Holotopia
HOLOTOPIA
An Actionable Strategy
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
Scope
"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Of course the political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking for was to 'hit the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is inspected, it becomes clear that its 'brakes' too are dysfunctional. And changing the system is well beyond their power—and even what they may be able to conceive of.
The COVID-19 crisis too is demanding systemic change.
So who—what institution or system—will lead us in "changing course"?
Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them—as they ignored Bush and Wiener before them, and others who followed.
Why?
It is tempting to conclude that the university institution too followed the general trend, and organized itself as a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.
The academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but to freely pursue knowledge for its own sake.