em>must</em> be attended to, nor belittle the heroic efforts of our frontier colleagues who are working on their solution.</p>
+<p>By supplementing this larger strategy, we neither deny that the problems we are facing must be attended to, nor belittle the heroic efforts of our frontier colleagues who are working on their solution.</p>
 <blockquote>The Holotopia project <em>complements</em> the problem-based approaches—by adding what is systemically lacking to make solutions <em>possible</em>.</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>We</em> will not change the world</h2></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, the <em>holotopia</em> is a trans-generational construction project.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>Like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, <em>holotopia</em> is a trans-generational construction project.</blockquote>
-<p>It is what our generation owes to future generations.</p>
+<p><em>Our</em> generation's job is to begin it.</p>
-<p><em>Our</em> purpose is to begin it.</p>
 <p>Margaret Mead left us this encouragement:
@@ Line 1,187: / Line 356: @@
 </blockquote> </p>
-<p>Mead explained what exactly <em>distinguishes</em> a small group that is capable of making a large difference:</p>
+<p>Mead explained what exactly <em>distinguishes</em> a small group of people that is capable of making a large difference:</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>
@@ Line 1,202: / Line 371: @@
 <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 <div class="col-md-7">
-<p><em>This</em>—capability to self-organize—is where "human quality" is needed. And that is what we've been lacking!</p>
+<p><em>This</em> capability—to self-organize and do something <em>because it's right</em>, because it <em>has to</em> be done—is where "human quality" is needed. That's what we've been lacking.</p>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em> have shown that again and again. Our stories are deliberately chosen to be a half-century old—and demonstrate that the "appropriately gifted" have already offered us their gifts. But <em>giants</em> and visionary ideas no longer have a place in the <em>order of things</em> we are living in.</p>
+<p>The <em>five insights</em> showed that again and again. Our stories were deliberately chosen to be a half-century old—and demonstrate that "the appropriately gifted" have offered us their gifts. But that "the conditions in which the appropriately gifted can actually make a contribution" have been absent.</p>
-<p>We live in an institutional ecology that gives us "competitive advantage" <em>only if</em> we make ourselves small, sidestep "ideals", and become "little cogs that mesh together". Through innumerably many 'carrots and sticks' we have <em>internalized</em> the little institutional man who fits in, and  keeps our larger self on a leash (see  [https://youtu.be/tRpWtQOpFm4 this re-edited and pointedly repetitive excerpt] from the animated film The Incredibles; its ending will suggest what we must find courage to do). </p>
+<p>It is not difficult to see that our culture's  systemic ecology is to blame. As [https://youtu.be/mC_97F2Zn9k?t=24 this excerpt] from the animated film "The Incredibles" might illustrate, it gives us power only if we consent to make ourselves small, and be "well-lubricated cogs" in an institutional clockwork.</p>
-<blockquote>Our core strategy is to <em>change</em> the institutional ecology that makes us small.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>We must claim back our will to make a difference.</blockquote>
-<p>We will <em>not</em> sidestep that goal by adapting to the existing <em>order of things</em>,  treating the development of <em>holotopia</em> as "our project" and  trying to make it "successful"—within that very order of things we have undertaken to change.</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>We insist on considering the development of the <em>holotopia</em> as <em>our generation</em>'s opportunity and obligation—and hence as <em>your</em> project as much as ours. Our core strategy is to inspire and empower <em>you</em> to contribute to it and make a difference.</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> institutes an ecology that is a radical alternative to turf strife.</blockquote>
-<p><em>We</em> will not change the world.</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>
-<blockquote><b><em>You</em> will</b>.</blockquote>
+<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>
-</div> </div>
+<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>
-<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
+<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>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> will not grow by "push", but by "pull". </blockquote>
-<div class="row">
+<p><em>We</em> will not change the world.</p>
-<div class="col-md-3"></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The Holotopia <em>prototype</em> is conceived as a collaborative strategy game, where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision.</blockquote>
-<p>We make this 'game' engaging and smooth by contributing the following tactical assets. </p>
+<blockquote><b><em>You</em> will</b>.</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
-<b>This text will be corrected, improved and completed by the end of 2020. What is above is hopefully readable; what follows is a rough sketch.</b>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A mission</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7">
+<p>Centuries ago a philosopher portrayed the human condition by telling a parable. He proposed to imagine us humans chained in a cave, able to look only at the wall of the cave where a projection of shadows is at play. He in this way portrayed what we dubbed <em>socialized reality</em>—that we live in a "reality" shaped by power play and calcified perception.</p>
+<p>He pointed to development of ideas as the way to liberate ourselves.</p>
-<div class="row">
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> showed that we are still in the 'cave'.</blockquote>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The arts</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>Holotopia is an art project.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>And how we can liberate ourselves once for all!</blockquote>
+<p>"A great cultural revival"—a change of evolutionary course that will lead to comprehensive improvement of our condition—is ready to begin as an <em>academic</em> revival; just as in Galilei's time.</p>
 <p>
-[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
+[[File:Jantsch-university.jpeg]]
 </p>
-<br>
+<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>
-<small>The transformative space created by our "Earth Sharing" pilot project, in Kunsthall 3.14 art gallery in Bergen, Norway.</small>
+<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>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 Marcel Duchamp exhibited the urinal, he challenged both the meaning of art and its limits. But the deconstruction of tradition has meanwhile been completed, and the time is now to <em>construct</em>.</p>
+<p>We implement this mission in two steps.</p>
-<blockquote> What sort of art will manifest the <em>holotopia</em>?</blockquote>
+<h3>Step 1: Enabling <em>academic</em> evolution</h3>
-<p>In "Production of Space", Henri Lefebvre offered an answer—which we'll here summarize in <em>holotopia</em>'s buddying vernacular.</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>The core problem with the social system we are living in, Lefebvre observed, is that our past activity, crystalized as <em>power structure</em>, keeps us "alienated" from our intrinsically human quest of <em>wholeness</em>. In our present conditions, "what is dead takes hold of what is alive". Lefebvre proposed to turn this relationship upon its head:</p>
+<blockquote>The purpose of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to enable <em>systems</em> to evolve knowledge-based.</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>
+<blockquote><em>Knowledge work</em> systems to begin with.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>As an initiative in the arts, Holotopia produces <em>spaces</em> where what is alive in us can overcome what is making us dead.</blockquote>
+<p>By reconfiguring academic work on <em>design epistemology</em> as foundation, <em>knowledge federation</em> fosters an academic space where creativity can be applied and careers can be pursued by <em>creating</em> knowledge work. By <em>changing</em> our <em>collective mind</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch.</blockquote>
-</div> </div>
+<h3>Step 2: Enabling <em>societal</em> evolution</h3>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="TacticalAssets"></span>
+<p>The second step is to further develop and implement the <em>holotopia</em> vision in real life.</p>
-<div class="row">
+<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>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five insights</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>While the role of the arts is to communicate and create, to put 'the dot on the i', the <em>five insights</em> model the <em>holotopia</em>'s knowledge base. They ensure that what we communicate and create reflects the state of the art of knowledge in relevant areas of interest. Together, they compose a complete 'i', or 'lightbulb', or "headlights and steering", or "communication and control".</p>
+<blockquote>This step is a direct response to the calls to action by Margaret Mead and Aurelio Peccei.</blockquote>
-<p>
+</div> </div>
-[[File:Holotopia33.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>The symbolic language of the arts can condense the <em>five insights</em> to images and objects, place them into physical reality and our shared awareness—as the above paper models may suggest.</p>
-</div> </div>
+<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>elephant</em></h2></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>
-[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
-<small>Elephant <em>ideogram</em></small>
-</p>
-<blockquote>The role of this metaphorical image, of an invisible [[elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], is to point to a quantum leap in relevance and interest, which specific academic and other insights can acquire when presented <em>in the context of</em> "a great cultural revival".</blockquote>
+<p>We make this 'game' smooth and [[awesomeness|<em>awesome</em>]] by supplementing a collection of tactical assets. </p>
-<p>There is an "elephant in the room", waiting to be discovered.</p>
+</div> </div>
-<p>Imagine the 20th century's thinkers touching this <em>elephant</em>: We hear them talk about "the fan", "the water hose" and "the tree trunk". But they don't make sense, and we ignore them.</p>
-<p>Everything changes when we realize that what they are really talking about are 'the ear', 'the trunk' and 'the leg' of an immensely large and exotic animal—which nobody has yet seen!</p>
-<blockquote>To make headway toward <em>holotopia</em>, we <em>orchestrate</em> 'connecting the dots'.</blockquote>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Art</h2></div>
-<p>By manifesting the <em>elephant</em>, we restore agency to information and power to knowledge.</p>
+<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>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. We can now take this evolution a step further.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
-<p>What interests us is not what, for instance, Bourdieu "really saw" and wanted to communicate; with the post-structuralists, we acknowledge that even Bourdieu would not be able to tell us that, if he were still around. Yet he undoubtedly <em>saw something</em> that invited a different way to see the world; and undertook to understand it and communicate it by taking recourse to the only <em>paraigm</em> that was available—the <em>old</em> one.</p>
+</p>
+<br>
-<blockquote>We give the study of cultural artifacts <em>new</em> relevance and rigor—by considering them as signs on the road, which point to a <em>paradigm</em> that now wants to emerge.</blockquote>
+<small>The transformative space created by our "Earth Sharing" pilot project, in Kunsthall 3.14 art gallery in Bergen, Norway.</small>
-</div> </div>
-<div class="row">
+<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>
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
-<p>These "stories" here are technically called [[vignette|<em>vignettes</em>]]. This in principle journalistic technique allows us to render transformative academic and other insights in ways that can be communicated to the public, or picked up by artists and journalists. But they are also fractals—which display the essence and the nuances of a larger and more complex situation, by focusing on one of its details. </p>
-<p>We here illustrate this technique and its potential by a single example—[[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart]]. We have told fragments of this story in different situations already, and plan to <em>federate</em> Engelbart's ideas and contributions carefully in the second book of the Holotopia series. So here we only offer some 'dots'—for the reader to connect together, and explore more deeply.</p>
+<p>The deconstruction of the tradition has been completed, and it is time to <em>create</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>What <em>memes</em> need to be fostered, and disseminated?</blockquote>
-<p>The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart is a story of a man who found an answer to Peccei's call to action, "a way to change course"—<em>thirty years before</em> Peccei issud it! It is a story about Silicon Valley's [[giant|<em>giant</em>]] in residence, whom Silicon Valley has not yet understood or even heard—even after having recognized him as that!</p>
+<blockquote>In what ways will art be present on the creative frontier where the <em>new</em> "great cultural revivival" will enfold?</blockquote>
-<p>The Story of Enelbart is a classic yet contemporary case of 'Galilei in house arrest'. It is a story of a visionary thinker whose ideas and contributions are still waiting to be recognized. </p>
+<p>In "Production of Space" Henri Lefebvre offered an answer, which we'll summarize in <em>holotopia</em>'s buddying vernacular.</p>
-<blockquote>It is just as much a story about the rest of us, as a generaton of people who have become <em>incredibly</em> technologically savvy—and <em>idea-blind</em>!</blockquote>
+<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>
-<p> If you find this  too harsh, consider this sentence, found in the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos Wikipedia article about "The Mother of All Demos"]:</p>
- <blockquote>"Prior to the demonstration, a significant portion of the computer science community thought Engelbart was "a crackpot"."</blockquote>
-<p>The article is about the 1968 event where Engelbart and his lab demonstrated significant parts of the communication technology that marked "the revolution in the Valley", and is in common use today. Contributions to <em>technology</em> we can recognize and appreciate; not ideas.</p>
-<blockquote>So what <em>were</em> some of Engelbart's important ideas?</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>One of them is that new 'headlights' are "a way to change course". And on a more fundamental level—how 'electricity' can be used to create the kind of 'light' we now need. </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>The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart might begin in December 1950: A young man at the beginning of his career is taking a critical look at his future. He is twenty five years old, has excellent engineering education, he's employed by (what would became) NASA, he is engaged to be married... He sees his career as a straight path to retirement; and he doesn't like what he sees. So right there and then he decides to give his career a purpose—the one that he will maximize its benefits to mankind. </p>
+<p>Where in the artist as retort, <em>new</em> ways to feel, think and act are created. </p>
-<p>Engelbart subsequently spent three month intensely thinking about the best way to do that. Then he had an epiphany.</p>
-<blockquote>Has Engelbart <em>succeeded</em> in offering a gift to humanity that would have <em>the</em> largest benefits?</blockquote>
-<p>We could say "the rest is history"—but the <em>real</em> story has not been told! </p>
+</div> </div>
-<p>We sometimes introduce it by sketching an image of the Silicon Valley's "<em>giant</em> in residence"—whom our most creative innovation hub failed to understand, <em>or even hear</em>, after having recognized him as that! With apologies for the echo, we here share [https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfek2vl99atz0am/DE%20Springboard%20Story.m4v?dl=0 this recording of the springboard story], and [https://www.dropbox.com/s/tyf1705t4hvk05s/2.%20DE%20Vision.m4v?dl=0 this one that explains the vision]. </p>
+<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>Then there is this this true pearl, [https://holoscope.info/2019/02/07/knowledge-federation-dot-org/#Engelbart Engelbart's "A Call to Action" panel presentation at Google], where somehow, and yes, incredibly, the first slides—which were to explain Engelbart's vision and provide a context for understanding all the rest—<em>were not even shown</em>! And so on the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQx-tuW9A4Q Youtube page where its recording is shown], Engelbart is <em>still</em> holding only a (computer) mouse in his hand—while it was a full-fledged <em>elephant</em> that he was offering and holding.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Holotopia33.jpeg]]<br>
+<small>The pentagram, which represents the <em>five insights</em>, lends itself to artistic interpretations.</small>
+</p>
-<blockquote>Here are some of Engelbart's contributions to the cause at hand.</blockquote>
+<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>
-<ul>
+<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>
-<li>The first methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>; Engelbart published an ingenious methodology for using our creative capabilities, to update <em>both</em> our "tool systems" and our "human systems" in a way that provides suitable "evolutionary guidance"—already in 1962, six years before Jantsch and others created theirs in Bellagio</li>
-<li>The technology and the processes for the <em>collective mind</em> <em>paradigm</em>—they were demonstrated at the 1968 Demo</li>
-<li>The "open hyperdocument system"; Engelbart understood (see the argument we shared above, related to <em>information holon</em>) that we would need to evolve completely <em>new</em> information formats and processes; that the proprietary systems (which are common today) would be a hindrance; hence he envisioned and <em>implemented</em> a system that enables free hypermedia evolution</li>
-<li>Concepts and templates for systemic re-organization of knowledge work, such as "networked improvement community" and the "ABC model"</li>
-</ul>
-<blockquote>What <em>was</em> Engelbart's "call to action"? These clues might help. </blockquote>
+<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>When around 1990 Engelbart and his daughter Christina created an institute, to share Doug's vision to the Silicon Valley businesses and academia, they called it "Bootstrap Institute"; and later renamed it to "Bootstrap Alliance", because  an <em>aliance</em> (or shall we call it a "federation"), and not an institute, was the right institutional template. They then undertook to disseminate the core ideas by offering the "Bootstrap Seminar" at Stanford University. Also Engelbart's <em>last</em> message to the world, recorded at the Stanford University's Studio, was titled "Bootstrap Dialogs". So yes—it was to <em>bootstrap</em> the <em>collective mind</em> paradigm, to begin it with our own minds and bodies and computers, that he was urging us to do.</p>
+<p>The <em>five insights</em> are a <em>prototype</em>—of a minimal collection of insight that can overturn the <em>paradigm</em>. With provision to evolve continuously—and reflect what we know collectively.</p>
+<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em> bring to the fore what is most <em>transformative</em> in our collective knowledge.</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>mirror</em></h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7">
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] is the entrance to <em>holotopia</em>.</blockquote>
 <p>
 [[File:Mirror-Lab.jpeg]]<br>
-<small>The mirror lands itself to artistic creation; snapshots from Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.</small>
+<small>Mirror prototypes in Vibeke Jensen's Berlin studio.</small>
 </p>
-<p>Let us begin with what is obvious: The mirror is a visual and symbolic object par excellence. In <em>holotopia</em>, however, its symbolism is vastly enriched by a wealth of interpretations—as we shall see here.</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>
-<p>One of them is the <em>holotopia</em>'s overall main message—that there is an unexpected, wonderful and seemingly magical way out of the "problematique"; a natural and effective way to transform our situation. We do not need to colonize another planet (anyhow we would carry to it our cultural diseases). The cure is here and now. We can move to an entirely different reality here on earthly realm—and indeed in our own offices, homes, and bodies.</p>
-<p>Then there is this more concrete interpretation of the <em>mirror</em> as a symbol of cultural transformation—by discovering ourselves. By putting ourselves into the picture, through self-awareness, and self-reflection. By understanding that <em>whatever we are feeling</em>— our anxieties and desires, and our very <em>happiness</em>—is <em>inside of us</em>! And that's where it can and needs to be found, or created. </p>
-<blockquote>What are we really <em>able</em> to feel?</blockquote>
+<blockquote>It is through genuine self-reflection and self-reflective [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] that <em>holotopia</em> can be reached.</blockquote>
-<p>Love? Deep inner peace? Unity with all creation? <em>Of course</em> in an informed society, where "informed" means "seeing things whole", the "pursuit of happiness" will no longer be confined to acquisition of objects.</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>This, of course, is the theme of the [[convenience paradox|<em>convenience paradox</em>]] insight.</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>Yet it also points to a way to resolve the <em>power structure</em> issue—by discovering, collectively, that the <em>systems in which we live and work</em> are largely unsuitable for making us <em>whole</em>. Here we see how the <em>holotopia</em> can result from a systemic revolution <em>from within</em>! The old "us against them" politics, and that very <em>attitude</em>, keeps us entrenched in <em>power structures</em>, and separates us from <em>wholeness</em>. </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>
-<blockquote>A still more subtle, but completely central function of the <em>mirror</em>, is perceiving and undoing what the <em>power structure</em> has done to us through <em>socialization</em>.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> is a symbol of cultural revival.</blockquote>
-<p>It has been repeatedly pointed out that Donald Trump does not believe in science. But when we carefully examine ourselves in the <em>mirror</em>, we see something far more to the point, and <em>far more</em> shocking:</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>Practically none of us believe in science.</blockquote>
+<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> is also a symbol of <em>academic</em> revival.</blockquote>
-<p>Little Greta Thunberg does. She lives in the reality that the scientists created for us, and acts accordingly. But she was diagnosed of Asperger syndrome, so she doesn't count as a counterexample.</p>
+<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>
-<blockquote><em>All of us</em> "normal" humans live in a <em>socialized reality</em> created by the <em>power structure</em>.</blockquote>
-<p>That is what we see when we examine ourselves in the <em>mirror</em>—in the light of published theories and everyday experiential evidence.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>mirror</em> reflects that <em>we have two sets of values</em>; and two worldviews.</blockquote>
-<p>We have the worldview and the values that we <em>rationally</em> uphold, as part of our self-identity. And we have a completely different <em>embodied</em> ones, which are the result of <em>socialization</em>. When we look at the <em>mirror</em>, in the light of the <em>five insights</em>, we see that there is a large discrepancy between them.</p>
-<blockquote>Healing the discrepancy between our rational values and our embodied ones is the key to cultural and social transformation.</blockquote>
-<p>The the work with embodied values requires practice—or more precisely <em>praxis</em>. The  body is like a donkey—rational arguments don't work. Integrity (making our embodied values, and behavior, consistent with the values we uphold rationally) demands training. It requires a <em>culture</em> that socializes us in an entirely different way that the cultures we've known.</p>
-<blockquote>It is <em>here</em>, in front of the <em>mirror</em>,  that "a great cultural revival" can earnestly begin.</blockquote>
-<p>It is in this context that we can fully understand the <em>importance</em> of the <em>epistemological</em> message we pointed to by using the <em>mirror</em> metaphor. The <em>mirror</em> shows us we <em>must</em> end <em>reification</em>—of not only emotions (which we have just talked about), but also of our worldview; of our institutions; and of our very <em>concepts</em>. And that we are also ready for such a step, because our <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> has already brought us the kind of self-awareness that is necessary and sufficient for such a step. What remains is to <em>embody</em> this self-awareness. And to <em>act</em> on it. .</p>
-<blockquote>The end of <em>reification</em> is the end of arrogance that breeds ignorance—and the beginning of true knowing.</blockquote>
-<p>When <em>reification</em> is removed, we are left with the question: "What do we <em>really</em> know, about the questions that matter?" The answer we'll reach may now seem preposterous, and shocking. So let us introduce it here by retelling and old story—told in Plato's "Apology". We offer this story as the story of inception of the academic tradition—which points to the true nature of this tradition. And to the role the academic tradition has had in our evolution, which follows from it. </p>
-<p>In Athens, Socrates became a bit of a nuisance to some of the people in high esteem in power, by asking too many questions. So they accused him of "impiety" and "for corrupting the youth", and sentenced him to death. But the "corrupted youth", one of which was Plato, carried his work further by creating the Academy. In "Apology" Plato tells how Socrates instead of defending himself, adhered to the truth of the matter and <em>explained</em> what had happened.</p>
-<p>An Athenian went to Delphi and asked the Oracle whether Socrates was the wisest man in Athens; and came back with the positive answer. When he heard that, Socrates was perplexed, because he did not consider himself a single bit knowledgeable or wise. So he endeavored to resolve this puzzle by seeking out and examining his contemporaries who were reputed as knowledgeable and wise. Surely he would find them superior! But in fact he didn't. He found that they knew just as little as he did. The difference was, however, that they <em>believed</em> they knew a lot more. In this way Socrates resolved the puzzle of the Oracle: A wise man is not the one who knows more than others—but the one who knows the limits of his knowledge.</p>
-<p>We share this story to highlight <em>the main point</em> the <em>mirror</em> is pointing to:</p>
-<blockquote>The evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to the <em>mirror</em>.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>It is the <em>academia</em>'s prerogative to lead  us <em>through</em> the <em>mirror</em>!</blockquote>
-<p>As we have seen (in <em>socialized reality</em>), the evolution of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—accelerated through the 20th century science and philosophy—brought us to this point.</p>
-<p>Our exodus from the <em>power structure</em>–created reality must begin as an <em>academic</em> self-reflection. As change of <em>academic</em> self-perception, and self-identity.</p>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>dialog</em></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>dialog</em>, just as the <em>mirror</em>, is an entire <em>aspect</em> of the <em>holotopia</em>. This [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]] defines an angle of looking from which the <em>holotopia</em> as a whole can be seen, and <em>needs</em> to be seen.</p>
-<p>The <em>mirror</em> and the <em>dialog</em> are inextricably related to one another: Our invitation is not only to self-reflect, but also and most importantly to have a <em>dialog</em> in front of the <em>mirror</em>. The <em>dialog</em> is not only a <em>praxis</em>, but also an attitude. And the <em>mirror</em> points to <em>the</em> core element of that attitude—which David Bohm called "proprioception". But let's return to Bohm's ideas and his contribution to this timely cause in a moment.</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>The <em>dialog</em> is a key element of the <em>holotopia</em>'s tactical plan: We create <em>prototypes</em>, and we organize <em>dialogs</em> around them, as feedback mechanisms toward evolving them further. And this <em>dialog</em> itself, as it evolves—turns us who participate in it into bright new 'headlights'!</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>
-<p>Everything in our Holotopia <em>prototype</em> is a <em>prototype</em>. And no <em>prototype</em> is complete without a feedback loop that reaches back into its structure, to update it continuously. Hence each <em>prototype</em> is equipped with a <em>dialog</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>Isn't this what the <em>mirror</em> too demands?</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. Hands-on.</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>
-<blockquote>The <em>dialog</em> is an instrument for <em>changing</em> our <em>collective mind</em>. </blockquote>
+<blockquote>The <em>dialog</em> changes the world by changing the way we communicate.</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>dialog</em>, even more than the <em>mirror</em>, brings up an association with the <em>academia</em>'s inception. Socrates was not <em>convincing</em> people of a "right" view to see "reality"; he was merely engaging them in a self-reflective <em>dialog</em>, the intended result of which was to see the <em>limits</em> of knowledge—from which the <em>change</em> of what we see as "reality" becomes possible.</p>
+<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>Let us begin this <em>dialog</em> about the <em>dialog</em> by emphasizing that the medium here truly <em>is</em> the message: As long as we are having a <em>dialog</em>, we are making headway toward <em>holotopia</em>. And vice-versa: when we are debating or discussing our own view, aiming to enforce it on others and prevail in an argument, we are moving <em>away</em> from <em>holotopia</em>—<em>even when</em> we are using that method to promote <em>holotopia</em> itself!</p>
+<p>To point to the <em>dialog</em>'s further tactical possibilities, we contemplate adapting "reality show" as  [[keyword|<em>keyword</em>]]. When the <em>dialog</em> brings us together to daringly create, we see a new social reality emerge. When it doesn't, we witness the grip that <em>socialized reality</em> has on us.</p>
+</div> </div>
-<p>The attitude of the <em>dialog</em> here follows from the fundamental premises, which are part of the <em>socialized reality</em> and the <em>narrow frame</em> insights—and which are <em>axiomatic</em> to <em>holotopia</em>. Hence coming to the <em>dialog</em> 'wearing boxing gloves' (manifesting the now so common verbal turf strife behavior) is as ill-advised as making a case for an academic result by arguing that it was revealed to the author in a vision.</p>
-<blockquote>But what <em>is</em> the <em>dialog</em>?</blockquote>
-<p>Instead of giving a definitive answer—let us turn this <em>keyword</em>, [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]], into an abstract ideal goal, to which we will draw closer and closer by experimenting, and evolving. <em>Through</em> a <em>dialog</em>. We offer the following stories as both points of reference, and as illustration of the kind of difference that the <em>dialog</em> as new way to communicate can mean, and make.</p>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Keywords</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>[[keyword|<em>Keywords</em>]] enable us to speak and think in new ways.</blockquote>
-<h3>David Bohm's "dialogue"</h3>
+<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>While through Socrates and Plato the dialog has been a foundation stone of the academic tradition, David Bohm gave this word a completely new meaning—which we have undertaken to develop further. The [https://www.bohmdialogue.org Bohm Dialogue website] provides an excellent introduction, so it will suffice to point to it by echoing a couple of quotations. The first is by Bohm himself.</p>
+<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>There is a possibility of creativity in the socio-cultural domain which has not been explored by any known society adequately.</blockquote>
+<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>We let it point to the fact that to Bohm the "dialogue" was an instrument of socio-cultural therapy, leading to a whole new <em>co-creative</em> way of being together. Bohm considered the dialogue to be a necessary step toward unraveling our contemporary situation.</p>
+<p>While we've been seeing examples all along, we here share three more—to illustrate the exodus.</p>
-<p>The second quotation is a concise explanation of Bohm's idea by the curators of Bohm Dialogue website.</p>
+<h3><em>Culture</em></h3>
-<blockquote> Dialogue, as David Bohm envisioned it, is a radically new approach to group interaction, with an emphasis on listening and observation, while suspending the culturally conditioned judgments and impulses that we all have. This unique and creative form of dialogue is necessary and urgent if humanity is to generate a coherent culture that will allow for its continued survival.</blockquote>
+<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>
-<p>As this may suggest, the [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] is conceived as a direct antidote to [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]]-induced [[socialized reality|<em>socialized reality</em>]].</p>
+<blockquote>We do not know what "culture" means.</blockquote>
-<h3>Carl Jung's shadow</h3>
+<p>Not a good venture point for developing culture as <em>praxis</em>!</p>
-<p>Carl Jung pointed to a useful insight for understanding the <em>dialog</em>, by his own lead keyword "shadow". In a non-whole world, we become "large" by ignoring or denying or "repressing" parts of our <em>wholeness</em>, which become part of our "shadow".  The larger we are, the larger the "shadow". It follows us, scares us, annoys us. <em>And</em> it contains what we must integrate, to be able to grow.</p>
+<p>We defined  <em>culture</em> as "<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>"; and <em>cultivation</em> by analogy with planting and watering a seed—in accord with the etymology of that word.</p>
-<p>The <em>dialog</em> may in this context be understood as a therapeutic instrument, to help us discharge and integrate our "shadow". </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>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> and <em>epistemology</em></h3>
+<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>Bohm's own inspiration (story has it) is significant. Allegedly, Bohm was moved to create the "dialogue" when he saw how Einstein and Bohr, who were once good friends, <em>and</em> their entourages, were unable to communicate at Princeton. Allegedly, someone even made a party and invited the two groups, to help them overcome their differences, but the two groups remained separated in two distinct corners of the room.</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>The reason why this story is significant is the root cause of the Bohr-Einstein split: Einstein's "God does not play Dice" criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory; and Bohr's reply "Einstein, stop telling god what to do!" While in our <em>prototype</em> Einstein has the role of the <em>icon</em> of "modern science", in this instance it was Bohr and not Einstein who represented the <em>epistemological</em> position we are supporting. But Einstein later reversed his position— in "Autobiographical Notes". This very title mirrors Einstein as an artist of understatement; "Autobiographical Notes" is really a statement of Einstein's epistemology—just as "Physics and Philosophy" was to Heisenberg. While the fundamental assumptions for the <em>holoscope</em> have been carefully <em>federated</em>, it has turned out that <em>federating</em> "Autobiographical Notes" is sufficient, see [[IMAGES|Federation through Images]]).</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>The point may or may not be obvious: <em>Even to Einstein</em>, this <em>icon</em> of "modern science", the <em>dialog</em> was lacking to see that we just <em>cannot</em> "tell God what to do"; that the only thing we can do is observe the experience—<em>and model it freely</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>The benefits of a functioning <em>culture</em> could be prodigious—without us seeing that.</blockquote>
-<p>But Einstein being Einstein—he finally <em>did</em> get it. And so shall we!</p>
+<p>This is why communication is so central to <em>holotopia</em>. </p>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> and creativity</h3>
+<p>This is why we must step through the <em>mirror</em> to come in.</p>
+<h3><em>Addiction</em></h3>
-<p>Bohm's experience with the "dialogues" made him conclude that when a group of people practices it successfully, something quite wonderful happens—a greater sense of coherence, and harmony. It stands to reason that the open and humble attitude of the <em>dialog</em> is an important or a <em>necessary</em> step toward true creativity.</p>
+<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>
-<p>And creativity, needless to say, is yet <em>another</em> key aspect of <em>holotopia</em>, and a door we need to unlock.</p>
+<blockquote>By defining <em>addiction</em> as a <em>pattern</em>, we made it possible to identify it as an <em>aspect</em> of otherwise useful activities and things.</blockquote>
-<p>We touched upon the breadth and depth of this theme by developing our [https://holoscope.info/2020/01/01/tesla-and-the-nature-of-creativity/ Tesla and the Nature of Creativity] [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]]—and we offer it here to prime our future <em>dialogs</em> about it.</p>
+<p>To make ourselves and our culture <em>whole</em>, even subtle addiction must be taken care of.</p>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> and The Club of Rome</h3>
+<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight showed that <em>convenience</em> is a general addiction; and the root of innumerable specific ones.</p>
-<p>There is a little known red thread in the history of The Club of Rome; the story could have been entirely different: Özbekhan, Jantsch and Christakis, who co-founded The Club with Peccei and King, and wrote its statement of purpose, were in disagreement with the course it took in 1970  (with The Limits to Growth study) and left. Alexander Christakis, the only surviving member of this trio, is now continuing their line of work as the President of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras.  "The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is credited for the formalization of the science of Structured dialogic design." (Wikipedia).</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>Bela H. Banathy, whom we've mentioned as the champion of "Guided Evolution of Society" among the systems scientists, extensively experimented with the <em>dialog</em>. For many years, Banathy was staging a series of dialogs within the systems community, the goal of which was to envision social-systemic change. With Jenlink, Banathy co-edited two invaluable volumes of articles about the dialogue.</p>
+<h3><em>Religion</em></h3>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> and democracy</h3>
+<p>In "Physics and Philosophy" Werner Heisenberg described some of the consequences of the <em>narrow frame</em>:</p>
-<p>In 1983, Michel Foucault was invited to give a seminar at the UC Berkeley. What will this European historian of ideas par excellence choose to tell the young Americans?</p>
+<blockquote>It was especially difficult to find in this framework room for those parts of reality tht had been the object of the traditional religion and seemed now more or less only imaginary. Therefore, in those European countries in which one was wont to follow the ideas up to their extreme consequences, and open hostility of science toward religion developed (...). Confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind.</blockquote>
-<p> Foucault spent six lectures talking about an obscure Greek word, "parrhesia".</p>
+<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>
-<blockquote>[P]arrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life. When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death.</blockquote>
+<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>Foucault's point was that "parrhesia" was an <em>essential</em> element of Greek democracy.</p>
+<blockquote>What serves this role in <em>modern</em> culture?</blockquote>
-<p>[https://youtu.be/C7Gw--6t3s4 This four-minute digest of the 2020 US first presidential debate] will remind us just how much the spirit "parrhesia", and of <em>dialog</em>, is absent from the oldest <em>modern</em> democracy; and from contemporary political discourse at large.</p>
+<p>We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with the <em>archetype</em>". We further adapted Carl Jung's keyword, and defined <em>archetype</em> as whatever in our psychological makeup may compel us to <em>transcend</em> the narrow limits of self-interest; to overcome [[convenience|<em>convenience</em>]]. "Heroism",  "justice", "motherhood", "freedom", "beauty", "truth" and "love" are examples. </p>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> and new media technology</h3>
+<blockquote>Imagine a world where truth, love, beauty, justice... bind us to our purpose; and to each other!</blockquote>
-<p>A whole new chapter in the evolution of the dialogue was made possible by the new information technology. We illustrate an already developed research frontier by pointing to [https://www.cognexus.org/id17.htm Jeff Conklin's] book "Dialogue Mapping: Creating Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems", where Bohm dialogue tradition is combined with Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS), which Kunz and Rittel developed at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. </p>
-<p>The [http://Debategraph.org Debategraph], which we already mentioned, is <em>transforming</em> our <em>collective mind</em> hands-on. Contrary to what its name may suggest, Debategraph is an IBIS-based  <em>dialog</em> mapping tool. While he was the Minister for Higher Education in Australian government, Peter Baldwin saw that political debate was <em>not</em> a way to understand and resolve issues. So he decided to retire from politics, and with David Price co-founded and created Debategraph to <em>transform</em> politics, by changing the way in which issues are explored and decisions are made.</p>
-<p>In Knowledge Federation, we experimented extensively with turning Bohm's dialog into a 'high-energy cyclotron'; and into a medium through which a community can find "a way to change course". The result was a series of so-called Key Point Dialogs. An example is the Cultural Revival Dialog Zagreb 2008. We are working on bringing its website back online. </p>
-<h3><em>Dialog</em> as a <em>tactical</em> asset</h3>
-<p>When it comes to using the [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] as a <em>tactical</em> asset—as an <em>instrument</em> of cultural change toward the <em>holotopia</em>—two points need to be emphasized:</p>
-<ul>
-<li>We <em>define</em> the <em>dialog</em>, and we <em>insist</em> on having a <em>dialog</em> </li>
-<li>We design our situations, and we use the media, in ways make that deviations from the <em>dialog</em>  obvious</li>
-</ul>
-<p>When a <em>dialog</em> is recorded, and placed into the <em>holotopia</em> framework, violations become obvious—because the <em>attitude</em> of the [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]] is so completely different! We may see how this made a difference in the Club of Rome's history, where the debate gave unjust advantage to the <em>homo ludens</em> turf players—who don't use "parrhesia", but say whatever will earn them points in a debate, and smile confidently, knowing that the "truth" of the <em>power structure</em>, which they represent, will prevail!  The body language, however, when placed in the right context, makes this game transparent. See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0141gupAryM&feature=youtu.be&t=135 this example], where Dennis Meadows is put off-balance by an opponent.</p>
+<p>But isn't religion a belief system? And an institution?</p>
-<p>Hence the <em>dialog</em>—when adopted as medium, and when <em>mediated</em> by suitable technology and camera work—<em>becomes</em> the <em>mirror</em>; it <em>becomes</em> a new "spectacle" (in Guy Debord's most useful interpretation of this word). We engage the "opinion leaders", and use the <em>dialog</em> to re-create the conventional "reality shows"—in a manner that shows the contemporary realities in a way in which they <em>need</em> to be shown:</p>
+<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>
-<ul>
-<li>When a <em>dialog</em> is successful, the result is timely and informative: We <em>witness</em> how our understanding and handling of core social realities are changing</li>
-<li>When unsuccessful, the result is timely and informative in a <em>different</em> way: We witness the resistance to change; we see what is holding us back</li>
-</ul>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Ten themes|<em>Ten themes</em>]]</h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Ten themes|<em>Ten themes</em>]]</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><p><em>Everything</em> in <em>holotopia</em> is a potential theme for a <em>dialog</em>. Indeed, everything in our <em>holotopia</em> <em>prototype</em> is a <em>prototype</em>; and a <em>prototype</em> is not complete unless there is a <em>dialog</em> around it, to to keep it evolving and alive. </p>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[Ten themes|<em>ten themes</em>]] offer relevant and engaging things to talk about.</blockquote>
-<p>In particular each of the <em>five insights</em> will, we anticipate, ignite a lively conversation.</p>
-<p>We are, however, especially interested in using the <em>five insights</em> as a <em>framework</em> for creating other themes and dialogs. The point here is to have <em>informed</em> conversations; and to show that their quality of being informed is what makes all the difference. And in our present <em>prototype</em>, the <em>five insights</em> symbolically represent that what needs to be known, in order to give any age-old or contemporary theme a completely new course of development.</p>
+<p>At the same time they illustrate <em>how different</em> our conversations will be, when 'the light' has been turned on.</p>
-<blockquote>The <em>five insights</em>, and the ten direct relationships between them, provide us a frame of reference—in the context of which both age-old and contemporary challenges can be understood and handled in entirely new ways.</blockquote>
-<p>Here are some examples.</p>
+<p>We selected [[Ten themes|<em>ten themes</em>]] to prime and energize the <em>dialogs</em>. They correspond to the ten lines that join the <em>five insights</em> pairwise in a pentagram. Here are some highlights.</p>
 <h3>How to put an end to war?</h3>
-<blockquote>What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war, once and for all?</blockquote>
+<blockquote>What would it take to <em>really</em> put an end to war?</blockquote>
-<p>The <em>five insights</em> allow us to understand the war as just an extreme case among the various consequences of our general evolutionary course, by "the survival of the fittest"—where the populations that developed armies and weapons had "competitive advantage" over those who "turned the other cheek". It is that very evolutionary course that the Holotopia project undertakes to change.</p>
+<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>We offered the [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#Chomsky-Harari-Graeber Chomsky–Harari–Graeber <em>thread</em>] as a way to understand the evolutionary course we've been pursuing, and the consequences it had. Noam Chomsky here appears in the role of a linguist—to explain (what he considers a revolutionary insight reaching us from his field) that the human language did not develop as an instrument of communication, but of worldview sharing. Yuval Noah Harari, as a historian, explains why exactly <em>that</em> capability made us the fittest among the species, fit to rule the Earth. David Graeber's story of Alexander the Great illustrates the consequences this has had—including the destruction of secular and sacral culture, and turning free people into slaves.</p>
+<p>The <em>socialized reality</em> insight allows us to recognize the war as an extreme case of the general dynamic it describes—where one person's ambition to expand "his" 'symbolic turf' is paid for with hacked human bodies, destroyed homes, and unthinkable suffering. This conversation may then focus on the various instruments of <em>socialization</em> (through which our duty, love, heroism, honor,... are appropriated), which have always been core elements of "culture". The <em>socialized reality</em> insight may then help us understand—and also deconstruct—the mechanism that makes the unlikely bargain of war possible.</p>
+<!-- ANCHOR -->
+<span id="Education"></span>
-<p>We then told about Joel Bakan's "The Corporation", to show that while the outlook of our society changed since then beyond recognition—the nature of our cultural and social-systemic evolution, and its consequences, remained in principle the same.</p>
+<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>We could have, however, taken this conversation in the making in another direction—by talking about the meeting between Alexander and Diogenes; and by doing that reaching another key insight. </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>This part of the conversation between Alexander and Diogenes (quoted here from Plutarch) is familiar :</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>
-<blockquote>And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, "Yes," said Diogenes, "stand a little out of my sun."</blockquote>
+<h3>Zero to one</h3>
-<p>In his earlier mentioned [http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Foucault,Michel/Foucault%20-%20Discourse%20and%20truth.pdf lectures about "parrhesia"], Foucault tells a longer and more interesting story—where Diogenes (who has the most simple lifestyle one could imagine) tells Alexander (the ruler of the world) that he is "pursuing happiness" in a wrong direction. You are not free, Alexander, Diogenes tells him; you live your life in fear; you hold onto your royal role by force:</p>
+<blockquote>This conversation is about education.</blockquote>
-<blockquote>" I have an idea, however, that you not only go about fully armed but even sleep that way. Do you not know that is a sign of fear in a man for him to carry arms? And no man who is afraid would ever have a chance to become king any more than a slave would."</blockquote>
+<p>It is through the medium of education that a culture reproduces itself and evolves. Education is a [http://holoscope.org/CONVERSATIONS#Donella systemic leverage point] that <em>holotopia</em> must not overlook. </p>
+<p>By placing it in the context of <em>narrow frame</em> and <em>convenience paradox</em>,  we look at education from <em>this</em> specific angle:</p>
-<h3>Alienation</h3>
+<blockquote>Is education socializing us into an obsolete worldview?</blockquote>
+<blockquote>What would education be like if it had human development as goal?</blockquote>
-<blockquote>This theme offers to reconcile Karl Marx with "the 1%", the Western philosophical tradition with the Oriental ones, and the radical left with Christianity.</blockquote>
+<p>By giving it this title, "zero to one", we want to ask the question that Sir Ken Robison posed at TED: </p>
+<blockquote> Do schools kill creativity?</blockquote>
-<p>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces "alienation" in a way that is easily integrated in the <em>order of things</em> represented by <em>holotopia</em>: </p>
+<p>The title we borrowed from Peter Thiel, to look at this question from an angle that the <em>holotopians</em> are most interested in: We've been prodigiously creative in taking things 'from one to many' (improving things that already exist, and replicating them in large numbers); ye we are notoriously incapable of conceiving things that <em>do not</em> exist. But isn't <em>that</em> what changing a paradigm is about?</p>
-<blockquote>"The concept of alienation identifies a distinct kind of psychological or social ill; namely, one involving a problematic separation between a self and other that properly belong together."</blockquote>
-<p>Or to paraphrase this in the vernacular of <em>holotopia</em>:</p>
+<blockquote>Is <em>education</em> making us unable to change course?</blockquote>
-<blockquote> Alienation is what separates us from <em>wholeness</em>.</blockquote>
+<p>The most <em>interesting</em> question, in <em>holotopia</em> context, is about education's principle of operation. The [https://holoscope.info/2020/01/01/tesla-and-the-nature-of-creativity/ Tesla and the Nature of Creativity <em>prototype</em>] showed that creative imagination (the ability to constructs complex things that don't exist) seems to depend on a gradual, annealing-like process. What if the ability to <em>comprehend</em> complex things too demands that we <em>let the mind</em>  construct? </p>
-<p>We offer the Hegel-Marx-Debord <em>thread</em> as a way put the ball in play for a conversation about this theme. This <em>thread</em> has not yet been written, so we here sketch it briefly.</p>
+<p>Of course"pushing" information on students (instead of letting them acquire it through "pull") was the only way possible when information was scarce, and people had to come to a university to access it. But that is no longer the case! [https://youtu.be/LeaAHv4UTI8?t=832 Hear Michael Wesch], and then join us in co-creating an answer to <em>this</em> pivotal question:</p>
-<p>To Hegel, "alienation" was a life-long pursuit. The way we see the world is subject to errors, Hegel observed; so we are incapable of seeing things whole, in order to make them whole. Hegel undertook to provide a remedy, by developing a <em>philosophical method</em>.</p>
+<blockquote>Is our education's very <em>principle of operation</em> obsolete?</blockquote>
-<p>Marx continued Hegel's pursuit in an entirely different way. Having seen the abysmal conditions that the mid-19th century workers lived in, he grew diffident of philosophizing and of his own class background. The working class—the majority of humans—cannot pursue <em>wholeness</em>, because they must labor under conditions that someone else created for them. Science liberated us from so many things, Marx also observed, in the spirit of his time—why not apply its causal thinking to the <em>societal</em> ills as well? Logically, he identified "expropriation" as necessary goal; and a revolution as necessary means. Seeing that the religion hindered the working class from fulfilling its historical revolutionary role, Marx chose to disqualify it by calling it "the opium of the people".</p>
-<p>Marx was of course in many ways right; but he made two errors. The first we'll easily forgive him, if we take into account that he too, unavoidably perhaps for a rational thinker in his age, looked at the world through the <em>narrow frame</em>: He sidestepped "human quality",  and adopted "instrumental thinking". Where Marx's agenda was successful,  "the dictatorship of the proletariat" ended up being only—the dictatorship! In the rest of world, the "left" understood that to have power, it must align itself with <em>power structure</em>—and became just another "right"!</p>
+<h3>Alienation</h3>
-<p>The second error Marx made was to ignore that <em>also the capitalists</em> were victims of <em>power structure</em>. <em>They too</em> would benefit from pursuing <em>wholeness</em> instead of power and money. Gandhi, of course, saw that, and that was his great contribution to the methodology of group conflict resolution.  But Gandhi's thinking was of holistic-Oriental, not instrumental. </p>
+<blockquote>This theme offers a way to reconcile Karl Marx with "the 1%", and the radical left with Christianity.</blockquote>
-<p>Having failed to see there was a "winning without fighting" strategy—the left and remained on the losing side of the power scale until this day.</p>
+<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>An interesting side effect of this development was that, having bing disowned by the "left", Christ became an emblem of the "right"—which is ironic: Jesus was a revolutionary! His only reported act of violence was  "expelling the money changers from the temple of God".</p>
+<blockquote><em>Holotopia</em> wins without fighting—by <em>co-opting</em> the powerful.</blockquote>
-<p>Guy Debord added to this theme a whole new chapter, by observing that the immersive audio-visual technology gave to alienation a whole new medium and course—which Marx could not have possibly predicted. </p>
-<p>By placing this conversation in the context of the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight on the one side, and the <em>power structure</em> insight on the other, we recognize the <em>power structure</em>—which includes all of us—as "enemy"; and <em>wholeness</em>—for all of us—as goal.</p>
 <h3>Enlightenment 2.0</h3>
-<p>By placing this conversation about the reissue of "enlightenment" in the context of the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>collective mind</em> insight, two most interesting venues for transdisciplinary cross-fertilization are opened up.</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 is to use <em>knowledge federation</em> and contemporary media technology, powered by artistic and other techniques, to <em>federate</em> the kind of insights that can make the <em>convenience paradox</em> transparent, and inform "a great cultural revival".</p>
+<p>One of them takes advantage of the media technology—to create media material that helps us "change course", by making the <em>convenience paradox</em> transparent. </p>
-<p>The other one is to use the insights into the nature of human <em>wholeness</em> to inform the development and use of contemporary media technology. How do computer games, and the ubiquitous advertising, <em>really</em> affect us? In [[Intuitive introduction to systemic thinking]] we offered a couple of further interesting historical reference points, to motivate a reflection about this theme.</p>
+<p>The other one applies the insights about <em>wholeness</em>—to develop media use that <em>supports</em> wholeness.</p>
-<p>Here Gregory Bateson's important keyword "the ecology of the mind", and Neil Postman's closely related one "media ecology", can set the stage for <em>federating</em> a human ecology that will make us spirited and <em>enlightened</em>, not despondent and dazzled.</p>
 <h3>Academia quo vadis?</h3>
-<p>This title is reserved for the <em>academic</em> self-reflective <em>dialog</em> in front of the <em>mirror</em>, about the university's social role, and future.</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>A number of 20th century thinkers claimed that the development of transdisciplinarity was necessary; Erich Jantsch, for instance, who saw the "[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00145222 inter- and transdisciplinary university]" as <em>the</em> core element of our society's "steering and control', <em>necessary</em> if our civilization will gain control over its newly acquired power, and steer a viable course;  Jean Piaget saw it from the point of view of cognitive psychology (although Piaget is usually credited for coining  this keyword, Jantsch may have done that before him); Werner Heisenberg saw it from the <em>fundamental</em> angle of "physics and philosophy", as we have seen. </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>
-<p>By placing the conversation about the <em>academia</em>'s future in the context of the <em>socialized reality</em> insight and the <em>narrow frame</em> insight, and in that way making it <em>informed</em> by a variety of more detailed insights, we showed that the epistemological and methodological developments that took place in the last century <em>enable</em>  transdisciplinarity; that its development can be seen as the natural and necessary next step in the university institution's evolution; and that our global condition <em>mandates</em> that we take that step.</p>
+<blockquote>Is <em>transdisciplinarity</em> the university institution's future?</blockquote>
-<p>Jey Hillel Bernstein wrote in [http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/510/412 a more recent survey]:</p>
+<p>This conversation should not avoid to look at the humanistic side of its theme.</p>
-<blockquote>"In simultaneously studying multiple levels of, and angles on, reality, transdisciplinary work provides an intriguing potential to invigorate scholarly and scientific inquiry both in and outside the academy."</blockquote>
+<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>This conversation may take a number of different directions.</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>One of them is to be a dialog about <em>knowledge federation</em> as a concrete <em>prototype</em> of a "transdiscipline". Such a dialog is indeed <em>the</em> true intent of our proposal; we are not proposing another methodological and institutional 'dead body'—but a way for the university to <em>evolve</em> its institutional organization and its methods, by <em>federating</em> insights into an evolving <em>prototype</em>.</p>
-<p>A completely one would be to discuss the university's <em>ethical</em> norms and guidance. Should we be pursuing our careers in traditional disciplines? Or consider ourselves as parts in a larger whole, and adapt to that role? </p>
-<p>This particular approach to our theme, however, also has a deeper meaning; and that's the one that its title is pointing to. Nearly two thousand years ago the ethical and institutional foundation of the Roman Empire was shaking, and the Christian Church stepped into the role of a guiding light. Can the university assume that role today?</p>
+<blockquote>Can <em>the university</em> enable our next ethical transformation—by liberating us from an antiquated way of comprehending the world?</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
 <div class="row">
-<div class="col-md-3"><h2><em>Keywords</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stories</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><p>A warning reaches us from sociology.</p>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The stories are a way to make insights accessible and clear.</blockquote>
-<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>
-[[File:Beck-frame.jpeg]]
-</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>By creating [[keyword|<em>keywords</em>]], by using [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]], we <em>liberate</em> thought and action from the "iron cage".</p>
+<p>We illustrate this technique by a single example, [[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart]].</p>
-<p>We have seen numerous examples of <em>keywords</em>; each of the <em>five insights</em> is one. Yt we shall briefly discuss another three—to illustrate the larger compendium of related issues, in a fractal-like way.</p>
+<blockquote>The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart is a <em>modern</em> version of 'Galilei in house arrest'.</blockquote>
-<h3><em>Culture</em></h3>
+<p>It shows who, or <em>what</em>, holds 'Galilei in house arrest' today.</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>
+<p>As summarized in [[The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart|the article]], Engelbart's contributions to the emerging <em>paradigm</em> were crucial. Erich Jantsch wrote:</p>
+<blockquote>"The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the “joint systems” of society and technology."</blockquote>
-<blockquote>We do not know what "culture" means!</blockquote>
+<blockquote>Engelbart contributed means to secure <em>decisive</em> victories in those "decisive battles".</blockquote>
-<p>Not a good venture point for developing culture as <em>praxis</em> (informed practice).</p>
+<p>Even <em>more</em> relevant and interesting is, however, what this story tells about ourselves.</p>
-<p>We defined  <em>culture</em> as "<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>", and <em>cultivation</em> by analogy with planting and watering a seed (which suits also the etymology of "culture") . In this way we defined a specific <em>way of looking</em> at culture, and pointed to its specific <em>aspect</em>—exactly the one that we tended to ignore, while we looked at it through the <em>narrow frame</em>. No amount of dissecting and studying a seed would suggest that it needs to be planted and watered; the difference between an apple eaten up and the seeds thrown away—and a tree full of apples each Fall—is made by relying on the <em>experience</em> of others who have undergone this process, and seen it work.</p>
+<blockquote>As part of the <em>mirror</em>, The Incredible History of Doug Engelbart reflects what we must see and change about <em>ourselves</em> to be able to "change course".</blockquote>
-<p>There is, however, an obvious difference between the two kinds of cultivation, the agricultural and cultural one: In this latter one, both 'seeds' and 'trees' are inside ourselves, and hence invisible. This has historically presented an insurmountable challenge, to communicate cultural insights. But to us this is also a most wonderful <em>opportunity</em>—because we have undertaken to <em>develop</em> communication consciously, by tailoring it to what needs to be communicated.</p>
+<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>
-<h3><em>Addiction</em></h3>
-<p>Selling addictions being a famously lucrative yet destructive line of work, the traditional cultures developed legal and ethical norms to keep it under control. But the traditions <em>reified</em> the addictions—as things, such as opiates, or activities, such as gambling. What will hinder businesses from using new technologies to create <em>new</em> addictions?</p>
+<p>We couldn't even hear him.</p>
-<p>The evolution gave us senses and emotions to guide us to [[wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]]. The technology made it possible to deceive our senses—and create pleasurable things and activities that take us  <em>away</em> from <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
+<blockquote>This 'experiment' showed how <em>incredibly</em> idea-blind we've become.</blockquote>
-<p>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. To make ourselves and our world <em>wholes</em>, even such subtle addiction need to be taken care of.</p>
+</div> </div>
-<p>From a large number of obvious or subtle <em>addictions</em>, we here mention only <em>pseudoconsciousness</em> defined as "<em>addiction</em> to information". Consciousness of one's situation and surroundings is, of course, a necessary condition for <em>wholeness</em>. In civilization we can, however, drown this need in facts and data, which give us the <em>sensation</em> of knowing—without telling us what we really <em>need to</em> know, in order to be or become <em>whole</em>.</p>
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The <em>elephant</em></h2></div>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>The [[elephant]] points to a quantum leap in relevance and interest—when academic and other insights are presented <em>in the context of</em> "a great cultural revival".</blockquote>
+<p>
+[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br>
+<small>Elephant <em>ideogram</em></small>
+</p>
-<h3><em>Religion</em></h3>
+<p>There is an "elephant in the room", waiting to be discovered.</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>
-<p>In traditional cultures, religion was widely regarded as an integral part of our [[wholeness|<em>wholeness</em>]]. Can this concept, and the heritage of the traditions it is pointing to, still have a function and a value in our own era? </p>
+<blockquote>This thoroughly changes when we realize that they described 'the ear', 'the trunk' and 'the leg' of an 'exotic animal'—which nobody has as yet seen!</blockquote>
-<p>We adapted the definition that Martin Lings contributed, and defined <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with the <em>archetype</em>" (which harmonizes with the etymological meaning of this word). The <em>archetypes</em> include "justice", "motherhood", "freedom", "beauty", "truth", "love" and anything else that may inspire a person to overcome <em>egotism</em> and <em>convenience</em>, and serve a "higher" end.</p>
-<p>Since the corresponding <em>ideogram</em> has not yet been drawn, imagine an old-fashioned wheel with spokes. Wherever the spokes meet the outer rim of the wheel, there is an <em>archetype</em>. In the center of the wheel we find the central archetype, which is their 'common denominator'. We might call it "pure archetypal energy"; or "love", or "God". </p>
+<p>We make it possible to 'connect the dots' and <em>see</em> the <em>elephant</em>.</p>
-<p>The iconic image of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel will help us highlight some of the nuances. Carol Reed's historical drama "The Agony and the Ecstasy" portrays this event through the relationship of its two main protagonists, Michelangelo (played by Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (played by Rex Harrison). Julius was a "warrior Pope"; yet he exercised his piety by enabling the Divinity to speak through the brush of his artist. Through Michelangelo, the film depicts the "agony and ecstasy" of the inspired artist. </p>
+<blockquote>By combining the <em>elephant</em> with [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] we offer a new notion of rigor to the study of cultural artifacts.</blockquote>
+<p>The structuralists attempted that in a different way. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts by successfully arguing that cultural artifacts <em>have no</em> "real meaning"; and making meanings open to interpretation. </p>
+<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 class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Books and publishing</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><p>Occasionally we publish books about of the above themes—to punctuate the laminar flow of events, draw attention to a theme and begin a <em>dialog</em>. </p>
+<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>Shall we not recreate the book as well—along with all the rest? Yes and no. 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" than the contemporary "immersive" audio-visual media do; it gives us a chance to <em>reflect</em>. </p>
+<p>Does the book still have a future?</p>
-<p>We, however, embed the book exist in an 'ecosystem' of media. By publishing a book we 'break ice' and place a theme—which may or may not be one of our <em>ten themes</em>—into the focus of the public eye. We then let our <em>collective mind</em> digest and further develop the proposed ideas; and by doing that—develop <em>itself</em>!</p>
+<p>In "Amuzing Ourselves to Death", Neil Postman (who founded "media ecology") left us a convincing argument why the book is here to stay. His point was that the book creates a different "ecology of the mind" (to borrow Gregory Bateson's similarly potent idea) than the audio-visual media do: It gives us a chance to <em>reflect</em>. </p>
+<p>We, however, embed the book in an 'ecosystem' of media. By publishing a book we 'break ice' and place a theme—which may or may not be one of our <em>ten themes</em>—into the focus of the public eye. We then let our <em>collective mind</em> digest and further develop the proposed ideas; and by doing that—develop <em>itself</em>!</p>
 <p>In this way, a loop is closed through which an author's insights are improved by <em>collective</em> creativity and knowledge—leading, ultimately, to a new and better edition of the book.</p>
@@ Line 1,683: / Line 792: @@
 <p>The book titled "Liberation", with subtitle "Religion beyond Belief", is scheduled to be completed during the first half of 2021, and serve as the first in the series.</p>
-<p>In a fractal-like way, this book reflects the <em>holotopia</em> as a whole. We are accustomed to think of "religion" as a firm or dogmatic <em>belief</em> in something, impervious to counter-evidence. The Liberation book turns this idea of religion inside out—so that <em>religion</em> is understood as <em>liberation</em> from not only rigidly held beliefs, but from rigidly held <em>anything</em>. </p>
+<!-- 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>
-<p>The age-old conflict, between science and religion, is resolved by the book by further evolving <em>both</em> science and religion.</p>
+<blockquote>The age-old conflict between science and religion is resolved by <em>evolving</em> both science and religion.</blockquote>
 </div> </div>
@@ Line 1,691: / Line 803: @@
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prototypes</h2></div>
-<div class="col-md-7"><p>
+<div class="col-md-7"><blockquote>
-[[prototype|<em>Prototypes</em>]], as we have seen, are a way to <em>federate</em> information by weaving it directly into the fabric of everyday reality. A <em>prototype</em> can be literally anything.</p>
+[[prototype|<em>Prototypes</em>]] <em>federate</em> insights by weaving them into the fabric of reality.</blockquote>
-<p>In the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>, everything is a <em>prototype</em>. In that way we subject <em>everything</em> to knowledge-based evolution.</p>
-<p>A type of <em>prototypes</em> we have not yet talked about are <em>events</em>. They are multimedia and multidimensional <em>prototypes</em>—which include a variety of more specific <em>prototypes</em>. Events are used to 'punctuate the equilibrium'—to create a discontinuity in the ordinary flow of events, draw attention to a theme, create a transformative space, both physical and in media, engage people and make a difference. </p>
+<p><em>They</em>
+<ul>
-<p>In what follows we illustrate this idea by describing the <em>holotopia</em>'s Earth Sharing pilot event, which took place in June of 2018 in Bergen, Norway.</p>
+<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>
-<p>Vibeke Jensen, the artist who created what we are about to describe, is careful to avoid interpreting the <em>space</em>, the objects and the interaction she creates. The idea is to use them as prompts, and <em>allow</em> new meaning to emerge through association and group interaction. The interpretation we are about to give is by us others. It is, however, only <em>a</em> possible interpretation.</p>
+</ul> </p>
-<p>
-[[File:B2018-Building.JPG]]
-</p>
-<p>The physical space where the event took place was symbolic of the purpose of the event. The building used to be a bank in the old center of Bergen, and later became an art gallery. It remained to turn the gallery, <em>holotopia</em>-style, into a transformative <em>space</em>. </p>
-<p>
-[[File:B2018-Stairs.jpg]]
-</p>
-<p>The space was upstairs—and Vibeke turned the stairs too into a symbolic object. Going up, the inscription on the stairs reads "bottom up"; going down, it reads "top down". In this way the very first thing that meets the eye is the all-important message, which defines the <em>polyscopy</em> and the <em>holoscope</em>—namely that we can reach insights in those two ways.</p>
-<p>
-[[File:Local-Global.jpg]]
-</p>
-<p>The BottomUp - TopDown intervention is a tool for shifting positions. It suggests transcendence of
-fixed relations between top and bottom, and builds awareness of the benefits of multiple points of
-view (polyscopy), and moving in-between.</p>
-<p>
-[[File:SafeSpace02.png]]
-</p>
-<p>The <em>mirror</em>—the core symbol of <em>holotopia</em> transformation—is seen almost everywhere. In particular, a one-way mirror serves as the entrance into the space that used to be the vault of the bank. One enters the vault by literally stepping through a physical mirror. Instead of money and other physical treasures, the vault is a "safe space" for reflection. The inside of the vault was not illuminated, but one could see the world outside through the semi-transparent door, and reflect on it. From the speakers in the vault one could hear edited fragments from an earlier dialog—offered as <em>information</em> to build on and develop ideas further. There was a bag with seeds hanging in the vault. </p>
-<p>
+<p>By rendering results of creative work as challenge—resolution pairs, <em>design patterns</em> make them adaptable to new applications. Each [[design pattern|<em>design pattern</em>]] constitutes a discovery—of a specific way in which a <em>system</em>, and world at large, can be made more <em>whole</em>.</p>
-[[File:Babel2.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>We like to think of the objects that populated the space as <em>furniture</em>—and give that world a <em>designed</em> meaning. When one enters a room, the furniture in the room (a sofa, a couple of armchairs...) automatically invites a certain kind of interaction. Our <em>furniture</em>, however, was <em>nothing like</em> conventional furniture; it invites to <em>recreate</em> the interaction. <em>And</em>, of course, it offers certain prompts.</p>
+<blockquote>What difference would be made, if the principle "make things <em>whole</em>" guided innovation?</blockquote>
+<p>We point to an answer by these examples.</p>
+<h3>Education</h3>
-</div> </div>
+<p>The Collaborology 2016 educational <em>prototype</em>, to whose subject and purpose we pointed by [https://iuc.hr/IucAdmin/Server/downloads/Collaborology2016.pdf this course flyer], exhibited solutions to a number of challenges that were repeatedly voiced by education innovators. In addition, its [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]] showed how education can be adapted to <em>holotopia</em>'s purpose. </p>
+<p>Most of Collaborology's <em>design patterns</em> were developed and tested within its precursor, [http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/ID-flyer.pdf University of Oslo Information Design course]. </p>
-<!-- AAAAAAA
+<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>
-<p>The academic tradition did not originate as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but knowledge for its own sake. And in a manner disciplined only by [[knowledge of knowledge|<em>knowledge of knowledge</em>]]—which philosophers have been developing since antiquity.</p>
+<blockquote>Learning is by "pull", by 'connecting the dots'.</blockquote>
-<p>We pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, by highlighting the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest, that
+<p>The students learn <em>what</em> they need, <em>when</em> they need it.</p>
-<blockquote>it was this <em>free</em> pursuit of knowledge that led to the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival".</blockquote>
+<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>
-<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>
-[[File:Toulmin-Vision2.jpeg]]
-</p>
+<blockquote>Economies of scale result, which drastically reduce workload. </blockquote>
-<p>And we asked:
+<p>It becomes cost-effective to power learning by <em>new</em> technologies—why should only the game manufacturers use them?</p>
-<blockquote>Could a similar advent be in store for us today?</blockquote></p>
-<p>The key to the positive answer to this question—and to <em>holotopia</em>—is in the <em>historicity</em> of "the relationship we have with knowledge".</p>
+<blockquote>Collaborology provides a sustainable business model for creating and disseminating transdisciplinary knowledge of <em>any</em> theme.</blockquote>
-<p>As Toulmin pointed out in "Reurn to Reason", from which the above quotation was taken, when the <em>contemporary</em> academic institutional structures and ethos were taking shape, it was the tradition and the Church that had the prerogative of telling the people what to believe in and what to do. And as the image of Galilei in house arrest may suggest—they held onto that prerogative most firmly! </p>
+<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>But censorship and prison were unable to hinder a new way of exploring the world to transpire from astrophysics, where it originated, and transform first our pursuit of knowledge in general—and then our society and culture at large.</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>
-<p>It is therefore natural that at the universities we consider the curation of this <em>approach</em> to knowledge to be our core role in our society. Being the heirs and the custodians of a tradition that has historically led to some of <em>the</em> most spectacular evolutionary leaps in human history, we remain faithful to that tradition. We do that by meticulously conforming to the methods and the themes of interests of mathematics, physics, philosophy, biology, sociology, philosophy and other traditional academic disciplines, which, we believe, <em>embody</em> the highest standards of that tradition. People can learn practical skills elsewhere. It is only at the <em>university</em> that they can acquire the highest standards of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>—and the ability to pursue knowledge effectively in <em>any</em> domain.</p>
+<h3>Scientific communication 1</h3>
-<p>We must ask:</p>
+<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>
-<blockquote>Can the academic tradition evolve still further? </blockquote>
+<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>Can this tradition <em>once again</em> give us a completely <em>new</em> way to explore the world?</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>Can the free pursuit of knowledge, curated by the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em>, once again lead to "a great cultural revival" ?</p>
+<p><b>Federating an author's idea</b>. An article written in an academic vernacular, of quantum physics, was transformed into a multimedia object—where its core idea was communicated by intuitive diagrams, and explained in recorded interviews with the author. A high-profile event was then organized to make the idea public, and discuss it in a dialog of experts. The idea was then embedded in a technology-enabled collective mind, implemented on Debategraph, where collective 'connecting the dots' continued.</p>
-<blockquote>Can "a great cultural revival" <em>begin</em> at the university?</blockquote>
+<blockquote>This <em>prototype</em> models a <em>new</em> "social life of information"—alternative to peer reviews.</blockquote>
-_______
+<h3>Scientific communication 2</h3>
+<p>[http://knowledgefederation.net/TLabstract.pdf Lightnouse 2016] <em>prototype</em> shows how an <em>academic community</em> can <em>federate</em> an insight. We offered it as a resolution to [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/WP.pdf Wiener's paradox].</p>
-xxxxxxx
+<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>
-now illustrate the variety of insights that are waiting to be <em>federated</em> on this <em>frontier</em>, and the variety of questions that can be asked and answered in that way. </p>
+<blockquote>Isn't this <em>the very first</em> question our society's 'headlights' must illuminate?</blockquote>
-<blockquote>2. The <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em> is counter-intuitive.</blockquote>
-<p>
-[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>To get a glimpse of it, compare the above utterances by Lao Tzu (acclaimed as progenitor of Taoism; "tao" literally means "way"), with what Christ taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Why was Teacher Lao claiming that "the weak can defeat the strong"? Why did the Christ advise his disciples to "turn the other cheek"?</p>
-<p>Aldous Huxley's book "Perennial Philosophy" is <em>alone</em> sufficient to give an answer.  Coming from a family that gave some of Britain's leading scientists, Huxley undertook to not only <em>federate</em> some of the core insights about the <em>way</em> (by demonstrating the consistency of both the relevant practices <em>and</em> their results across historical periods and cultures), but to also make a case for the method he used, as an extension of science needed to support <em>cultural</em> evolution.</p>
+<h3>Public informing</h3>
-<blockquote>3. To overcome the paradox, we must <em>reverse</em> the modernity's characteristic values.</blockquote>
+<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><em>Convenience</em> must be replaced by "human development". </p>
+<p><b><em>Federated</em> journalism.</b> A journalist working alone has no recourse but to look for sensations. In BIGJ 2011 the journalist works within a 'collective mind', in which readers, experts and communication designers too have active roles—see [https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=132084&vt=ngraph&dc=focus this description].</p>
-<p><em>Egotism</em> must be subjugated by service to larger purposes.</p>
+<p><b><em>Designed</em> journalism.</b> What would public informing be like, if it were not <em>reified</em> as "what the journalists are doing", but <em>designed</em> to suit its all-important social role? We asked "What do the people <em>really</em> need to know—so that the society may function, and the democracy may be real?" And we drafted a public informing that applies the time-honored approach of science to <em>society</em>'s problems—see [https://holoscope.info/2013/06/05/toward-a-scientific-understanding-and-treatment-of-problems/ this explanation].</p>
-<p>Lao Tzu (the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>'s iconic pointer to the <em>way</em>) is often portrayed as reading a bull—which signifies that he achieved that.</p>
-<p>While this insight can easily be <em>federated</em> in the manner just described, we here point to it by a curiosity.</p>
+<h3>Culture</h3>
-<p>
+<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>
-[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
-</p>
-<p>In "The Art of Seeing", Huxley observed that overcoming egotism is a necessary element of even <em>physical</em> wholeness!</p>
-<p>We may now perceive significant parts of our cultural history as a struggle between <em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em> guided by insights into the nature of the <em>way</em>—and the <em>power structure</em>–related <em>socialization</em>, aided by the attraction of <em>convenience</em> and <em>egotism</em>. It is on the outcome of this struggle, Peccei warned us, that our future will depend. </p>
-<blockquote>What hope do we have of reversing its outcome?</blockquote>
+<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>
-<p>The answer is, of course, that we now have a whole new <em>dimension</em> to work with.</p>
+<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>
-<blockquote>We can <em>design</em> communication.</blockquote>
+<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>We can create media content that will communicate the <em>convenience paradox</em> in clear and convincing ways; we can guide people to an <em>informed</em> use of information; <em>and</em> we can create various elements of culture to <em>socialize</em> us or <em>cultivate</em> us accordingly. Including, of course, <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>. </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>
-<blockquote>A <em>vast</em> creative frontier opens up.</blockquote>
+<h3>Art</h3>
-<p>We illustrate it here by a handful of examples.</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><b>Art as space</b>. The artist no longer only creates, but creates a <em>space</em> where the public can create.</p>
-<p>The first of the <em>five insights</em>, the <em>power structure</em>, showed that when we use "free competition" or "the survival of the fittest" to direct our efforts and our evolutionary course, then <em>we</em> end up being 'the enemy' <em>creating</em> the "problematique". We have seen that the key to "changing course" is a change of values—from <em>convenience</em> and <em>egotism</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. We have seen (the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight) that this change of values follows when we substitute <em>federated</em> information for various forms of power-motivated <em>socialization</em>, such as advertising. </p>
+<p><b>Art <em>and</em> science</b>. The artist no longer works in isolation, but in a space illuminated by information—where <em>memes</em> that are most vital come to the fore, to be given a voice.  </p>
-<p>The values are an easy target, if we consider that <em>convenience</em> and <em>egotism</em> are so obviously lame that they hardly merit to be called "values". In the [[Holotopia:Socialized reality|<em>Socialized reality</em>]] detailed article, we however showed that those values inhibit also our <em>personal</em> "pursuit of happiness", profoundly and directly. And that as soon as an <em>informed</em> "pursuit of happiness" is in place, not only the direction is changed, but also a vast culture-creative frontier opens up, where the levels of human <em>wholeness</em> and fulfillment come within reach that are well beyond what the now common ways of "pursuing happiness" can achieve.</p>
+<p>Our Earth Sharing pilot event, which we offer as illustration, took place in June of 2018, in Kunsthall 3,14 of Bergen. Vibeke Jensen, the artist who led us, avoids interpreting her creations. They are to be used as prompts, to <em>allow</em> meaning to emerge. The interpretation we share here is a <em>possible</em> one.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:B2018-Building.JPG]]
+</p>
-<p>Furthermore, in <em>narrow frame</em>, we have seen how a general-purpose <em>methodology</em> can be developed for doing that, on state-of-the-art academic premises.</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>
-_______
-<blockquote>Our call to action, to institutionalize and develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field and a real-life <em>praxis</em>, is a practical way to implement the changes that have become necessary. As an academic field, <em>knowledge federation</em> is conceived as the <em>academia</em>'s and the society's evolutionary organ; as a real-life <em>praxis</em>, it is the collective thinking we now need to develop.</blockquote>
 <p>
-[[File:Jantsch-university.jpeg]]
+[[File:B2018-Stairs.jpg]]
 </p>
-<p>When making this call to action, we are not saying anything new; we are only echoing the call to action that <em>many</em> have made before us.</p>
-<p>We, however, extend the action they were calling for to a fully developed academic <em>paradigm</em>—and hence ground it firmly on the <em>academia</em>'s time-honored principles. And we also <em>operationalize</em> the action, by offering a complete institutional [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]]—comprising everything from the <em>epistemology</em> and methods on the one side, and an active community of practitioners and a portfolio of real-life applications on the other—and making it ready to be deployed.</p>
+<p>The gallery was upstairs—and Vibeke turned the stairs into a metaphor. Going up, the inscription read "bottom up"; going down, it read "top down". From the outset, the visitors were sensitized to those two ways to connect ideas.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Local-Global.jpg]]
+</p>
-_____________
+<p>The BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool then suggested to transcend fixed ways of looking, and <em>combine</em> worldviews and perspectives.</p>
-<p>Is it really true that we <em>must</em> "change course"? While this question may seem compelling, our focus will be on a related practical task:</p>
+<p>
+[[File:SafeSpace02.png]]
+</p>
-<blockquote>The purpose of the Holotopia project is to restore our ability to "change course".</blockquote>
+<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>The fact that we <em>must</em> be able to "change course", when the circumstances demand that, can hardly be disputed. The fact that now, forty years later, The Club of Rome's call to action is still ignored and not even disputed—shows that there is some urgent work that needs to be done.</p>
+<p>
+[[File:Babel2.jpeg]]
+</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>
-_______
+<blockquote>The creation that took place in this space was the Holotopia project's inception.</blockquote>
+</div> </div>
-<p>Let us right away illustrate [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]] by showing how it may inform the <em>academic</em> self-reflection in front of the <em>mirror</em>, and help us resolve the self-identity paradox we are here talking about.</p>
-<p>We defined the <em>academia</em> as "institutionalized academic tradition". And we made Socrates be the <em>icon</em> of <em>academia</em>, as its intellectual father. By telling the story Plato told in Apology, we show that the <em>academia</em>'s point of inception was really an act of <em>liberation</em> from <em>socialized reality</em>; Socrates used the dialogue as technique to shake up the rigidity of "doxa", and help us see, rationally, that what we believe is "reality" may not at all be true. Similarly, by making Galilei the <em>icon</em> of science, we pointed out that, 2000 years later, he (i.e. science) assumed a similar role with respect to the <em>socialized reality</em> of the Church—and enabled the evolution of ideas and of society to continue.</p>
-<p>In this way we have created a <em>way of looking</em> at the contemporary university, as an institutionalization of <em>that</em> tradition.</p>
-<p>At first glance, our job now may seem so much easier than what Socrates and Galilei had to do; the academic tradition now <em>is</em> in power!</p>
-<p>But there's a rub: Ironically, by being in power, the academic tradition is exposed to all the negative tendencies—the risk of becoming a <em>power structure</em>, or a complex 'turf'—that institutionalization, as we have seen, carries along.</p>
-<blockquote>Can we muster enough of <em>academic</em> "human quality",  of the integrity and courage that Socrates and Galilei and other founding fathers of <em>academia</em> and of science displayed so vigorously—to make the kind of changes the academic tradition is once again called upon to make?</blockquote>
-<p>We leave such questions for our <em>dialog</em> in front of the <em>mirror</em>, and here conclude by some example <em>prototypes</em>—which will illustrate some of the <em>fundamental</em> interventions that become actionable on the other side of the <em>mirror</em>. </p>
-<p>Our main two <em>prototypes</em>, the <em>holoscope</em> and the <em>holotopia</em>, model the academic and the social reality on the other side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]].</p>
-<p>On the other side of the <em>mirror</em>, we create a <em>foundation</em> for truth and meaning that is a convention. We called the new method Polyscopic Modeling or <em>polyscopy</em>. While the methods are allowed to evolve freely, as <em>prototypes</em>.</p>
-_______

Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

Latest revision as of 12:37, 30 September 2021

Contents

HOLOTOPIA

An Actionable Strategy

Imagine...

Our proposal

Its essence

Its substance

Its method

A vision

A difference to be made

A different way to see the future

Five insights

Power structure insight (analogy with Industrial Revolution)

Collective mind insight (analogy with Gutenberg Revolution)

Socialized reality insight (analogy with Enlightenment)

Narrow frame insight (analogy with Scientific Revolution)

Convenience paradox insight (analogy with Renaissance)

Large change is easy

The "course" is a paradigm

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

"Human quality" is the key

A strategy

We will not solve our problems

We will not change the world

A mission

Step 1: Enabling academic evolution

Step 2: Enabling societal evolution

Tactical assets

Art

Five insights

The mirror

The dialog

Keywords

Culture

Addiction

Religion

Ten themes

How to put an end to war?

Zero to one

Alienation

Enlightenment 2.0

Academia quo vadis?

Stories

The elephant

Books and publishing

Liberation

Prototypes

Education

Scientific communication 1

Scientific communication 2

Public informing

Culture

Art