Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<p>What would it take to <em>repair</em> the tie between information and action? </p>  
 
<p>What would it take to <em>repair</em> the tie between information and action? </p>  
 
<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we changed the relationship we have with information and treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served? </p>  
 
<p>What would information and our handling of information be like, if we changed the relationship we have with information and treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served? </p>  
<p>What would our <em>world</em> be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"? If the other half of this picture were treated with similar thoroughness as academic technical work? If the question "What do people actually <em>need</em> to know?" led to a "social life of information" that allows each of us to benefit from what the others have seen and understood; and our society to perceive the world correctly, and navigate it safely?</p>  
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<p>What would our <em>world</em> be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"? If the other half of this picture—the use and the usefulness of information—were treated with similar thoroughness as academic technical work? </p>  
  
 
<p>What would the academic field that develops this approach to information be like? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>  
 
<p>What would the academic field that develops this approach to information be like? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And <em>academic communication, and education</em>? </p>  

Revision as of 13:23, 28 July 2020

Imagine...

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

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it? Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

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

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram


Our proposal

In a nutshell

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."

The objective of our proposal is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.

Postman.jpg
Neil Postman

In detail

What would it take to repair the tie between information and action?

What would information and our handling of information be like, if we changed the relationship we have with information and treated it as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted it to the purposes that need to be served?

What would our world be like, if academic researchers retracted the premise that when an idea is published in a book or an article it is already "known"? If the other half of this picture—the use and the usefulness of information—were treated with similar thoroughness as academic technical work?

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


The substance of our proposal is a complete prototype of knowledge federation, by which those and other related questions are answered.

The Knowledge Federation prototype is conceived as a portfolio of about forty smaller prototypes, which cover the range of questions that define an academic field—from epistemology and methods, to social organization and applications.

We use our main keyword, knowledge federation, in a similar way as the words "design" and "architecture" are used—to signify both a praxis (informed practice), and an academic field that develops it and curates it.

Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop knowledge federation as an academic field, and as real-life praxis.

Technically, we are proposing a paradigm. The proposed paradigm is not in a specific scientific field, where paradigm changes are relatively common, but in "creation, integration and application of knowledge" at large.


A challenge

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

"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."

Peccei.jpg
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's 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".

Can the proposed 'headlights' help us "find a way to change course"?

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

If we used knowledge federation to 'illuminate the way'—what difference would that make?

The Holotopia project is conceived as a knowledge federation-based response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action.

We coined the keyword holotopia to point to the cultural and social order of things that will result.

To begin the Holotopia project, we are developing an initial prototype, which includes both a vision and a project infrastructure. That prototype is described on these pages.

A vision

The holotopia is not a utopia

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

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

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

The holotopia vision is made concrete, and substantiated or justified, in terms of five insights, as explained below.

Making things whole

What do we need to do to change course toward the holotopia?

From a comprehensive volume of insights from which the holotopia emerges as a future realistically worth aiming for, we have distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things whole.

This principle is suggested by the holotopia's very name. And also by the Modernity ideogram: Instead of reifying 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 of it all—including, of course, our own wholeness.

Imagine if academic and other knowledge-workers collaborated to serve and develop planetary wholeness – what magnitude of benefits would result!



A method

Seeing things whole

"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 the sense of the whole."

But to make things whole—we must be able to see them whole!

To highlight that the knowledge federation methodology described in the mentioned prototype affords that very capability, to see things whole, in the context of the holotopia we refer to it by the pseudonym holoscope.

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 characteristic, however, must be made clear from the start.

Looking in new ways

Holoscope.jpeg
Holoscope ideogram

The key novelty in the holoscope is the capability it affords to deliberately choose the way in which we look at an issue or situation, which we call scope. Just as the case is when inspecting a hand-held cup to see if it is whole or cracked, and in projective geometry, the art of using the holoscope will to a large degree consist in finding a suitable way of looking. This is, of course, also suggested with the bus with candle headlights metaphor.

Especially valuable will turn out to be the scopes, and the corresponding views, which correct the way in which we see the whole thing, our "big picture"; they will be made accurate finding and using scopes (or aspects or 'projection planes') that reflect what our habitual way of looking made us ignore.

To liberate our thinking from the narrow frame of 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 state of the art insights in 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.

This capability to create views by choosing scopes, on any desired level of detail, adds to our work with contemporary issues a whole new 'dimension' or "degree of freedom"—where we choose what we perceive as issues, so that the issues can be resolved, and wholeness can be restored.


Thinking outside the box

That we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them is a commonplace. But this presents a challenge when academic rigor needs to be respected.

When our goal is to put a new piece into an existing "reality picture", then whatever challenges the reality of that picture will be considered "controversial".

When, however, our goal is to "find a way to change course"—then challenging the "conventional wisdom" is our very job.

The views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to relax and enjoy our presentation if you bear in mind its meaning and purpose.

While we did our best to ensure that the presented views accurately represent what might result when we 'connect the dots' or federate published insights and other relevant cultural artifacts, we do not need to make such claims; and we are not making them. It is a paradigm we are proposing; it is the methodology by which our views are created that gives them rigor—as "rigor" is understood in the paradigm.

The methodology itself is, to the best of our knowledge, flawlessly rigorous and coherent. But we don't need to make that claim either.

Everything here is offered as a collection of prototypes. The point is to show what might result if we changed the relationship we have with information, and developed, both academically and on a society-wide scale, the approach to information and knowledge we are proposing.

Our goal when presenting them is to initiate the dialogs and other social processes that constitute that development.


FiveInsights.JPG
Five Insights ideogram

Before we begin

What themes, what evidence and conclusions, what "new discovery" might have the force commensurate with the momentum with which our civilization is rushing onward, and have a chance to make it "change course"?

We offer these five insights as a prototype answer.

We could have called them "five issues"—because each of them discloses a large systemic issue, which underlies the observed problems or conventional issues, and requires to be recognized as an issue. We chose to call them insights (in the general spirit of holotopia), because each of these issues can be resolved; and because their resolutions lead to benefit that vastly surpass the solution to problems.

The five insights result when we use the holoscope to illuminate five pivotal themes:

  • Innovation (the way in which we use our rapidly growing ability to create, and induce change); and its relationship with justice and power; or to use our metaphor, we look at the way our 'bus' is following, and how the way is being chosen
  • Communication, and the way the information technology is applied, and its relationship with governance or democracy; or in other words, we look at the construction of our 'headlights'
  • Foundations for creating truth and meaning (the fundamental premises that govern our work with information); here the focus is on the relationship we have with information, and he assumptions that determine it, or metaphorically on the question whether we should indeed consider those 'candles' are 'headlights', and adapt them to their purpose
  • Method for creating truth and meaning; or metaphorically at the principle of operation of the 'headlights', whether 'electricity' or 'fire' is more appropriate
  • Values, and more specifically the way in which we "pursue happiness"; or metaphorically whether 'driving with candle headlights' is at all taking us where we want to be going; or whether a whole new direction emerges when proper light is used

For each of those five themes we shall see that our conventional way of looking made us ignore a principle or a rule of thumb, which readily emerges when we 'connect the dots', i.e. when we combine the published insights and "see things whole". And that by ignoring and violating those principles, we have created deep structural problems ('crack in the cup'), which are causing what we perceive as "problems" or specifically as "global issues".

We shall then be able to perceive our problems as consequences or mere symptoms of deeper structural issues. And we shall see, a bit later, that those structural issues can resolved. And that by resolving them, much larger benefits will result than mere "solutions to problems" or freedom of symptoms.

In that way the holotopia vision will be made concrete and actionable.

We shall see, by connecting the five insights as dots, that the "new discovery" we need to make to radically change our situation is stupefyingly simple—it's the discovery of ourselves!

Since the key to it all will turn out to be to change the relationship we have with information, and be able to "see things whole", a case for our proposal will also be made.

In the spirit of the holoscope, we here only summarize each of the five insights as a big picture—and provide the supporting evidence and details separately.

Five issues

<div class="col-md-7"

Power structure issue

"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. We look at the way in which man uses his newly acquired and rapidly growing power to innovate (create, and induce change). That is the way our civilization is following in its evolution, or metaphorically 'the itinerary' of our 'bus'—and we use the holoscope to illuminate it.

An easy observation will give us a head start: We use competition or "survival of the fittest" to orient innovation, not systemic insights and information. The popular belief that "the free competition" or "the free market" is our best guide makes our "democracies" elect the "leaders" who represent it. But is that belief warranted?

Genuine revolutions tend to include new ways to perceive the perennial issues of freedom and power, and the holotopia is not an exception. We offer this keyword, power structure, as a means to that end. Think of the power structure as a new way to conceive of the intuitive notion "power holder", who might obstruct our freedom, or be our political "enemy".

While the exact meaning and character of the power structure will become clear as we go along, imagine, to begin with, that power structures are institutions; or a bit more accurately, that they are the systems in which we live and work, which we'll here simply call systems. Notice that the systems have an immense power—first of all the power over us, because we have to adapt to them to be able to live and work; and then also the power over our environment, because by organizing us and using us in certain specific ways, they determine what the effects of our work will be. Whether the effects will be problems, or solutions.

How suitable are our systems for this all-important role?

Evidence, circumstantial and theoretical, shows that the systems waste a lion's share of our resources. That they cause our problems, and make us incapable of solving them.

The reason is that the evolution by "the survival of the fittest" tends to favor the systems that are by nature predatory, not the ones that are useful. This excerpt from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as a law professor created to federate an insight he considered essential) explains how the corporation, the most powerful institution on our planet, evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine", just as the shark evolved as a perfect "killing machine". ("Externalizing", as explained in more detail in the excerpt, means maximizing profits by letting someone else, notably the people and the environment, bear the costs.) This excerpt from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how the competitive environment our systems create for us to live and work in impacts our own condition.

So why do we put up with such systems? Why don't we treat them as we treat other human-made things—by adapting them to the purposes that need to be served?

The reasons are most interesting, and they'll be a recurring theme in holotopia.

One of them we have already seen: We don't have the habit or the means to see things whole. When we look in our conventional ways, we don't see the structure of our systems—just as we don't see the mountain on which we might be walking. Because of this natural limitation of our perception, even such uncanny errors as 'using candles as headlights' might develop on this large scale without us noticing.

A subtler reason why we tend to ignore the possibility of adapting the systems in which we live and work to their roles in larger systems, is that they perform for us an entirely different role—they give structure to our power battles and turf strifes. Within our system, they provide us "objective" and "fair" criteria to compete for positions; and in the world outside, they give our system a "competitive edge".

Our media agencies, to illustrate this by an example, cannot combine their resources to give us the awareness we need, because the media corporations compete with one another for our attention—and must be as "cost-effective" in that struggle as they can.

But the deepest and the most interesting reason is that our systems or power structures have the power to socialize us in ways that suit their interests. Through socialization, they can adapt to their interests both our culture and our "human quality".

Bauman-PS.jpeg

A result is that bad intentions are no longer needed for cruelty and evil to result. The power structures can co-opt our sense of duty and commitment, and even our heroism and honor.

Zygmunt Bauman's key insight, that the concentration camp was only a special case, however extreme, of (what we are calling) the power structure, needs to be carefully digested and internalized: While our ethical sensibilities are focused on the power structures of the past, we are committing the greatest massive crime in human history (in all innocence, by acting through the systems we belong to).

Our civilization is not "on the collision course with nature" because someone violated the rules—but because we follow them.

The fact that we will not "solve our problems" unless we learned to collaborate and adapt our systems to their contemporary roles and our contemporary challenges has not remained unnoticed. Alredy in 1948, in his seminal Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener explained why competition cannot be relied on the role of 'headlights and steering'. Cybernetics was envisioned as a transdisciplinary academic effort to help us understand systems, and give them the kind of structure that will enable them to function—and us to have a future.

Jantsch-vision.jpeg

The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome's did after its inception in 1968 was to gather a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, and 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 keywords.


Collective mind issue

If our key evolutionary task is to develop the ability to make things whole on the level of basic institutions or socio-technical systems—then where, with what system, should we begin?

Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information and not competition to guide our society's evolution, then our information will have to be entirely different.

Norbert Wiener contributed another reason, by observing that in all systems composed of self-governed individuals, communication is what turns those individuals into a system. The nature of communication determines what such a system will be like—and Wiener talked about the communication in the colonies of ants, bees and other animals to make that point.

We may now understand our bus with candle headlights, and without steering, in scientific or cybernetic terms. The complete title of Wiener's book was "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". The most basic insight we need to acquire from cybernetics is that to have "control" over its impact on its environment, by correcting its behavior, a system must have suitable communication (or technically "feedback"). In "Cybrnetics", Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", which we may interpret as "sustainability". But the tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed; and it needs to be restored, for "sustainability" to even be possible

Bush-Vision.jpg

To make that point, that the tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising their own system their next highest priority (the World War Two having just been won).

So why hasn't this been done?

"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm. The reason for our inaction is, of course, that the tie between information and action has been severed. Wiener too entrusted his own results to this broken communication! We used this anecdote to point to a more general and pervasive anomaly in academic communication, which we are calling Wiener's paradox.

It may feel disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see the best ideas of our best minds unable to benefit our society; to see again and again—our portfolio has a wealth of examples—that when a researcher's insight challenges the "course", it as a rule remains ignored. But this quickly changes to optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier this insight is pointing to—where we shall reinvent the very system by which we do our work; as the founding fathers of science did.

And optimism turns into enthusiasm, when we realize that core parts of contemporary information technology were created to enable such a development!

It is not completely true that Vannevar Bush's call to action was ignored. Douglas Engelbart heard it, and with his SRI team responded to it and developed a solution well beyond what Bush envisioned—and demonstrated them in their famous 1968 demo.

The point here is this: When we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar ways as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system.

Notice that all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be reproduced and physically transported from one person to another. The new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" concurrently, as cells in a human nervous system do. We can now think and create—together!

This three minute video clip, which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the system by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The improvement that is possible is not only large but staggering. It is indeed qualitative— from a system that doesn't function, to a system that does. The difference this can make is mind-blowing, and well worth a careful reflection.

Engelbart envisioned that the new technology would allow us to comprehend our problems and respond to them far more quickly than we do now. He foresaw that the collective intelligence that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially".

But to Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to only broadcast data—to only implement the old processes and systems, which evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, and make them more efficient.

The 'socio-technical lightbulb' was invented—and yet the 'electricity' ended up being used to do no better than create fancy 'candles'!

Giddens-OS.jpeg

The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on us as culture; and on "human quality". Dazzled by an overflow of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehsnsion—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.

But this is, of course, what binds us to power structure.

Instead of liberating us—the new information technology bound us to power structure even stronger!


Socialized reality issue

"Act like as if you loved your children above all else"
Greta Thunberg told the perplexed political leaders at Davos. Of course they love their children. And yet "there is nothing they can do"—because none of the 'buttons to press' and 'strings to pull' that they've been given by the system they belong to will have the effect that Greta is asking for. And changing their system is well beyond what they can do, or even conceive of.

So our next question is who, that is what institution, will initiate the next and most urgent task on our evolutionary agenda—teach us how to update the systems in which we live and work; and empower us to do that?

Both Erich Jantsch and Doug Engelbart believed that the answer would have to be "the university"; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored. And so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them; and Neil Postman and numerous others that followed.

Why? Isn't the opportunity to restore agency to information and power to knowledge a challenge worthy of academic attention?

It is tempting to conclude that the academia followed the general trend; that the academic discipline too evolved as power structures—as a way to provide clear and fair rules for pursuing a career within a discipline; and as a way to divide the 'academic turf' between disciplines, and keep the outsiders out.

But to see solutions, we will need to look at deeper causes.

As we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue useful knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. To tell us what the meaning and purpose of information and of knowledge are, so that we may pursue knowledge more successfully, in any context. The technical academic keywords are "epistemology" and "ontology", but we'll here call them "foundations" and "method" for creating truth and meaning. The condition they are in, and the need for change, will be the theme of this insight and the next.

So what is "right" knowledge?

Nobody knows! Of course, innumerable books and articles have been written, since as far back as our collective memory can reach. But no "official narrative" or consensus has as yet emerged.

So all we can offer instead is what we have been told while we were growing up. Which is roughly as follows.

To direct his activities effectively, and be able to "satisfy his needs", the homo sapiens has the vital need to understand the natural world. Here the traditions got it all wrong. Having been unable to explain the natural phenomena on which we humans depended, they invented a "ghost in the machine"—and made our ancestors pray and make sacrifices to the the "ghosts" of their tradition, as a way to improve their condition. But science removed the "ghost"! We can now use the scientific understanding of causes and effects—and through technology get out the nature exactly what we want and need.

It follows that the paragon of "right" information is the information that science is giving us—which shows us "the reality" objectively, as it really is. It is "the laws of nature", which tell us, precisely and concisely, how the nature works. "Basic", or "fundamental", or "pure" research, whose task is to "discover" those laws, then naturally enjoys the highest esteem.

There is, of course, also research in the "humanities". Those fields have been around for awhile, and they too are given a part of the academic 'turf'. But it is not exactly clear what practical purpose they serve, if any. Unable to produce anything close in spirit to "natural laws", the humanities researchers never even seem to agree with one another.

The age-old belief—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality", and that the purpose of information is to show us the "reality" as it truly is—is still upheld by a vast majority of lay people, and surprisingly many scientists. Even though belief has been disproven and disowned in the 20th century science and philosophy.


It turned out that we got it wrong!

Einstein-Watch.jpeg

It is simply beyond our power, the scientists found out, to assert that our ideas and models correspond to reality. There is no way to open the supposed "mechanism of nature", and verify that our models correspond to the real thing.

Information is (or more to the point needs to be perceived as) the core part in another 'mechanism'—in the system of our society.

"Objective reality", the researchers found out, is in part a result of an illusion created by our sensory and cognitive organs; and in part as a contrivance of the traditional culture, or of power structure, invented to socialize us in a certain way. Our "reality pictures", Berger and Luckmann observed in Social Construction of Reality, tend to serve as "universal theories", to legitimize a given social order.

Bourdieu-insight.jpeg

Research in sociology and cognitive science showed, furthermore, that the homo sapiens is not the rational decision maker, as the 19th century made us believe. They explained the mechanisms through which our seemingly rational choices can be manipulated through socialization, through the use of "symbolic power", even without anyone noticing. The "symbolic power" is what can, and does, keep the contemporary 'Galilei in house arrest'—without any need for physical means of compulsion.

To see what all this practically means, in the context of our theme (we are federating Peccei), we invite you to follow us in a brief thought experiment. We'll pay a short visit to a cathedral. No, this is not about religion; we are using the image of a cathedral as an ideogram—to correct the proportions, and "see things whole".

So there is architecture, which inspires awe. We hear music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are sculptures, and frescos by masters of old on the walls. And there is the ritual...

But there is also a little book on each bench. Its first few paragraphs explain how the world was created.

Let this difference in size, between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—the cathedral as a whole, with its physical objects and the activities it provides a space for—point to the difference in importance between the factual explanations of the mechanisms of nature and our culture as a whole, relative to our theme, the "human quality". For there can be no doubt that a function of the cathedral—and of culture—is to nourish the "human quality" in a certain specific ways. By providing a certain symbolic environment, in which certain ethical and emotional dispositions can grow. Notice that we are only pointing to a function, without making any value judgement of its results.

The question is—How, and by whom, is the evolution of culture secured today? Who has the prerogative of socializing people in our own time?

The answer is obvious; it suffices to look around. All the advertising, however, is only a tip of an iceberg—comprised by various instruments of symbolic power, by which our choices are directed and our values modified—to give us the "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow.

The ethical and legal norms we have do not protect us from this dependence.

The humanities researchers are, of course, well aware of this. But the "objective observer" role to which the academic researchers are confined, and the fact that "the tie between information and action is broken", makes this all but irrelevant.

While most of us still consider ourselves as "rational decision makers", who can simply "feel" their "real interests" or "needs" and bring them to the market of goods, or as voters to the market of political agendas (which will like a perfect scale secure justice by letting the largest ones prevail), the businesses and the politicians know better. Scientific means are routinely used by their advisers, to manipulate our choices.

By considering that the purpose of information is to give us "an objective reality picture", we have ignored the symbolic means by which the power structure directs our cultural evolution

The conclusion that 'Galilei is be kept in house arrest' (that the evolution of knowledge of knowledge that can give us the information to liberate us from the power structure and begin a "cultural revival") by the very institution that's been created on his legacy might seem preposterous. But not if we realize that the academia now holds the role that the Church had back then—of providing the "universal theory", which decides what knowledge is about, and what sort of ideas can and cannot be conceived of.

The Enlightenment did not really liberate us humans, as one might believe. Our socialization only changed hands—from one power structure (the kings and the clergy) to the next (the corporations and the media).


Narrow frame issue

Here our focus is on what most closely corresponds to 'candle headlights' on this fundamental level—on the way or the method by which we look at the world, to comprehend it and handle it.

Traditionally, such a method is a result of "ontology" or of the way in which we conceive "the nature of reality"—and "the common sense" that keeps us and our 'bus' oriented in a certain way today is no exception.

Around the middle of the 19th century, when Adam and Moses as cultural heroes and forefathers had to give way to Darwin and Newton, the belief emerged that the universe is in essence a mechanism; that science removed from it even the last traces of "ghosts"; and that the "scientific worldview" consists in considering as possible or real only that which can be explained as a consequence of the functioning of this 'mechanism', or in a "scientific" way. Isn't this how we finally came to understand that women cannot fly on broomsticks (because that would violate some well-established "natural laws")?

But here too the 20th century disproved and disowned the 19th century's worldview. Modern physics proved the "classical" or "causal" way of explaining phenomena proved to be unable to explain the behavior of small particles or "quanta" of matter, that manifested itself in experiments.


Yet we still consider as "scientific" a way of thinking which, as physicist Werner Heisenberg observed in "Physics and Philosophy", has been damaging to culture—because the "truth and meaning" it provided was too narrow to hold many of the values and practices that were the culture's very core. We may easily recognize in his description the thinking and values that Bauman called "adiaphorized".

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Heisenberg expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be on popular culture—because the narrow frame would be removed. would make the largest impact 20th century's physics constituted a scientific disproof of the narrow frame.

But the tie between information and action having been broken—our "conventional wisdom" remained unchanged.

Another set of reasons why the narrow frame needs to be changed is reaching us from the systems sciences. The whole point of the "systemic thinking" is that causal thinking is erroneous, that it leads to wrong conclusions even when applied to the behavior of the systems that can be modeled in the "classical" way. Notably those systems that govern the human society and culture.

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Hear Mary Catherine Bateson say:

"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 in general. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"

Convenience paradox issue

We now look at what (in a "democracy", and a "free market economy") directly determines our society's course—our values

Here the "ontology" and the "epistemology" we have just seen led to a way of making choices that vastly relies on "classical" or "Newtonian" direct causality—namely "instant gratification". This way of making choices, where we focus on "our own interests", also seems to be supported on the ethical side by the Darwin's theory of evolution, as "simply natural".

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The convenience paradox issue is that convenience is a paradoxical and deceptive value, whose pursuit leaves us as a rule less whole. And that immense opportunities for improving our condition remained ignored.

A radically better human experience is possible, than what our culture allows us to experience. Wholeness does exist; and it does feel incomparably better than what the deception of convenience might allow us to believe. But the way to it is paradoxical, and needs to be illuminated by suitable information.

Two consequences or more specific insights follow and are worth highlighting, that result when this insight (what the way to human wholeness is really like) is understood on a more detailed level.

The first is that we do not need all the material welfare to pursue wholeness. On the contrary—the kind of lifestyle we've developed, in the pursuit of "material welfare", makes this pursuit impossible.

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The second insight is that overcoming egocentricity is an essential part of the way to wholeness; and most interestingly—even when its physical or motoric side is concerned!

Lao Tzu (often considered as the progenitor of Taoism) appears in holotopia as an icon for using knowledge to understand "the way" to wholeness ("tao" literally means "way"). He is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies his tamed ego.

But ego-centeredness is what makes us create the power structures! And what prevents us from collaborating and self-organizing differently! <p>With this the circle of causality that the five insights compose together has been closed.


Five solutions

The power structure issue can be resolved

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The power structure issue is resolved through systemic innovation—by which systems, and hence also power structures, evolve in ways that make them whole; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the holoscope.

We give structure to systemic innovation by conceiving our prototypes by weaving together suitable design patterns—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across prototypes, but also across application domains.

All our prototypes are examples of systemic innovation; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen design patterns of the Collaborology educational prototype, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,

(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or systemic innovation, because when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the theme of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really knowledge federation and systemic innovation, organized under a name that the students can understand.

By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology prototype illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as systemic innovation/knowledge federation. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a single lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.

A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that systemic innovation depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life).

The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a new and transdisciplinary body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.

Our other prototypes show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel prototypes shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it serve cultural revival.

Such prototypes, and the design patterns they embody, are new kinds of results, which in the paradigm we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.

A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for systemic innovation. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or transdiscipline around a prototype, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the transdiscipline) have direct impact on systems.

Our experience with the very first application prototype, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the transdiscipline (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change the systems in which they live and work themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those system. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to change systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game prototype, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a prototype which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, progress toward resolving the power structure issue can be made by simply identifying the issue; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a radical change of values, and of "human quality".

Notice that the power structure insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the power structure.

This potential of the power structure insight gains power when combined with the convenience paradox insight and the socialized reality insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the power structure defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the real "reality game" are indeed enormous.

The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: decooling. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar decolling.

The collective mind issue can be resolved

Here it may be recognized that knowledge federation is really just a name, a placeholder name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation transdiscipline is to bootstrap the development of knowledge federation both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded prototypes), and in general (by developing knowledge federation as an academic field, and as a real-life praxis).

Of the concrete prototypes, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, BCN2011, may be named as a prototype of a public informing that provides the information according to real that is systemic needs of people and society—as it may be necessary for making things whole. A number of design patterns are woven together. The news production loop begins by citizen journalism (the local Barcelona Wikidiario project gave us a head start); the people themselves report about their issues and problems. These reports are then curated by journalists, to present recurring or important ones as "front page news" etc. The production enters then into its second loop, where systemic causes to perceived issues are identified and reported. Professional (academic and other) advisors are followed in this loop by communication designers, to make academic insights clear and palpable (by using video, animation, story telling...). The second loop concludes by giving advice for systemic action. So here we have a journalism prototype that supports systemic innovation—and counteracts the power structure

Also the Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015 prototype</em and The Lighthouse 2016 prototype are also offered as prototype resolutions to the Wiener's paradox. The former shows how to federate a single result of a researcher, which is written in a highly specialized academic language (quantum physics), and has large potential to impact other fields (the article is about the phenomenology, and cultivation and use, of the kind of creativity that we now vitally need (the creativity that was manifested, and described, by genius inventor Nikola Tesla). The latter shows how to federate a single core insight from an entire research field. Here the field is the systems science; the insight is that "free competition" cannot be trusted; that systemic innovation must be used. Both prototypes show how an academic discipline may need to self-organize to acquire the capability to make the most important insight that result in its midst usable and useful to the larger society.


The socialized reality issue can be resolved

This is extremely good news: To begin the transformation to holotopia, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change their rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of publicly supported intellectuals.

The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as the key element in our various systems.

Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent contemporary issues.

Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as the urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but without academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new paradigm be rightly considered as "basic research".

The key to all these changes is epistemology—just as it was in Galilei's time!

The reification as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also reification of our institutions (democracy is the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science is what the scientists are doing). That it is also directly preventing us from even imagining a different world.

Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. Even grammatically, there can be only one worldview—the one that corresponds with reality! Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement about reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything but what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we ever come out of this entrapment?

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A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or reification. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world".

Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of information is not reification, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only in context at hand—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia prototype. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X as Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.

By using truth by convention, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and purposes to academic fields!

The concrete prototypes</em are the design epistemology—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of information, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.

We have two canonical examples of concept-and-field definitions, which were tested in practice—through interaction with academic communities that represent them—and hence already are prototypes.

One of them is the definition of design, as "the alternative to tradition; when the two concepts are defined as two alternative ways to wholeness—where we either rely on spontaneous evolution (in the case of tradition), or take conscious responsibility for it (and use design). The point here is that in a culture that is no longer traditional (following conservatively in the footsteps of the ancestors, and perhaps making small and gradual changes)—design must be used.

The other definition is of implicit information, and of visual literacy (which also the name of an academic field) as "literacy associated with implicit information. The point here is that while our ethical, legal and political sensibilities are, by tradition, focused on explicit information (where is something explicitly claimed)—our culture is dominated by largely visual and subtle implicit information; which is the source of symbolic power, and an instrument of socialization.


The narrow frame issue can be resolved

The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a narrow frame—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was destructive of culture.

The solution found is to define a general purpose methodology. <p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—and give provisions for updating them.

Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...).

The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the knowledge federation as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...

Further prototypes include the polyscopy or Polyscopic Modeling methodology—whereby information can be created on any chosen theme, and on any level of generality.


The convenience paradox issue has a solution

The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential...

The resolution is —cultivation of wholeness—which means to develop support for long-term work on wholeness; watering 'the seeds' of wholeness. And to federate information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the way to wholeness.

Concrete prototypes include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by federating the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.

The big news is that wholeness exists; and that it involves the value of serving wholeness (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to power structure.

These solutions compose a paradigm

<p>The five issues, and their solutions, are closely co-dependent; the key to resolving them is the relationship we have with information (the epistemology by which the proposed paradigm is defined).

  • The power structure issue cannot be resolved (we cannot begin "guided evolution of society", as Bela H. Banathy called the new evolutionary course that is emerging) without resolving the collective mind issue (by creating a knowledge-work infrastructure that provides "evolutionary guidance")
  • The resolution of the collective mind issue requires that we resolve the socialized reality issue (that instead of reifying our present institutions or systems, and the way in which we look at the world, we consider them as functional elements in a larger whole)
  • The resolution of the socialized reality issue follows from intrinsic considerations—from the reported anomalies, and published epistemological insights (Willard Van Orman Quine identified the transition to truth by convention as a sign of maturing that has manifested itself in the evolution of every science)
  • The resolution of the narrow frame issue, by developing a general-purpose methodology, is made possible by just mentioned epistemological innovation
  • The resolution of the convenience paradox issue is made possible by federating knowledge from the world traditions, by using the mentioned methodology
  • The power structure issue can only be resolved when we the people find strength to overcome self-serving, narrowly conceived values, and collaborate and self-organize to create radically better systems in which we live and work


We adapted the keyword paradigm from Thomas Kuhn, and define it as

  • a new way of conceiving a domain of interest
  • which resolves the reported anomalies
  • and opens up a new frontier to research
The five insights complete our proposal as a paradigm proposal. Not in any traditional domain of science, where paradigm proposals are relatively common, but in our handling of information or knowledge work at large.

The solutions enable a cultural revival

The five insights were deliberately chosen to represent the main five aspects of the cultural and social change that marked the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. They show how similar improvements in our condition can once again be achieved, by resolving the large anomalies they are pointing to.

  • The power structure insight shows how dramatic improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of human work can be made, similar to the ones that resulted from the Industrial Revolution
  • The collective mind insights points to a revolution in communication, similar to the one that the invention of the printing press made possible
  • The socialized reality insight points to a revolution in our very relationship with information and knowledge, similar to the one that marked the Enlightenment
  • The narrow frame insight points to a revolution in our understanding of our everyday realities, similar to the revolution that science made possible in our understanding of natural phenomena
  • The convenience paradox insight points to a general "cultural revival", analogous to the Renaissance

Together, the five insights complete the first half of our response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action—where we showed that the holoscope can illuminate the way in the way in which he deemed necessary.

The second half will consist in implementing the "change of course" in reality.

We will not "solve our problems"

Already in 1964, four years before The Club of Rome was established, Margaret Mead wrote:

"(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."

Despite the holotopia's optimistic tone, we do not assume that the problems we are facing can be solved.

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Margaret Mead

Hear Dennis Meadows (the leader of the team that produced The Club of Rome's seminal 1972 report Limits to Growth) diagnose, based on 44 years of experience on this frontier, that our pursuit of "sustainability" falls short of avoiding the "predicament" they were warning us about back then:

"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."

Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream (hear Ronald Reagan set the tone for it, in a most charming tone, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). But we must forgive our political leaders for leading us into an abyss; they didn't know what they were doing. To be successful in politics, they had to genuinely believe what the power structure made them believe.

Just as we must forgive our academic leaders for not leading us to a transformation of our knowledge work. To be successful in academia, they had to either "publish, or perish".

We do not claim our problems can be solved. But neither do we deny them.

There is a sense of sobering up, of a catharsis, that needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. That must be our very first step.

We take a deep dive into the depth of our problems. But we do not dwell there.

We will begin "a cultural revival"

Ironically, our problems might only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as symptoms of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which can and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.

And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and must take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus. <p>Hear Meadows say, in the same interview:

"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."

Margaret Mead encouraged us, with her best known motto:

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

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

It is that "creating" that the Holotopia project is about. We set it up as a research lab, for resolutely working on that goal. We create a transformative 'snowball', with the material of our own bodies, and we let it roll.


"(W)e take the position that the unit of cultural evolution is neither the single gifted individual nor the society as a whole", Mead wrote, "but 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."

As we have seen, and will see, the "single gifted individuals" have already offered us their gifts, already a half-century ago. But their insights failed to incite the kind of self-organization and action that would enable them to make a difference.

Here the holotopia's "rule of thumb", to "make things whole", which is really an ethical stance, plays a central role. While we are creating a small 'snowball' and letting it roll, the cohesive force that holds it together is of a paramount importance. We are not developing this project to further our careers; nor to earn some money, or get a grant. We are doing that because it's beautiful. And because it's what we need to give to our next generation.

We are developing the holotopia as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".

Our mission

By mission we mean the practical changes we undertake to achieve, to implement our strategy and pursue our vision.

Our mission is to change the relationship we have with information.

So that information will no longer be controlled by power structure, but be an instrument of our liberation; and our cultural re-evolution.

Don't be deceived by the apparent modesty of this mission, compared to the size of our vision. "In all humility",

the creative space this mission opens up to is unique is human history.



Before we begin

Before we share the "tactical assets" we've put together to prime the Holotopia project, a couple of notes are in order to explain how exactly we want them to be understood and received.

A 'cardboard city'

While each of these "assets" is created, to the best of our ability, to serve as a true solution, we do not need to make that claim, and we are not making it. Everything here is just prototypes. Which means models, each made to serve as a "proof of concept", to be experimented with and indefinitely improved.

Think of what's presented here as a cardboard model of a city.

It includes a 'school', and a 'hospital', a 'main square' and 'residential areas'. The model is complete enough for us to see that this 'city' will be a wonderful place to be in; and to begin building. But as we build—everything can change!

One of the points of using this keyword, prototype, is to consider them as placeholders. A city needs a school, and a hospital, and... The whole thing models a 'modern city' (an up-to-date approach to knowledge).

Another important point: design patterns. The prototypes * model * a multiplicity of challenge–solution pairs. With provisions for updating the solutions continuously. The point here is that while solutions can and need to evolve, the design patterns (as 'research questions') can remain relatively stable.

This will all make even more sense when one takes into consideration that the core of our proposal is not to build a city; it is to develop 'architecture'!

A 'business plan'

No, we are not doing this to start a business, or to make money. But a 'business plan' is still a useful metaphor, because we do "mean business". The purpose of the Holotopia project is to make a difference. In the social and economic reality we are living in.

These "tactical assets" can then also be read as points in a business plan—which point to the realistic likelihood of it all to achieve its goals.

The point here is not money, but impact. Making a real difference. From the business point of view, perhaps a suitable metaphor could be 'branding'. And 'strategy'. There are numerous movements, dedicated to a variety of causes. Can we unite under a single flag and mission, not as a monolithic thing but a 'federation', or a 'franchise' of sorts, so that the holotopia offers these resources.

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.

An obvious problem is the lack of a shared and effective strategy that would allow the movements to really make a difference. As it is, they are largely reactive and not pro-active. But as we have seen, the problems can only be solved when their systemic roots are understood and taken care of.

But there is a subtle and perhaps even more important difficulty—that our efforts at making a difference tend to be symbolic. We adapted this keyword from political scientist Murray Edelman, and attribute to it the following meaning.

Real impact, we might now agree, is impact on systems. They are the 'riverbed' that directs the 'current' in which we are all swimming. We may 'swim against the current' for awhile, with the help of all our courage and faith and togetherness—but ultimately we get exhausted and give up.

The difficulty, however, is our socialization—owing to which we tend to take systems for granted; they are the "reality" within which we seek solutions. And so our attempts at solution end up being akin to social rituals, where we symbolically act out our "responsibilities" and concerns (by writing an article, organizing a conference, or a demonstration) and put them to rest.

The alternative is, of course, to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge—i.e. to create a clear guiding light under which efforts can be effectively focused.

The five insights, which we'll list as our first "tactical asset", are our prototype placeholder in that role.

So here we have a design pattern: The challenge is How to create a shared strategy, so that efforts can be coordinated and meaningfully directed? The holotopia is offered as a prototype. As all prototypes do, here too the solution part has provisions for updating itself continuously—with everyone's participation


They provide us a frame of reference, around which the city is built. They serve as foundation stones, or as 'five pillars' lifting the emerging construction up from the mundane reality, and making it stand out.

In our challenge to come through the sensationalist press and reach out to people, each of them is a sensation in its own right; but a real sensation, which merits our attention.

In our various artistic, research, media... projects—they provide us building material.



The mirror

POINT: Bring in the fundamental element. CHANGE of WORLDVIEW begins with FOUNDATIONS—and here we orchestrate it carefully. BRING ACADEMIA ALONG! LIBERATE the enormous creative potential it contains. WE DO NOT NEED TO "PUBLISH OR PERISH".

The appeal here is to institutionalize a FREE academic space, where this line of work can be developed with suitable support.

A way out

That there is an unexpected, seemingly magical way into a new cultural and social reality is really good news. But is it realistic?

We here carefully develop the analogy with Galilei's time, when a new epistemology was ready to change the world, but still kept in house arrest. All we need to do is to set it free.

The discovery of ourselves

The mirror symbolizes the ending of reification (when we see ourselves in the world, we realize that we are not above it and observing it "objectively"); and the beginning of accountability (we see the world in dire need for creative action; and we see our own role in it).

This insight extends into ending of the reification of our personal preferences, feelings, tastes... What we are able to feel, think, create... is determined, to an astounding degree, by the degree in which our "human quality" has been developed. And our ability to develop it depends in an overwhelming degree on the way in which our culture has been developed.

The academia's situation

The mirror symbolizes also the academia's situation, just as the bus with candle headlights symbolizes our civilization's situation. The point is that the hitherto development of the academic tradition brought us there, in front of the mirror.

An enormous liberation of our creative abilities results when we realize they must not be confined to traditional disciplinary pursuits and routines.

Especially important is the larger understanding of information that the self-reflection in front of the mirror brings us to; information is no longer only printed text; it includes any artifacts that embody human experience, refined by human ingenuity.


Occupy the university

Who holds 'Galilei in house arrest'

We don't need to occupy Wall Street. The key is in another place.

We really just need to occupy our own profession—by continuing the tradition that our great predecessors have created.

A sand box

On the other side of the mirror we create a 'sandbox'; that's really the holotopia project.


Note: on the other side of the mirror the contributions of Jantsch and Engelbart are seen as fundamental (they were drafting, and creating strategically, a new 'collective mind').

See the description of 'sandbox' in our contribution Enabling Social-Systemic Transformations to the 2013 conference "Transformations in a Changing Climate"



The five insights, and the ten direct relationships between them, provide us reference—in the context of which some of the age-old challenges are understood and handled in entirely new ways.

How to put an end to war

Consider, for instance, this age-old question: "How to put an end to war?" So far our progress on this all-important frontier has largely been confined to palliative measures; and ignored those far more interesting curative ones. What would it take to really put an end to war, once and for all?

When this question is considered in the context of two direction-changing insights, power structure and socialized reality, we become ready to see the whole compendium of questions related to justice, power and freedom in a completely new way. We then realize in what way exactly, throughout history, we have been coerced, largely through cultural means, to serve renegade power, in the truest sense our enemy, by engaging our sense of duty, heroism, honor and other values and traits that constitute "human quality". We then become ready to redeem the best sides of ourselves from the power structure, and apply them toward true betterment of our condition.

Religion beyond belief

Or think about religion—which has in traditional societies served to bind each person with "human quality", and the people together into a culture or a society. But which is in modern times all too often associated with dogmatic beliefs, and inter-cultural conflicts.

When religion is, however, considered in the context provided by socialized reality and convenience paradox, a whole new possibility emerges—where religion no longer is an instrument of socialization—but of liberation; and as an essential way to cultivate our personal and communal wholeness.

A natural strategy for remedying religion-related dogmatic beliefs and inter-cultural conflicts emerges—to evolve religion further!

The ten themes cover the holotopia

Of course any theme can be placed into the context of the five insights, and end up being seen and handled radically differently. To prime these eagerly sought-for conversations, we provided a selection of ten themes (related to the future of education, business, science, democracy, art, happiness...) that—together with the five insights—cover the space of holotopia in sufficient detail to make it transparent and tangible.


The dialogs

The dialog is an art form

We make conversation themes alive through dialogs.

We turn conversations into artistic and media-enabled events (see the Earth Sharing prototype below).

The dialog is an attitude

The dialog is an integral part of the holoscope. Its role will be understood if we consider the human inclination to hold onto a certain way of seeing things, and call it "reality". And how much this inclination has been misused by various social groups to bind us to themselves, and more recently by various modern power structures. (Think, for instance, about the animosity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.)

The attitude of the dialog may be understood as an antidote.

The dialog is an age-old tradition

The dialogues of Socrates marked the very inception of the academic tradition. More recently, David Bohm gave the evolution of the dialogue a new and transformative direction. Bohm's dialogues are a form of collective therapy. Instead of arguing their points, the participants practice "proprioception" (mindfully observe their reactions), so that they may ultimately listen without judging, and co-create a space where new and transformative ideas can emerge.

We built on this tradition and developed a collection of prototypes—which holotopia will use as construction material, and build further.


We employ contemporary media

The use of contemporary media opens up a whole new chapter, or dimension, in the story of the dialog.

Through suitable use of the camera, the dialog can be turned into a mirror—mirroring our dysfunctional communication habits; our turf strifes.

By using Debategraph and other "dialog mapping" online tools, the dialog can be turned into a global process of co-creation of meaning.

The dialog as spectacle

The holotopia dialogs will have the nature of spectacles—not the kind of spectacles fabricated by the media, but real ones. To the media spectacles, they present a real and transformative alternative.

The dialogs we initiate are a re-creation of the conventional "reality shows"—which show the contemporary reality in ways that need to be shown. The relevance is on an entirely different scale. And the excitement and actuality are of course larger! We engage the "opinion leaders" to contribute their insights to the cause.

When successful, the result is most timely and informative: We are witnessing the changing of our understanding and handling of a core issue.

When unsuccessful, the result is most timely and informative in a different way: We are witnessing our resistances and our blind spots, our clinging to the obsolete forms of thought.

Occasionally we publish books about those themes, based on our dialogs, and to begin new ones.

The dialog is an instrument of change

This point cannot be overemphasized: Our primary goal is not to warn, inform, propose a new way to look at the world—but to change our collective mind. Physically. The dialog is the medium for that change.

We organize public dialogs about the five insights, and other themes related to change, in order to make change.

Here the medium in the truest sense is the message: By developing dialogs, we re-create our collective mind—from something that only receives, which is dazzled by the media... to something that is capable of weaving together academic and other insights, and by engaging the best of our "collective intelligence" in seeing what needs to be done. And in inciting, planning and coordinating action.

In the holotopia scheme of things everything is a prototype. The prototypes are not final results of our efforts, they are a means to an end—which is to rebuild the public sphere; to reconfigure our collective mind. The role of the prototypes is to prime this process.

The elephant

Elephant.jpg
Elephant ideogram

The elephant

Imagine the 20th century's visionary thinkers as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear them talk about things like "a fan", "a water hose" and "a tree trunk". But they don't make sense, and we ignore them.

Everything changes when we realize that they are really talking about the ear, the trunk and the leg of an imposingly large exotic animal, which nobody has yet had a chance to see—a whole new order of things, or cultural and social paradigm!

A spectacle

The effect of the five insights is to orchestrate this act of 'connecting the dots'—so that the spectacular event we are part of, this exotic 'animal', the new 'destination' toward which we will now "change course" becomes clearly visible.

A side effect is that the academic results once again become interesting and relevant. In this newly created context, they acquire a whole new meaning; and agency!

Post-post-structuralism

The structuralists undertook to bring rigor to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists "deconstructed" their efforts, by observing that there is no such thing as "real meaning"; and that the meaning of cultural artifacts is open to interpretation.

This evolution may be taken a step further. What interests us is not what, for instance, Bourdieu "really saw" and wanted to communicate. We acknowledge (with the post-structuralists), that even Bourdieu would not be able to tell us that, if he were still around. We acknowledge, however, that Bourdieu saw something that invited a different interpretation and way of thinking than what was common; and did what he could to explain it within the old paradigm. Hence we give the study of cultural artifacts not only a sense of rigor, but also a new degree of relevance—by considering them as signs on the road, pointing to an emerging paradigm

A parable

While the view of the elephant is composed of a large number of stories, one of them—the story of Doug Engelbart—is epigrammatic. It is not only a spectacular story—how the Silicon Valley failed to understand or even hear its "giant in residence", even after having recognized him as that; it is also a parable pointing to many of the elements we want to highlight by telling these stories—not least the social psychology and dynamics that 'hold Galilei in house arrest'.

This story also inspired us to use this metaphor: Engelbart saw 'the elephant' already in 1951—and spent a six decades-long career to show him to us. And yet he passed away with only a meager (computer) mouse in his hand (to his credit)!


The holoscope

Seeing things whole

Peccei concluded his analysis in "One Hundred Pages for the Future":

The arguments posed in the preceding pages [...] point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost the sense of the whole.

In the context of Holotopia, we refer to knowledge federation by its pseudonym holoscope, to highlight one of its distinguishing characteristics—it helps us see things whole.

Different from the sciences that have been "zooming in" (toward finer technical details); and promoting a fixed way of looking at the world (a domain of interest, a terminology and a set of methods being what defines a scientific discipline); and the informing media's focus on specific spectacular events, the holoscope allows us to chose our scope –"what is being looked at and how".


Stories

We bring together stories (elsewhere called vignettes)—which share the core insights of leading contemporary thinkers. We tell their stories.

They become 'dots' to connect in our dialogs.

They also show what obstructed our evolution (the emergence of holotopia).

Ideograms

Art meets science

Placeholder. The point is enormous—federation of insights, connecting the dots, not only or even primarily results in rational insights. It results in implicit information; we are undoing our socialization!

H side.png
A paper model of a sculpture, re-imaging the five insights and their relationships.

The ideograms condense lots of insights into a simple image, ready to be grasped.


As the above image may suggest, the pentagram—as the basic icon or 'logo' of holotopia—lends itself to a myriad re-creations. We let the above image suggest that a multiplicity of ideas can be condensed to a simple image (the pentagram); and how this image can be expanded into a multiplicity of artistic creations.

Keywords

The Renaissance, and also science, brought along a whole new way of speaking—and hence a new way to look at the world. With each of the five insights we introduce a collection of keywords, in terms of which we come to understand the core issues in new ways.

The keywords will also allow us to propose solutions to the anomalies that the five insights bring forth.

Prototypes

Information has agency only when it has a way to impact our actual physical reality. A goal of the Holotopia project is to co-create prototypes—new elements of our new reality. We share the prototypes we've already developed, to put the ball in play.



These titles will change

Art leads science

How the action began...

Seeing differently

Up and down

The vault

Precious space for reflection—where the stories are told, and insights begin to take shape.

Holotopia is an art project

The Holotopia is an art project. We are reminded of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the heart of the old world order planting the seeds of the new one.

Duchamp's (attempted) exhibition of a urinal challenged what art may be, and contributed to the legacy that the modern art was built on. Now our conditions demand that we deconstruct the deconstruction—and begin to construct anew.

What will the art associated with the next Renaissance be like? We offer holotopia as a creative space where the new art can emerge.

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A snapshot of Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen.

Henri Lefebvre summarized the most vital of Karl Marx's objections to capitalism, by observing that capital (machines, tools, materials...) or "investments" are products of past work, and hence represent "dead labour". That in this way past activity "crystalyzes, as it were, and becomes a precondition for new activity." And that under capitalism, "what is dead takes hold of what is alive"

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

As the above image may suggest, the holotopia artists still produce art objects; but they are used as pieces in a larger whole— which is a space where transformation happens. A space where the creativity of the artist can cross-fertilize with the insights of the scientist, to co-create a new reality that none of them can create on her own. Imagine it as a space, akin to a new continent or a "new world" that's just been discovered—which combines physical and virtual spaces, suitably interconnected.

Going online

Debategraph was not yet implemented. But David was there!