Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice two flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed in the circular holes 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.

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

Modernity ideogram

The KF proposal

We have candles as headlights

From around the middle of the 19th century, and until the first decades of the 20th century, everything changed: Our countries became democracies; our worldview became scientific and secular; our lifestyle became mechanized and modern. Everything changed—and then for about a century remained frozen!

Meanwhile the human creativity, unleashed from tradition, continued to bear fruits; and we now have

• a completely different understanding of language, truth and reality, and of the meaning and purpose of information and its relationship with power
• a completely new information technology—first the TV, and the immersive audio-visual media, and then the Internet and the interactive digital media
• completely changed societal needs and challenges—from increasing productivity, to understanding and controlling our newly acquired powers to change the planetary systems, and bring about our own end
• the heritage of the world traditions—which for the first time came together and became available

Indeed—as we shall see again and again in the course of our conversations—the most important ideas of our leading thinkers, and the main insights of entire academic disciplines, remained without due influence on public opinion and institutional policy! To this curious phenomenon we have given the name Wiener's paradox.

The point of departure of the knowledge federation initiative is an alarming split—between published academic insights, and the way we as society and culture tend to see the world; and try to handle issues.

"Knowledge federation" means 'connecting the dots'

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

Knowledge federation can be understood as the principle of operation of an entirely different pair of 'headlights'—by which this purpose is achieved.

Political federation combines smaller political units together, to give them visibility and impact. Knowledge federation does that to information. As our logo might suggest—knowledge federation means 'connecting the dots'.

By 'connecting the dots', we can reach a new insight—and see an issue or a situation in a new way, which shows how it may need to be handled. Or we can create a prototype—and give to information a way to impact the reality directly

We are proposing to create new 'headlights'

The core of our knowledge federation 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."

We are proposing to handle information as we handle other man-made things—by suiting it to the purposes that need to be served.

Or to rephrase this in the language of our metaphor, we are proposing to create the 'headlights'—instead of trying to make use of whatever happens to be there; instead of blindly adopting what we've inherited from the past.

We have created a prototype

What consequences will knowledge federation have? How will information be different? How will it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom will it be created? What new information formats will emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How will information technology be adapted? What will public informing be like? And academic communication, and education?

The substance of our proposal is the Knowledge Federation prototype—a complete and academically coherent answer to those and other related questions. An answer that is not only described and explained, but also implemented—in a collection of real-life embedded prototypes.

An application

What difference will this make? The Holotopia prototype, which is under development, is a proof of concept application.

The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting our ideas to 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 warning:

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

Aurelio Peccei

Why did Peccei's call to action remain unanswered? Why wasn't The Club of Rome's purpose—to illuminate the course our civilization has taken—served by our society's institutions, as part of their function? Isn't this already showing that we are 'driving with candle headlights'?

Can knowledge federation help us "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."

This conclusion Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's frontier thinkers. Arne Næss for instance, Norway's most loved philosopher, reached it on different grounds and called it "deep ecology".

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 vision

What new 'course' shall we see, when we use knowledge federation to 'illuminate the way'?

The holotopia is an astonishingly positive future scenario.

This future vision is more positive than what the familiar utopias offered—whose authors lacked the information to see what was possible; or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist.

When the evidence offered on these pages has been considered, it will be clear why holotopia is not only "the new black"—but also the new red; and the new green!

Unlike the utopias, the holotopia is readily realizable; we already have all that is needed for its fulfillment.

All we need to do to realize this vision, all that remains for us to do to "change course", is to follow a principle or a rule of thumb, which is suggested by the holotopia's very name.

We must see ourselves as parts in a larger whole; and act in ways that make this larger whole more whole.

But this is exactly the direction the Modernity ideogram is pointing to!

The point is to see that—whenever we are using information, or creating it—we are those 'headlights'! And to self-organize, and act, as this function may require.

The direction this rule of thumb is pointing to is a radical departure from our current course—which emerges as a result of everyone pursuing "his our own interests"; and trusting that "the invisible hand" of the "free competition" will turn our self-serving acts into the greatest common good.

Five insights

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

When Peccei talked about "a great cultural revival", he was obviously referring to the the Renaissance—the historical instance of a comprehensive change of the human systems, and of the overall order of things they compose together. The five insights explain why a similar change is ready to take place once again in our own time, by developing an analogy with each of the five specific changes of which the historical comprehensive change was composed. And to make things even simpler—by developing a parallel between the image of Galilei in house arrest (as a metaphor of new thinking being arrested by popular prejudice and power play), and the state of affaires in our own time.

We are living on a brink of a new Renaissance

By radically improving the efficiency and the effectiveness of human work, the Industrial Revolution liberated our ancestors from toil, and enabled them to engage in a cultural revival. The power structure insight shows that in this process a peculiar oversight was made; and that a new wave of change with similar consequences is possible.

By radically improving communication, the printing press enabled a rapid dissemination of information, and growth of knowledge. The collective mind insight shows that the new media enable a similar revolution—where the improvement will not be only in the production of the volume of data, but also and most importantly in the organization of information; and in the quality of knowledge.

What Galilei before all stands for is a change of the foundations on which information and knowledge are created and handled—from an unreserved faith in the Scriptures, to an empowerment of reason to explore and understand the world. The socialized reality insight shows that an error has been made, and also academically discovered. The situation that resulted obliges us to once again liberate and empower the human reason—to make the kind of difference that now must be made.

Galilei also stands for the onset of science—as the method by which the human reason was empowered. The narrow frame insight shows that the scientific revolution remained confined to the natural world; and why the evolution of science can continue, and enable a revolution in the human world.

The Renaissance is, of course, most vividly remembered as an emancipation of the arts, and of the joy of living and human quality. The convenience paradox insight shows that once again our "pursuit of happiness" got stalled by a myth. And why a new Renaissance is ready to begin.

The sixth insight

The anomalies the five insights point to, and the corresponding solutions, are so closely inter-related that taking care of one necessitates resolving the others. In this way the sixth insight is reached:

Comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible.

An academic revolution

The Renaissance was largely conceived and perceived as a revival of the Hellenic culture, philosophy and civilization, which blossomed centuries earlier. We evoked the image of Galilei to point to the deepest part of this revival—the revival of the Hellenic philosophy and academic tradition.

Into the stories told in connection with the five insights we carefully wove another story—of a similar development taking place in our own time. Or needing to take place, because the spontaneous development of the academic tradition has brought us to the point where—if we follow the intrinsic and time-tested values of this tradition—the further development must result in another discontinuity, or re-evolution.

In the direction pointed to by the Modernity ideogram; along the lines that constitute the core of our proposal.

A revolution of justice

Every genuine revolution is, finally, also a revolution in justice; not only in the way in which justice is institutionalized, but also the very idea of justice, and of its obstructions. We don't need to emphasize that Galilei was in house arrest because he was threatening the very foundation on which the political order of things was erected.

Each of the five insights brings along also a piece in that puzzle. When those pieces are put together, a completely new idea of justice and freedom and what obstructs them results. We see who, or what, 'holds Galilei in house arrest' once again in our own time—even though the form and the means of oppression are entirely different than they were back them. And hence not yet popularly recognized as such.

A strategy

We focus on changing the whole order of things

In these times when change is immanent, the question of strategy is all-important.

First of all, it's a question of directing our efforts effectively and productively. What can make a large enough difference to really make a difference? Einstein's most famous dictum, that we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them, is implicit in all of holotopia. Of course we need to deal with urgent threats such as the climate change, the epidemics etc. Yet something else needs to be in place, if all our good efforts should have the intended effect.

Furthermore, it is essential to avoid misdirected anger. As the tensions increase, and our public awareness remains without suitable understanding of what goes on and how we must act, conflicts and riots will escalate. The five insights show that it is useless to blame others; that we are all in this together; and that an entirely different course of action give us a radically better chances of success.

The holotopia strategy follows from the five insights, and is suggested by its name—it is to focus on changing the entire order of things from which our problems emanate. This is exactly the strategy that The Club of Rome recommended.

Such a strategy can and needs to be pursued through radically changed awareness and values, and then through collaboration, not conflict.

We begin with information

Just as building a house must begin with the foundations, changing the whole order of things has its own natural order in which it needs to proceed. As the Modernity ideogram suggested, to change course, we must begin by changing the illumination source, so that the new course may become visible.

We apply pressure on the leverage point

Thed leverage point is the point where small action can give large results. We may be glad to recognize that our best leverage point is not in the hands of the Wall Street bankers, but with publicly sponsored intellectuals. The people whose job is to develop awareness.

Tactical assets