Holotopia

Holotopia

Imagine...

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

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

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

Modernity ideogram

We need new 'headlights'

The way we see the world

The COVID-19 crisis and its fallout reminds us of the connectedness and vulnerability of human and natural systems. And of the all-important role of the 'headlights'. Soon we may be facing irreversible changes in the climate system causing global warming, extreme weather and sea-level rise. Shall we resort to our usual reactive responses and blame games? Or shall we see our situation in a way that will empower us to comprehend it truly, and handle it effectively?

ALTERNATIVE ((subtractions noted as [...], additions/changes as text within square brackets and comments within paranthesis ))

The COVID-19 crisis and its fallout remind[...] us of the connectedness and vulnerability of the human [and natural] systems ((science shows that both covid and climate change stem from human actions influencing natural systems)). [...]((covid is not over so too early to quantify/compare, and the term 'disturbance' undermines the lives lost)) [Both epidemics and], the irreversible changes expected to result from climate change [are systemic problems that result from human actions].

[...] Problems, such as the coronavirus epidemic and climate change, [...] ((some people don't think so)) have to be dealt with. But [how? The question of strategy is of vital importance.] [...] ((what do you mean by 'sufficient' in this context?)) Einstein's familiar observation, that we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them, is implicit in every step that our initiative has made.

We need different thinking and ['systemic' instead of 'deeper'?] understanding to [prevent] ((rather than 'avoid')) crisis, injustice, riots and conflicts, scapegoating and blame. ((Cut: "In the absence of deeper understanding, the age-old scapegoats will be blamed: "the lazy people on welfare"; the immigrant workers; the 1%; the Jews or the Muslims" – I don't find this list very elegant)).

END ALTERNATIVE

We have 'candles' as 'headlights'

How we ended up with a dysfunctional and obsolete way of comprehending the world is illuminating, and we must return to it, however briefly.

Between the mid-19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, Western societies changed drastically: Our countries became democracies; our worldviews became scientific and secular; our lifestyles became mechanized and modern. The way we looked at the world also 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 challenges— ((rewrite)) from increasing productivity, to understanding and controlling our newly acquired powers to change the global systems and bring about our own end
• the heritage of the world traditions—which for the first time became documented and made available

But these changes remained without impact on our institutionalized ways of working together and achieving socially important goals.

Academia remained confined to disciplines, which grew and got fragmented into sub-specialties. Massive academic publishing made scientists loose contact not only with one another but with the world at large – entire fields failed to communicate even their most basic insights.

Indeed—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!

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.

The KF proposal

Knowledge federation means 'connecting the dots'

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

Knowledge federation can be understood as the principle of operation of an entirely different pair of 'headlights'—by which the above 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 suggests—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 reveals how it may need to be handled. And by creating prototypes—we can give information a way to impact 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."

Neil Postman

We are proposing to create new 'headlights'—by federating knowledge instead of trying to make use of whatever happens to be there; instead of blindly adopting what we've inherited from the past.

Knowledge federation means acting differently

Having perceived our society as a bus with candle headlights, we recognized ourselves as (part of) those headlights. Naturally, we began to self-organize—to become 'lightbulbs', not 'candles'!

We understood that we must use our creativity in a new way; not by merely observing and reporting—but by self-organizing and co-creatively acting in ways that will result in a re-evolution of the system we are part of.

Knowledge federation concretely

We are proposing to establish knowledge federation as a new transdisciplinary academic field, and a real-life praxis.

As "applied research", knowledge federation is intended to be the 'headlights'—and turn academic and other relevant insights into shared visions.

As "basic research", its function is to create the 'headlights'—and to recreate them continuously, to keep them in sync with relevant knowledge, technology, and our society's needs.

As a way to operationalize this proposal, we offer to

• establish knowledge federation as a transdiscipline—for which the prototype described on these pages is offered as a detailed explanation, and a template ready for implementation
• develop the holotopia prototype as a real-life initiative to change the way we as society see and handle our larger situation at hand, and information and knowledge in particular

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 and implemented—in a collection of real-life embedded prototypes.

An application

The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for developing the Holotopia prototype. 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."

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

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

Aurelio Peccei

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

In "Human Quality", Peccei assessed our contemporary situation as follows:

"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".

Federating Peccei

We conceive the Holotopia prototype as a way to federate The Club of Rome's vision and mission.

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'?

Since our proposal is to develop a new paradigm in creation and use of information, the lack of academic and social response to The Club of Rome and Peccei constitutes (in Thopmas Kuhn's usage of this word) an anomaly.

The Holotopia prototype should, in this context, be understood as a model response to The Club of Rome and Peccei. Imagine it as a cardboard model of a large sculpture.

The real thing, or 'the sculpture', is a global knowledge work system, or our collective mind, that federates knowledge. One which is capable of taking such an insight as The Club of Rome provided, and doing what needs to be done. In creating this 'cardboard model', we assume that part of the federation has already been done by The Club of Rome—and we federate further. The Club of Rome was indeed a federation effort, both an attempt to create the 'headlights' and to provide the vision. But our collective mind being fragmented and irresponsive, the action of our 'collective organism' did not follow.

Can knowledge federation help us "change course"?

What are the functions that our collective mind and our 'collective organism' are lacking to become viable, or "sustainable"?

Our response to Peccei is to begin a process.

Our goal is to initiate and streamline a process through which our collective mind can re-create itself and become capable of evolving further—and guide the evolution of the entire 'organism' to become capable of responding to changes in the 'environment'.

Exactly as Erich Jantsch proposed fifty years ago—as a core element of a necessary and meaningful way to continue The Club of Rome's action.

Liberating Galilei

There is a second, and entirely different way to read the present description of the Holotopia prototype—the academic way.

Here we are talking about a core academic anomaly—that our knowledge work is not evolving in sync with the knowledge of knowledge that has become available. Because the academia is lacking an evolutionary organ, and an awareness of its social roles—so that it may adapt its behavior, and its evolution, to those roles.

We show that when this evolution is allowed to continue (and keeping the evolution of knowledge in sync with the knowledge of knowledge is the academia's primary role)—then the paradigm shift we are proposing follows as the next step. Just as it did in Galilei's time.

We have created—and are now exhibiting—a prototype of an academic 'reality beyond', made according to the best standards of the academic tradition—which means rigorous, non-trivial, parsimonious or elegant... Our proposal is not to adopt the prototype we've proposed (which too is a 'paper model), but to continue the evolution in the direction our prototype is pointing.

To ignite action, which is long overdue, we submit what might be seen as an unexpected answer to the key question:

Who holds Galilei in house arrest?

The answer is surprising considering that the contemporary academia has been developed on the legacy of Galilei and his colleagues. As a way to continue the tradition they represented.

The answer will, however, be natural, if we see that the contemporary academia has the social role that the Church held in Galilei's time. And that liberating the evolution of knowledge from the power structure is the key task today, just as it was then. And in so many other situations in the past.

Mirror, holoscope and holotopia

Our proposal is "to develop knowledge federation as an academic field, and as a real-life praxis.

The key to the change we are proposing is to change the relationship we have with knowledge. The "leverage point" (place to intervene) is the university (or academia), which holds this key.

The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it.

This Erich Jantsch's call to action has "the university" as natural implementation.

Our proposal can now be summarized by three keywords, and corresponding images.

The evolution of academia has brought it to the metaphorical mirror—a situation that demands self-reflection, leading to a change of self-perception and self-identity (from "objective observer of reality", to "piece in a larger whole").

The holotopia can then be understood as the vision of a resulting social reality; the holoscope alias knowledge federation can be understood as a resulting academic reality.

A vision

What new 'course' will 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.

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.

This is exactly the direction the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.

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

The point is to see that we are those 'headlights'—whenever we are using information or creating it; and to self-organize and act in ways this function (of being headlights) requires.

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

A strategy

We focus on "changing course"

How can we, realistically, "change course"? What can make a large enough change to really make a difference?

The holotopia strategy, as suggested by its name, is to focus on changing the entire order of things from which our problems emanate. Exactly as The Club of Rome recommended.

Such a strategy can only be pursued through a radically changed awareness and values. And through collaboration, not conflict. But how can our values, our very way of being in the world, realistically be transformed?

We will answer this question carefully, under "Tactical assets".

We foster new thinking to enable solutions

The problems, such as the coronavirus epidemic and climate change, of course have to be dealt with. But how? Einstein's familiar observation, that we cannot solve our problems by thinking as we did when we created them, is implicit in every step that our initiative has made.

Our value proposition is not to replace the most worthwhile initiatives that are focused on specific problems, but to complement them. And by doing that, to vastly augment their chances of success.

We need different thinking and deeper ((systemic?)) understanding to avoid crisis, injustice, riots and conflicts, scapegoating and blame.

And we also need different thinking to direct the remedial efforts productively. Peccei wrote:

[…] The Club of Rome also realized that our generations, swollen with pride in our technological triumphs, must regain the sense of human responsibilities that I have already mentioned.

[…] For some time now, the perception of these responsibilities 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 varied 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 changed; 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 the 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 of 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 toward strategic objectives.

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. In the "Age of Information", re-branded "Anthropocene", we urgently need the kind of information that can illuminate the way.

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!

Tactical assets

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".

Scope and perspective

Perspective ideogram

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.

The holoscope combines and connects information in a dynamic way, to illuminate what remained obscure or hidden, so that we may uncover the whole, and assess its shape, dimensions and condition fully (adjust our perspective).

The holoscope complements the usual approach in the sciences.

Insights, principles, rules of thumb

By deliberately creating scopes, and using methods provided within our prototype, we are able to create insights, principles, rules of thumb—relevant to any issue; and on any level of detail, or abstraction.

When we point the holoscope to some of the most basic (to human life and culture) themes and interests, what result are surprising and sometimes shocking, even scandalous realizations—of the extent in which our "conventional wisdom" deviate from what is "known" in academic disciplines, and other relevant cultural traditions.

A collection of five main insights constitute the motor that drives the Holotopia initiative onward, toward its destination.

Five insights

Five Insights ideogram

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

We look at five pivotal themes

When Peccei talked about "a great cultural revival", he was referring to the Renaissance—the historical moment when a comprehensive change of the human systems was under way. We refer to it by using the symbolic image of Galilei in house arrest—and carefully develop an analogy between that and our present condition.

The five insights show why a similar change is ready to take place once again, by elaborating on the analogy between our time and conditions, and the five specific changes the historical comprehensive change was composed of:

• the Industrial Revolution, made possible by a revolution in science and innovation
• the revolution in communication, made possible by the printing press
• the revolution in epistemology, enabled by the empowerment of human reason to explore and comprehend the world
• the revolution in our ability to explore and comprehend the world, made possible by the emergence of science
• the revolution in lifestyle and in arts, happened as the preoccupation with the afterlife lost its hold

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 is ready to take place, with similar consequences.

By radically improving communication, the printing press enabled a rapid dissemination of information, and growth in knowledge. The collective mind insight shows that the new media enable a similar revolution—where the most important improvement will be in the organization of information; and in the nature and the quality of knowledge.

What Galilei mainly 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 here as well, and later academically uncovered. The resulting situation obliges us to once again liberate and empower the human reason—and make the kind of difference that now needs to be made.

Galilei also symbolizes the onset of science—the method by which human reason was empowered. The narrow frame insight shows that the scientific revolution remained confined to the ways of understanding the natural world; and how this revolution can continue in a new way, and enable a revolution in the human world as well.

The Renaissance is most vividly remembered as a liberation of the arts, and of the joy of living and human quality. The convenience paradox insight shows that once again a myth stalled our "pursuit of happiness". And why a 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.

A view of the next Renaissance

Together, the five insights constitute a breath-taking sight of a spectacular development presently taking place. It escaped the attention of the media, because a variety of academic and other insights need to be put together, for it to become visible.

The five insights combined together enable us to see our own time in a similar light as we see the historical moment when Galilei was in house arrest. It is a time of deep and shocking incongruences. A time when what once appeared as "normal" can no longer continue. The moment when the ideas bringing change are still outside the focus of the public eye; when 'Galilei is still in house arrest'.

A case for academic revival

The image of Galilei in house arrest is a snapshot of an instance where an age-old tradition was about to become alive again—and make a difference.

Socrates, whom we honor as the founding icon of the academic tradition, did not leave us a new worldview, or a theory. His work was to ask questions—and by doing that, empower the human reason (which tended to be then, as it is now, put to rest by the comforting belief that we already know, which suits our self-esteem and power positions) to question the very foundations of our beliefs. It is not practical knowledge the academia stands for, but the knowledge of knowledge; and the foundations of knowledge. In Galilei's time, this all-important praxis (of using the reason to examine the foundations) was about to become alive again; and make a difference. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

The arguments advanced in association with the five insights show in a careful academic way that the state of the art of knowledge of knowledge once again demands such development. The age-old assumptions on which the ideas about knowledge and reality, which the academia is the keeper of, have once again been proven false.

Traditionally, the academia does not stand for useful knowledge, but for "right" knowledge. We show that the time is ripe for merging those two sets of criteria into one. We show, in a way that honors the time-tested values of the academic tradition, that the change of the relationship we have with information, which we are proposing, is also a way to resolve the reported fundamental anomalies in our conception and handling of information. Currently academia occupies the university physically, or outwardly. We challenge academia to occupy the university also inwardly by embodying the values that the founding fathers of science, and of academia, manifested so clearly.

By weaving together specific stories, distributed under the headings of all five insights, we begin to see clearly what happened with our culture; and why claiming it back, or "a great cultural revival", is overdue.

Science came into the role of "Grand Revelator of Modern Western Culture", as Benjamin Lee Whorf phrased it, "without intending to". This was a side effect of its successes in the task for which it was created—providing causal explanations of natural phenomena. Culture, founded on mythical explanations of natural phenomena and the shaky ground of the respect for tradition, lost bearings and began to erode. While we were busy developing science and technology, the abandoned and ignored reproduction of culture was co-opted by commercial actors, who are now molding it, and us through it, as it suits their interests—without us even suspecting that something in this arrangement might be eery.

This issue is political

Every genuine revolution is also a revolution in justice; not only in the way in which justice is handled, but also in the way in which it is conceived of. Galilei was in house arrest not only because his ideas were "heretical", but also and perhaps primarily because he was questioning the foundations on which the existing power relations depended.

Each of the five insights contributes a new piece to that puzzle. When those pieces are put together, a completely new idea of justice and freedom, and what tends to obstruct 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 then.

A case for our proposal

The five insights allow us to see and understand our knowledge federation proposal in a context.

The insights, and especially the points of evidence we bring up to make them clear and convincing, serve as "anomalies" (in Thomas Kuhn's usage of this word), which call for a "new paradigm" in knowledge work at large. In this context we present the main design decisions that led to knowledge federation, as well as some of the implementation details, as solutions, or as steps necessary for resolving the paradigm.

In this way, a case for academic revival is made—by showing that the new paradigm we are proposing has become necessary for both fundamental and pragmatic reasons.

At the same time, we provide sufficiently many technical details of our solution, to make the Holotopia prototype self-contained.

((I propose to cut this - until "The ten thesmes))

Ten themes

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!

((cut stops here))

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 dialog

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.

((I PROPOSE TO CUT HERE - this needs more work - until "The dialog is an instrument..."))

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.

((CUT STOPS HERE))

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.

((CUT AGAIN - this needs more work))

Art and new media

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.

Art as production of space

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.

Holotopia gives new life to new media

The Holotopia project combines contemporary art with contemporary media (tools for "augmenting our collective intellect", creative video recording and editing etc.), to evolve our collective mind.

We use those tools to create a new collective mind

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The elephant

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 mirror

A detail from Holotopia's pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14 Bergen, where the mirror was used as an entry point into a "safe space" for reflection; from which holotopia can be seen, and contributed to.

The mirror is a complex symbol, in which a number of streams of thought and lines of development that constitute the holotopia are woven together.

End of "objectivity"

Or the "discovery of ourselves"—will have a range of consequences.

One of them is to understand just how much our perception of things is subject to "human development"...

The end of "objectivity" is the beginning of accountability—where instead of seeing ourselves as "objective observers" of the world, we recognize that we are its responsible creators. "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

This is also an epistemology change—with profound consequences on how we valuate information, and what we do.

A theme for academic revival

A key point here is that the evolution of academia—that is, of knowledge of knowledge—has brought us here, in front of this mirror. The next step in academia's development is to (instead of being so busy with business as usual) stop and self-reflect. When we do that, a whole new self-identity will emerge—where we are no longer the "objective observers of reality", but its creators. That is the epistemology that produces the holotopia.

The academia must guide our society 'through the mirror'

The holotopia and the holoscope (alias knowledge federation) are respectively the social and the academic reality on the other side. By presenting the suitable prototypes, we facilitate the all-important step, through the mirror.

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

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.

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The existing ideograms are only a place holder—for what may be developed through suitable combinations of art and new media.

The ideograms employ the vast arsenal of artistic and suggestive tools, to affect us directly

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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.

Completing the KF prototype

The academic cause is presently obstructed ('Galilei is held in house arrest') by a most interesting challenge, which we have called the Wiener's paradox: Our collective mind is structured in a way that leaves the academia disconnected, from the public opinion and from the policy. As we have seen, the core mission of our knowledge federation initiative is to remedy that split.

This paradox, however, means that whatever we may say in an academic publication—is likely to remain without effect! But what else can we do? The Holotopia project is our prototype answer. Its purpose within the Knowledge Federation prototype is to complete the prototype by federating knowledge federation!

Imagine us as a collection of 'cells' in our 'collective mind', which mutated in a new way. Having perceived our society as a bus with candle headlights, we perceived ourselves as (part of) those headlights. And we began to self-organize differently. So that we may become 'lightbulbs', not 'candles'!

We understood, in other words, that we must use our creativity in a new way; not by merely observing and reporting—but by being and acting differently.

And so we made a small snowball, and began to roll it downhill. Will it gather snow? Will it grow? Will it have the effect it needs to have?

A call to action

What exactly we must do to make a difference

Margaret Mead wrote in Continuities in Cultural Evolution, already in 1964:

"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our shole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene."

Well before The Club of Rome said their word, Mead 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."

Mead's best known motto is encouraging:

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

We leave her more sober words, regarding what constitutes "a small group of... citizens" that are capable of making such a large difference, as her challenge to the Holotopia initiative:

Margaret Mead

"Although lengthy discussions about different kinds of leadership in different situations serve, indirectly, to explain why science has not solved the problem of identifying leaders, they serve no further constructive purpose.

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

A dugnad

Our call to action is an invitation to make an inner all-important step: To consider holotopia as your project, not ours. By seeing yourself as part of the larger whole—and contributing accordingly—you will already be in holotopia

In Norwegian language there is a word, "dugnad" (pronounced as "dügnad"), for the kind of collective event that may be organized by the people in the neighborhood, to collect fallen branches and trash and do small repairs in the commons—and then share a meal and get to know each other.

It is the spirit of dugnad we are inviting you to emulate.