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<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Stories</h1> </div>
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<div class="page-header"><h1>Federation through Keywords</h1></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><font size="+1">– I cannot understand how anyone can make use of the frameworks of reference developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in order to understand the transformation into the post-traditional cosmopolitan world we live in today.</font>
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(Ulrich Beck, <em>The Risk Society and Beyond</em>, 2000)
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<div class="col-md-6"><p>To orient ourselves in the "post-traditional world" (where traditional recipes no longer work), to step <em>beyond</em> the "risk society" (where existential risks lurk in the dark, because we can neither comprehend nor resolve them by thinking as we did when we created them)—we must <em>create</em> new ways to think and speak; but <em>how</em>?</p>
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<p>Here a technical idea—<em><b>truth by convention</b></em>—is key; I adopted it or more precisely <em><b>federated</b></em> it from Willard Van Orman Quine; who qualified the transition to "truth by convention" as a sign of maturing that the sciences have manifested in their evolution; so why not use it to mature our pursuit of <em><b>knowledge</b></em> <em>in general</em>? <em><b>Truth by convention</b></em> is the notion of truth that is usual in mathematics: Let <em>x</em> be... then... It is meaningless to argue whether <em>x</em> "really is" as defined. </p>
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<h3><em>Truth by convention</em> gives us a way to create an independent reference system.</h3>
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<p>Independent, that is, from the <em><b>beliefs</b></em> of our traditions; and from the social "reality" or <em><b>the world</b></em> we live in. <em><b>Truth by convention</b></em> empowers us to (create <em><b>information</b></em> that makes it possible to) reflect about them critically.</p>       
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<h3><em>Keywords</em> are concepts defined by <em>convention</em>.</h3>
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<p>Years ago, when this work was still in infancy and before I read about <em><b>guided evolution of society</b></em>, I coined a pair of keywords—<em><b>tradition</b></em> and <em><b>design</b></em>—to explain the nature of the error I am inviting you to correct; the one the Modernity ideogram is pointing to. <em><b>Tradition</b></em> and <em><b>design</b></em> are two ways of thinking and being in the world; and two distinct ways of evolving culturally and socially—corresponding to the two ways in which <em><b>wholeness</b></em> can result: <em><b>Tradition</b></em> relies on spontaneous evolution (where things are adjusted to each other through many generations of use); <em><b>design</b></em> relies on accountability and deliberate action. <em><b>Design</b></em> means thinking and acting as a designer would, when designing a technical object such as a car; and making sure that the result is functional (it can take people places), and also safe, affordable, appealing etc. The point of this definition is that when <em><b>tradition</b></em> can no longer be relied on—<em><b>design</b></em> must be used.</p>
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<p>So let us right away take a decisive step toward the <em><b>design</b></em> thinking and being by turning "reification" into a <em><b>keyword</b></em>; and explain that <em><b>reification</b></em> is something the <em><b>traditional</b></em> cultures did and <em>had to</em> do (to compel everyone to comply to the traditional order of things without needing to understand it); and use the  Modernity ideogram to explain why <em>we</em> must learn to <em>avoid</em> <em><b>reification</b></em> (because it hinders us from <em><b>designing</b></em> i.e. from deliberately <em><b>seeing things whole</b></em> and <em><b>making things whole</b></em>).</p>
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<p>You may now understand the error I am inviting you to correct as something (only) the <em><b>traditional</b></em> people could have made; and the Modernity ideogram as depicting a point of transition: We are no longer <em><b>traditional</b></em>; and we are not yet <em><b>designing</b></em>; we live in a (still haphazard) transition from one stable way of evolving and being in the world, which is no longer functioning—and another one, which is not yet in place.</p> 
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<h3><em>Reification</em> is the <em>traditional</em> approach to communication.</h3>
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<p>And to concept definition in particular. <em><b>See</b></em> the approach to concept definition I have just introduced <em><b>as</b></em> a way or <em>the</em> way to avoid <em><b>reification</b></em>.</p>
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<p> When I define for instance "culture" by <em><b>convention</b></em>, and turn it into a <em><b>keyword</b></em>, I am not saying what culture "really is"; I am creating a <em>way of looking</em> at an endlessly complex real thing—and <em>projecting</em> it, as it were, onto some judiciously chosen plane; so that we may talk about it and comprehend it in simple and clear terms, by seeing it from a specific <em>angle</em>; and I'm inviting you, the reader, to <em><b>see</b></em> culture <em><b>as</b></em> it's been defined.</p>
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<p>Defined by <em><b>convention</b></em>, institutions like "science" or "religion" are not <em><b>reified</b></em> as what they <em>currently</em> are—but defined as means to an end i.e. in terms of a certain specific function or a collection of <em>functions</em> in the <em><b>system</b></em> of society; so that we may <em>adapt</em> the actual institutions to those functions.</p>
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<h3><em>Keyword</em> creation is a form for linguistic and institutional recycling.</h3>
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<p>Often but not always, <em><b>keywords</b></em> are adopted from the repertoire of a frontier thinker, an academic field or a cultural tradition; they then enable us to <em><b>federate</b></em> what's been comprehended or experienced in some of our culture's dislodged compartments.</p>
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<h3><em><b>Keywords</b></em> enable us to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and see further.</h3>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Beck.jpeg]] <br><small><center>[[Ulrich Beck]]</center></small></div></div>
 
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Information technology and innovation</h2></div>
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  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Liberating and directing creative work</h3>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h2>Paradigm</h2>
<p>On our main page we suggested that when we liberate our creative work in general, and our knowledge work in particular, from subservience to age-old patterns and routines and outmoded assumptions, and then motivate it and orient it differently, a sweeping Renaissance– like change may be expected to result. We motivated this observation, and our initiative, by three large changes that took place during the past century – of epistemology, of information technology, and of our society's condition and information needs. In Federation through Images we took up the first motive. Here our theme will be the second one.</p>
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<p>I use the keyword <em><b>paradigm</b></em> informally, to point to a societal and cultural order of things as a whole; and to explain the strategy for solving "the huge problems now confronting us" and continuing cultural evolution I am proposing to implement—which is to <em>enable</em> the <em><b>paradigm</b></em> to change; from the one we presently live in, which I'll characterize as <em><b>materialism</b></em>—all the way to <em><b>holotopia</b></em>.</p>
<p>In Federation through Images we used the image of a bus with candle headlights to make a sweepingly large claim: When innovation, or creative work in general, is "knowledge-based" and directed as it may best improve or complete the larger whole in which what is being innovated has a role, then the difference this may make, the benefits that may result to our society, are similar as the benefits of substituting light bulbs for candles may be to the people in that bus. </p>
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<p>[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br><small><center>The purpose of <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> is to (enable us to) <em><b>connect the dots</b></em>.</center></small></p>  
<p>There is, however, an obvious alternative – and that is what is in effect today. It is to simply have everyone act as it may best further (what they perceive as) their "personal interests" – and trust that the "free competition" or "the survival of the fittest" or "the invisible hand" of the market will turn that into common good. The real-life stories we are about to tell will help us make a case for an informed and more sober alternative.</p>
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<p>I use the keyword <em><b>elephant</b></em> as a nickname for <em><b>holotopia</b></em> when I want to be even more informal—and highlight that it's a <em>coherent</em> order of things where everything depends on everything else, as the organs of an <em><b>elephant</b></em> do.</p>
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<p>I also use <em><b>elephant</b></em> as metaphor and <em><b>keyword</b></em> to motivate the strategy I have just mentioned by pointing to a paradox: <em><b>Paradigms</b></em> resist change; you just <em>can't</em> fit an elephant's ear onto a mouse! And yet <em>comprehensive</em> change, of a <em><b>paradigm</b></em> as a whole, can be natural and effortless—when the conditions for it are ripe.</p>
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<h3>We live in such a time.</h3>
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<p>When all the data points that are needed for constituting an entirely different <em><b>paradigm</b></em> are already there; so that all that remains is—to <em><b>connect the dots</b></em>; or more accurately—to restore our collective <em><b>capability</b></em> to <em><b>connect the dots</b></em>.</p>
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<h3>Which is what <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> proposal is all about.</h3>
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<p>The <em><b>elephant</b></em> was in the room when the 20th century’s <em><b>giants</b></em> wrote or spoke; but we failed to see him because of the jungleness of our <em><b>information</b></em>; and because of disciplinary and cultural fragmentation; and because our thinking and communication are still as the traditions shaped them. We heard the <em><b>giants</b></em> talk about a ‘thick snake’, a ‘fan’, a ‘tree-trunk’ and a ‘rope’, often in Greek or Latin; they didn’t make sense and we ignored them. How differently our information fares when we understand that it was the ‘trunk’, the ‘ear’, the ‘leg’ and the ‘tail’ of a vast exotic ‘animal’ they were talking about; whose very <em>existence</em> we ignore! </p>
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<p><em><b>Transdisciplinarity</b></em>, as <em><b>prototyped</b></em> by <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> is also a <em><b>paradigm</b></em>—in <em><b>information</b></em>; which will empower us to <em><b>connect the dots</b></em> and manifest the <em>comprehensive</em> <em><b>paradigm</b></em>. You may now comprehend this call to action (to institute <em><b>transdisciplinarity</b></em> or <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> academically) as a call to mobilize the power that our society has invested in science and in the university institution at large—to <em><b>design</b></em> the process and <em>be</em> the process by which the society's 'candle headlights' will be turned into the real thing. This process must be <em><b>designed</b></em> because no matter how hard we try—we'll <em>never</em> create the lightbulb by incrementally improving the candle. To substitute 'the lightbulb' for 'the candle' we must <em><b>design</b></em> a suitable <em>process</em>; which (a moment of thought might be necessary to see why) will have to include a <em><b>prototype</b></em>.</p>
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<h3><em>Knowledge federation</em> is both the process and the <em>prototype</em>.</h3>
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<p>Science enabled the existing <em><b>paradigm</b></em> to come about; <em><b>transdisciplinarity</b></em> must be in place to enable us to transition to the next one.</p>  
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<p>I use the keyword <em><b>paradigm</b></em> also more formally, as Thomas Kuhn did—to point to
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<ul>
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<li>a different way to conceive a domain of interest, which</li>
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<li>resolves the reported anomalies and</li>
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<li>opens a new frontier to research and development.</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>Only here the domain of interest is not a conventional academic field, where <em><b>paradigm</b></em> changes have been relatively common—but <em><b>information</b></em> and <em><b>knowledge</b></em> and cultural evolution at large.</p>
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<p>In what follows I will structure my case for <em><b>transdisciplinarity</b></em> alias <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as a <em><b>paradigm</b></em> proposal—i.e. as a reconception of <em><b>information</b></em> and other categories on which our evolutionary <em><b>course</b></em> depends; and show how this reconception enables us to resolve the anomalies that thwart our efforts to comprehend and handle <em>the</em> core or <em><b>pivotal</b></em> themes of our lives and times; and how those anomalies are resolved by the proposed approach; and how this reconception opens up a creative frontier closely similar to the one that began to blossom after Galilei's and Descartes' time—where the next-generation <em><b>scientists</b></em> will be empowered to be creative in ways and degrees as the founders of Scientific Revolution were creative; and as the condition of their world will necessitate.</p>  
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
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<font size="+1">– Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.</font>
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(René Descartes,  <em> Meditations on First Philosophy</em>, 1641)
 
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Logos</h2>
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<p>The <em>Liberation</em> book opens with the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest—at the point in humanity's evolution when a sweeping <em><b>paradigm</b></em> shift was about to take place; the book then draws a parallel between that moment in history and the time <em>we</em> live in. So let me right away turn "mind" into a <em><b>keyword</b></em>; and use it to point out that <em>liberating</em> the way we use the <em><b>mind</b></em> and allowing it to change is—and has always been—<em>the</em> way to enable the <em><b>paradigm</b></em> to change; or the way to <em><b>change course</b></em>. I give the keyword <em><b>mind</b></em> a more general meaning meaning than this word usually has; closer to its French cognate "<em>esprit</em>", as Descartes used it in the title of his unfinished work <em>Règles pour la direction de l'esprit</em> (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). Indeed (as I pointed out in <em>Liberation</em> book's ninth chapter, which has "Liberation of Science" as title)—the course of action I am proposing can be seen as the "it's about time" continuation of Descartes' all-important project.</p>
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<p><em><b>Transdisciplinarity</b></em>, as <em><b>prototyped</b></em> by <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>, is envisioned as a <em>liberated</em> academic space where the next-generation <em><b>scientists</b></em> will be empowered to be creative in ways as Galilei and Descartes were creative—and "start again right from the foundations"; and <em>design</em> the way(s) they do <em><b>science</b></em> (instead of blindly inheriting them from <em><b>tradition</b></em>).</p>
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<p>I also coin <em><b>logos</b></em> as <em><b>keyword</b></em>; and erect is as banner demarcating this frontier, and inviting to the <em>next</em> scientific revolution; where we'll <em>again</em> liberate the <em><b>mind</b></em> (from compliance to "logic" as fixed and eternal "right" way to think; and from the suffix "logy" which we use to name scientific disciplines—and suggest that they <em>embody</em> <em><b>logos</b></em>; and compel us to <em>comply</em> to the hereditary procedures they embody). <em><b>Logos</b></em> as 'banner' invites (next-generation) <em><b>scientists</b></em> to revive an age-old quest—for the <em><b>correct</b></em> way to use the <em><b>mind</b></em>; by pointing to its <em>historicity</em> (i.e. that it <em>did</em> change in the past and <em>will</em> change again).</p>
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<p>"In the beginning was logos and logos was with God and logos was God." To Hellenic thinkers logos was the principle according to which God organized the world; which makes it possible to us humans to <em>comprehend</em> the world correctly—provided we align with it the way we use our minds. How exactly we may achieve that—there the opinions differed; and gave rise to a multitude of philosophical schools and traditions.</p>
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<p>But "logos" faired poorly in the post-Hellenic world; neither Latin nor the modern languages offered a suitable translation. For about a millennium our European ancestors believed that <em><b>logos</b></em> had been <em>revealed</em> to us humans by God's own son; and considered questioning that to be the deadly sin of pride, and a heresy.</p>
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<p>The scientific revolution unfolded as a reaction to earlier theological or "teleological" explanations of natural phenomena; as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his University of Oslo talk "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding", its founders insisted that a "scientific" explanation <em>must not</em> rely on a 'ghost' acting within 'the machine'; that the natural phenomena must be explained in ways that are <em>completely</em> comprehensible to the mind—as one would explain the functioning of a clockwork. </p>
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<p>Initially, science and church or tradition coexisted side by side—the latter providing the <em><b>know-what</b></em> and the former the know-how; but then right around mid-19th century, when Darwin stepped on the scene, the way to use the <em><b>mind</b></em> that science brought along <em>discredited</em> the mindset of tradition; and it appeared to educated masses that <em>science</em> was the answer; that science was <em>the</em> right way to knowledge.</p>
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<p>So here is my <em><b>point</b></em>—what I wanted to tell you by reviving this old word, and restoring it to function: The way we use the <em><b>mind</b></em> today—on which <em><b>materialism</b></em> grew—has not been chosen on <em>pragmatic</em> grounds; indeed it has not been chosen <em>at all</em>—but simply adopted or adapted from what people saw as "scientific" way to think; in the 19th century, when the educated masses abandoned the <em><b>belief</b></em> that <em><b>logos</b></em> was revealed and recorded once and for all in the Bible. And it was by this same sequence of historical accidents that science (which had been developed for an <em>entirely</em> different purpose—to unravel the mechanisms of nature) ended up in the the much larger role of "Grand Revelatory of modern Western culture" as Benjamin Lee Whorf branded it in <em>Language, truth and reality</em>.</p>
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<h3><em>That</em>'s how we ended up with 'candles' as 'headlights'.</h3>
 
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
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[[File:Descartes.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[René Descartes]]</center></small></div></div>
 
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The nature of our stories</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>   </h2>
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>They illustrate a larger point</h3>
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<font size="+1">– The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.</font>
<p>We choose our stories to serve as parables. In a fractal-like manner, each of them will reflect from a specific angle, of course – the entire situation our creative work and specifically knowledge work is in. So just as the case was with [[ideograms|<em>ideograms</em>]], stories too can be worth one thousand words. They too can condense and vividly display a wealth of insight. Bring to mind again the iconic image of Galilei in house prison, whispering ''eppur si muove'' into his beard. The stories  we are about to tell will suggest that also in our own time similar situations and dynamics are at play.</p>
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<h3>They lift up ideas of giants</h3>
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(Morpheus to Neo, <em>The Matrix</em>.)
<p>How to lift up a core insights of a [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] out of undeserved anonymity? We tell [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] – lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories. They are the kind of stories one might want to tell to an assembly of friends over a glass of vine. Their role is to distill core ideas of daring thinkers from the vocabulary of a discipline, and give them the visibility and appeal they deserve. If you are like us, weary of Donald Trump-style sensations in the media, then you might be glad to find here sensations of a completely new kind – that are in a truest sense good news, and also relevant! And with <em>completely</em> different protagonists! Our sensations will bring to the foreground some of our most innovative and daring thinkers, and make them a subject of conversations. What they'll have to say will give us the power of think new thoughts and handle large and small issues in completely new ways. </p>
 
<p>By joining [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] together into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], and [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] into a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] – we can create an overarching view of any situation, and of our historical, global situation at large – and see in a completely new light how those situations may need to be handled. </p>
 
 
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<div class="col-md-7"><h2>Materialism</h2>
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<p>Before we turn to <em><b>holotopia</b></em>, let's take a moment and theorize our present <em><b>paradigm</b></em>. What I'm calling <em><b>materialism</b></em> is not an actual but a theoretical or "ideal" order of things—which follows as consequence of the cultural–<em><b>fundamental</b></em> coup I've just described; where the <em><b>traditional</b></em> ideas and ideals (which, while far from perfect, used to provide people <em><b>know-what</b></em>) have been abandoned, and a proper replacement has not yet been found or even sought for. Here's the gist of it, in a nutshell, and I'll put it crudely: I acquire some material thing and this gives me a pleasurable feeling; and I interpret what happened in causal terms—and see the acquisition as <em>cause</em> and the gratifying feeling as its <em>consequence</em>; and I conceive my "pursuit of happiness" accordingly.</p>
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<p>See <em><b>materialism</b></em>'s way to use the <em><b>mind</b></em> as a travesty of science; and <em><b>materialism</b></em> itself as the cultural and social order of things that follows from its consistent application—where (a certain causal clockwork-like comprehension of) "the material world" is used as a measure of all things; where the direct experience of the material world, what <em>feels</em> attractive or unattractive, is presumed to be an experimental fact of sorts and promoted to the status of "interests" or "needs"; and allowed to determine or to <em>be</em> our <em><b>know-what</b></em>—so that all that remains is technical know-how; the knowledge of <em>how to</em> acquire what we want or need; by competing Darwin-style within <em><b>systems</b></em> conceived as a "fair" or "zero-sum" games.</p>
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<h3>In <em>materialism</em>, (direct experience of, and mechanistic-comprehension of) "material reality" serves as reference system.</h3> 
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<p>Anthony Giddens wrote in <em>Modernity and Self-Identity</em>) in 1991: “The threat of personal meaninglessness is ordinarily held at bay because routinised activities, in combination with basic trust, sustain ontological security. Potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems. Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality; to be able to control one’s life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities.”</p>
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<h3>In <em>materialism</em> "success" (what works in practice) is used for orientation.</h3>
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<p>"Mind could be introduced into the general picture only as a kind of mirror of the material world", Werner Heisenberg wrote in <em>Physics ad Philosophy</em>. Not having any guiding ideas or principles, in <em><b>materialism</b></em> people use direct experience or <em><b>convenience</b></em> to make choices; they simply this complex and <em><b>pivotal</b></em> matter by <em><b>reifying</b></em> the way they experience the material world; they <em><b>reify</b></em> their wants as their "needs". The rest is then just the matter of know-how—of how to acquire the material things one "needs".</p>
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<h3>"Convenience"—reaching out toward what <em>feels</em> attractive—is <em>materialism</em>'s "core value".</h3>
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<p>Which follows from its characteristic way to use the mind (whereby only "the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided" are considered as possible or relevant or "real", as Heisenberg pointed out)–and considers those things and <em>only</em> those things that appear attractive to our senses as real and worth pursuing (technical science here won't be of much help); and in this way decides or circumvents the larger issue of <em><b>know-what</b></em>, so that know-how (how to <em>acquire</em> the things we "need") is all that remains.</p> 
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<p>"Doxa" is the keyword that Pierre Bourdieu used (he adopted it from Max Weber, but its usage dates as far back as Aristotle) to point to corresponding phenomenology: The more familiar word "orthodoxy" means believing that one's own worldview or <em><b>paradigm</b></em> is the only "right" one; doxa ignores even the <em>existence</em> of alternatives; it means <em><b>believing</b></em> that the existing social reality is in a similar way immutable and real as the physical world is. You may comprehend <em><b>doxa</b></em> as an addiction—which results when the <em><b>mind</b></em>'s adaptive function (which evolved to help us adapt and function in the natural world) is applied so that the <em>social</em> world is experienced as "the reality" to which we must adapt. In <em>Liberation</em> book's Chapter Nine I point out how Socrates demonstrated that we humans tend to be victims of <em><b>doxa</b></em> and have <em><b>belief</b></em> instead of <em><b>knowledge</b></em>; and how Plato instituted the Academia to help his fellow humans evolve <em><b>knowledge-based</b></em>, by creating general insights and principles.</p>
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<h3>Once again the (evolution of) academic tradition, and the human <em>mind</em>, must be  liberated.</h3>
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<p>Just as the case was in Galilei's time.</p>
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<p>From the movie <em>The Matrix</em> I'll adopt <em><b>the world</b></em> as keyword—and use it to point to this so enticing yet sinister addiction that <em><b>materialism</b></em> thrives on—the addiction to "reality"; to "success"; which compels us to reproduce the dysfunctional habits and <em><b>systems</b></em> all the way until the bitter end; and to point to <em>the</em> urgent duty we have as generation.</p>
 +
<h3><em>Transdisciplinarity</em> and <em>holotopia</em> are conceived as steps toward liberating our next generation from <em>the world</em>.</h3> 
 +
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
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<font size="+1">– [T]he nineteenth century developed an extremely rigid frame for natural science which formed not only science but also the general outlook of great masses of people.</font>
 +
<br>
 +
(Werner Heisenberg, <em>Physics and Philosophy</em>, 1958.)
 
</div>
 
</div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Design epistemology</h2>
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<p>You'll comprehend the <em><b>category</b></em> from which this <em><b>foundational</b></em> of <em><b>holotopia</b></em>'s <em><b>five points</b></em> stems if you think of the subtle ambiguity in the word "foundation", as it's been used in this context: What Descartes was searching for, when he used that word, was the Archimedean point for acquiring "objectively true" knowledge—of "reality" as it "truly is"; which (he took this for granted) would be revealed to the mind as the <em>sensation</em> of absolute certainty; and which, when found (he and his colleagues also <em><b>believed</b></em>) would remain the lasting truth forever.</p>
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The incredible history of Doug</h2></div>
+
<p>What I call <em><b>foundation</b></em> is what <em><b>information</b></em> is founded on; and <em><b>culture</b></em> as a whole; which—just as <em><b>information</b></em>—needs to be <em><b>seen as</b></em> a human-made thing for human purposes; so that when the <em><b>foundation</b></em> changes (as it did in Darwin's time)—we need to deliberately secure that the new <em><b>foundation</b></em> is still suitable for <em>the</em> all-important function it needs to perform.</p>  
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>How the Silicon Valley failed to understand its giant in residence</h3>
+
<p>I'll use <em><b>ontological</b></em> and <em><b>pragmatic</b></em> as <em><b>keywords</b></em> to pinpoint the nature of the fundamental error I've been telling you about, and how I propose to correct it; and say that a <em><b>foundation</b></em> is <em><b>ontological</b></em> if it rests upon the intrinsic nature of things or "reality"; that a certain way to (found) knowledge is the right one because it gives us "objective" knowledge, of the world as it truly is. My point is that we (the institution in control of this matter, the <em><b>academia</b></em>) must urgently develop a significant part of our activity on a <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em>—because science as it is <em>does not</em> tell us how to solve "the huge problems now confronting us".</p>
<p>Before we go into the details of this story, let's take a moment to see how it works as a parable. The story is about how the Silicon Valley failed to understand and even hear its giant or genius in residence, even after having recognized him as such! This makes the story emblematic: The Silicon Valley is the world's hottest innovation hub. The paradigm shifts have, on the other hand, always been opportunities for creative new actors, for unconventional and daring thinkers and does, to emerge as new leaders. Could the large paradigm shift we've been talking about indeed be an opportunity for new actors to take the lead – <em>even in</em> technological innovation? </p>
+
<h3>And because the <em>foundation</em> we have is not a one on which the cultural evolution can continue.</h3> 
<p>Douglas Engelbart, the main protagonist of this story, is not only [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]'s iconic progenitor or "patron saint"; to quite a few of us he has also been a revered friend. Among us we call him "Doug". So we'll continue this tradition sporadically also on these pages.</p></div>
+
<p>When Nietzsche diagnosed, famously, that "<em>Got ist tot</em>!" (God is dead), he did not of course mean that God <em>physically</em> died; but that <em>religion</em> no longer had a <em><b>foundation</b></em> to stand on, that it was about to be eroded; which was needless to say true not only of religion—but of <em><b>culture</b></em> at large.</p>
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Doug.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Douglas Engelbart]]</center></small></div>
+
<p>In the late 1990s, when this line of work was still beginning to take shape, I drafted a book manuscript titled <em>What's Going on?</em> and subtitled "A Cultural Renewal". The book was conceived as an <em><b>information holon</b></em>; whose <em><b>point</b></em> (pointed to by its title and an <em><b>ideogram</b></em> on its cover—which was a house about to collapse, with a large crack extending from its foundation to its top) was what I'm telling you here—namely that "the huge problems now confronting us" are consequences of the <em><b>foundation</b></em> of it all being inadequate for holding the huge edifice it now supports; and that the way to solution is not fixing but rebuilding; and that this rebuilding <em>must</em> begin from the <em><b>foundation</b></em> up. And it had, of course, also this other <em><b>point</b></em>—that what's <em>really</em> going on (i.e. what we above all need to <em><b>know</b></em> to consider ourselves <em><b>informed</b></em>) is this overall <em><b>gestalt</b></em>; not the fine details of 'cracks in walls' that our media informing brings us daily.</p>
 +
<p>As I said—the 19th century change of <em><b>foundation</b></em> was not done for <em><b>pragmatic</b></em> reasons, but for <em><b>ontological</b></em> ones.</p>
 +
<h3>People began to <em><b>believe</b></em> that <em>science</em> (not the Bible) was the right way to truth.</h3> 
 +
<p>You'll fully comprehend the <em><b>anomaly</b></em> that I am proposing to unravel (and here <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> is a concrete proposal pointing out that this <em>can</em> be done, and showing how)—when you see that the <em><b>ontological</b></em> argument for the present <em><b>foundation</b></em> has been <em>proven</em> wrong and disowned—<em>by science itself</em>!</p>
 +
<p>When scientists became able to zoom in on small quanta of energy-matter—they found them behaving in ways that could <em>not</em> be explained in the "classical" way (as Descartes and his Enlightenment colleagues demanded); and that they even contradicted the <em>common sense</em> (as J. Robert Oppenheimer pointed out in <em>Uncommon Sense</em>)! Just as the case was at the time of Copernicus—a <em>different</em> way to see the world, and use the <em><b>mind</b></em>, was necessary to enable the <em>physical</em> science to continue evolving.</p>
 +
<p>A careful reading of Werner Heisenberg's <em>Physics and Philosophy</em> will show that this book is conceived as a rigorous <em>disproof</em> of <em><b>materialism</b></em>'s fundamental premises; and a call to action—to reconfigure and replace and revive <em><b>culture</b></em>, on a <em>new</em> <em><b>foundation</b></em>. His point was that—based on certain fundamental assumptions—science created a certain way to knowledge and experimental machinery; and when this machinery was applied to small quanta of matter-energy—the results contradicted the fundamental assumptions that served as departure point; so the whole thing has the logical structure of a proof by contradiction—which, in the present <em><b>paradigm</b></em> is a legitimate way of proving assumptions wrong.</p>
 +
<p>Seeing that what they had uncovered had profound implications for our "edifice of knowledge" and culture at large—the <em><b>giants</b></em> of physics wrote popular books and essays to clarify or <em><b>federate</b></em> it. In <em>Physics and Philosophy</em>, in 1958, Werner Heisenberg pointed out that the <em><b>foundation</b></em> that our general culture imbibed from 19th century science was "so narrow and rigid that it was difficult to find a place in it for many concepts of our language that had always belonged to its very substance, for instance, the concepts of mind, of the human soul or of life." Since "the concept of reality applied to the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided", whatever failed to be <em><b>founded</b></em> in this way was considered impossible or unreal. This in particular applied to those parts of our culture in which our ethical sensibilities were rooted, such as religion, which "seemed now more or less only imaginary. [...] The confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind."</p>
 +
<p>The experience of modern physics constituted a rigorous <em>disproof</em> of this approach to knowledge, Heisenberg explained; and concluded that "one may say that the most important change brought about by its results consists in the dissolution of this rigid frame of concepts of the nineteenth century." Heisenberg wrote <em>Physics and Philosophy</em> anticipating that <em>the</em> most valuable gift of modern physics to humanity would be a <em>cultural</em> transformation; which would result from the <em>dissolution</em> of the <em><b>narrow frame</b></em>.</p>
 +
<h3>So what is to be done?</h3>
 +
<p>You already know my answer—it's what the Modernity ideogram points to; namely to fist identify the function or <em>functions</em> that need to be served; and then create a <em><b>prototype</b></em> by <em><b>federating</b></em> whatever points of reference or evidence may be relevant to that function; just as one would do to create the lightbulb.</p>
 +
<p>What I call <em><b>epistemology</b></em> is the result of applying this procedure (where we first <em><b>federate</b></em> the way we use the <em><b>mind</b></em> or <em><b>logos</b></em>; and then use it to <em><b>federate</b></em> a new <em><b>foundation</b></em> for it all.</p>
 +
<p>As an insight, <em><b>design eistemology</b></em> shows that a <em><b>broad</b></em> and <em><b>solid</b></em> <em><b>foundation</b></em> for truth and meaning, and for <em><b>knowledge</b></em> and <em><b>culture</b></em>, can be developed by this approach.</p>
 +
<p>The <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> originated by <em><b>federating</b></em> the state-of-the-art <em><b>epistemological</b></em> findings of the <em><b>giants</b></em> of 20th century science and philosophy; which I'll here illustrate by quoting a single one—Einstein's "epistemological credo"; which he left us in <em>Autobiographical Notes</em>:</p> 
 +
<p>“I see on the one side the totality of sense experiences and, on the other, the totality of the concepts and propositions that are laid down in books. <nowiki>[…]</nowiki> The system of concepts is a creation of man, together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure of the conceptual system. <nowiki>[…]</nowiki> All concepts, even those closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen posits, just as is the concept of causality, which was the point of departure for [scientific] inquiry in the first place.”</p>
 +
<h3><em>Design epistemology</em> turns Einstein's "epistemological credo" into a <em>convention</em>.</h3>
 +
<p>And adds to it a purpose or function—the one we've been talking about all along.</p>
 +
<h3><em>Design epistemology</em> as <em>foundation</em> is <em>broad</em>.</h3>
 +
<p>Since it expresses the <em><b>phenomenological</b></em> position (that it is human experience and not "objective reality" that <em><b>information</b></em> needs to reflect and communicate), the <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> gives us a <em><b>foundation</b></em> not only overcomes the <em><b>narrow frame</b></em> handicap that Heisenberg was objecting to—but also allows us to treat <em>all</em> cultural heritage, including cultural artifacts and even the rituals, mores and beliefs of traditions on an equal footing; by <em><b>seeing</b></em> it all <em><b>as</b></em> just records of human experience, in a variety of media; and finding similarities and patterns, and reaching <em><b>insights</b></em> or <em><b>points</b></em>. Instead of simply ignoring what fails to fit our "scientific" worldview or the <em><b>narrow frame</b></em>—the <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> empowers us and even <em>obliges</em> us to carefully consider and <em><b>federate</b></em> <em>all forms of</em> human experience that could be relevant to a theme or task at hand.</p>
 +
<p>By <em><b>convention</b></em>, human experience has no a priori "right" interpretation or structure, which we can or need to "discover"; rather, experience is considered as something to which we <em>assign</em> meaning (as one would assign the meaning to an inkblot in Rorschach test). Multiple interpretations or insights or <em><b>gestalts</b></em> are possible.</p>
 +
<h3><em>Design epistemology</em> as <em>foundation</em> is also <em>solid</em>.</h3>  
 +
<p>Since it expresses (as a <em><b>convention</b></em>) the "constructivist credo"—that we are not "discovering objective reality" but <em>constructing</em> interpretations and explanations of human experience—the <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> turns the <em><b>epistemological</b></em> position that  the Modernity ideogram expresses into a <em><b>convention</b></em>; it empowers us to do as Modernity ideogram calls upon us to do—and <em>design</em> the ways in which we see the world, and pursue <em><b>knowledge</b></em>. The resulting <em><b>foundation</b></em> is <em><b>solid</b></em> or "academically rigorous"—because it represents the epistemological state of the art; <em>and</em> because it's a <em><b>convention</b></em>. The added purpose can hardly be debated—because (from a <em>pragmatic</em> point of view) <em><b>evolutionary guidance</b></em> has become all-important; and because (from a <em>theoretical</em> point of view) a <em><b>foundation</b></em> of this kind is incomplete unless it has a purpose (which we can use to distinguish useful "constructions" from all those useless ones). This added function <em>too</em> is only a <em><b>convention</b></em>; a <em>different</em> one, and an altogether different way to knowledge can be created by the same approach to suit a <em>different</em> function.</p>
 +
<p>Appeals to legitimate <em><b>transdisciplinarity</b></em> academically—if they were at all considered—have been routinely rejected on the account that they lacked "academic rigor". I'm afraid it will turn out that the contemporary academic conception of "rigor" is based on not much more than the <em>sensation</em> of certainty and clarity we experience when we've followed a certain prescribed procedure to the letter—as Stephen Toulmin suggested in his last book <em>Return to Reason</em>. It was <em><b>logos</b></em> Toulmin was urging us to return to; and that's been my proposal and call to action too.</p>
 
</div>
 
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>   </h2>
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
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[[File:Heisenberg.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Werner Heisenberg]]</center></small></div>
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Engelbart too stood on the shoulders of giants</h3>
 
<p>It is in the spirit of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to at least mention the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] on whose shoulders Engelbart was standing. We'll here mention only one, whom we also need to lift up as an icon. [[Vannevar Bush]] was a scientist and a scientific strategist par excellence,  who pointed to the urgent need for (what we are calling) [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] – already in 1945!</p>
 
<p>A pre-WW2 pioneer of computing machinery, and professor and dean at the MIT, During the war Bush served as the leader of the entire US scientific effort – supervising about 6000 leading scientists, and assuring that the Free World is a step ahead in developing all imaginable weaponry including The Bomb. And so in 1945, the war just barely being finished, Bush wrote an article titled "As We May Think", where the tone is "OK, we've won the great war. But one other problem still remains to which we scientists now need to give the highest priority – and that is to recreate what we do with knowledge after it's been published". He urged the scientists to focus on developing suitable technology and processes.</p>
 
<p>Engelbart heard him. He read Bush's article in 1947, as a young army recruit, in a Red Cross library in the Philippines, and it helped him 'see the light' a couple of years later. But Bush's article inspired in part also another development – and that's what we'll turn to next.</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bush.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Vannevar Bush]]</center></small></div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Engelbart's epiphany</h3>
+
<font size="+1">– I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.</font>
<p>Having decided, as a novice engineer in December of 1950, to direct his career so as to maximize its benefits to the mankind, [[Douglas Engelbart]] thought intensely for three months about the best way to do that. Then he had an epiphany.</p>  
+
<br>
<p>On a convention of computer professionals in 1968 Engelbart and his SRI-based lab demonstrated the computer technology we are using today – computers linked together into a network, people interacting with computers via video terminals and a mouse and windows – and through them with one another.</p>  
+
(Abraham Maslow,  <em>Psychology of Science</em>, 1966)
<p>In the 1990s it was finally understood (or in any case <em>some</em> people understood) that it was not Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who invented the technology, or even the XEROS PARC, from where they took it. Engelbart received all imaginable honors that an inventor can have. Yet he made it clear, and everyone around him knew, that he felt celebrated for a wrong reason. And that the gist of his vision had not yet been understood, or put to use. "Engelbart's unfinished revolution" was coined as the theme for the 1998 Stanford University celebration of his Demo. And it stuck. </p>
 
<p>The man whose ideas made "the revolution in the Valley" possible passed away in 2013 – feeling he had failed.</p></div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Polyscopic methodology</h2>
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
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<p>You'll comprehend the <em><b>anomaly</b></em> this <em><b>holotopia</b></em>'s <em><b>insight</b></em> points to, if you <em><b>see</b></em> method—the category the <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> pillar in the Holotopia ideogram stems from—<em><b>as</b></em> the toolkit with which we construct truth and meaning, and <em><b>knowledge</b></em>; and consider that—as Maslow pointed out—this method is now so specialized, that it compels <em>us</em> to be specialized; and choose themes and set priorities (not based on whether they are practically <em>relevant</em> or not, but) according to what this <em>tool</em> enables us to do.</p>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<p>As an <em>insight</em>, the <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> points out that a general-purpose <em><b>methodology</b></em>, which alleviates this problem, can be created by the proposed approach  (by applying <em><b>logos</b></em> or <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> to method); by <em><b>federating</b></em> the findings of <em><b>giants</b></em> of science and the very <em>techniques</em> that have been developed in the sciences—with an aim to preserve the advantages of science, and alleviate its limitations.</p>
<h3>Engelbart's vision</h3>
+
<p><em><b>Design epistemology</b></em> mandates such a step: When we on the one hand acknowledge that (as far as we <em><b>know</b></em>) <em> there is no</em> conclusive truth about reality; and on the other hand, that our very <em>existence</em> depends on <em><b>information</b></em> and <em><b>knowledge</b></em>—we are bound to be <em>accountable</em> for providing <em><b>knowledge</b></em> about the most relevant themes (notably the ones that determine our society's evolutionary <em><b>course</b></em>) <em>as well as we are able</em>; and to of course <em>continue to improve</em> both our <em><b>knowledge</b></em> and our <em>ways</em> to <em><b>knowledge</b></em>.</p>
<p>What is it that Engelbart saw? How important is it? Why was he not understood?</p>
+
<p>As long as "reality" and its "objective" descriptions constitute our reference system and provide it a <em><b>foundation</b></em>—we have no way of evaluating our <em><b>paradigm</b></em> critically. The <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> empowers us to develop the <em><b>realm of ideas</b></em> as an <em>independent</em> reference system; where ideas are founded (not on "correspondence with reality" but) on <em><b>truth by convention</b></em>; and then use clearly and academically defined ideas to develop clear and academically well-founded <em>theories</em>—in all walks of life; as it has been common in natural sciences. Suitable theoretical constructs, notably the <em><b>patterns</b></em> (defined as "abstract relationships", which have in this generalized <em><b>science</b></em> a similar role as mathematical functions do in traditional sciences) enable us to formulate general results and theories, <em>including</em> the <em><b>gestalts</b></em>; suitable <em><b>justification</b></em> methods (I prefer the word "justification" to the commonly used word "proof", for obvious reasons) can then be developed as <em>social processes</em>; as an up-to-date alternative to "peer reviews" (which have, needless to say, originated in a world where "scientific truth" was believed to be "objective" and ever-lasting). </p>
<p>We'll answer by zooming in on one of the many events where Engelbart was celebrated, and when his vision was in the spotlight – a videotaped panel that was organized for him at Google in 2007. This will give us an opportunity to explain his vision – if not in his own words, then at least with his own Powerpoint slides. Here is how his presentation was intended to begin.</p>
+
<p>The details of <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> or <em><b>polyscopy</b></em> are beyond this brief sketch; and I'll only give you this hint: Once it's been formulated and theorized in <em><b>the realm of ideas</b></em>, a <em><b>pattern</b></em> can be used to <em><b>justify</b></em> a result; since (by <em><b>convention</b></em>) the substance of it all is human experience, and since (by <em><b>convention</b></em>) experience does not have an a priori "real" structure that can or needs to be "discovered"—a result can be configured as the claim that the <em><b>dots</b></em> <em>can</em> be <em><b>connected</b></em> in a certain specific way (as shown by the <em><b>pattern</b></em>) and <em>make sense</em>; and its <em><b>justification</b></em> can be conceived in a manner that resembles the "repeatable experiment"—which is "repeatable" to the extent that different people can <em>see</em> the <em><b>pattern</b></em> in the data. This social social process can then further be refined to embody also other desirable characteristics, such as "falsifiability"; I'll come back to this in a moment, and also show an example.</p>  
<p></p>
 
<p>[[File:Doug-4.jpg]]<br><small><center>The title and the first three slides of Engelbart's call to action panel at Google in 2007.</center></small></p>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>Around that time it became clear that Engelbart's long career was coming to an end. By choosing title "A Call to Action!", Engelbart obviously intended make it clear that what he wanted to give to Google, and to the world through Google, was a direction and a call to pursue it.</p>
 
<p>The first slide pointed to a large and as yet unfulfilled opportunity that is immanent in digital technology. The digital technology can help make this a better world! But to realize this potential of technology, we need to change our way of thinking.</p>
 
<p>The second slide was meant to explain the nature of this different thinking, and why we needed it. The slide points to a direction. Doug talks about a 'vehicle' we are riding in. You'll notice that part of the message here is the same as in our [[Modernity ideogram]], which we discussed at length in Federation through Images. But there's also more; the vehicle has inadequate "steering and braking controls". We'll come back to that further below.</p>  
 
<p>The third slide was there to point to Doug's way to remedy this problem. It sets the stage for explaining the essence of Doug's vision; for understanding the purpose and the value of his many technical ideas and contributions, which is what the remainder of the slides were about; and ultimately for his call to action.</p>  
 
</div></div>
 
 
 
INTERMISSION [[The future of innovation]]
 
 
 
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The incredible history of Eric</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Innovation 2.0</h3>
 
<p>However incredible the story we've just told might appear (a very smart man trying to communicate a very important insight to a whole community of very smart folks, and (to use the expression for which Doug was notorious) "they just didn't get it!" – the story <em>does</em> have a simple explanation: A shared paradigm (consistency with a set of basic assumptions) is what <em>enables</em> us to communicate. The seemingly naive metaphor in Doug's second slide, the image of a vehicle in which we ride toward our future, points to a whole new paradigm in the way in which we use our creative capabilities. Consider the way the things are presently done: A scientists learns how to do physics, or biology, and does that. A journalist, similarly, learns the trade of media reporting from the past-generation journalists. There is no awareness of a larger, systemic purpose involved, no possibility of adapting what we do to that purpose. With every new generation, we are just passing on those 'candles'.</p>
 
<p>Technological innovation is presently driven by "market needs":  What are the scientists doing? What do the journalists need? We can use new technology to have them do those things incomparably easier and faster! </p>
 
<p>In his second slide, Doug was pointing to a radical alternative. Information, knowledge work, and information technology, have  <em>systemic</em> roles and purposes. Information must be perceived as a system within a system. We must configure our way of handling it as it may best suit its vitally important roles in the larger systems – so that the larger systems may fulfill <em>their</em> vitally important roles. </p>
 
<p>There's a message on an even higher level in Doug's second slide – that one whole category of human activities, of decisive importance to our future, cannot be driven by age-old habits, or "the market"; that it must become "systemic" or informed. And when it does, that it will serve us incomparably better and more safely than it does, guide us toward an incomparably better future. But this – as Naomi Klein observed – changes everything! It changes <em>the</em> most important meme or gene in our 'cultural DNA'! We are not in the habit of using information to make this sort of basic, directional choices. To get there will require one whole evolutionary quantum leap. But isn't that what we've been talking about all along?</p>
 
<p>Hence the difficulty in communicating it. We don't come to a lecture to hear that sort of thing! We are all far too busy to ever come back to such basics. We come to a talk to get a technical idea – and perhaps implement it in the new system we are building. Not to learn that the very <em>direction</em> of technological innovation has to change! We have no time, and no place to such messages. And hence we just ignore them.</p>
 
<p>But here our goal is to change that practice. We've now heard Doug's basic message. But can we rely on it? In what follows we'll begin to connect the dots. We'll connect his vision with the insights of other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. We'll begin to see the emerging order of things in which the mentioned details will make perfect sense. We'll begin to draft the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]].</p>
 
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<h3>Connecting the dots</h3>
 
<p>[[Erich Jantsch]], the main protagonist of the story we are about to share, will here serve as an icon for those very insights that Doug's audiences were lacking, to be able to understand what he was talking about. It's what we've been calling [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. We shall see his insights were so similar to Doug's, and his story so parallel to his, that we couldn't help calling it "the incredible history of Eric". Jantsch was, however, focusing on questions that were complementary to Doug's: What properties do our large and basic systems (such as our civilization at large, or Doug's 'vehicle') need to be safe or governable or sustainable or simply "good"? In what way should we intervene into those systems so that they may acquire those properties? Who – and in what way, that is, by what methods – should do such interventions? </p>
 
<p>Having received his doctorate in astrophysics at the tender age of 22, from the University of Vienna, [[Erich Jantsch]] realized that it is here on Earth that his attention is needed. And so he ended up researching, for the OECD in Paris, the theme that animates our initiative (how our ability to create and induce change can be directed far more purposefully and effectively). Jantsch's specific focuse was on the ways in which technology was being developed and introduced in different countries, the OECD members. Jantsch and the OECD called this issue  "technological planning". Is it only the market? Or is there some way we can more effectively <em>direct</em> the development and use of the rapidly growing muscles of our technology? </p>
 
<p>So when The Club of Rome (a global think tank where a hundred selected international and interdisciplinary members do research into the future prospects of mankind) was about to be initiated, in 1968, it was natural to invite Jantsch to give the opening keynote. </p>
 
<p>Immediately after the opening of The Club of Rome Jantsch made himself busy crafting solutions. By following him through three steps of this process, we shall be able to identify three core insights, three key pieces in our 'elephant puzzle', for which Jantsch must be credited.</p>
 
<p>But before we do that, we'll give due credit to a couple of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] whose insights helped Jantsch see further.</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Jantsch.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Erich Jantsch]]</center></small></div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
 +
[[File:Maslow.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Abraham Maslow]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>What our systems must be like</h3>
+
<font size="+1">– The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future.</font>
<p>A scientific reader may have noticed that Engelbart's innocent metaphor in Slide 2 has a technical or scientific interpretation. In cybernetics, which is a scientific study of (the relationship between information and) control, "feedback"  and "control" are household terms. Just as the bus must have functioning headlights and steering and braking controls, so must <em>any</em> system have suitable feedback (inflow of suitable information), and suitable control (a way to apply the incoming information to correct its course or functioning or behavior) – if it is to be steerable or viable or "sustainable".</p>
+
<br>
<p>Norbert Wiener is a suitable iconic [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] to represent (the vision that inspired) cybernetics for us. Wiener studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and finally got his doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard – when he was only 17! Then he went on to do seminal work in a number of fields – one of which was cybernetics.</p>
+
(Aurelio Peccei,  <em>One Hundred Pages for the Future</em>, 1981)
<p>In the final chapter of his 1948 book Cybernetics, titled "Information, Language and Society", Wiener puts forth two insights that are of central interest to our story.</p>
 
<p>The first is that our communication (or feedback loop) is broken. Wiener does that by citing Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", which – as we have seen – also inspired Engelbart. And also in another way, as we'll see next.</p>
 
<p>Wiener's second insight is that the market won't give us control. Wiener [[knowledge federation|<em>federates</em>]] this insight by citing another [[giants|<em>giant</em>]], John von Neumann (whose many seminal contributions include the design of the basic architecture of the digital computer, which is still in use), and his results (with Oskar Morgenstern) in the theory of games. And by discussing common experience. Wiener's argument has the form "see what my estimable colleagues have found out; doesn't this explain the dynamics we have been witnessing daily? Here we have further evidence that indeed our communication is broken!"</p>
 
<p>But let's listen to Wiener's tone. Isn't he suggesting that some deep and power-related prejudices are at play (recall Galilei...):
 
<blockquote>
 
There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market, the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end of a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor, and has thus earned the great reward with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory.
 
</blockquote >
 
You may understood Wiener's technical keyword "homeostatic process" as what a system must maintain to be (as we now call it) "sustainable". It's been defined as "feedback mechanism inducing measures to keep a system continuing".</p>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Wiener.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Norbert Wiener]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Convenience paradox</h2>
 +
<p>How do you raise a child in a culture whose values are in significant dimensions opposite from yours?</p>
 +
<p>Noah and I have been having a series of <em><b>dialogs</b></em> whose shared theme or red thread is <em><b>epistemology</b></em> (when he was a baby, I joked that "epistemology" would be the first word he'd learn). It's late December in Oslo now, Christmas is in the air; so the other day I played to Noah versions of the "Oh Happy Day" gospel by several gospel choirs on YouTube; where "Oh happy day, when Jesus washed (...) my sins away" is emphatically and enthusiastically repeated. I asked Noah to imagine what a <em><b>materialist</b></em> might think about this message: "Jesus died centuries ago; these poor souls don't understand that he most certainly cannot <em>do</em> anything for them..." And yet when you look at the faces of the gospel singers, and listen to the <em>way</em> they sing—you cannot but conclude that the joyful <em>experience</em> they are singing about <em>does</em> exist; that there's an exquisite sort of "high" that people can reach through certain practice; and that music or chanting in quire can help both in reaching and in communicating this experience. And if you are in doubt—you may move on next door, to the Sufis; or to the Suan Mokkh forest monastery in Southern Thailand; where the language, the symbolism and the ritual may be in some ways different and in other ways similar—and yet have the same joyful-exuberant experience as result—with interesting variations.</p>
 +
<h3>A vast creative frontier opens up—for academic and personal.</h3>
 +
<p>As soon as we step beyond the <em><b>belief</b></em> system of <em><b>materialism</b></em>—and use <em><b>logos</b></em> to (create <em><b>epistemology</b></em> and <em><b>methodology</b></em> and ) explore in a systematic way such basic themes as "happiness" and "values"; and importantly—<em>how they are related</em> to each other. Which is—now you'll now easily comprehend that—what "Religion beyond Belief", the <em>Liberation</em> book's subtitle is hinting at.</p>
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<p>What I've just described was quite accurately my own way into and through this creative frontier; <em><b>convenience paradox</b></em> was the very first <em><b>prototype</b></em> result of this line of work. I presented in 1995, at Einstein Meets Magritte (in addition to a parallel <em><b>methodology</b></em> "prospectus" paper); and I've been working on it off and on ever since. </p>  
 +
<h3><em>Convenience paradox</em> is one of <em>holotopia</em>'s <em>five insights</em>.</h3>
 +
<p>You'll appreciate the <em>relevance</em> of the <em><b>convenience paradox insight</b></em> if you consider it in the context of our contemporary condition: The evolutionary <em><b>course</b></em> of <em><b>materialism</b></em>—marked by growth of material production and consumption—must be <em>urgently</em> changed (certainly in the "developed" parts of the world, and arguably in other parts too); but to what? It seems that everyone who has looked into this question concluded that the pursuit of humanistic or <em>cultural</em> goals and values will have to be the answer; you can hear this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Z6h-U4CmI straight from the horse's mouth].</p>
 +
<p>You'll begin to see the <em>anomaly</em> this <em><b>point</b></em> points to if you consider the obvious—<em>desensitization</em>; the more our senses are stimulated—the less <em>sensitive</em> they'll become; but where shall we draw the line? Could <em>fasting</em> (and making our senses more sensitive) could be a better way to gastronomic pleasure than eating until our stomach hurt? Already at the turn of the <em>nineteenth</em> century Nietzsche saw his contemporary "modern" human as so overwhelmed by "the abundance of disparate impressions", that he "instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to ‘digest’ anything"; so that "a kind of adaptation to this flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside." What would Nietzsche say if he saw us <em>today</em>?</p>
 +
<p><em><b>Convenience</b></em> in the role of 'headlights' (or way to determine the <em><b>know-what</b></em>) leaves in the dark one whole <em>dimension</em> of physical reality—time; and also an important side or one could even say <em>the</em> important 'half' of the three dimensions of space—its <em>inner</em> or embodied part; I emphasize its importance because while "happiness" (or whatever else we may choose to pursue on similar grounds) <em>appears</em> to be "caused" by events in the outer world—it is <em>inside</em> us that our emotions <em>materialize</em>; and it is <em>there</em> that the difference that makes a difference can and needs to be made.</p>
 +
<p>Did you notice, by the way—when you watched the video I've just shared (and if you haven't watched it, do it now; because it's the state of the world diagnosed by the world's foremost expert—who studied and <em><b>federated</b></em> this theme for more than four decades—condensed in a six-minute trailer)—how Dennis Meadows, while pointing in this new evolutionary direction, struggled to find the words that would do it justice; and came up with little more than "knowledge" and "music"?</p>
 +
<h3>This is where the <em>Liberation</em> book <em>really</em> takes off!</h3>
 +
<p>Its entire first half (its first five chapters) is dedicated to mapping not only specific opportunities, but five whole <em>realms</em> where we may dramatically improve our condition through inner development; whereby a roadmap to inner <em><b>wholeness</b></em> is drafted, as the book calls it. The <em>Liberation</em> book opens with an amusing little ruse—where a note about freedom and democracy is followed by the observation that we are free to "pursue happiness as we please"; and I imagined the reader would say "Sure—what could possibly be wrong about <em>that</em>?" But what do we really <em><b>know</b></em> about "happiness"? And whether "happiness" is at all what we <em>out</em> to be pursuing? Perhaps "love" could be a better choice? So let me for a moment zoom in on "love" as theme; which hardly needs an explanation—considering how much, both in our personal lives and in our culture, revolves around it: "My baby's gone, and I got the blues, It sure is awful to be lonsesome like me, Worried, weary up in a tree." The <em>Liberation</em> book invites us to look at this theme from a freshly <em>different</em> viewpoint: <em>What sort of "love"</em>—or what <em>quality</em> of love—are any of us really <em>capable of experiencing</em>? Can you imagine a world where we are culturally empowered to <em>cultivate</em> love; including our ability to <em>experience</em> love and importantly—to <em>give</em> love? In the third chapter of the <em>Liberation</em> book, which has "Liberation of Emotions" as title, <em><b>phenomenological</b></em> evidence for illuminating this realm of questions is drawn from the tradition of Sufism; in order to demonstrate that <em>love</em> has a spectrum of possibilities that reaches far beyond the outreach of our common experience and even awareness; and that certain kinds of practice, which combine poetry and music with meditation and ethical behavior, <em>can</em> make us, in the long run <em>capable of experiencing</em> the kinds of love whose very <em>existence</em> we as culture ignore; which can make <em>our experience of poetry and music too</em> incomparably more nuanced and rewarding.</p>
 +
<p><em><b>Convenience paradox</b></em> is the <em><b>point</b></em> of a very large <em><b>information holon</b></em>; which asserts (and invites us to turn it into shared and acted-upon fact, by giving it a similar visibility and credibility as what the "Newton's Laws" now enjoy) that <em><b>convenience</b></em> is a useless and deceptive "value", behind which a myriad opportunities to improve our lives and condition—through <em>cultural</em> pursuits—await to be uncovered. The <em><b>rectangle</b></em> of this <em><b>information holon</b></em> is populated by a broad range of—curated—ways to improve our condition through cultural pursuits or by <em><b>human development</b></em> (which Peccei qualified as <em>the</em> most important goal).</p>
 +
<p>Originally, the <em><b>convenience paradox</b></em> result was conceived as a proof-of-concept application of <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em>; I showed preliminary versions of both in 1995, at the Einstein Meets Magritte conference that the transdisciplinary center Leo Apostel and Brussels Free University organized (this conference marked the turning point in my career); the corresponding articles were published in 1999 in the "Yellow Book" of the proceedings titled <em>World Views and the Problem of Synthesis</em>. My point was to show how the <em><b>methodological</b></em> approach to <em><b>knowledge</b></em> I've been telling you about here (which empowers us to consider all forms and all <em>records</em> of human experience as data; and to synthesize and <em><b>justify</b></em> general and overarching <em><b>insights</b></em> as <em><b>patterns</b></em>; and to communicate them and make them palpable through <em><b>ideograms</b></em>) can allow us to collect and combine culturally relevant experiences and insights <em>across</em> worldviews and cultural traditions; and to give them visibility and citizenship rights; and empower them to <em>impact</em> our culture. I've  been working this so fascinating creative frontier ever since.</p>
 +
<p>The <em>Liberation</em> book too is a fruit of this line of work. The entire book can be <em><b>seen as</b></em> a <em><b>prototype</b></em> of a <em><b>system</b></em>—for empowering or <em><b>federating</b></em> culture-transformative experiences and insights or <em><b>memes</b></em>. The book is conceived as a <em><b>federation</b></em> of a single such <em><b>meme</b></em>—the legacy and vision of Buddhadasa, Thailand's 20th century holy man and Buddhism reformer; who—anticipating that something essential may have been misunderstood—withdrew to an abandoned forest monastery near his native village Chaya, to practice and experiment as Buddha did in his day. Having seen what he found out as potential antidote to (the global onslaught of) <em><b>materialism</b></em>, and also as the (still widely ignored) shared essence of the great religions of the world—Buddhadasa undertook to do whatever he could to make his insight available to both Thai people and foreigners.</p>
 +
<p>It should go without saying that the <em><b>Buddhadasa meme</b></em> (as I call it in the book) makes no sense in the context of <em><b>materialism</b></em>—which it undertakes to transform. The <em>Liberation</em> book alleviates this problem by drafting a <em>different</em> context—so that Buddhadasa's transformative insights can be <em><b>seen as</b></em> an essential elements in a new and emerging order of things (envisioned as <em><b>holotopia</b></em>); or metaphorically—as a vital organ of the <em><b>elephant</b></em>.</p>  
 
</div>
 
</div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
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[[File:Peccei.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]</center></small>
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>   </h2>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Planning as feedback, systemic innovation as control</h3>
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<font size="+1">– Many years ago, I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems.</font>
<p>With a doctorate in physics, it was not difficult to Jantsch to put two and two together and see what needed to be done. If our civilization is on a disastrous course, and if it lacks suitable "headlights and braking and steering controls) or (to use a cybernetician's more scientific tone) "feedback and control" – then there's a single capability that we as society are lacking, which can correct this problem – the capability to look into the future, and steer the way by correcting our systems.</p>
+
<br>
<p>So right after The Club of Rome's first meeting, Jantsch gathered a group of creative leaders and researchers, mostly from the systems community, in Bellagio, Italy, to put together necessary insights and methods. The result was so basic that Jantsch called it "rational creative action". The message is obvious and central to our interest: Certainly there are many ways in which we can be creative. But if our creative action is to be <em>rational</em> – then these essential ingredients must be present. </p>
+
(Doug Engelbart, "Dreaming of the Future*, <em>BYTE Magazine</em>, 1995)
<p>Rational creative action begins with forecasting, which explores different future scenario; it ends with an action selected to enhance the likelihood of the <em>desired</em> scenario or scenarios. So what they called "planning" (notice that this had nothing to do with the kind of planning that was at the time used in the Soviet Union) was envisioned as the new and enhanced feedback that our society lacked in order to have control over its future:
+
</div>
<blockquote>[T]he pursuance of orthodox planning is quite insufficient, in that it seldom does more than touch a system through changes of the variables. Planning must be concerned with the structural design of the system itself and involved in the formation of policy.
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Knowledge federation</h2>
</blockquote>
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<p>David Graeber and David Wengrow wrote in <em>The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity</em>: "There is no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. A very small percentage of its population do control the fate of almost everyone else, and they are doing it in an increasingly disastrous fashion." Why am I quoting (from a book that offers us a wealth of insights, emerging from scientific studies in ethnography, about latent opportunities for configuring human relations and society that are <em>beyond</em> <em><b>materialism</b></em>) something that "everyone knows"? Because I'm about to tell you why I passionately <em>disagree</em> with it! And in the same breath introduce to you <em><b>communication</b></em> as the <em><b>category</b></em> from which <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> stems as <em><b>point</b></em> or <em><b>insight</b></em>; and also Norbert Wiener as yet another ignored <em><b>giant</b></em>. And a <em><b>giant</b></em> he manifestly was—having earned academic degrees in mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and then a doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard <em>while he was still a teenager</em>! Wiener then went on to do seminal work in a variety of fields, one of which was cybernetics (but not alone; Margaret Mead was a member of the small transdisciplinary circle from which cybernetics emerged). Wiener's ignored <em><b>point</b></em> was already in the <em>title</em> of his seminal <em>Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine</em>: Control and communication are <em>inextricably</em> connected; control <em>depends</em> on right or <em><b>correct</b></em> communication. You'll see this if you just think of the bus with candle headlights: We who are in the bus do see someone sitting behind the steering wheel, and think he's in control; and there <em>is</em>, of course a fierce battle inside the buss for those "driver" positions (which are, indeed, available to only a few people, as Graeber & Wengrow observed). But in the larger picture—<em>are they</em> really in control? Will <em>anyone</em> benefit from steering the society in a "disastrous fashion"?</p>  
Policies, which are the objective of planning (as the authors of the Bellagio Declaration envisioned it) specify both the institutional changes and the norms and value changes that might be necessary to make our goal-oriented action in a true sense rational and creative (Jantsch, 1970):
+
<p>The word "cybernetics" is derived from Greek "<em>kubernan</em> (to steer); it is related to the English noun "government" and the verb "to govern". As an academic field, cybernetics is dedicated to the study of governability—or more precisely, what structure do <em><b>systems</b></em> need to have to be <em>viably</em> governable or "sustainable" (Wiener framed this question by using "homeostasis" as technical keyword—to point to an organism's or <em><b>system</b></em>'s activities to maintain a stable or viable <em><b>course</b></em>). Wiener's all-important and <em>still</em> flagrantly ignored point was that "free competition" won't do (he called the <em><b>belief</b></em> that we can rely on it a "simpleminded theory" which contradicts the evidence). The <em><b>point</b></em> of it all is that to make our <em><b>systems</b></em> viable or "sustainable"—we must learn about the relationship between communication and control by studying living systems ("the animal") and technical systems ("the machine")—and apply the resulting insights there where they'll make the largest difference—in the design and control of <em>society</em> and its <em><b>systems</b></em>.</p>
<blockquote>Policies are the first expressions and guiding images of normative thinking and action. In other words, they are the spiritual agents of change—change not only in the ways and means by which bureaucracies and technocracies operate, but change in the very institutions and norms which form their homes and castles.</blockquote>
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<h3>Isn't this what we've been talking about all along?</h3>
</p>
+
<p> In social systems—composed of relatively autonomous individuals—communication <em>is</em> the system, Wiener pointed out in <em>Cybernetics</em>; and he talked about ants and bees to demonstrate that. You'll comprehend the <em><b>anomaly</b></em> that <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as <em><b>holotopia</b></em>'s <em><b>point</b></em> points to if you consider that the "digital technology"—the interactive, network-interconnected digital media you and I use to read email and browse the Web—has been <em>envisioned</em> (by Doug Engelbart—already in 1951!) and developed (by his SRI-based team, and publicly demonstrated in 1968) to serve as "a collective nervous system" of a <em>radically</em> novel kind; and <em>enable</em> a quantum leap in the evolution of our "collective social organisms"—which  would <em>dramatically</em> augment their—and <em>our</em>—"capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems". You'll easily see what all this means if you imagine us all traveling in that so horrid bus—rushing off-chart at an accelerating speed and dodging trees: We must be able to act <em>fast</em>; and if also we want to give the whole thing a viable <em>direction</em>—we must be able to synthesize a whole new <em>view</em> of the world (which shows us forests, not trees); and <em>use it</em> for steering. The key to grasping the gist of Engelbart's vision—which I'll refer to as <em><b>collective mind</b></em>—is his acronym CoDIAK; which stands for "concurrent development, integration and application of knowledge. Take a moment to reflect on his word "concurrent": <em>Every other</em> technology I can think of—including handwritten letters carried by caravans and books printed by Gutenberg—require that a physical object with the message be <em>physically carried</em> from its author to its recipient; only this Engelbart's technology provided the genuine functionality of the nervous system—which enables us, and indeed <em>compels</em> us to "develop, integrate and apply" knowledge <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a single human mind  do; but of course—to take advantage of this technology, to <em>realize</em> this possibility, our communication needs to be structured and organized in entirely new ways; which is, of course, what <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> is all about. Imagine if <em>your</em> cells were using your nervous system to merely <em>broadcast</em> data—and you'll easily see what I'm talking about.</p>
<h3>The emerging role of the university</h3>
+
<p>You'll see the related <em><b>anomaly</b></em> if you notice that this technology is <em>still</em> largely used to send back and forth messages and publish or <em>broadcast</em> documents—i.e. to implement and speed up the sort of processes that the old technologies of communication made possible (here Noah, my thirteen-year-old,  would instantly object; so I must qualify that it's <em>academic</em> or "serious" communication I am talking about). Or to use <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>'s lead metaphor:</p>
<p>The next question in Jantsch's stream of thought and action was roughly this: If [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] is a necessary new capability that our systems and our civilization at large now require, then who – that is, what institution – may be the most natural and best qualified to foster this capability? Jantsch concluded that the university (institution) will have to be the answer. And that to be able to fulfill this role, the university itself will need to update its own system.
+
<h3>'Electrical technology' is <em>still</em> used to produce 'fancy candles'.</h3>
<blockquote>[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society’s capacity for continuous self-renewal. It may have to become a political institution, interacting with government and industry in the planning and designing of society’s systems, and controlling the outcomes of the introduction of technology into those systems. This new leadership role of the university should provide an integrated approach to world systems, particularly the ‘joint systems’ of society and technology.” </blockquote>
+
<p>Substantial parts of the <em><b>knowledge federation prototype</b></em> have been developed by a community of knowledge media researchers and developers committed to continuing and completing the work on Engelbart's vision—by creating completely <em>different</em> <em><b>systems</b></em> that this technology enables; and taking part in the quantum leap in the evolution of humanity's core <em><b>systems</b></em>—which this technology enables, and our situation necessitates. I'll here illustrate this line of work by a single example—our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 prototype; where we showed how <em>academic</em> communication can be updated, to benefit the society far more than it presently does.</p>
In 1969  Jantsch spent a semester at the MIT, writing a 150-page report about the future of the university, from which the above excerpt was taken, and lobbying with the faculty and the administration to begin to develop this new way of thinking and working in academic practice.</p>
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<p>To begin, I'll invite you to <em><b>see</b></em> the academic system <em><b>as</b></em> a gigantic socio-technical 'machine' that takes as input gifted young people and society's resources; and produces creative people and ideas as output; and explore  the question that follows—<em>How suitable</em> is this <em><b>system</b></em> for its all-important role? In a moment I'll show you the <em><b>prototype</b></em> where the result of an academic researcher  has been <em><b>federated</b></em>; but before I do that let us zoom in even further, and examine how a researcher's result is handled in our present system—which first subjects it to "peer reviews" (which made sense in those good old days when it was academically <em>legitimate</em> to <em><b>believe</b></em> that conforming to a <em><b>traditional</b></em> disciplinary procedure and that alone would qualify a result as worthy of being included in "the edifice of knowledge"; that once it passed that test—if would remain part  of this edifice forever; which today has as unhappy consequence that it keeps academic creativity all too narrowly confined—to so-called "safe" which means not-so-novel areas) and then—if it receives a passing grade—commits it to academic bookshelves; where <em>nobody</em> will ever find it—except those few specialists to whom it's addressed; who are anyhow the only ones who can <em>comprehend</em> what the result is all about. </p>
<h3>Evolution is the key</h3>
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<p>[[File:TNC2015.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Knowledge Federation's Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 workshop in Sava Center, Belgrade.</center></small></p>
<p>In the 1970s Jantsch lived in Berkeley, wrote prolifically, and taught occasional seminars at the U.C. Berkeley. This period of his life and work was marked by a new insight, which was triggered by his experiences with working on global / systemic change, and some profound scientific insights brought to him, initially, by Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel laureate scientist who visited Berkeley in 1972. Put very briefly, this involves two closely related insights:
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<p>In our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 <em><b>prototype</b></em> we <em><b>federated</b></em> the result of a researcher—University of Belgrade's Dejan Raković—in three phases; where:
<ul>
+
<ul>  
<li> we cannot – that is, nobody can – recreate the large systems including the largest, our civilization, in any way directly; where we <em>can</em> make a difference – and hence where we must focus on – is their evolution;</li>
+
<li>The first phase was to make the result <em>comprehensible</em> to lay audiences; which we (concretely <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>'s communication design team) did by turning this technical research article into a multimedia object; where its main <em><b>points</b></em> were extracted and <em><b>connected</b></em> and made comprehensible by explanatory diagrams or <em><b>ideograms</b></em>; and further clarified by (placing on them links to) recorded interviews with the author</li>  
<li>the living and evolving systems are governed by an entirely different dynamic than physical systems – which needs to be understood</il>
+
<li>In the second phase we made the result <em>known</em> and at the same time discussed in space, by leading international experts on Tesla—by staging a televised and streamed high-profile <em><b>dialog</b></em> at Sava Center Belgrade</li>
 +
<li>The third phase constituted a technology-enabled global social process (we used DebateGraph) by which the result was processed further, .</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</ul></p>
<p>Jantsch was especially interested in understanding the relationship between our that is, people's values and ways of being, and our evolution. He saw us as entering the "evolutionary paradigm". Bela Banathy cited him extensively in "Guided Evolution of Society". The title of Jantsch's 1975 book "Design for Evolution" points unequivocally in the same direction as our four core keywords. The keyword [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] we adopted from him directly.</p>
+
<p>This third stage is in particular illustrative of the vast difference the new media technology can make—once we use it to re-create our "social life of information"; here the <em><b>points</b></em> that were extracted and explained in the first phase were made available online as DebateGraph nodes; so that other experts or DebateGraph users—anywhere in the world—can add to them <em>new</em> nodes, corresponding to the sort of action they deem appropriate: They may add supporting evidence; or challenge the result by counterevidence and so on. Here (not the reviewers' verdict on an academic article, but) this <em><b>connecting the dots</b></em>—this new creative process of this new <em><b>collective mind</b></em>—is allowed to continue forever. Two MS theses were developed to complement and complete this <em><b>prototype</b></em>: One of them made  it possible to create 'dialects' on DebateGraph (which determine what actions or moves can be applied to a certain kind of node, such as an idea, or an negative or positive evaluation of an idea); and  effect <em>program</em> "the social life" of academic information. The other MS thesis <em><b>prototyped</b></em> two objects called <em><b>domain map</b></em> and <em><b>value matrix</b></em>; which enabled both authors <em>and</em> their contributions to be evaluated by multiple criteria.</p>
<h3>The incredible part</h3>
+
<p>Also the <em>theme</em> of Raković's result—the nature of the creative process that distinguishes "creative genius"—must be taken into consideration to fully comprehend this <em><b>prototype</b></em>: Raković first demonstrated <em><b>phenomenologically</b></em> (by referring to Nikola Tesla's own descriptions of his creative process) that there are two distinct <em>kinds of</em> creativity; and that the "outside the box" creativity necessitates an entirely <em>different</em> creative process, and <em><b>ecology of mind</b></em>, distinct from its common alternative; and he then theorized this creative process within the paradigm of quantum physics. <em>Imagine</em> if it turns out that the way we (teach the young people how to) think and use the mind, at schools and universities—which happens to be the kind of creative work that the machines are now doing quite well—<em>inhibits</em> this entirely <em>different</em> process that we <em>ought</em> to be using, and teaching! I open the "Liberation of Mind" chapter of the <em>Liberation</em> book by quoting Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, to hint that the evidence for it is <em>everywhere</em>, that it's staring us in the eye! And so the question—the <em>key</em> question—is by what social process are we handling this and other similar <em><b>pivotal</b></em> questions?</p>  
<p>Norbert Wiener was of course not alone in observing that a meta-discipline was needed, that would (1) provide a common language and body of knowledge for communication among and beyond the sciences and (2) provide us an understanding of systems, so that we may secure that they the core socio-technical systems we are creating are suitably structured, and thereby also "sustainable". Von Bertalanffy reached similar conclusions from the venture point of mathematical biology; and so did a number of others, in their own way. In 1954 Bertalanffy was joined by  biologist Ralph Gerard, economist Kenneth Boulding and mathematician Anatol Rapoport at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences – and they created an organization that later included (as a federation) most of the others including cybernetics, and became the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Realizing the importance of this new frontier, many brave young women and men joined the systems movement, and the body of research grew immensely.</p>
+
<p>With this in mind, compare the <em><b>federation</b></em> process I've just outlined—which  (1) models the <em><b>phenomenology</b></em> of Tesla's creative process; (2) submits this <em><b>phenomenology</b></em> outline to expert researchers and biographers of Tesla and (3) proposes an <em>explanatory model</em> of this process as a <em><b>prototype</b></em>—available online, with provisions to be indefinitely improved—to a peer review; which will say "yes" or "no" depending on whether the <em>model</em> is stated and "proven" by a certain hereditary <em>procedure</em>.</p>
<p>The research in the part of games theory that Wiener found especially interesting also subsequently exploded. During the 1950s more than a thousand research articles were published on the so-called "prisoner's dilemma". The message from this research that will be for our story can be found in the opening of the corresponding Wikipedia page: It is that perfectly rational competition, where everyone maximizes the personal gain, can lead to a condition where <em>everyone</em> is worth off than what would be reached through cooperation. </p>
+
<h3>Isn't all this just a way to keep the humanity's creative powers in the proverbial 'box'?</h3> 
<p>Erich Jantsch spent the last decade of his life living in Berkeley, teaching sporadic seminars at U.C. Berkeley and writing prolifically. Ironically, the man who with such passion and insight wrote about how the university would need to change to help us master our future, and lobbied for such change – never found a home and sustenance for his work at the university. </p>
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<p>"So you are creating a <em>collective</em> Tesla", Serbian TV anchor commented while conversing with our representative in the studio; and rendered the gist of our initiative better than I have been able to.</p>  
<p>In 1980 Jantsch published two books with a wealth of insights on "evolutionary paradigm" – whose purpose was to inform the evolutionary path of our society; he  passed away after a short illness, only 51 years old. An obituarist commented that his unstable income and inadequate nutrition might have been a factor. In his will Jantsch asked that his ashes be tossed into the ocean, "the cradle of evolution".</p>
 
<p>In that same year Ronald Reagan became the 40th U.S. president on the agenda that the market, or the free competition, is the <em>only</em> thing we can rely on. That same "simple-minded theory", as Norbert Wiener called it, marks our political life still today. It is also what directs our technological innovation and creative work in general, and hence also our travel into the future.</p>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
 +
[[File:Engelbart.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Doug Engelbart]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Wiener's paradox</h3>
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<font size="+1">– The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the ‘joint systems’ of society and technology.</font>
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem," David Bohm wrote, "it can never be dissolved." We must recognize that what we are witnessing is a paradox and not a problem. Indeed, this paradox might well be identified as "the mother of all problems" – or at least the characteristic problems that mark our era.</p>
+
<br>
<p>In her 2014 keynote to the American Society for Cybernetics, Mary Catherine Bateson – the daughter of two prominent forefathers of cybernetics and of the systems movement, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson – observed that cybernetics should not really organize itself as a scientific discipline; that its main reason for existence is "cognitive therapy" to help us the people overcome a cognitive illusion we acquire in early childhood, namely that the direct cause-effect relationships we perceive are the only thing that matters.</p>
+
(Erich Jantsch,  <em>Integrative Planning for the "Joint Systems" of Society and Technology—the Emerging Role of the University</em>, MIT Report,1969)
<p>At the 2015, at the 59th yearly meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, with Mary Cathrine Bateson also present, we presented a talk titled "Wiener's paradox – we can dissolve it together". Our point was that <em>the very first thing</em> that the world needed to hear from the systems movement, the one that Wiener reported already in 1948 (that we cannot and should not trust "the market" to direct our ride into the future; that systemic insights and action must necessarily be used if we want this ride to be "sustainable"), the one that is necessary for the whole opus of the systems sciences to become socially relevant and impactful – has not yet been communicated. And that to dissolve the paradox, the traditional-academic organization and activities (that evolved within traditional academic disciplines for an entirely different purpose) will not be sufficient – and that some systemic self-organization, or what Engelbart called "bootstrapping" (see below) will be necessary.</p>
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</div>
<p>But we also use this keyword, [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]], in a broader sense – to signify that <em>the entire academic enterprise</em> might now find itself in a similarly paradoxical situation.</p> </div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Systemic innovation</h2>
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bateson2.jpeg]]<br><small><center>[[Mary Catherine Bateson]]</center></small></div>
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<p>You'll see the relevance of <em><b>innovation</b></em>—the category from which this <em><b>insight</b></em> stems—if you consider that it's <em>both</em> (whereby we use and direct our technology-augmented power to create and induce change, and hence) what drives the metaphorical bus forward <em>and</em> what needs to be redirected so that its headlights can be replaced.</p>
 +
<p>You'll see the "different" way of looking at <em><b>innovation</b></em>, by which it can be comprehended in a new way and <em><b>corrected</b></em>, if you imagine the <em><b>systems</b></em> in which we live and work as gigantic machines, comprising people and technology; and acknowledge that they determine <em>how</em> we live and work; and importantly, what the <em>effects</em> of our work will be—whether they'll be problems, or solutions. Béla H. Bánáthy wrote in <em>Designing Social Systems in a Changing World</em>:</p>  
 +
<p>“I have become increasingly convinced that [people] cannot give direction to their lives, they cannot forge their destiny, they cannot take charge of their future—unless they also develop the competence to take part directly and authentically in the design of the systems in which they live and work, and reclaim their right to do so. This is what true empowerment is about.”</p>
 +
<h3>How suitable are our <em>systems</em> for the functions they need to perform "in a changing world"?</h3>
 +
<p>If the <em><b>system</b></em> whose function is to enable us to <em>direct</em> our efforts <em><b>correctly</b></em> is a 'candle'—<em>what about all others</em>? How suitable are our financial system, our governance, our international corporation and our education for what <em>they</em> need to be able to achieve?</p>
 +
<p>In 2013 I was invited to give an online talk to a workshop of social scientists who convened at IUC Dubrovnik; who were interested in journalism, IT innovation and e-democracy. The title I gave my talk was "Toward a Scientific Comprehension and Handling of Problems", in order to draw attention to my <em>main</em> <em><b>point</b></em>—namely that there is an altogether different or "scientific" way to comprehend and handle the society's ills that journalism reports, and innovation and democracy aim to resolve. To explain and justify this <em><b>point</b></em>, I drafted a parallel between the society and the human organism—and invited my audience to <em><b>see</b></em> communication <em><b>as</b></em> the society's nervous system, finance as its vascular system, the corporation as its muscular system, education as reproductive system and so on; and I demonstrated, one by one, that what we see as society's problems are indeed (or need to be seen as) <em>symptoms</em> of <em><b>systemic</b></em> malfunction. Scientific medicine distinguishes itself by comprehending and handling symptoms in terms of the <em>anatomy and pathophysiology</em> that underlie  them, my point was; why not comprehend and handle our <em>society's</em> issues in a similar, <em><b>scientific</b></em> way?</p>
 +
<p>I ended my talk on a positive note; by showing a photo of an electoral victory, to which I added in Photoshop "The systems, stupid!" as featured winning electoral slogan; which was, of course, a paraphrase of Bill Clinton's winning 1992 slogan "The Economy, stupid!" In a society where the survival of businesses depends on their ability to sell people things—<em>of course</em> one needs to keep the economy growing if one wants the business to be profitable and the people employed. But economic growth is <em>not</em> "the solution to our problem". </p>
 +
<h3><em>Systemic innovation</em> empowers us to <em>change</em> the <em>system</em> of our economy.</h3>
 +
<p>Instead of only <em>adapting</em> to it, until the bitter end.</p>
 +
<p>In the <em>Liberation</em> book (where, as I said, I explain abstract ideas by telling people stories), I let Erich Jantsch <em>iconize</em> <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>. I introduce Jantsch's legacy and vision by qualifying them as the environmental movement's forgotten history; and its ignored theory; which we'll <em>have to</em> comprehend to be able to <em>act</em>, instead of only reacting.</p>
 +
<p>In the story we meet Jantsch at the point where he's just given his keynote to The Club of Rome's inaugural meeting in 1968 in Rome. Jantsch readily saw what needed to be done to pave the way to solutions; and right away convened a workshop of a hand-picked team of experts—to craft <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> theory and methodology; and then—seeing that the university is the only institution capable of developing and spearheading this new way to think and act—spent a semester at MIT drafting a plan for the transdisciplinary university, from which I quoted the above excerpt; and lobbying with the MIT academic colleagues and administration to <em>implement</em> this necessary and so timely change.</p>
 +
<p>Then there was this <em>wonderful</em> turn of events—which spices up both the story of Jantsch and <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>, and the story of Engelbart and <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> I shared a moment ago: During the 1970s Jantsch and Engelbart were practically neighbors—separated only by the San Francisco Bay! But they never met or collaborated—even though each of them needed the other to fulfill <em>his own</em> larger-than-life mission: Engelbart was struggling to explain to Silicon Valley businesses and innovators that <em><b>innovation</b></em> needed to be directed in an <em>entirely</em> different way; that the technology he gave them was intended to serve as enabler for an quantum leap in evolution of humanity's <em><b>systems</b></em>. And just across the bay there was this other ignored <em><b>giant</b></em>, with the <em>complementary</em> message. Let me be blunt: Would <em>you</em> choose to leave your children loads and loads of dough—and a world about to collapsed on their heads? I mean—if you <em>knew</em> what was going on; and that <em>you</em> could make a difference.</p> 
 +
<p>But Jantsch didn't stop there; during the 1970s, until his premature death in 1980, Jantsch was earnestly and with all his power developing a <em>different</em> view of the <em><b>elephant</b></em> (and supporting himself by working as a music critic); he gave it different names in different publications, and I'll call it <em><b>evolutionary vision</b></em>; as Jantsch did in the last expert workshop he organized, and his corresponding last book he edited.</p>
 +
<p>The turning point in Jantsch's creative process was the talk that Ilya Prigogine gave U.C. Berkeley (where Jantsch was an <em><b>adjunct assistant professor</b></em>; I adopted this <em><b>keyword</b></em> from Doug Engelbart to use it as he did—to point to the highest academic position available to <em><b>system</b></em> reformers) about his work (for which he received the Nobel Prize five years later); which showed Jantsch that even <em>physical</em> systems follow a certain peculiar evolutionary dynamic. You'll comprehend the gist of it if you think for a moment about <em>the</em> key point of cybernetics (in the context of the error I am inviting you to correct, and the challenge of making our society's evolutionary <em><b>course</b></em> governable or sustainable): Wiener's idea of control (he used "homeostasis" as keyword to pinpoint it) was the maintenance of a certain equilibrium state or condition; and using "communication and control" to avoid and <em>eliminate</em> the deviations. What Jantsch saw (and also Prigogine) was an entirely <em>different</em> evolutionary dynamic—where the system operates in a state that is <em>far</em> from equilibrium; in a manner that is in a fundamental sense <em>creative</em>.</p>
 +
<p>In <em>Design for Evolution</em>, his 1975 seminal work, Jantsch introduced the <em><b>evolutionary vision</b></em> by inviting us to see ourselves as passengers (not in a bus but) in a boat on a river. The traditional sciences would have us look at the boat from above, Jantsch explained—and aim to describe it "objectively"; the traditional systems science would position us <em>on</em> the boat—and instruct us how to steer it safely. The <em><b>evolutionary vision</b></em> would have us to see ourselves as—the river! The <em><b>point</b></em> of it all being that <em>the way we present ourselves</em> to evolution is what determines its course!</p>
 +
<h3>Why am I telling you at length about these so technical themes?</h3>
 +
<p>Because we've just placed the <em>Liberation</em> book's overall main <em><b>point</b></em> into this website's all-important context (our quest or guiding light or <em><b>know-what</b></em>): According to <em><b>evolutionary vision</b></em>, the "liberated" or "enlightened" condition this book portrays <em>is</em> "the solution to our problem".</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
 +
[[File:Jantsch.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Erich Jantsch]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
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<div class="row">
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The future of innovation</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>   </h2>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A way of looking</h3>
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<font size="+1">– Modernity did not make people more cruel; it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people. Under the sign of modernity, evil does not need any more evil people. Rational people, men and women well riveted into the impersonal, adiaphorized network of modern organization, will do perfectly.</font>
<p>By [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] we mean creative action that makes a difference in the world, that induces change. We have adapted this most common business concept to our needs when an idea (insight, invention...) becomes hard-wired in our daily reality, when it has made a difference, then it becomes an "innovation". </p>
+
<br>
<p>Notice that [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] is what drives our societal and cultural evolution; it's the movement of our metaphorical 'bus' or Engelbart's 'common economic-political vehicle' in which we ride into the future.</p>
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(Zygmunt Bauman <em>Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality</em>, 1995)
<p>[[innovation|<em>Innovation</em>]] has a result which we have hitherto ignored. This thing has  been a kind of a casualty, a collateral damage, a side effect... of our "successes in business", of the present way in which we've been evolving and innovating and conducting affaires.  Not because it's a small detail – on the contrary! It's because it's so <em>large</em> that we don't see it! Like a mountain on which we may be walking, it determines what and how we see things – but it's not something we can see from the place where we stand. It's what Banathy called "the systems in which we live and work". </p>
 
<p>So we have a maaaaajor challenge – to make that thing visible to us the people! We gave our communication design team that challenge, and here is what they came up with. </p>
 
[[File:System.jpeg]]<br><small><center>System ideogram</center></small>
 
<p>The original image was partly animated. But anyhow, this image is a placeholder for a core [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] challenge.</p>
 
<p>The insight that this System [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] is meant to convey is to help us see ourselves as parts or clogs or nuts and bolts in those large systems. Seen as the systems in which we work, they are those large economic-political 'mechanisms' whose purpose is to take our daily work as input, and produce socially useful effects as output. Seen as the systems in which we live, they determine not only the quality of our lives – but also the very course, the very nature of our lives.</p>
 
<p>How are those systems? How have they been evolving?</p>
 
<p>And this is where – to acquire and complete the insight we are talking about here – we need quite a bit more courage, more presence of spirit, more patience to stay focused, than what most of us are able to gather at this point. Those large things are not only our "reality" – they even determine how we see reality, and <em>what</em> we consider to be real. How can we dare to question them, to examine them? And yet that is what we must do.</p>
 
<h3>An insight</h3>
 
<p>A likely result, when we've gone through this exercise – and you'll find ample material and evidence on these pages to get us started – is a two-sided coin. And the value of this coin is beyond astronomical – it's our future, and our world!
 
<ul>
 
<li>"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them," said Einstein. Systemic thinking – or perhaps better said [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] as systemic thinking in action – offers itself as a natural or <em>informed</em> alternative. If we now follow this alternative for just one step, if we begin to apply it – as we just did – then Einstein's most famous word of wisdom can be paraphrased as "We cannot solve our problems with the same <em>systems</em> we used when we created them." If you are still frowning, more evidence – a lot more evidence will be provided on these pages; and an invitation to resolve the remaining hesitancies in a conversation. And so on the one side we find that learning to see and update those systems is a <em>necessary</em> condition for our future. Like evil masters, those gigantic things have been flagrantly and mercilessly misusing our daily work, and turning it <em>against</em> us! And this is true not only for the 99%, but also for the 1%! </li>
 
<li>On the other side we find something even much <em>more</em> spectacular – something which truly requires daring, unusual independence of spirit... to see. And that is that the possibilities for improvement are properly speaking <em>enormous</em>! We don't need to work so hard (not at all)! We don't need to stress and strive and compete. Imagine – just imagine – that 90%, perhaps even 99% of our work may be spent for not better purpose than spinning the wheels of an obsolete and largely dysfunctional "economic-political" 'machinery'! <p>If you follow this line of thought just a few steps further, perhaps with the help of the links provided below and all the rest that's been said on these pages – you will have no difficulty understanding why improvements in our condition, in the efficiency and effectiveness of our work, similar to the ones that have been reached through the Industrial Revolution, may be reached by this approach. You will also have no difficulty – especially with the help of the extensive portfolio of examples or [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] provided in Federation through Applications – seeing how this new creative frontier will open up a wealth of new possibilities for a broad variety of creative contributions including social entrepreneurship, business and research. You may then indeed be (and you perhaps already are) perplexed by another question – why has this possibility been so consistently ignored, and for such a long time? This indeed most interesting question too can be answered by [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] knowledge – by putting together insights from the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities. We have initiated this exercise by developing The Paradigm Strategy Poster, which we'll use to initiate our conversations.</li>
 
</ul>
 
</p>
 
<p>So the insight we are talking about is properly speaking a civilizational, or evolutionary, turning point!</p>
 
<p>This turning point begins to act on us and grow into a sweeping change as soon as we begin to look still deeper, and (with the help of the insights of last century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]) – begin to probe into the nature of our evolutionary and systemic blindness. What we've hitherto perceived as "objective reality" becomes seen as a result of our socialization – and an instrument of our socialization by which our systems, our unseen and incompassionate 'masters', are keeping us at bay. Paradigmatic changes naturally and readily follow.</p>
 
<h3>A rule of thumb</h3>
 
<p>We are here talking about first of all liberating creative work from that obsolete 'machinery', from being caught up in it – and then using it in an informed way, directing it, so that it may TRULY serve a good purpose.</p>
 
<p>See (once again – we may be repeating ourselves, but we'll fix that...) how [[innovation|<em>innovation</em>]] is done today. In the sciences we obey to our disciplines. In public informing we learn to do certain kind of reporting. Those things evolve slowly, as the market (the modern 'god' to which we the people pay allegiance) dictates. Then technological innovation  comes in, driven by the same market, and asks: What is it that the scientists are doing? And the journalists? We can make that incomparably faster and cheaper for them! The result is, of course, that information becomes a commodity, and we all end up competing over how much of that of that thing we can produce even more, cheaper and faster, and still make a living! But OK, that's just a small example.</p>
 
<p>So what we are converging toward is a rule of thumb. "Innovation must be [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic</em>]]!" We must innovate with the view toward improving "the systems in which we live and work". We are not accustomed to having this sort of 'rule of thumb'. Yet we may now begin to see that <em>anything</em> can be improved, and even <em>radically</em> improved, when it becomes informed – even our work with information, and even our creative work and work in general!</p>
 
<h3>An example</h3>
 
<p>In Federation through Images we saw that the goal of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is an evolving hierarchy of insights, principles, rules of thumb... that can inform and guide our handling of basic things in life. We federate basic knowledge, basic insights. What we've just seen is an example. But already this single example shows how this <em>systemic</em> creation and use of knowledge can be a scaffolding for a whole new phase in our evolution – and the beginning of it.</p>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Power structure</h2>
 +
<p>Before we can <em>solve</em> "the huge problems now confronting us", we need to <em>diagnose</em> them <em><b>correctly</b></em>.</p>
 +
<h3><em>Power structure</em> is a social-and-cultural disease.</h3>
 +
<p>It is also an update or redesign of the traditional idea of the enemy. The <em><b>power structure</b></em> is not a physical entity but a <em><b>pattern</b></em>; it is not bacteria-like but cancer-like. It  has similar effects on our minds and liberties as a dictator; but it remains invisible—as long as we look at freedom and justice in any of our inherited or <em><b>traditional</b></em> ways. The <em><b>power structure</b></em> is not a conspiracy theory but its exact opposite: The people who co-created it have no evil intentions; and indeed not a faintest idea that they <em>might</em> be part of the problem. Before I say more about it, let me bring this down to earth by sharing how <em>I</em> got to be aware of <em><b>power structure</b></em>.</p>
 +
<p>When around 1995 I caught a glimpse of the vast and wondrous creative frontier I've been telling you about, and reconfigured my life and my work to be able to focus on it fully—I anticipated a completely <em>different</em> dynamic than what I <em>actually</em> encountered: I expected a spirited conversation; and perhaps some doubt and disbelief to begin with.  What I got instead was—silence; accompanied with a vague sense of discomfort. Evidently, I was doing something wrong; but even <em>that</em> was only communicated in body language. Could it be that the academic culture is not steered by academic <em><b>logos</b></em>, as I took it for granted; but by something quite different, which I could not even <em>name</em>? The experience was disheartening; it's as if you put all your chips on being a painter; and work with all your power to manifest all those wonderful images you were carrying in intuition—only to realize that your fellow painters and gallerists are <em>color blind</em>! But when I explored this phenomenon a bit, I realized that what I was experiencing was not just some weird anomaly, but <em>the</em> problem—that's preventing us from solving "the grave problems now confronting us"; and so naturally, I undertook to research it thoroughly. It was at that point that I undertook to explore the related results humanities, about which I knew next to nothing.</p>
 +
<p>Here in front of me on the table I have Zygmunt Bauman's book <em>Modernity and the Holocaust</em>; which—as I am now re-reading it—reflects back to me a closely similar message—namely that there is something <em>essential</em> we still ignore about ourselves and our society, and importantly—about the relationship between us and society (Bauman's "we" included his fellow sociologists). When we theorize the Holocaust while ignoring that all-important something—we see it as "an interruption in the normal flow of history, a cancerous growth on the body of civilized society, a momentary madness among sanity"; whereas when we look carefully at how it <em>really</em> developed (as documented by the historians)—we are bound to see it as just an extreme case of a pathology that <em>permeates</em> our society; which by being so extreme—invites us to comprehend that all-permeating pathology. Hannah Arendt left us a similar message when she talked about "banality of evil"; but her diagnoses too were ignored, and considered "controversial".</p>
 +
<h3>These warning we must <em>urgently</em> attend to.</h3>
 +
<p>Because the banal evil is acquiring <em>grotesque</em> proportions! I am considering to use <em><b>geocide</b></em> as keyword to rub it in; but perhaps you already got my point?</p>
 +
<p>At InfoDesign 2000 conference in Coventry, GB, I presented the <em><b>power structure</b></em> theory alongside with <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em>; and introduced the former as a proof-of-concept application of the latter.</p>
 +
<h3>We must look through the <em>holoscope</em> to diagnose the society's deadly disease!</h3>
 +
<p>In Coventry I was invited to elaborate both ideas in Information Design Journal; which resulted in two publications: "Designing Information Design" introduced the <em><b>methodological</b></em> or <em><b>design</b></em> approach to <em><b>information</b></em> and gave (an early version of) the same call to action I am proposing here; "Information for Conscious Choice" introduced the <em><b>power structure</b></em> theory and a <em>pragmatic</em> argument for that call to action: "Free competition" and the related notion of "free choice" is what's breeding the <em><b>power structure</b></em> and driving us to extinction; our choices <em>must</em> be illuminated by suitable or <em><b>designed</b></em> information.</p>
 +
<p>The Power Structure ideogram consists of three white entities joined together by three black arrows; and suggests that the <em><b>power structure</b></em> is not a distinct thing but a <em>structure</em>—comprising known entities and their subtle relationships. The entities are power (represented in the <em><b>ideogram</b></em> by a dollar sign), <em><b>information</b></em> (represented by a book), and our personal and socio-cultural <em><b>wholeness</b></em> (represented by a stethoscope). The <em><b>point</b></em> here is that "the enemy", that what <em>really</em> has the power over us the people is not any of those three things alone—but their <em>combination</em>; or more to the point—their <em>synergy</em>.</p>
 +
<p>The reason why those relationships remained invisible and ignored is that they are not mechanical but <em>evolutionary</em>; it is (not deliberate scheming but) <em>evolution</em> that adjusts those three (obviously co-dependent) entities to each other; and turns them into something that for all practical purposes acts as an organism.</p>
 +
<p>I used results and insights from multiple fields of science to elaborate the <em><b>power structure</b></em> as a <em><b>pattern</b></em>: <em>The</em> basic insights from stochastic optimization, artificial intelligence and artificial life—to show that co-dependent entities <em>can</em> co-evolve to form a coherent structure, which can behave as if it were intelligent and alive; Antonio Damasio's revolutionizing insights in cognitive neuroscience, explained in his book appropriately titled <em>Descartes' Error</em>—to point to the pre-conscious and embodied and hence 'programmable' nature of (what's <em><b>believed</b></em> to be) "free choice"; and Pierre Bourdieu's explorations of of "symbolic power" and his "theory of practice" to explain the <em><b>power structure</b></em> dynamic; and how it's related to economic and political power.</p>
 +
<p>The <em><b>power structures</b></em> exist at distinct levels of generality or details; smaller <em><b>power structures</b></em> compose together larger ones; so that we are justified in <em><b>seeing</b></em> it all <em><b>as</b></em> just <em>the</em> (one single) <em><b>power structure</b></em>.</p>
 +
<p>I used metaphors to make this invisible enemy comprehensible and palpable; one of which was cancer: The <em><b>power structure</b></em> is a cancer-like <em>deformation</em> of society's 'tissues and organs'; which—unless it's recognized and countered by society's 'immune system'—can proliferate and be fatal.</p>
 +
<p>Bourdieu left us a pair of useful metaphors and keywords, "field" and "game"; which he used interchangeably to describe the dynamics of <em><b>power structure</b></em>.  imagine us all as tiny magnets immersed in a large magnetic field; which subtly orients our seemingly free or random behavior; which—as we align ourselves with it—becomes stronger. The <em><b>power structure</b></em>, or "field", then <em><b>gamifies</b></em> the society; and reduces for each of us the disturbing complexity of our world to just learning a social role and performing in it; which gives us "ontological security" and eliminates the need for ethics and for <em><b>knowledge</b></em>, as Giddens pointed out.</p>
 +
<h3><em>Power structure</em> is not a pejorative label but a way of looking.</h3>
 +
<p>As long as we live in a society—we <em>are</em> affected by <em><b>power structure</b></em> and we <em>must</em> see to it that this co-dependence is minimal; because both our freedom <em>and</em> our society's future depend on our liberation.</p>
 +
<p><em><b>Power structure</b></em> is not one of <em><b>holotopia</b></em>'s <em><b>five insights</b></em>; it <em>is</em>, however, a theme that permeates all of them, <em>and</em> the <em>Liberation</em> book; which gives us a way to revisit and revise other themes including</p>
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Ethics; to be part of the societal 'cancer', and be culpable of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1x7lDxHd-o <em><b>geocide</b></em>], we need to do no more than—"do our job"; in "the impersonal, adiaphorized network of modern organization" (Bauman used this keyword, "adiaphorized", to delineate the style of thinking I've asked you to associate with <em><b>materialism</b></em>—which is "purely rational", devoid of ethical or emotional concerns; we do something not because it's right or just—but because it is "our job", or "good for business"); or even more simply—act in <em><b>materialism</b></em>'s characteristically self-centered way (which turns us into 'little magnets'...) </li>
 +
<li>Politics; the <em><b>geocide</b></em> is <em>not</em> in anyone's "interest"; the <em><b>holotopian</b></em> politics is not conceived as "us against them", as it's been usual—but as <em>all of us</em> against the <em><b>power structure</b></em></li>
 +
<li>Religion; in Chapter Ten of the <em>Liberation</em> book, titled "Liberation of Religion", I defined <em><b>religion</b></em> as a function in culture—to help us counteract <em>self-centeredness</em>; and see ourselves as parts in a larger <em><b>whole</b></em>.</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
<p>You may now comprehend the <em>Liberation</em> book's subtitle "Religion beyond Belief" a notch deeper; and see the evolution of <em><b>religion</b></em> as having three stages; so that in the first, the <em><b>beliefs</b></em> of tradition were used to coerce everyone to do the right thing (which, needless to say, didn't always work as intended); and in the second, the <em><b>beliefs</b></em> of <em><b>materialism</b></em> gradually made us do the <em>wrong</em> thing; so that we have a chance to bring <em><b>religion</b></em> into its <em>third</em> phase of evolution—by founding it on <em><b>knowledge</b></em>, not <em><b>belief</b></em>.</p>
 +
<p>You may now also see science and the way the pursuit of <em><b>knowledge</b></em> has been institutionalized, and the <em><b>ontological</b></em> argument for our (lack of) <em><b>foundation</b></em>, in a completely new light. In their 1966 classic  <em>Social Construction of Reality</em>, Berger and Luckmann told us that societies have a special category of people, suitably institutionalized, whose prerogative is to define "reality" for us; they called them "universal experts", and explained that "[t]his does not mean that they claim to know everything, but rather that they claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does. Other men may continue to stake out particular sectors of reality, but they claim expertise in the ultimate definitions of reality as such." The social function of "ultimate definitions of reality as such" has been to maintain the given social order by inhibiting change: "Habitualization and institutionalization in themselves limit the flexibility of human actions. Institutions tend to persist unless they become ‘problematic’. Ultimate legitimations inevitably strengthen this tendency. The more abstract the legitimations are, the less likely they are to be modified in accordance with changing pragmatic exigencies. If there is a tendency to go on as before anyway, the tendency is obviously strengthened by having excellent reasons for doing so. This means that institutions may persist even when, to an outside observer, they have lost their original functionality or practicality. One does certain things not because they work, but because they are right – right, that is, in terms of the ultimate definitions of reality promulgated by the universal experts."</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
 +
[[File:Bauman.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Zygmunt Bauman]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
</div>
----
 
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Engelbart's legacy</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>   </h2>
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Engelbart and the invisible elephant</h3>
+
<font size="+1"><em><b>See things whole</b></em>.</font>
<p>So what is Engelbart's key insight? What is his core contribution to the emerging paradigm? There are several. But here's perhaps the most spectacular or breath-taking one. Yes, it's the one that gives the "nervous system" to the elephant, so that this huge and mighty animal may not go rampant and destroy everything around...</p>
+
<br>
<p>Imagine yourself walking toward a wall.</p>
+
The <em><b>holoscope principle</b></em>.
<p>You may be thinking your own thoughts. Listening to music. Looking around. But then something happened: And suddenly you see yourself standing still, a wall is in front of you. As your conscious mind is becoming aware of the situation, you realize that your muscles have already reacted to it! </p>
+
</div>
<p>So Doug's insight, in 1951!!!, was that the digital technology, connected in a network, provides this capability – we can think together just as the cells do in an organism!</p>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>Holoscope</h2>
<h3>The printing press could not do that</h3>
+
<p>René Descartes pointed out in his testament, his unfinished <em>Règles pour la direction de l’esprit</em> (Rules for the Direction of the Mind)—as Rule One: “The objective of studies needs to be to direct the mind so that it bears solid and true judgments about everything that presents itself to it.” And pointed to academic specialization as <em>the</em> impediment to practicing Rule One: “In truth, it surprises me that almost everyone studies with greatest care the customs of men, the properties of the plants, the movements of the planets, the transformations of metals and other similar objects of study, while almost nobody reflects about sound judgment or about this universal wisdom, while all the other things need to be appreciated less for themselves than because they have a certain relationship to it. It is then not without reason that we pose this rule as the first among all, because nothing removes us further from the seeking of truth, than to orient our studies not towards this general goal, but towards the particular ones.</p>
<p>The printing press is a suitable metaphor here – many authors saw it as one of the key contributing factors for the Enlightenment. Suddenly knowledge became widely available, and reproducible! But still the printing press could only mass-produce and BROADCAST data. </p>
+
<h3>You have seen four independent arguments for developing <em>knowledge</em> on <em>pragmatic foundation</em>.</h3>
<h3>Engelbart was not a technology inventor</h3>
+
<p>See them as four ways of looking, as four projection planes corresponding to the edges of the <em><b>rectangle</b></em> from which my main <em><b>point</b></em> follows as "the dot on the i"; which is, as I said, not a statement of fact but a course of action and an invitation to act: To enable <em><b>knowledge</b></em>-based evolution of culture and society by instituting academic <em><b>transdisciplinarity</b></em>.</p>  
<p>In the reality 'on the other side of the mirror', where we [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] basic and most useful insights as guiding principles for directing our daily lives and our evolution, there can hardly be a more basic and more useful guiding principle than a one by which the use of our creative capabilities is directed. It is therefore worth emphasizing that  Engelbart (while being perceived as a technology inventor, and hence never really receiving any serious academic credit or attention or support for his work and ideas) contributed not only the <em>principle</em> of systemic innovation, but also a suitable methodology – and published it six years before Erich Jantsch and others met in Bellagio to create their own version of such a methodology. </p>
+
<p>Those four arguments are:</p>  
<p>Engelbart's methodology, which he called "augmentation", governed also his own work throughout his long career. It is therefore best to understand his real contributions by explaining them in the context of his very approach to innovation.</p>
+
<ul>  
<h3>Augmenting human capabilities</h3>
+
<li>(Pragmatic argument) it stands to reason that our species will quite surely be eliminated from the evolutionary scene unless we learn to use <em><b>information</b></em> as guiding light, to provide us <em><b>know-what</b></em>; and vice-versa—(as I will demonstrate in a moment) developing <em><b>knowledge</b></em> on a <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em> will lead to comprehensive change of <em><b>course</b></em> in two natural and easy steps; the change that is <em>the</em> solution to "the huge problems now confronting us</li>
<p>[[File:Augmentation.jpeg]]<br><small><center>The slide in Doug's 2007 presentation at Google, which he used to explain "augmentation" – his systemic innovation methodology.</center></small></p>
+
<li>(Fundamental argument) the <em><b>ontological foundation</b></em> rests upon historical <em><b>beliefs</b></em> about knowledge, reality and human mind that have been <em>proven</em> wrong and disowned by the <em><b>giants</b></em> of science; developing <em><b>knowledge</b></em> on <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em> is a way to restore to <em><b>information</b></em> and <em><b>knowledge</b></em> the quality that is most closely associated with the word "academic"; and to <em>continue</em> academic evolution</li>  
<p></p>
+
<li>(Political and ethical argument) "the correspondence theory of truth" or <em><b>reification</b></em>, which underlies <em><b>ontological foundation</b></em>, is (needs to be <em><b>seen as</b></em>) an instrument of <em><b>power structure</b></em>; the change to <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em> is the way to liberation</li>
<p>So here's the "new thinking". </p>
+
<li>(IT argument) It is only when we see <em><b>information</b></em> as something we humans make for human purposes, and learn to tailor it to the most vital among those purposes—that we'll be able to (stop reproducing old <em><b>systems</b></em> in new technology, and) take advantage of the intrinsic properties of new information technology to provide us <em>new</em> collective capabilities; on which our future depends.</li>  
<h3>Engelbart's technical contributions</h3>
+
</ul>  
<p>The meaning and the value of everything that Engelbart created, or dreamed of, must be understood in the context just presented.</p>
+
<h3>Comprehensive <em>paradigm</em> shift follows from this change of <em>foundation</em>.</h3>
<p>Even the technical pieces that he received the credit for, the interactive user interface, collaboration on a distance... Doug experimented with linking people together in a seamless way. With a mouse in the right hand and the chorded keyset in the left, and the eyes fixed on the screen – one does not even need to move his hands to do most of the instant processing...</p>
+
<p>You'll see it if you take another look at Holotopia ideogram; and see its four side edges as forming a "V" for (our conclusive) "victory" (over <em><b>power structure</b></em>); which stems from <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> as root or <em><b>foundation</b></em>.</p>
<p>Similarly the Open Hyperdocument System, which was the design philosophy underlying the NLS system that was demonstrated in 1968. People thinking together will not necessarily create... old-fashioned books and articles! Why not let the new hypermedia documents freely evolve, or even better, be loose conglomerations of a variety of media pieces, assembled together according to need... But the Word and the Powerpoint and the email and the Photoshop... – they are all just reproducing the processing of the pre-Web kind of documents. Each in its own document format, not interoperable... Can't create new workflows!</p>
+
<p>The bottom edge on the left, connecting <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> with <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em>, points to the first step that naturally follows from  <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em>—where we specify (or more precisely <em><b>federate</b></em>) what <em><b>information</b></em> needs to be like (which includes, once again, the methods by which information is created and structured, and the ways it needs to be used) by creating a <em><b>methodology</b></em>. </p>
<p>And then there are higher-level constructs, quite a few of them. Let's just mention a couple: the Networked Improvement Community (NIC) is a basic new socio-technical system for a (generic) discipline – the B-level improvement activity... But there's another, C level – improving the improvers, organized as a NIC of NICs. But that's exactly what we are calling the [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]]; and that's quite precisely what the cybernetics, and the systems sciences, are about.</p>
+
<p>The bottom edge on the right, connecting <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> with <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> (as and up-to-date technology-enabled social process of <em><b>communication</b></em>), points to the other, parallel step that naturally follows from <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em>—where we (acknowledging that the use of new technology to publish or broadcast documents, and make the processes that have evolved based on the printing press as technology more effective, has given us overloads of documents that by many orders of magnitude exceed what any human mind can process, and made <em><b>knowledge</b></em> impossible) create processes and <em><b>systems</b></em> that <em>complement</em> document publishing by <em>structuring</em> <em><b>information</b></em>; and organize us in creating <em>meaning</em>; and restore the severed tie between information and action; or in a word—which <em><b>federate knowledge</b></em>.</p>
<p>It is most interesting in the larger context we are exploring to see that Engelbart developed an original <em>methodology</em> for [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] – already in 1962, i.e. six years before the systems scientists did that in Bellagio! The methodology is based on "augmentation system"... (explain?)</p>
+
<p>Look now at the horizontal line (in Holotopia ideogram) that connects <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> with <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>; which has "information" as label; and points to the <em>synergy</em> between those two <em><b>points</b></em> of action: It is only when we develop an academic i.e. well-founded and relied on theory of what <em><b>information</b></em> needs to be like—that we'll be able to develop the corresponding communication (both academically, and in real-life practice). And vice-versa: It is only when we have <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as process that we'll be able to create and evolve this theory; because <em><b>information</b></em> is by its nature <em><b>transdisciplinary</b></em>; its <em><b>informed</b></em> creation and use need to draw <em><b>insights</b></em> from a number of disciplines, and other traditions.</p>
<h3>The future of innovation</h3>
+
<h3>I gave this new <em>information</em> the name <em>holoscope</em>.</h3>
<p>[[File:Capabilities.jpg]]<br><small><center>The slide Engelbart used in his early 1990s "Bootstrap Seminar" to explain his approach to innovation.</center></small></p>
+
<p>In order to highlight that the university institution <em>must</em> give us the people (not only the likes of the microscope and the telescope, but also) a way to see the world that is functional <em>by design</em>; which makes <em>us</em> functional. And I coined a suitable rule of thumb, <em><b>see things whole</b></em>, and called it <em><b>holoscope principle</b></em>; to pinpoint the distinguishing character of this new way to see the world.</p>
<p></p>
+
<h3>We need the <em>holoscope</em>, alias <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>, to make <em>knowledge</em> possible.</h3>
<p>So we may see Engelbart's key insight as this "P" in the above slide: Something was possible with the new technology that was not possible before!</p>
+
<p>I explained in <em>Liberation</em>: "It may seem to me that the Earth is flat and I might even <em><b>believe</b></em> that; but people have traveled around the Earth; and others saw it from outer space. When I take account of evidence—I cannot but change my mind."</p>
<p>But what is "N"? What is still needed, so that we may become "collectively intelligent"?</p>
+
</div> </div>
<p>The answer is "systemic innovation"...</p>
+
<div class="row">
<p>Engelbart also saw an original solution to the Wiener's paradox. He called it [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]]. The point is to not (only) tell the world how the systems should be, but engage in re-creating systems hands-on. Typically, but not exclusively, this is achieved when the developers of the system use themselves as the initial human part of the system. This idea was the core of Doug's all action in the last two decades of his career. When in the late 1980s he and his daughter Christina created an institute to share his gift to the world, the institute was first called "Bootstrap Institute", and it was later renamed "Bootstrap Alliance". The idea is clear – to bootstrap, the key will be to create alliances with businesses and universities and other institutions, and [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] the systemic change together with them.</p></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
 +
<font size="+1"><em><b>Make things whole</b></em>.</font>
 +
<br>The <em><b>holotopia principle</b></em>.
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>Holotopia</h2>
 +
<p>Have a look now at the next level on Holotopia ideogram; see the edge connecting <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> with <em><b>convenience paradox</b></em> on the left: When we adapt and apply (the method and the approach that distinguishes) <em><b>science</b></em> to life's core themes, and use it to orient our "pursuit of happiness" and inform our values—<em><b>wholeness</b></em> will be our value of choice; and the aim of our pursuits. And with such radical shift in orientation—the change of <em><b>course</b></em> will most naturally follow; as we'll evolve toward <em><b>wholeness</b></em>. And since guiding <em><b>insights</b></em> will be drawn (or <em><b>federated</b></em>) from all world traditions, <em>including</em> the disciplines of science—the continuities in cultural evolution too will be restored.</p>
 +
<p>Look now at the edge connecting <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> with <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> on the right: It is only when we'll have <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> in place, as instituted social process that empowers us to configure (<em><b>prototypes</b></em> of) <em><b>systems</b></em> evidence-based—that we'll be able to adapt <em><b>systems</b></em> to their function; and to the exigencies of our new situation; and it is only when we'll have <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as technology-enabled communication infrastructure or "collective nervous system" that we'll be able to give the society's <em><b>systems</b></em> the faculty of vision they necessitate; to be viable or "sustainable" or <em><b>whole</b></em>.</p>
 +
<p>Look at the horizontal line connecting <em><b>convenience paradox</b></em> on the left and <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> on the right; which has "action" as label: It is only we've become sufficiently <em><b>whole</b></em>, by pursuing "human development" or <em><b>wholeness</b></em> as value—that we'll have the moral strength to collaborate and co-create our <em><b>systems</b></em>; and it is only when our <em><b>systems</b></em> liberate us from struggle and competition, and afford us the free time—that we'll become capable of cultivating our <em>inner</em> <em><b>wholeness</b></em>.</p>
 +
<h3>I call this new <em>informed</em> action <em>holotopia</em>.</h3>
 +
<p>In order to highlight that it has all the "beyond belief" qualities of a utopian vision—in addition to this all-important <em>distinguishing</em> one: <em><b>Holotopia</b></em> is a <em>realistic</em> future scenario; the <em><b>belief</b></em> that we can continue to live <em>without</em> radical change is what's utopian.</p>
 +
<p>I coined a suitable rule of thumb, <em><b>make things whole</b></em>, and called it <em><b>holotopia principle</b></em>; to pinpoint the distinguishing character of this new way to act.</p>
 +
<p>And so to sum up: As soon as we develop <em><b>information</b></em> on a <em><b>pragmatic foundation</b></em>—it will be obvious that <em><b>information</b></em> must enable us to <em><b>see things whole</b></em>; and it is only when our <em><b>course</b></em> is illuminated by such <em><b>information</b></em>—that we'll be able to <em><b>make things whole</b></em>. </p>
 +
</div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
 +
<font size="+1">– As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved.</font>
 +
<br>
 +
(David Bohm,  <em>Problem and Paradox</em>.)
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h2>Dialog</h2>
 +
<p>Whenever the way we think is part of the problem—and this is clearly the case with "the huge problems now confronting us"—what we are up against is not a problem but a paradox. And yet we must conform to the common way to think to be able to <em>communicate</em> with people; and <em>function</em> in society.</p>
 +
<p>To liberate myself sufficiently and be able to complete the <em><b>knowledge federation prototype</b></em>, I withdrew into a self-imposed quarantine; which lasted about five years. I am now <em><b>coming out</b></em>—and entering the next phase of this creative process; whose focus will be on communication, and collective action toward implementation and scaling. But I don't intend to come out of <em><b>holotopia</b></em>, where I've made myself a home during this period; why would I?</p>
 +
<h3>I invite you to meet me half way.</h3>
 +
<p>Which is what the <em><b>dialog</b></em> is about: Instead of thinking and speaking as we've been socialized to—we'll <em><b>federate</b></em> a suitable new way or a <em>collection</em> of new and better ways to think and communicate; and we'll use them to explore the core themes of our lives and times; <em>and</em> we'll rebuild our "public sphere" or <em><b>collective mind</b></em> as we go along.</p>
 +
<h3>The <em>dialog</em> is (a way to develop) our society's new 'headlights'.</h3>
 +
<p>I'll illustrate a broad range of resources we'll bring together to inform the <em><b>dialog</b></em> by a single one—David Bohm's related legacy. You'll find this on BohmDialogue.org:  "Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process." This website further explains: "Dialogue, as David Bohm envisioned it, is a radically new approach to group interaction, with an emphasis on listening and observation, while suspending the culturally conditioned judgments and impulses that we all have. This unique and creative form of dialogue is necessary and urgent if humanity is to generate a coherent culture that will allow for its continued survival."</p>
 +
<p>What I have in mind is not a single <em><b>prototype</b></em> but a broad variety of them; and it is this <em>variety</em> that attracts me most strongly; <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> has been <em><b>prototyping</b></em> <em><b>dialogs</b></em> all along; some of them are described in <em>Liberation</em> book; others are outlined in the concluding ("conversations" or "action") page of this website.</p>
 +
<p>In Chapter Nine of <em>Liberation</em> (which has "Liberation of Science" as title) I talk about the academic <em><b>dialog</b></em> in front of the (metaphorical) <em><b>mirror</b></em>; which is a self-reflective <em><b>dialog</b></em> whose goal to liberate us from the "objective observer" self-identity that now so narrowly confines academic thought and action; and to empower the <em><b>academia</b></em> to <em>act</em> in the guiding role it already has—and guide us the people to new thinking; and toward the emerging <em><b>paradigm</b></em>.</p>
 +
<p>I see the larger, public <em><b>dialog</b></em> as up-to-date alternative and antidote to the media "infotainment" or "spectacle"; which will document and facilitate the emergence of the <em>real</em> spectacle—the <em><b>elephant</b></em> that has all too long remained the room unnoticed. It is by giving voice to the people who <em>have</em> <em><b>knowledge</b></em>, and by using <em><b>knowledge</b></em> to elevate us collectively to simple and empowering <em><b>insights</b></em>—that the <em><b>dialog</b></em> will give the new media technologies the function they can and <em>must</em> have.</p> 
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"><h2>  </h2>
 +
[[File:Bohm.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[David Bohm]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
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need to <em><b>see</b></em> ourselves <em><b>as</b></em> and part of ; ethics—the new, <em><b>holotopian</b></em> one—demands that we carefully investigate just how much; and take precautions. Nobody—no profession or institution—is exempt; not even <em>science</em>. </p>
 +
<p>When Berger and Luckmann told us in <em>Social Construction of Reality</em> that "because they are historical products of human activity, all socially constructed universes change, and the change is brought about by the concrete actions of human beings"—their aim was to prepare us to hear their <em>main</em> <em><b>point</b></em>—show us what makes us the people <em>incapable</em> of changing our "socially constructed universes"; even when their change is overdue and <em>immanent</em>. Societies have a special category of people, they explained, who are  suitably institutionalized; whose prerogative is to define "reality" for us. Berger and Luckmann called them "universal experts"; and explained that "[t]his does not mean that they claim to know everything, but rather that they claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does. Other men may continue to stake out particular sectors of reality, but they claim expertise in the ultimate definitions of reality as such." And definitions of "reality", <em>Social Construction of Reality</em> explained, is <em>the</em> instrument for <em>inhibiting</em> social change: "Habitualization and institutionalization in themselves limit the flexibility of human actions. Institutions tend to persist unless they become ‘problematic’. Ultimate legitimations inevitably strengthen this tendency. The more abstract the legitimations are, the less likely they are to be modified in accordance with changing pragmatic exigencies. If there is a tendency to go on as before anyway, the tendency is obviously strengthened by having excellent reasons for doing so. This means that institutions may persist even when, to an outside observer, they have lost their original functionality or practicality. One does certain things not because they work, but because they are right – right, that is, in terms of the ultimate definitions of reality promulgated by the universal experts."</p>
 +
<p>In effect, what Berger and Luckmann left us in <em>Social Construction of Reality</em> is a most useful view of the <em><b>power structure</b></em>—its use of "social construction of reality"; which they did by pointing to "a profound affinity" that exists between "those with an interest in maintaining established power positions" (think of the kings in Galilei's time) and "the personnel administering monopolistic traditions of universe-maintenance" (think of the clergy): "Historically, of course, most of these monopolies have been religious."</p>
 +
<h3>I let you reflect on how this bears upon the parallel between Galilei in house arrest and what is happening in <em>our</em> time.</h3>
 +
<p>And how this bears upon the most interesting relationship between science and religion.</p>
  
 +
-------
  
<h3>The 20th century printing press</h3>
+
<p>I coined <em><b>academia</b></em> as <em><b>keyword</b></em>, and defined it as "institutionalized academic tradition"—to help me clarify the word "institute" in my proposal. We use the adjective "academic" to legitimate what we do at universities—by projecting it as being built on the aims, values and legacy of the the tradition that Plato began twenty-four centuries ago in Athens; when he founded Academia. It is no secret that Plato's primary aim was to create general ideas or <em><b>insights</b></em> about <em><b>know-what</b></em> or values; and more generally to explore life's core themes through <em><b>logos</b></em>—as we've done by creating the <em><b>five insights</b></em>; and that the core academic value—to build <em><b>knowledge</b></em> on evidence—is what I've been appealing to.</p>  
<p>The printing press is a suitable metaphor for explaining the substance of of Engelbart's vision, as put forth in his third slide – and its role in the larger picture, in the emerging larger paradigm. Gutenberg's invention is sometimes mentioned as <em>the</em> main factor that led to the Enlightenment – by making knowledge sharing incomparably more efficient. What invention might play a similar role today?</p>
+
<h3>Correcting the fundamental error is <em>the</em> academic job.</h3>  
<p>"The answer is obvious", we imagine you say, "It's the Web!" "Of course it's the Web", Engelbart might have answered, as he indeed did in his very first slide. "But we've also got to change our way of thinking." Doug's second slide pointed to <em>systemic</em> thinking as the new thinking that needs to be used. His third slide was there to explain exactly why this new thinking is the key to making a radically better use of information technology. Considering the importance of this matter, you'll grant us the time and the pleasure of taking a closer look at each of its three paragraphs.</p>
+
<p>As soon as we've corrected the error—by <em><b>founding</b></em> <em><b>information</b></em> on pragmatic grounds, by conceiving it and handling it as a human-made thing for human purposes—we are bound to recreate or <em><b>federate</b></em> also the method, and create a <em><b>methodology</b></em> (see <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> stemming from <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> on the left); and of course also the social process, or communication (<em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> stems from <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> on the right).</p>
<p>The first paragraph sets the stage for Doug's core discovery.
+
 
<blockquote>Many years ago I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems.</blockquote>
+
-------
Doug's observation posited on his second slide, that our civilization was rushing into the future at an accelerating speed, led him to identify the accelerated or "exponential" growth of a single factor, "complexity times urgency", as a core challenge to be tackled by "augmenting our collective intelligence". </p>
+
 
<p>The second paragraph frames the core of Engelbart's vision.
+
Let me begin with what I see as Bohm's main point: Our thinking and speech are not automatically "free" when physical forms of censorship and compulsion are removed; we live in a web of human relationships—and subtle suggestions in body language, or even just simply <em>incomprehension</em>, can suffice to keep us "in the box".</p>  
<blockquote>Computers, high-speed communications, displays, interfaces—as if suddenly, in an evolutionary sense, we are getting a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms.</blockquote>
+
<h3>Bohm conceived his "dialogue" as a means of collective liberation.</h3>  
"A super new nervous system!" The reference here is to the completely new capability that the new media technology affords us. Doug called it CoDIAK (for Concurrent Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge). The key point is in the word "concurrent". We are linked together in such a way that we can think together and create together – as if we were nerve cells in a single organism. You put something on the Web and <em>instantly</em> anyone in the world can see it! People can be subscribed and be notified. You may have a question – someone else may have an answer... Compare this to the printing press – which could only vastly speed up what the people (the scribes, or the monks in the monasteries) were <em>already</em> doing – copying manuscripts. But the principle of operation remained the same – publishing! But when we are all connected to each other through interactive media technology – <em>completely new</em> processes become possible. And as we shall see – also <em>necessary</em>!</p>
+
<p>As next-generation modern physicist (a student of Oppenheimer and younger friend and protege of Einstein), who extended the paradigm of new physics to studies of creativity and communication, Bohm may well serve as an icon for the line of work we are about to develop. "The point is that this notion of dialogue and common consciousness suggests that there is some way out of our collective difficulties" is the first of a number of wonderful quotations of Bohm
<p>To see how this may help us deal with complexity and urgency of problems, imagine your own organism going toward a wall. (You may think this matter is simple – but we know <em>scientifically</em> that there is some quite complex processing of sensory data that leads to this gestalt.) Imagine now that your eyes see that something is wrong, but are trying to communicate it to the brain by publishing research articles in some specialized field of science. Imagine furthermore that the cells in your nervous system have not specialized and organized themselves to make sense of impulses, filter out the less relevant ones... Imagine that everyone in your body is using the nervous system to merely <em>broadcast</em> information! Would you be confused? Well that's exactly the condition in which the development of information technology has brought us to. </p>
 
<p>The third paragraph points to the unfulfilled part, which remained only a dream.
 
<blockquote>I dreamed that people could seriously appreciate the potential of harnessing the technological and social nervous system to improve the collective IQ of our various organizations.</blockquote>
 
Technological <em>and</em> social nervous system. Doug never tired of emphasizing that what the technology does and what the people do must evolve together. And that progress of  the "tools system" has not been paralleled with a similar progress of the "human system".  </p>
 
<h3>The incredible part</h3>
 
<p>There are several points that make this history of Doug in a true sense incredible. The first one is that he had this epiphany already in  1951, when there were only a handful of computers in the world, and (practically) nobody had seen one. Those computers were gigantic monsters made out of old-fashioned radio tubes; and they served exclusively for scientific calculations in large labs such as Los Alamos. At that point Doug saw people linked to computers via interactive video terminals, and through computers to each other, through an interactive network. </p>
 
<p>The other incredible point is that he tried for more than a half-century to explain his insight to the Silicon Valley – and failed!</p>
 
<p>We like to point out that on the many occasions where Engelbart was talking, or being celebrated, there was an 'invisible elephant' in the room (we use this metaphor, of an [[invisible elephant]], to point to the large societal paradigm that is emerging from the fog of our awareness). What Engelbart was pointing toward (just look at the above photo), where he wanted to take us by issuing his "call to action" (as we shall see in more detail below) was a whole new paradigm – first of all in IT innovation, then in creative work, and then in the evolution of our knowledge, and by extension in the evolution of our society at large. What he ended up with was a mere little mouse!</p>
 
<p>If you now google Engelbart's 2007 presentation at Google and watch the recording of the event and its presentation on Youtube, you will see that Doug is introduced as "the inventor of the computer mouse"; that no call to action was mentioned; and that the four slides we showed above – which were (as we shall see below) needed to understand the meaning and the value of his technical contributions, not to speak of those not yet seen and implemented ones – <em>were not even shown</em> on this event!</p>
 
<h3>The invisible elephant</h3>
 
<p>And so it turned out that every time Doug was giving a talk, or being celebrated, there was (metaphorically speaking – we use single quotes to enclose our metaphors) an 'invisible elephant' in the room. A huge exotic animal in the midst of an urban lecture hall – should this not be a major sensation? But alas, the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] remained invisible! And so while our hero was enthusiastically describing this yet unseen animal's ears and trunk and tail, the audience heard him only talk about a fan and a hose and a rope. Naturally, they failed to make the connections.</p>
 
<h3>A story worth telling</h3>
 
<p>You may now see some of the reasons why we found this history worth telling. One of them is that it's a true sensation when we properly understand it, and also a most relevant one – because it points to paradigm-related cognitive impediments, which hinder even the smartest and most successful among us to understand or even to <em>hear</em> (for an entire half-century!)  an insight whose nature is to challenge and shift  the prevailing paradigm (think of Galilei in prison).</p>
 
<p>Another reason – why we told this story on multiple occasions, for example as a springboard story at the opening of the Leadership and Systemic Innovation PhD program at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, which we'll come back to further below. So many economies and regions around the globe tried, and often failed, to transplant the entrepreneurial culture and activity of the Silicon Valley to their own soil. This story shows that something else – something much larger indeed – may be not only possible but also easy; something that the Silicon Valley <em>failed</em> to achieve or even understand – owing to the idiosyncrasies of its culture. </p>
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
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<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The future has already begun</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Be the systems you want to see in the world</h3>
 
<p>Fortunately, our story has a happy ending. (...) </p>
 
<p>Less than two weeks after Douglas Engelbart passed away – on July 2, 2013 – his dream was coming true in an academic community. AND the place could not be more potentially impactful than it was! As the President of the ISSS, on the yearly conference of this largest organization of systems scientists, which was taking place in Haiphong, Vietnam, Alexander Laszlo initiated a self-organization toward collective intelligence. </p>
 
  
<p>He really had two pivotal ideas. One was to make the community intelligent. The other one was to make an intelligent system for coordinating change initiatives around the globe. (An extension of.... TBA).</p>
 
<p>Alexander was practically born into systemic innovation. Didn’t his father Ervin, himself a creative leader in the systems community,  point out that our choice was “evolution or extinction” in the very title of one of his books? And so evolution naturally became Alexander’s choice (we are here talking, of course, about the evolution of our knowledge-work and other systems, so that they may give a suitable orientation to the technological and cultural and social-systemic and other important aspects of our evolution). Alexander’s PhD advisor, Hasan Özbekhan, wrote the first 150-page systemic innovation theory (as part of a project initiated by Jantsch), at the point (in 1968), when systemic innovation was recognized (by the creative elite) as a necessary step toward the resolution of the global issues (which the same elite already then recognized as urgent).  Later Alexander worked closely in the circle of Bela Banathy, who for a period of a couple of decades held the torch of the systemic innovation–related developments in the systems community.</p>
 
<p>Last not least, as a prominent member of the systems community, as the leader of the International Society for the Systems Sciences Advisory Board and of the Bertalanffy Center in Vienna, Alexander is well positioned to [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]]  the state-of-the-art of the systems sciences into these initiatives.  </p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Laszlo.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Alexander Laszlo]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We are here to build a bridge</h3>
 
<p>We came to Haiphong with the story about Jantsch and Engelbart; and with the proposal "We are here to build a bridge"...</p>
 
<p>And indeed – the bridge has been built! The two initiatives have federated their activities most beautifully!</p>
 
<p>Prototypes include LaSI SIG & PHD program, the SIL... And The Lighthouse project, among others.</p>
 
<p>The meaning of [[The Lighthouse]] (although it belongs really to prototypes, and to Applications): It breaks the spell of the Wiener's paradox. It creates a lighthouse, for the systems community, to attract stray ships to their harbor. It employs strategic - political thinking, systemic self-organization in a research community, and contemporary communication design, to create impactful messages about a single issue, and placing them into the orbit:  CAN WE TRUST "THE MARKET"? or do we need systemic understanding and innovation and design?</p></div>
 
</div>
 
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<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>See</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Evangelizing systemic innovation.</h3>
 
<p>The emerging societal paradigm is often seen as a result of some specific change, for example to "the spiritual outlook on life", or to "systemic thinking". A down-on-earth, life-changing insight can, however, more easily be reached by observing the stupendous inadequacy of our various institutions and other systems, and understanding it as a consequence of our present values and way of looking at the world. The "evangelizing prototypes" are real-life histories and sometimes fictional stories, whose purpose is to bring this large insight or [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] across.  They point to uncommonly large possibilities for improving our condition by improving the systems. A good place to begin may be the blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/ode-to-self-organization-part-one/ Ode to Self-Organization – Part One], which is a finctional story about how we got sustainable. What started the process was a scientist observing that even though we have all those incredible time-saving and labor-saving gadgets – we seem to be more busy than the people ever were! What happened with all that time we saved? (What do you think...?) [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/toward-a-scientific-understanding-and-treatment-of-problems/ Toward a Scientific Understanding and Treatment of Problems] is an argument for the systemic approach that uses the metaphor of scientific medicine (which cures the unpleasant symptoms by relying on its understanding of the underlying anatomy and physiology) to point to an analogous approach to our societal ills. The [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2342lis6oqs4gg4/SI%20Positively.m4v?dl=0 Systemic Innovation Positively] recording of a half-hour lecture points to some larger-than-life benefits that may result. The already mentioned introductory part (and Vision Quest) of [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/2574/ The Game-Changing Game] is  a different summary of those benefits. The blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/information-age-coming-of-age/ Information Age Coming of Age] is the history of the creation and presentation (at the Bay Area Future Salon) of The Game-Changing Game, which involves Doug Engelbart, Bill and Roberta English and some other key people from the Engelbart's intimate community.</p>
 
<h3>Evangelizing knowledge federation.</h3>
 
<p>The wastefulness and mis-evolution of our financial system is of course notorious. Yet perhaps even more spectacular examples of mis-evolution, and far more readily accessible possibilities for contribution through improvement, may be found in our own system – knowledge-work in general, and academic research, communication and education in particular. (One might say that the bankers are doing a good job making money for the people who have money...) That is what these evangelizing prototypes for knowledge federation are intended to show. On several occasions we began by asking the audience to imagine meeting a fairy and being approached by (the academic variant of) the usual question "Make a wish – for the largest contribution to human knowledge you may be able to imagine!" What would you wish for? We then asked the audience to think about the global knowledge work as a mechanism or algorithm; and to imagine what sort of contribution to knowledge a significant improvement to this algorithm would be. We then re-told the story about the post-war sociology, as told by Pierre Bourdieu, to show that even enormously large, orders-of-magnitude improvements are possible! Hear the beginning of our 2009  [http://folk.uio.no/dino/KF/KF.swf evangelizing talk at the Trinity College, Dublin], or read (a milder version) at the beginning of [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-552/Karabeg-Lachica-KF08.pdf this article].</p>
 
<p>[[Knowledge Work Has a Flat Tire]] is a springboard story we told was the beginning of one of our two 2011 Knowledge Federation introductory talks to Stanford University, Silicon Valley and the world of innovation (see the blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/knowledge-federation-an-enabler-of-systemic-innovation/ Knowledge Federation – an Enabler of Systemic Innovation], and the article linked therein). [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/eight-vignettes-to-evangelize-a-paradigm/ Eight Vignettes to Evangelize a Paradigm] is a collection of such stories.</p>
 
<h3>Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
 
<p>When the above stories are heard and digested, not only the story of Engelbart must seem incredible, but really the entire big thing: How can it be possible that we the people have ignored insights whose importance literally cannot be overstated? Why don't we innovate on the level of our basic institutions or systems – just as we innovate in technology? Why is there this surreal gap between our cleverness in the small (think of your smart phone) and our lack of attention to the infinitely larger and incomparably more imortant (our knowledge work at large)? What is really going on? Perhaps there is something we need to understand about ourselves, something very basic, that we haven't seen before? It turns out – and isn't this what the large paradigm changes really are about – that the heart of the matter will be in an entirely different perception of the human condition, with entirely new issues... Here is where the real story begins – and it involves weaving together the research and the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities. That is what The Paradigm Strategy poster aims to model, as one of our prototypes. Here is where the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] are woven together into all those higher-level constructs: [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], and ultimately to a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]], showing what is to be done. The [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] here represent sociology, linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy... They include Bauman, Bourdieu, Chomsky, Damasio, Nietzsche... We'll say more about the substance of this conversation piece in Federation through Conversations. For now you may just explore [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The Paradigm Strategy poster] on your own.
 
</p>
 
<h3>Systemic Innovation book</h3>
 
<p>"Systemic Innovation" is the title of the book manuscript in the making, which is intended to be the second book in [[Knowledge Federation Trilogy]] (a small book series with which we intend to break the news about [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to the general public – and initiate the corresponding dialog). The tentative subtitle of this book is "Democracy for the Third Millennium".</p>
 
<p>A note about the subtitle: In the present and so stubbornly persisting order of things or paradigm, "democracy" is the institutions and processes that we associate with this word ("free elections", "free press"...). It is commonly assumed that when all this is in place, then so is democracy – and we the people are in control. The nightmare scenario in this order of things is a dictatorship – where a dictator has taken from the people all those affordances of control and tokens of freedom. But there's a <em>worse</em> scenario – and that's what Engelbart's second slide at Google was pointing to – where <em>nobody</em> has control, simply because the system or systems in which we ride into the future do not afford the possibility of control <em>by design</em>. The dictator may come to his senses; his more reasonable son may succeed him. But if our ride into the future is such that <em>nobody</em> can control it – then we really have a problem!</p>
 
<p>The book narrative weaves together the histories of Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch, as two visionary thinkers who lived and worked in close vicinity to each other, near the two ends of the Golden Gate bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay. Each of them needed the other one to complete his dream (give us the people the vision and control we need to steer safely into the future); and yet they never met or collaborated – and it is uncertain whether at all they knew about each other. This story is of course a metaphor for the two lines of activity that those two unordinary men represent as interests and as icons – technological innovation / knowledge media / [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] (Engelbart), and systems science / contemporary issues / [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] (Jantsch). And for the need to combine those two lines of activity.</p>
 
<p>While this book is being written, let's just share here another story and [[thread|<em>thread</em>]] – which will both touch upon a theme from Engelbart's 2007 presentation at Google which we've so far ignored ("the breaking controls" on his second slide), and give a hint that may explain the subtitle.</p>
 
<p>So imagine a bright young man, Jørgen Randers by name, traveling from Oslo to Boston, in 1969, to do a doctorate in physics at the MIT. And who – having heard a talk by Jay Forrester (systems scientist and founding father of "system dynamics") decided (just as Jantsch did a bit earlier in time and a bit later in his career) that it would not be physics but systems sciences that his career would be devoted to.</p>
 
<p>Jørgen ended up being one of the four authors, all just as young as he was, of what is still most sold and most talked about book on the environmental issues – The Club of Rome report "The Limits to Growth". So imagine now that this bright young man reached the conclusion that our civilization would eventually come to a bitter end – unless... </p>
 
<p>What followed was a series of nonsensical public debates, which marked Jørgen's life. </p>Much later he would bring his experiences to the conclusion that "The need is for ..." – see him say that in [https://youtu.be/SzUKVqD-xKs?t=4m27s the trailer of The Last Call documentary] (the entire six-minute trailer is of course well worth you time and attention). All that really needed to be said – and that is difficult to argue with <em>even without</em> the simulation study – is that our civilization needs 'brakes' – see
 
<ul>
 
<li>The article [http://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings57th/article/view/2080/727 Bootstrapping Social-Systemic Evolution], by which Knowledge Federation introduced itself to the systems community at the above-mentioned ISSS57 conference in Haiphong.</li>
 
<li>The [https://www.dropbox.com/s/sirn5scutkgrm6w/Democracy%202.0.m4v?dl=0 recording of a lecture] where this is told as a springboard story in Democracy 2.0 lecture series at Buenos Aires Institute of Technology</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
<p>The book then sets the stage for a short survey of the contemporary developments, including the development of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], as we briefly pointed out above. </p>
 
<ul>
 
<li>The Incredible History of Doug continues. We proposed to some of the leaders at Google and at Stanford University, who knew us from before, to take advantage of this year's 50th anniversary of Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" and correct the historical errors by (1) explaining his vision and contributions, and giving him proper credit; (2) extending that line of action into institutionalizing his work and vision – and thereby "completing Engelbart's unfinished revolution" see [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1isj9-vsEkjikt9wYG9xYhj8az9904CaFl-Ko9qxzjXw/edit?usp=sharing this Google document].</li>
 
  
</ul>
+
-------
</div></div>
 
  
<!-- OLD BEGINNING
 
  
<p>[[File:Elephants.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Presentation slide pointing to our goal.</center></small></p>
+
<p>We have now come to <em>the</em> important step <em><b>three</b></em>; which takes us from information to action; which is represented  by the second horizontal line in the Holotopia ideogram. The nature or the course of the "action" here—to <em><b>make things whole</b></em>—follows from the <em><b>five points</b></em>; and defines the <em><b>holotopia</b></em> initiative.</p>
<p></p>
+
<h3>What <em>are</em> those "things" we need to make <em>whole</em>?</h3>  
<div class="row">
+
<p>The first thing you want to <em><b>know</b></em> about <em><b>wholeness</b></em> is that it is all-inclusive: <em>We</em> cannot be <em><b>whole</b></em> unless our social and natural environments are <em><b>whole</b></em> and vice versa. Which is the reason why this "action" line is connecting <em><b>convenience paradox</b></em> on its left with <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> on its right. The <em><b>point</b></em> of the former being that there is a <em>comprehensively</em> better way to be human—"better" in <em>all</em> of its important dimensions including emotions, ethics, physical wellbeing <em>and</em> creativity; and the point of the latter being that there is a <em>radically</em> better way to organize us as society—and dramatically enhance the effectiveness of our work, the flourishing of our culture and importantly, the benefits we draw from our creative efforts of various kinds. </p>
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Glimpses of an emerging paradigm</h2></div>
+
<h3>The point of it all is that those two realms of improvement opportunities depend on each other.</h3>  
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Our goal is to see the whole</h3>
+
<p>It is only when we've reconfigured our <em><b>systems</b></em> that the pursuit of inner <em><b>wholeness</b></em> will truly be possible; and it is only when we've grown insightful and wise enough to collaborate and self-organize instead of competing—that we'll be able to reconfigure our <em><b>systems</b></em>.</p>
<p>Although we shall not talk about him directly, the elephant in the above [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] is the main protagonist of our stories. It is a glimpse of him that we want to give by talking about all those people and events. This visual metaphor represents the whole big thing – the Renaissance-like change that now wants to emerge. The elephant is invisible, but we will have glimpses of him as soon as we begin to 'connect the dots'. And that's what we are about to do.</p>
+
<h3>I let the <em>holotopia principle</em> point, by its simplicity, to the difference that <em>transdisciplinarity</em> will make.</h3>  
<p>Recall once again Galilei in house prison, the image which we are using here to point to repressed, or not-yet-heard voices of change. Galilei was not tried for his belief in Heliocentricity; that's just a minor technical detail. The big point was that he dared to state in public that when the reason contradicts the scriptures, it is still legitimate to be open to the possibility that the reason might be right. Today there is no Inquisition, and practically no censorship – and yet (as Italo Calvino observed decades ago, when still only the printed text was competing for our attention) the overabundance of our unorgarnized information will do the censoring just as well. And there are also other factors in play, which we will come back to. </p>
+
<p>Have a look at the all-important transition from step <em><b>two</b></em> to step <em><b>three</b></em>: The <em><b>paradigm</b></em> change will happen (only) when we the people elevate ourselves to the (metaphorical) <em><b>mountain</b></em> top from where we can jointly see and follow this new direction.</p>  
<h3>What the visionaries see</h3>
+
<h3>Only <em>science</em> can achieve that.</h3>  
<p>It has been said that a visionary is a person who looks at the same things all of us look at, and sees something different. What we here call [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] are the people with an uncommon ability. You may call it intuition, or creative imagination. We think of it as <em>soaring intelligence</em>: Where the rest of might be painstakingly trying to fit the pieces together, they appear to somehow <em>see through</em> the pieces, and anticipate how they might fit together in a completely new way.</p>
+
<p>The <em><b>paradigm</b></em> change will not be possible unless step <em><b>two</b></em> has been performed with the esteem and credibility that (only) the brand "science" enjoys. Which brings us back to this proposal—to establish academic work on a <em>different</em> foundation, which <em><b>design epistemology</b></em> and Modernity ideogram point to; and develop on this <em><b>foundation</b></em> <em>new</em> methods and <em>different</em> social processes of communication—which <em><b>polyscopic methodology</b></em> and <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as <em><b>insights</b></em> point to.</p>
<p>Some difficulties are, however, inherent in this kind of seeing. Even a visionary can see (metaphorically) only a part of the elephant. This is because [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]], or the elephant, is so large and complex that anyone can look at it only from a certain angle, which is defined by his or her field of interest and background. And when a visionary tries to explain what he sees to the rest of us, then there's another problem – even suitable words are lacking. So we may hear him talk about a rope, a fan or a hose – when really what he's talking about is the large animal's tail, or ear, or trunk.</p>
+
<p>Today we rely on humanities and social sciences to tell us what we need to know about ourselves and our society.</p>  
<h3>Why visionaries fail to communicate</h3>
+
<h3>How suitable is their <em>system</em> for this all-important role?</h3>
<p>The reasons are complex, and the phenomenon is fascinating. We shall look into deeper reasons as we go along. But the large and obvious reason is that they are trying to show us the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], or some of its specific parts. And that our communication, presently, is conceived as fitting things into a (old) paradigm! And so naturally we only hear what fits in, and ignore what doesn't. But (and you will see some quite wonderful examples in a moment) – the real value of the giants' insight is exactly that it <em>changes</em> (improves) the conventional order of things.</p>
+
<p>In 2009, while on sabbatical in San Francisco Bay Area (to hand-pick a team for <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>'s second workshop in Dubrovnik that would represent the state of the art in academic and other domains that are necessary for composing the <em><b>transdiscipline</b></em>), I had a memorable meeting with Doug and Karen Engelbart in Doug's SRI office; to which I contributed some delicious locally grown tangerines and a draft of the statement-of-purpose article for <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> I was then editing, which I dedicated to Doug. This article was subsequently published online within the CEUR Workshop Proceeding series. Here too I clarified my call to action—to add an evolutionary organ to the academic <em><b>system</b></em>—by sharing <em><b>vignettes</b></em>; which illustrated how this <em><b>system</b></em> is <em>currently</em> evolving. It is tempting to just copy from it and paste, and I won't resist the temptation:</p>
<p>And so we undertake to enable us to take advantage of the heritage, the jewels we have – by materializing the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] sufficiently so that new things can be understood in its context, and fitted in.</p>
+
<p>‟After the Second World War sociology grew dramatically, and by the 1980s the number of sociologists and sociology publications increased more than five-fold. At the same time, sociology divided itself into a number of regional and methodological sub-specialties, which were rapidly losing contact with one another.</p>  
<p>You will now easily understand why our primary interest is not to find out what some [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] "really saw" (even he would not be able to tell us that). What we are above all interested in is to use their views as signs on the road, and ultimately find and see 'the elephant'.</p>
+
<p>The disadvantages of this style of organization were easily recognized, and in 1989 a conference was organized by two leading researchers, European Pierre Bourdieu and American James Coleman, to explore the possibility of bridging the dividing lines and putting sociology back together. In the epilog to the book that resulted from this conference, titled ‛On the possibility of a field of world sociology’Bourdieu argued that ‛the progress of scientific reason in sociology hinges crucially on a transformation of the social organization of scientific production and communication.’ His argumentation is insightful and worth quoting:</p>
<h3>The substance of our project</h3>
+
<p>‛Max Weber (1978) reminds us that, in the art of warfare, the greatest progress originated not in technical inventions but in transformations of the social organization of the warriors, as for instance in the case of the invention of the Macedonian phalanx. One may, along the same line, ask whether a transformation of the social organization of scientific production and circulation and, in particular, of the forms of communication and exchange through which logical and empirical control is carried out would not be capable of contributing
<p></p>
+
to the progress of scientific reason in sociology—and to do so more powerfully than the refinement of new technologies of measurement or the endless warnings and ‘presuppositional’ discussions of epistemologists and methodologists. I have in mind here a scientific politique—that is, policy and politics—whose goal would be to foster scientific communication and debate across the many divisions associated with rational traditions and with the fragmentation of social science into empirical subspecialties, theoretical paradigms, and methodological schools.</p>  
<p>[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br><small><center>Our goal is to organize this activity, and foster this collective capability - of federating knowledge or 'connecting the dots'.</center></small></p>
+
<p>The same reasoning needs to be taken further. While Bourdieu’s concern was the progress of <em>sociology</em>, the problematic nature of fragmentation of sociology becomes <em>spectacular</em> when considered in the context of <em>society</em>: Its consequence is that our society no longer has <em>the sociology</em> to inform it about its problems!</p>
<p></p>
+
<p>The Club of Rome was organized to supplement this all-important role.”</p>
<p>Seeing the whole thing is of course fascinating as a spectacle – 'a large exotic animal grazing at our universities, or visiting our lecture halls without being seen'. But the view of it becomes life-changing and essential, when what we are talking about is not really an animal, and not even a finished thing, but something that <em>we</em> need to create together.</p>
+
<p>But The Club of Rome lacked the mandate to incite action—which the instituted or "official" sciences (at least in theory) enjoy.</p>
<p>So our goal is first of all a liberation from a certain fixed way of looking at things, which we acquired while growing up and through education. And then to – not exactly connect all the dots (which may be something each of us will have to do on our own), but foster this whole art, this capability we have all but lost, of connecting dots in general. We undertake to organize it as an academic, and real-world activity. We undertake to institutionalize it, give it the status of "knowledge creation" – which is what it really is, as we have already seen, and as we are about to see. </p>
 
</div></div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>The substance of this page</h3>
 
<p>So we are about to see only one small part of 'the elephant'. But this will be a crucial part. It will also be a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in its own right – a paradigm in knowledge work. In the large puzzle we need to put together, there is a piece we need to create and place in first, because it will show us what all the rest is going to look like.</p>
 
<p>In what follows we will looking at exactly the same 'piece in the puzzle' that we saw in Federation through Images. There we used keywords such as [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], and [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]], and the image of the bus with candle headlights to describe it. But while there our angle of looking and focus was on the foundations or  <em>epistemology</em>), here our point of view will be the society's new needs, and the capabilities of new technology. We will then have covered all the three main motivations for [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] that were mentioned on the front page.</p>
 
<p>We'll tell the stories of two [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] – Douglas Engelbart as the icon of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], and Erich Jantsch as the icon of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. But we'll also put on our map just a couple of the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] on whose shoulders <em>they</em> stood.</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:2Elephants.jpeg]]<br><small><center>The smaller elephant will call the larger one into existence.</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
------
 
<p>Here is one of the ways in which Peccei later framed the answer (in 1977, in The Human Qualityhis personal reflections on the human condition and his recommendation for handling it):
 
<blockquote>
 
Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world.
 
</blockquote>
 
</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 

Latest revision as of 13:32, 12 January 2024

– I cannot understand how anyone can make use of the frameworks of reference developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in order to understand the transformation into the post-traditional cosmopolitan world we live in today.


(Ulrich Beck, The Risk Society and Beyond, 2000)

To orient ourselves in the "post-traditional world" (where traditional recipes no longer work), to step beyond the "risk society" (where existential risks lurk in the dark, because we can neither comprehend nor resolve them by thinking as we did when we created them)—we must create new ways to think and speak; but how?

Here a technical idea—truth by convention—is key; I adopted it or more precisely federated it from Willard Van Orman Quine; who qualified the transition to "truth by convention" as a sign of maturing that the sciences have manifested in their evolution; so why not use it to mature our pursuit of knowledge in general? Truth by convention is the notion of truth that is usual in mathematics: Let x be... then... It is meaningless to argue whether x "really is" as defined.

Truth by convention gives us a way to create an independent reference system.

Independent, that is, from the beliefs of our traditions; and from the social "reality" or the world we live in. Truth by convention empowers us to (create information that makes it possible to) reflect about them critically.

Keywords are concepts defined by convention.

Years ago, when this work was still in infancy and before I read about guided evolution of society, I coined a pair of keywords—tradition and design—to explain the nature of the error I am inviting you to correct; the one the Modernity ideogram is pointing to. Tradition and design are two ways of thinking and being in the world; and two distinct ways of evolving culturally and socially—corresponding to the two ways in which wholeness can result: Tradition relies on spontaneous evolution (where things are adjusted to each other through many generations of use); design relies on accountability and deliberate action. Design means thinking and acting as a designer would, when designing a technical object such as a car; and making sure that the result is functional (it can take people places), and also safe, affordable, appealing etc. The point of this definition is that when tradition can no longer be relied on—design must be used.

So let us right away take a decisive step toward the design thinking and being by turning "reification" into a keyword; and explain that reification is something the traditional cultures did and had to do (to compel everyone to comply to the traditional order of things without needing to understand it); and use the Modernity ideogram to explain why we must learn to avoid reification (because it hinders us from designing i.e. from deliberately seeing things whole and making things whole).

You may now understand the error I am inviting you to correct as something (only) the traditional people could have made; and the Modernity ideogram as depicting a point of transition: We are no longer traditional; and we are not yet designing; we live in a (still haphazard) transition from one stable way of evolving and being in the world, which is no longer functioning—and another one, which is not yet in place.

Reification is the traditional approach to communication.

And to concept definition in particular. See the approach to concept definition I have just introduced as a way or the way to avoid reification.

When I define for instance "culture" by convention, and turn it into a keyword, I am not saying what culture "really is"; I am creating a way of looking at an endlessly complex real thing—and projecting it, as it were, onto some judiciously chosen plane; so that we may talk about it and comprehend it in simple and clear terms, by seeing it from a specific angle; and I'm inviting you, the reader, to see culture as it's been defined.

Defined by convention, institutions like "science" or "religion" are not reified as what they currently are—but defined as means to an end i.e. in terms of a certain specific function or a collection of functions in the system of society; so that we may adapt the actual institutions to those functions.

Keyword creation is a form for linguistic and institutional recycling.

Often but not always, keywords are adopted from the repertoire of a frontier thinker, an academic field or a cultural tradition; they then enable us to federate what's been comprehended or experienced in some of our culture's dislodged compartments.

Keywords enable us to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and see further.

Paradigm

I use the keyword paradigm informally, to point to a societal and cultural order of things as a whole; and to explain the strategy for solving "the huge problems now confronting us" and continuing cultural evolution I am proposing to implement—which is to enable the paradigm to change; from the one we presently live in, which I'll characterize as materialism—all the way to holotopia.

Elephant.jpg

The purpose of knowledge federation is to (enable us to) connect the dots.

I use the keyword elephant as a nickname for holotopia when I want to be even more informal—and highlight that it's a coherent order of things where everything depends on everything else, as the organs of an elephant do.

I also use elephant as metaphor and keyword to motivate the strategy I have just mentioned by pointing to a paradox: Paradigms resist change; you just can't fit an elephant's ear onto a mouse! And yet comprehensive change, of a paradigm as a whole, can be natural and effortless—when the conditions for it are ripe.

We live in such a time.

When all the data points that are needed for constituting an entirely different paradigm are already there; so that all that remains is—to connect the dots; or more accurately—to restore our collective capability to connect the dots.

Which is what knowledge federation proposal is all about.

The elephant was in the room when the 20th century’s giants wrote or spoke; but we failed to see him because of the jungleness of our information; and because of disciplinary and cultural fragmentation; and because our thinking and communication are still as the traditions shaped them. We heard the giants talk about a ‘thick snake’, a ‘fan’, a ‘tree-trunk’ and a ‘rope’, often in Greek or Latin; they didn’t make sense and we ignored them. How differently our information fares when we understand that it was the ‘trunk’, the ‘ear’, the ‘leg’ and the ‘tail’ of a vast exotic ‘animal’ they were talking about; whose very existence we ignore!

Transdisciplinarity, as prototyped by knowledge federation is also a paradigm—in information; which will empower us to connect the dots and manifest the comprehensive paradigm. You may now comprehend this call to action (to institute transdisciplinarity or knowledge federation academically) as a call to mobilize the power that our society has invested in science and in the university institution at large—to design the process and be the process by which the society's 'candle headlights' will be turned into the real thing. This process must be designed because no matter how hard we try—we'll never create the lightbulb by incrementally improving the candle. To substitute 'the lightbulb' for 'the candle' we must design a suitable process; which (a moment of thought might be necessary to see why) will have to include a prototype.

Knowledge federation is both the process and the prototype.

Science enabled the existing paradigm to come about; transdisciplinarity must be in place to enable us to transition to the next one.

I use the keyword paradigm also more formally, as Thomas Kuhn did—to point to

  • a different way to conceive a domain of interest, which
  • resolves the reported anomalies and
  • opens a new frontier to research and development.

Only here the domain of interest is not a conventional academic field, where paradigm changes have been relatively common—but information and knowledge and cultural evolution at large.

In what follows I will structure my case for transdisciplinarity alias knowledge federation as a paradigm proposal—i.e. as a reconception of information and other categories on which our evolutionary course depends; and show how this reconception enables us to resolve the anomalies that thwart our efforts to comprehend and handle the core or pivotal themes of our lives and times; and how those anomalies are resolved by the proposed approach; and how this reconception opens up a creative frontier closely similar to the one that began to blossom after Galilei's and Descartes' time—where the next-generation scientists will be empowered to be creative in ways and degrees as the founders of Scientific Revolution were creative; and as the condition of their world will necessitate.

– Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.
(René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641)

Logos

The Liberation book opens with the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest—at the point in humanity's evolution when a sweeping paradigm shift was about to take place; the book then draws a parallel between that moment in history and the time we live in. So let me right away turn "mind" into a keyword; and use it to point out that liberating the way we use the mind and allowing it to change is—and has always been—the way to enable the paradigm to change; or the way to change course. I give the keyword mind a more general meaning meaning than this word usually has; closer to its French cognate "esprit", as Descartes used it in the title of his unfinished work Règles pour la direction de l'esprit (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). Indeed (as I pointed out in Liberation book's ninth chapter, which has "Liberation of Science" as title)—the course of action I am proposing can be seen as the "it's about time" continuation of Descartes' all-important project.

Transdisciplinarity, as prototyped by knowledge federation, is envisioned as a liberated academic space where the next-generation scientists will be empowered to be creative in ways as Galilei and Descartes were creative—and "start again right from the foundations"; and design the way(s) they do science (instead of blindly inheriting them from tradition).

I also coin logos as keyword; and erect is as banner demarcating this frontier, and inviting to the next scientific revolution; where we'll again liberate the mind (from compliance to "logic" as fixed and eternal "right" way to think; and from the suffix "logy" which we use to name scientific disciplines—and suggest that they embody logos; and compel us to comply to the hereditary procedures they embody). Logos as 'banner' invites (next-generation) scientists to revive an age-old quest—for the correct way to use the mind; by pointing to its historicity (i.e. that it did change in the past and will change again).

"In the beginning was logos and logos was with God and logos was God." To Hellenic thinkers logos was the principle according to which God organized the world; which makes it possible to us humans to comprehend the world correctly—provided we align with it the way we use our minds. How exactly we may achieve that—there the opinions differed; and gave rise to a multitude of philosophical schools and traditions.

But "logos" faired poorly in the post-Hellenic world; neither Latin nor the modern languages offered a suitable translation. For about a millennium our European ancestors believed that logos had been revealed to us humans by God's own son; and considered questioning that to be the deadly sin of pride, and a heresy.

The scientific revolution unfolded as a reaction to earlier theological or "teleological" explanations of natural phenomena; as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his University of Oslo talk "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding", its founders insisted that a "scientific" explanation must not rely on a 'ghost' acting within 'the machine'; that the natural phenomena must be explained in ways that are completely comprehensible to the mind—as one would explain the functioning of a clockwork.

Initially, science and church or tradition coexisted side by side—the latter providing the know-what and the former the know-how; but then right around mid-19th century, when Darwin stepped on the scene, the way to use the mind that science brought along discredited the mindset of tradition; and it appeared to educated masses that science was the answer; that science was the right way to knowledge.

So here is my point—what I wanted to tell you by reviving this old word, and restoring it to function: The way we use the mind today—on which materialism grew—has not been chosen on pragmatic grounds; indeed it has not been chosen at all—but simply adopted or adapted from what people saw as "scientific" way to think; in the 19th century, when the educated masses abandoned the belief that logos was revealed and recorded once and for all in the Bible. And it was by this same sequence of historical accidents that science (which had been developed for an entirely different purpose—to unravel the mechanisms of nature) ended up in the the much larger role of "Grand Revelatory of modern Western culture" as Benjamin Lee Whorf branded it in Language, truth and reality.

That's how we ended up with 'candles' as 'headlights'.

– The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
(Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix.)

Materialism

Before we turn to holotopia, let's take a moment and theorize our present paradigm. What I'm calling materialism is not an actual but a theoretical or "ideal" order of things—which follows as consequence of the cultural–fundamental coup I've just described; where the traditional ideas and ideals (which, while far from perfect, used to provide people know-what) have been abandoned, and a proper replacement has not yet been found or even sought for. Here's the gist of it, in a nutshell, and I'll put it crudely: I acquire some material thing and this gives me a pleasurable feeling; and I interpret what happened in causal terms—and see the acquisition as cause and the gratifying feeling as its consequence; and I conceive my "pursuit of happiness" accordingly.

See materialism's way to use the mind as a travesty of science; and materialism itself as the cultural and social order of things that follows from its consistent application—where (a certain causal clockwork-like comprehension of) "the material world" is used as a measure of all things; where the direct experience of the material world, what feels attractive or unattractive, is presumed to be an experimental fact of sorts and promoted to the status of "interests" or "needs"; and allowed to determine or to be our know-what—so that all that remains is technical know-how; the knowledge of how to acquire what we want or need; by competing Darwin-style within systems conceived as a "fair" or "zero-sum" games.

In materialism, (direct experience of, and mechanistic-comprehension of) "material reality" serves as reference system.

Anthony Giddens wrote in Modernity and Self-Identity) in 1991: “The threat of personal meaninglessness is ordinarily held at bay because routinised activities, in combination with basic trust, sustain ontological security. Potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems. Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality; to be able to control one’s life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities.”

In materialism "success" (what works in practice) is used for orientation.

"Mind could be introduced into the general picture only as a kind of mirror of the material world", Werner Heisenberg wrote in Physics ad Philosophy. Not having any guiding ideas or principles, in materialism people use direct experience or convenience to make choices; they simply this complex and pivotal matter by reifying the way they experience the material world; they reify their wants as their "needs". The rest is then just the matter of know-how—of how to acquire the material things one "needs".

"Convenience"—reaching out toward what feels attractive—is materialism's "core value".

Which follows from its characteristic way to use the mind (whereby only "the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided" are considered as possible or relevant or "real", as Heisenberg pointed out)–and considers those things and only those things that appear attractive to our senses as real and worth pursuing (technical science here won't be of much help); and in this way decides or circumvents the larger issue of know-what, so that know-how (how to acquire the things we "need") is all that remains.

"Doxa" is the keyword that Pierre Bourdieu used (he adopted it from Max Weber, but its usage dates as far back as Aristotle) to point to corresponding phenomenology: The more familiar word "orthodoxy" means believing that one's own worldview or paradigm is the only "right" one; doxa ignores even the existence of alternatives; it means believing that the existing social reality is in a similar way immutable and real as the physical world is. You may comprehend doxa as an addiction—which results when the mind's adaptive function (which evolved to help us adapt and function in the natural world) is applied so that the social world is experienced as "the reality" to which we must adapt. In Liberation book's Chapter Nine I point out how Socrates demonstrated that we humans tend to be victims of doxa and have belief instead of knowledge; and how Plato instituted the Academia to help his fellow humans evolve knowledge-based, by creating general insights and principles.

Once again the (evolution of) academic tradition, and the human mind, must be liberated.

Just as the case was in Galilei's time.

From the movie The Matrix I'll adopt the world as keyword—and use it to point to this so enticing yet sinister addiction that materialism thrives on—the addiction to "reality"; to "success"; which compels us to reproduce the dysfunctional habits and systems all the way until the bitter end; and to point to the urgent duty we have as generation.

Transdisciplinarity and holotopia are conceived as steps toward liberating our next generation from the world.

– [T]he nineteenth century developed an extremely rigid frame for natural science which formed not only science but also the general outlook of great masses of people.
(Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1958.)

Design epistemology

You'll comprehend the category from which this foundational of holotopia's five points stems if you think of the subtle ambiguity in the word "foundation", as it's been used in this context: What Descartes was searching for, when he used that word, was the Archimedean point for acquiring "objectively true" knowledge—of "reality" as it "truly is"; which (he took this for granted) would be revealed to the mind as the sensation of absolute certainty; and which, when found (he and his colleagues also believed) would remain the lasting truth forever.

What I call foundation is what information is founded on; and culture as a whole; which—just as information—needs to be seen as a human-made thing for human purposes; so that when the foundation changes (as it did in Darwin's time)—we need to deliberately secure that the new foundation is still suitable for the all-important function it needs to perform.

I'll use ontological and pragmatic as keywords to pinpoint the nature of the fundamental error I've been telling you about, and how I propose to correct it; and say that a foundation is ontological if it rests upon the intrinsic nature of things or "reality"; that a certain way to (found) knowledge is the right one because it gives us "objective" knowledge, of the world as it truly is. My point is that we (the institution in control of this matter, the academia) must urgently develop a significant part of our activity on a pragmatic foundation—because science as it is does not tell us how to solve "the huge problems now confronting us".

And because the foundation we have is not a one on which the cultural evolution can continue.

When Nietzsche diagnosed, famously, that "Got ist tot!" (God is dead), he did not of course mean that God physically died; but that religion no longer had a foundation to stand on, that it was about to be eroded; which was needless to say true not only of religion—but of culture at large.

In the late 1990s, when this line of work was still beginning to take shape, I drafted a book manuscript titled What's Going on? and subtitled "A Cultural Renewal". The book was conceived as an information holon; whose point (pointed to by its title and an ideogram on its cover—which was a house about to collapse, with a large crack extending from its foundation to its top) was what I'm telling you here—namely that "the huge problems now confronting us" are consequences of the foundation of it all being inadequate for holding the huge edifice it now supports; and that the way to solution is not fixing but rebuilding; and that this rebuilding must begin from the foundation up. And it had, of course, also this other point—that what's really going on (i.e. what we above all need to know to consider ourselves informed) is this overall gestalt; not the fine details of 'cracks in walls' that our media informing brings us daily.

As I said—the 19th century change of foundation was not done for pragmatic reasons, but for ontological ones.

People began to believe that science (not the Bible) was the right way to truth.

You'll fully comprehend the anomaly that I am proposing to unravel (and here design epistemology is a concrete proposal pointing out that this can be done, and showing how)—when you see that the ontological argument for the present foundation has been proven wrong and disowned—by science itself!

When scientists became able to zoom in on small quanta of energy-matter—they found them behaving in ways that could not be explained in the "classical" way (as Descartes and his Enlightenment colleagues demanded); and that they even contradicted the common sense (as J. Robert Oppenheimer pointed out in Uncommon Sense)! Just as the case was at the time of Copernicus—a different way to see the world, and use the mind, was necessary to enable the physical science to continue evolving.

A careful reading of Werner Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy will show that this book is conceived as a rigorous disproof of materialism's fundamental premises; and a call to action—to reconfigure and replace and revive culture, on a new foundation. His point was that—based on certain fundamental assumptions—science created a certain way to knowledge and experimental machinery; and when this machinery was applied to small quanta of matter-energy—the results contradicted the fundamental assumptions that served as departure point; so the whole thing has the logical structure of a proof by contradiction—which, in the present paradigm is a legitimate way of proving assumptions wrong.

Seeing that what they had uncovered had profound implications for our "edifice of knowledge" and culture at large—the giants of physics wrote popular books and essays to clarify or federate it. In Physics and Philosophy, in 1958, Werner Heisenberg pointed out that the foundation that our general culture imbibed from 19th century science was "so narrow and rigid that it was difficult to find a place in it for many concepts of our language that had always belonged to its very substance, for instance, the concepts of mind, of the human soul or of life." Since "the concept of reality applied to the things or events that we could perceive by our senses or that could be observed by means of the refined tools that technical science had provided", whatever failed to be founded in this way was considered impossible or unreal. This in particular applied to those parts of our culture in which our ethical sensibilities were rooted, such as religion, which "seemed now more or less only imaginary. [...] The confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking replaced all other safeguards of the human mind."

The experience of modern physics constituted a rigorous disproof of this approach to knowledge, Heisenberg explained; and concluded that "one may say that the most important change brought about by its results consists in the dissolution of this rigid frame of concepts of the nineteenth century." Heisenberg wrote Physics and Philosophy anticipating that the most valuable gift of modern physics to humanity would be a cultural transformation; which would result from the dissolution of the narrow frame.

So what is to be done?

You already know my answer—it's what the Modernity ideogram points to; namely to fist identify the function or functions that need to be served; and then create a prototype by federating whatever points of reference or evidence may be relevant to that function; just as one would do to create the lightbulb.

What I call epistemology is the result of applying this procedure (where we first federate the way we use the mind or logos; and then use it to federate a new foundation for it all.

As an insight, design eistemology shows that a broad and solid foundation for truth and meaning, and for knowledge and culture, can be developed by this approach.

The design epistemology originated by federating the state-of-the-art epistemological findings of the giants of 20th century science and philosophy; which I'll here illustrate by quoting a single one—Einstein's "epistemological credo"; which he left us in Autobiographical Notes:

“I see on the one side the totality of sense experiences and, on the other, the totality of the concepts and propositions that are laid down in books. […] The system of concepts is a creation of man, together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure of the conceptual system. […] All concepts, even those closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen posits, just as is the concept of causality, which was the point of departure for [scientific] inquiry in the first place.”

Design epistemology turns Einstein's "epistemological credo" into a convention.

And adds to it a purpose or function—the one we've been talking about all along.

Design epistemology as foundation is broad.

Since it expresses the phenomenological position (that it is human experience and not "objective reality" that information needs to reflect and communicate), the design epistemology gives us a foundation not only overcomes the narrow frame handicap that Heisenberg was objecting to—but also allows us to treat all cultural heritage, including cultural artifacts and even the rituals, mores and beliefs of traditions on an equal footing; by seeing it all as just records of human experience, in a variety of media; and finding similarities and patterns, and reaching insights or points. Instead of simply ignoring what fails to fit our "scientific" worldview or the narrow frame—the design epistemology empowers us and even obliges us to carefully consider and federate all forms of human experience that could be relevant to a theme or task at hand.

By convention, human experience has no a priori "right" interpretation or structure, which we can or need to "discover"; rather, experience is considered as something to which we assign meaning (as one would assign the meaning to an inkblot in Rorschach test). Multiple interpretations or insights or gestalts are possible.

Design epistemology as foundation is also solid.

Since it expresses (as a convention) the "constructivist credo"—that we are not "discovering objective reality" but constructing interpretations and explanations of human experience—the design epistemology turns the epistemological position that the Modernity ideogram expresses into a convention; it empowers us to do as Modernity ideogram calls upon us to do—and design the ways in which we see the world, and pursue knowledge. The resulting foundation is solid or "academically rigorous"—because it represents the epistemological state of the art; and because it's a convention. The added purpose can hardly be debated—because (from a pragmatic point of view) evolutionary guidance has become all-important; and because (from a theoretical point of view) a foundation of this kind is incomplete unless it has a purpose (which we can use to distinguish useful "constructions" from all those useless ones). This added function too is only a convention; a different one, and an altogether different way to knowledge can be created by the same approach to suit a different function.

Appeals to legitimate transdisciplinarity academically—if they were at all considered—have been routinely rejected on the account that they lacked "academic rigor". I'm afraid it will turn out that the contemporary academic conception of "rigor" is based on not much more than the sensation of certainty and clarity we experience when we've followed a certain prescribed procedure to the letter—as Stephen Toulmin suggested in his last book Return to Reason. It was logos Toulmin was urging us to return to; and that's been my proposal and call to action too.

– I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
(Abraham Maslow, Psychology of Science, 1966)

Polyscopic methodology

You'll comprehend the anomaly this holotopia's insight points to, if you see method—the category the polyscopic methodology pillar in the Holotopia ideogram stems from—as the toolkit with which we construct truth and meaning, and knowledge; and consider that—as Maslow pointed out—this method is now so specialized, that it compels us to be specialized; and choose themes and set priorities (not based on whether they are practically relevant or not, but) according to what this tool enables us to do.

As an insight, the polyscopic methodology points out that a general-purpose methodology, which alleviates this problem, can be created by the proposed approach (by applying logos or knowledge federation to method); by federating the findings of giants of science and the very techniques that have been developed in the sciences—with an aim to preserve the advantages of science, and alleviate its limitations.

Design epistemology mandates such a step: When we on the one hand acknowledge that (as far as we know) there is no conclusive truth about reality; and on the other hand, that our very existence depends on information and knowledge—we are bound to be accountable for providing knowledge about the most relevant themes (notably the ones that determine our society's evolutionary course) as well as we are able; and to of course continue to improve both our knowledge and our ways to knowledge.

As long as "reality" and its "objective" descriptions constitute our reference system and provide it a foundation—we have no way of evaluating our paradigm critically. The polyscopic methodology empowers us to develop the realm of ideas as an independent reference system; where ideas are founded (not on "correspondence with reality" but) on truth by convention; and then use clearly and academically defined ideas to develop clear and academically well-founded theories—in all walks of life; as it has been common in natural sciences. Suitable theoretical constructs, notably the patterns (defined as "abstract relationships", which have in this generalized science a similar role as mathematical functions do in traditional sciences) enable us to formulate general results and theories, including the gestalts; suitable justification methods (I prefer the word "justification" to the commonly used word "proof", for obvious reasons) can then be developed as social processes; as an up-to-date alternative to "peer reviews" (which have, needless to say, originated in a world where "scientific truth" was believed to be "objective" and ever-lasting).

The details of polyscopic methodology or polyscopy are beyond this brief sketch; and I'll only give you this hint: Once it's been formulated and theorized in the realm of ideas, a pattern can be used to justify a result; since (by convention) the substance of it all is human experience, and since (by convention) experience does not have an a priori "real" structure that can or needs to be "discovered"—a result can be configured as the claim that the dots can be connected in a certain specific way (as shown by the pattern) and make sense; and its justification can be conceived in a manner that resembles the "repeatable experiment"—which is "repeatable" to the extent that different people can see the pattern in the data. This social social process can then further be refined to embody also other desirable characteristics, such as "falsifiability"; I'll come back to this in a moment, and also show an example.

– The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future.
(Aurelio Peccei, One Hundred Pages for the Future, 1981)

Convenience paradox

How do you raise a child in a culture whose values are in significant dimensions opposite from yours?

Noah and I have been having a series of dialogs whose shared theme or red thread is epistemology (when he was a baby, I joked that "epistemology" would be the first word he'd learn). It's late December in Oslo now, Christmas is in the air; so the other day I played to Noah versions of the "Oh Happy Day" gospel by several gospel choirs on YouTube; where "Oh happy day, when Jesus washed (...) my sins away" is emphatically and enthusiastically repeated. I asked Noah to imagine what a materialist might think about this message: "Jesus died centuries ago; these poor souls don't understand that he most certainly cannot do anything for them..." And yet when you look at the faces of the gospel singers, and listen to the way they sing—you cannot but conclude that the joyful experience they are singing about does exist; that there's an exquisite sort of "high" that people can reach through certain practice; and that music or chanting in quire can help both in reaching and in communicating this experience. And if you are in doubt—you may move on next door, to the Sufis; or to the Suan Mokkh forest monastery in Southern Thailand; where the language, the symbolism and the ritual may be in some ways different and in other ways similar—and yet have the same joyful-exuberant experience as result—with interesting variations.

A vast creative frontier opens up—for academic and personal.

As soon as we step beyond the belief system of materialism—and use logos to (create epistemology and methodology and ) explore in a systematic way such basic themes as "happiness" and "values"; and importantly—how they are related to each other. Which is—now you'll now easily comprehend that—what "Religion beyond Belief", the Liberation book's subtitle is hinting at.

What I've just described was quite accurately my own way into and through this creative frontier; convenience paradox was the very first prototype result of this line of work. I presented in 1995, at Einstein Meets Magritte (in addition to a parallel methodology "prospectus" paper); and I've been working on it off and on ever since.

Convenience paradox is one of holotopia's five insights.

You'll appreciate the relevance of the convenience paradox insight if you consider it in the context of our contemporary condition: The evolutionary course of materialism—marked by growth of material production and consumption—must be urgently changed (certainly in the "developed" parts of the world, and arguably in other parts too); but to what? It seems that everyone who has looked into this question concluded that the pursuit of humanistic or cultural goals and values will have to be the answer; you can hear this straight from the horse's mouth.

You'll begin to see the anomaly this point points to if you consider the obvious—desensitization; the more our senses are stimulated—the less sensitive they'll become; but where shall we draw the line? Could fasting (and making our senses more sensitive) could be a better way to gastronomic pleasure than eating until our stomach hurt? Already at the turn of the nineteenth century Nietzsche saw his contemporary "modern" human as so overwhelmed by "the abundance of disparate impressions", that he "instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to ‘digest’ anything"; so that "a kind of adaptation to this flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside." What would Nietzsche say if he saw us today?

Convenience in the role of 'headlights' (or way to determine the know-what) leaves in the dark one whole dimension of physical reality—time; and also an important side or one could even say the important 'half' of the three dimensions of space—its inner or embodied part; I emphasize its importance because while "happiness" (or whatever else we may choose to pursue on similar grounds) appears to be "caused" by events in the outer world—it is inside us that our emotions materialize; and it is there that the difference that makes a difference can and needs to be made.

Did you notice, by the way—when you watched the video I've just shared (and if you haven't watched it, do it now; because it's the state of the world diagnosed by the world's foremost expert—who studied and federated this theme for more than four decades—condensed in a six-minute trailer)—how Dennis Meadows, while pointing in this new evolutionary direction, struggled to find the words that would do it justice; and came up with little more than "knowledge" and "music"?

This is where the Liberation book really takes off!

Its entire first half (its first five chapters) is dedicated to mapping not only specific opportunities, but five whole realms where we may dramatically improve our condition through inner development; whereby a roadmap to inner wholeness is drafted, as the book calls it. The Liberation book opens with an amusing little ruse—where a note about freedom and democracy is followed by the observation that we are free to "pursue happiness as we please"; and I imagined the reader would say "Sure—what could possibly be wrong about that?" But what do we really know about "happiness"? And whether "happiness" is at all what we out to be pursuing? Perhaps "love" could be a better choice? So let me for a moment zoom in on "love" as theme; which hardly needs an explanation—considering how much, both in our personal lives and in our culture, revolves around it: "My baby's gone, and I got the blues, It sure is awful to be lonsesome like me, Worried, weary up in a tree." The Liberation book invites us to look at this theme from a freshly different viewpoint: What sort of "love"—or what quality of love—are any of us really capable of experiencing? Can you imagine a world where we are culturally empowered to cultivate love; including our ability to experience love and importantly—to give love? In the third chapter of the Liberation book, which has "Liberation of Emotions" as title, phenomenological evidence for illuminating this realm of questions is drawn from the tradition of Sufism; in order to demonstrate that love has a spectrum of possibilities that reaches far beyond the outreach of our common experience and even awareness; and that certain kinds of practice, which combine poetry and music with meditation and ethical behavior, can make us, in the long run capable of experiencing the kinds of love whose very existence we as culture ignore; which can make our experience of poetry and music too incomparably more nuanced and rewarding.

Convenience paradox is the point of a very large information holon; which asserts (and invites us to turn it into shared and acted-upon fact, by giving it a similar visibility and credibility as what the "Newton's Laws" now enjoy) that convenience is a useless and deceptive "value", behind which a myriad opportunities to improve our lives and condition—through cultural pursuits—await to be uncovered. The rectangle of this information holon is populated by a broad range of—curated—ways to improve our condition through cultural pursuits or by human development (which Peccei qualified as the most important goal).

Originally, the convenience paradox result was conceived as a proof-of-concept application of polyscopic methodology; I showed preliminary versions of both in 1995, at the Einstein Meets Magritte conference that the transdisciplinary center Leo Apostel and Brussels Free University organized (this conference marked the turning point in my career); the corresponding articles were published in 1999 in the "Yellow Book" of the proceedings titled World Views and the Problem of Synthesis. My point was to show how the methodological approach to knowledge I've been telling you about here (which empowers us to consider all forms and all records of human experience as data; and to synthesize and justify general and overarching insights as patterns; and to communicate them and make them palpable through ideograms) can allow us to collect and combine culturally relevant experiences and insights across worldviews and cultural traditions; and to give them visibility and citizenship rights; and empower them to impact our culture. I've been working this so fascinating creative frontier ever since.

The Liberation book too is a fruit of this line of work. The entire book can be seen as a prototype of a system—for empowering or federating culture-transformative experiences and insights or memes. The book is conceived as a federation of a single such meme—the legacy and vision of Buddhadasa, Thailand's 20th century holy man and Buddhism reformer; who—anticipating that something essential may have been misunderstood—withdrew to an abandoned forest monastery near his native village Chaya, to practice and experiment as Buddha did in his day. Having seen what he found out as potential antidote to (the global onslaught of) materialism, and also as the (still widely ignored) shared essence of the great religions of the world—Buddhadasa undertook to do whatever he could to make his insight available to both Thai people and foreigners.

It should go without saying that the Buddhadasa meme (as I call it in the book) makes no sense in the context of materialism—which it undertakes to transform. The Liberation book alleviates this problem by drafting a different context—so that Buddhadasa's transformative insights can be seen as an essential elements in a new and emerging order of things (envisioned as holotopia); or metaphorically—as a vital organ of the elephant.

– Many years ago, I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems.
(Doug Engelbart, "Dreaming of the Future*, BYTE Magazine, 1995)

Knowledge federation

David Graeber and David Wengrow wrote in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity: "There is no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. A very small percentage of its population do control the fate of almost everyone else, and they are doing it in an increasingly disastrous fashion." Why am I quoting (from a book that offers us a wealth of insights, emerging from scientific studies in ethnography, about latent opportunities for configuring human relations and society that are beyond materialism) something that "everyone knows"? Because I'm about to tell you why I passionately disagree with it! And in the same breath introduce to you communication as the category from which knowledge federation stems as point or insight; and also Norbert Wiener as yet another ignored giant. And a giant he manifestly was—having earned academic degrees in mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and then a doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard while he was still a teenager! Wiener then went on to do seminal work in a variety of fields, one of which was cybernetics (but not alone; Margaret Mead was a member of the small transdisciplinary circle from which cybernetics emerged). Wiener's ignored point was already in the title of his seminal Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine: Control and communication are inextricably connected; control depends on right or correct communication. You'll see this if you just think of the bus with candle headlights: We who are in the bus do see someone sitting behind the steering wheel, and think he's in control; and there is, of course a fierce battle inside the buss for those "driver" positions (which are, indeed, available to only a few people, as Graeber & Wengrow observed). But in the larger picture—are they really in control? Will anyone benefit from steering the society in a "disastrous fashion"?

The word "cybernetics" is derived from Greek "kubernan (to steer); it is related to the English noun "government" and the verb "to govern". As an academic field, cybernetics is dedicated to the study of governability—or more precisely, what structure do systems need to have to be viably governable or "sustainable" (Wiener framed this question by using "homeostasis" as technical keyword—to point to an organism's or system's activities to maintain a stable or viable course). Wiener's all-important and still flagrantly ignored point was that "free competition" won't do (he called the belief that we can rely on it a "simpleminded theory" which contradicts the evidence). The point of it all is that to make our systems viable or "sustainable"—we must learn about the relationship between communication and control by studying living systems ("the animal") and technical systems ("the machine")—and apply the resulting insights there where they'll make the largest difference—in the design and control of society and its systems.

Isn't this what we've been talking about all along?

In social systems—composed of relatively autonomous individuals—communication is the system, Wiener pointed out in Cybernetics; and he talked about ants and bees to demonstrate that. You'll comprehend the anomaly that knowledge federation as holotopia's point points to if you consider that the "digital technology"—the interactive, network-interconnected digital media you and I use to read email and browse the Web—has been envisioned (by Doug Engelbart—already in 1951!) and developed (by his SRI-based team, and publicly demonstrated in 1968) to serve as "a collective nervous system" of a radically novel kind; and enable a quantum leap in the evolution of our "collective social organisms"—which would dramatically augment their—and our—"capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems". You'll easily see what all this means if you imagine us all traveling in that so horrid bus—rushing off-chart at an accelerating speed and dodging trees: We must be able to act fast; and if also we want to give the whole thing a viable direction—we must be able to synthesize a whole new view of the world (which shows us forests, not trees); and use it for steering. The key to grasping the gist of Engelbart's vision—which I'll refer to as collective mind—is his acronym CoDIAK; which stands for "concurrent development, integration and application of knowledge. Take a moment to reflect on his word "concurrent": Every other technology I can think of—including handwritten letters carried by caravans and books printed by Gutenberg—require that a physical object with the message be physically carried from its author to its recipient; only this Engelbart's technology provided the genuine functionality of the nervous system—which enables us, and indeed compels us to "develop, integrate and apply" knowledge concurrently, as cells in a single human mind do; but of course—to take advantage of this technology, to realize this possibility, our communication needs to be structured and organized in entirely new ways; which is, of course, what knowledge federation is all about. Imagine if your cells were using your nervous system to merely broadcast data—and you'll easily see what I'm talking about.

You'll see the related anomaly if you notice that this technology is still largely used to send back and forth messages and publish or broadcast documents—i.e. to implement and speed up the sort of processes that the old technologies of communication made possible (here Noah, my thirteen-year-old, would instantly object; so I must qualify that it's academic or "serious" communication I am talking about). Or to use knowledge federation's lead metaphor:

'Electrical technology' is still used to produce 'fancy candles'.

Substantial parts of the knowledge federation prototype have been developed by a community of knowledge media researchers and developers committed to continuing and completing the work on Engelbart's vision—by creating completely different systems that this technology enables; and taking part in the quantum leap in the evolution of humanity's core systems—which this technology enables, and our situation necessitates. I'll here illustrate this line of work by a single example—our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 prototype; where we showed how academic communication can be updated, to benefit the society far more than it presently does.

To begin, I'll invite you to see the academic system as a gigantic socio-technical 'machine' that takes as input gifted young people and society's resources; and produces creative people and ideas as output; and explore the question that follows—How suitable is this system for its all-important role? In a moment I'll show you the prototype where the result of an academic researcher has been federated; but before I do that let us zoom in even further, and examine how a researcher's result is handled in our present system—which first subjects it to "peer reviews" (which made sense in those good old days when it was academically legitimate to believe that conforming to a traditional disciplinary procedure and that alone would qualify a result as worthy of being included in "the edifice of knowledge"; that once it passed that test—if would remain part of this edifice forever; which today has as unhappy consequence that it keeps academic creativity all too narrowly confined—to so-called "safe" which means not-so-novel areas) and then—if it receives a passing grade—commits it to academic bookshelves; where nobody will ever find it—except those few specialists to whom it's addressed; who are anyhow the only ones who can comprehend what the result is all about.

TNC2015.jpeg

Knowledge Federation's Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 workshop in Sava Center, Belgrade.

In our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 prototype we federated the result of a researcher—University of Belgrade's Dejan Raković—in three phases; where:

  • The first phase was to make the result comprehensible to lay audiences; which we (concretely knowledge federation's communication design team) did by turning this technical research article into a multimedia object; where its main points were extracted and connected and made comprehensible by explanatory diagrams or ideograms; and further clarified by (placing on them links to) recorded interviews with the author
  • In the second phase we made the result known and at the same time discussed in space, by leading international experts on Tesla—by staging a televised and streamed high-profile dialog at Sava Center Belgrade
  • The third phase constituted a technology-enabled global social process (we used DebateGraph) by which the result was processed further, .

This third stage is in particular illustrative of the vast difference the new media technology can make—once we use it to re-create our "social life of information"; here the points that were extracted and explained in the first phase were made available online as DebateGraph nodes; so that other experts or DebateGraph users—anywhere in the world—can add to them new nodes, corresponding to the sort of action they deem appropriate: They may add supporting evidence; or challenge the result by counterevidence and so on. Here (not the reviewers' verdict on an academic article, but) this connecting the dots—this new creative process of this new collective mind—is allowed to continue forever. Two MS theses were developed to complement and complete this prototype: One of them made it possible to create 'dialects' on DebateGraph (which determine what actions or moves can be applied to a certain kind of node, such as an idea, or an negative or positive evaluation of an idea); and effect program "the social life" of academic information. The other MS thesis prototyped two objects called domain map and value matrix; which enabled both authors and their contributions to be evaluated by multiple criteria.

Also the theme of Raković's result—the nature of the creative process that distinguishes "creative genius"—must be taken into consideration to fully comprehend this prototype: Raković first demonstrated phenomenologically (by referring to Nikola Tesla's own descriptions of his creative process) that there are two distinct kinds of creativity; and that the "outside the box" creativity necessitates an entirely different creative process, and ecology of mind, distinct from its common alternative; and he then theorized this creative process within the paradigm of quantum physics. Imagine if it turns out that the way we (teach the young people how to) think and use the mind, at schools and universities—which happens to be the kind of creative work that the machines are now doing quite well—inhibits this entirely different process that we ought to be using, and teaching! I open the "Liberation of Mind" chapter of the Liberation book by quoting Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, to hint that the evidence for it is everywhere, that it's staring us in the eye! And so the question—the key question—is by what social process are we handling this and other similar pivotal questions?

With this in mind, compare the federation process I've just outlined—which (1) models the phenomenology of Tesla's creative process; (2) submits this phenomenology outline to expert researchers and biographers of Tesla and (3) proposes an explanatory model of this process as a prototype—available online, with provisions to be indefinitely improved—to a peer review; which will say "yes" or "no" depending on whether the model is stated and "proven" by a certain hereditary procedure.

Isn't all this just a way to keep the humanity's creative powers in the proverbial 'box'?

"So you are creating a collective Tesla", Serbian TV anchor commented while conversing with our representative in the studio; and rendered the gist of our initiative better than I have been able to.

– The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it. With technology having become the most powerful change agent in our society, decisive battles will be won or lost by the measure of how seriously we take the challenge of restructuring the ‘joint systems’ of society and technology.
(Erich Jantsch, Integrative Planning for the "Joint Systems" of Society and Technology—the Emerging Role of the University, MIT Report,1969)

Systemic innovation

You'll see the relevance of innovation—the category from which this insight stems—if you consider that it's both (whereby we use and direct our technology-augmented power to create and induce change, and hence) what drives the metaphorical bus forward and what needs to be redirected so that its headlights can be replaced.

You'll see the "different" way of looking at innovation, by which it can be comprehended in a new way and corrected, if you imagine the systems in which we live and work as gigantic machines, comprising people and technology; and acknowledge that they determine how we live and work; and importantly, what the effects of our work will be—whether they'll be problems, or solutions. Béla H. Bánáthy wrote in Designing Social Systems in a Changing World:

“I have become increasingly convinced that [people] cannot give direction to their lives, they cannot forge their destiny, they cannot take charge of their future—unless they also develop the competence to take part directly and authentically in the design of the systems in which they live and work, and reclaim their right to do so. This is what true empowerment is about.”

How suitable are our systems for the functions they need to perform "in a changing world"?

If the system whose function is to enable us to direct our efforts correctly is a 'candle'—what about all others? How suitable are our financial system, our governance, our international corporation and our education for what they need to be able to achieve?

In 2013 I was invited to give an online talk to a workshop of social scientists who convened at IUC Dubrovnik; who were interested in journalism, IT innovation and e-democracy. The title I gave my talk was "Toward a Scientific Comprehension and Handling of Problems", in order to draw attention to my main point—namely that there is an altogether different or "scientific" way to comprehend and handle the society's ills that journalism reports, and innovation and democracy aim to resolve. To explain and justify this point, I drafted a parallel between the society and the human organism—and invited my audience to see communication as the society's nervous system, finance as its vascular system, the corporation as its muscular system, education as reproductive system and so on; and I demonstrated, one by one, that what we see as society's problems are indeed (or need to be seen as) symptoms of systemic malfunction. Scientific medicine distinguishes itself by comprehending and handling symptoms in terms of the anatomy and pathophysiology that underlie them, my point was; why not comprehend and handle our society's issues in a similar, scientific way?

I ended my talk on a positive note; by showing a photo of an electoral victory, to which I added in Photoshop "The systems, stupid!" as featured winning electoral slogan; which was, of course, a paraphrase of Bill Clinton's winning 1992 slogan "The Economy, stupid!" In a society where the survival of businesses depends on their ability to sell people things—of course one needs to keep the economy growing if one wants the business to be profitable and the people employed. But economic growth is not "the solution to our problem".

Systemic innovation empowers us to change the system of our economy.

Instead of only adapting to it, until the bitter end.

In the Liberation book (where, as I said, I explain abstract ideas by telling people stories), I let Erich Jantsch iconize systemic innovation. I introduce Jantsch's legacy and vision by qualifying them as the environmental movement's forgotten history; and its ignored theory; which we'll have to comprehend to be able to act, instead of only reacting.

In the story we meet Jantsch at the point where he's just given his keynote to The Club of Rome's inaugural meeting in 1968 in Rome. Jantsch readily saw what needed to be done to pave the way to solutions; and right away convened a workshop of a hand-picked team of experts—to craft systemic innovation theory and methodology; and then—seeing that the university is the only institution capable of developing and spearheading this new way to think and act—spent a semester at MIT drafting a plan for the transdisciplinary university, from which I quoted the above excerpt; and lobbying with the MIT academic colleagues and administration to implement this necessary and so timely change.

Then there was this wonderful turn of events—which spices up both the story of Jantsch and systemic innovation, and the story of Engelbart and knowledge federation I shared a moment ago: During the 1970s Jantsch and Engelbart were practically neighbors—separated only by the San Francisco Bay! But they never met or collaborated—even though each of them needed the other to fulfill his own larger-than-life mission: Engelbart was struggling to explain to Silicon Valley businesses and innovators that innovation needed to be directed in an entirely different way; that the technology he gave them was intended to serve as enabler for an quantum leap in evolution of humanity's systems. And just across the bay there was this other ignored giant, with the complementary message. Let me be blunt: Would you choose to leave your children loads and loads of dough—and a world about to collapsed on their heads? I mean—if you knew what was going on; and that you could make a difference.

But Jantsch didn't stop there; during the 1970s, until his premature death in 1980, Jantsch was earnestly and with all his power developing a different view of the elephant (and supporting himself by working as a music critic); he gave it different names in different publications, and I'll call it evolutionary vision; as Jantsch did in the last expert workshop he organized, and his corresponding last book he edited.

The turning point in Jantsch's creative process was the talk that Ilya Prigogine gave U.C. Berkeley (where Jantsch was an adjunct assistant professor; I adopted this keyword from Doug Engelbart to use it as he did—to point to the highest academic position available to system reformers) about his work (for which he received the Nobel Prize five years later); which showed Jantsch that even physical systems follow a certain peculiar evolutionary dynamic. You'll comprehend the gist of it if you think for a moment about the key point of cybernetics (in the context of the error I am inviting you to correct, and the challenge of making our society's evolutionary course governable or sustainable): Wiener's idea of control (he used "homeostasis" as keyword to pinpoint it) was the maintenance of a certain equilibrium state or condition; and using "communication and control" to avoid and eliminate the deviations. What Jantsch saw (and also Prigogine) was an entirely different evolutionary dynamic—where the system operates in a state that is far from equilibrium; in a manner that is in a fundamental sense creative.

In Design for Evolution, his 1975 seminal work, Jantsch introduced the evolutionary vision by inviting us to see ourselves as passengers (not in a bus but) in a boat on a river. The traditional sciences would have us look at the boat from above, Jantsch explained—and aim to describe it "objectively"; the traditional systems science would position us on the boat—and instruct us how to steer it safely. The evolutionary vision would have us to see ourselves as—the river! The point of it all being that the way we present ourselves to evolution is what determines its course!

Why am I telling you at length about these so technical themes?

Because we've just placed the Liberation book's overall main point into this website's all-important context (our quest or guiding light or know-what): According to evolutionary vision, the "liberated" or "enlightened" condition this book portrays is "the solution to our problem".

– Modernity did not make people more cruel; it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people. Under the sign of modernity, evil does not need any more evil people. Rational people, men and women well riveted into the impersonal, adiaphorized network of modern organization, will do perfectly.
(Zygmunt Bauman Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, 1995)

Power structure

Before we can solve "the huge problems now confronting us", we need to diagnose them correctly.

Power structure is a social-and-cultural disease.

It is also an update or redesign of the traditional idea of the enemy. The power structure is not a physical entity but a pattern; it is not bacteria-like but cancer-like. It has similar effects on our minds and liberties as a dictator; but it remains invisible—as long as we look at freedom and justice in any of our inherited or traditional ways. The power structure is not a conspiracy theory but its exact opposite: The people who co-created it have no evil intentions; and indeed not a faintest idea that they might be part of the problem. Before I say more about it, let me bring this down to earth by sharing how I got to be aware of power structure.

When around 1995 I caught a glimpse of the vast and wondrous creative frontier I've been telling you about, and reconfigured my life and my work to be able to focus on it fully—I anticipated a completely different dynamic than what I actually encountered: I expected a spirited conversation; and perhaps some doubt and disbelief to begin with. What I got instead was—silence; accompanied with a vague sense of discomfort. Evidently, I was doing something wrong; but even that was only communicated in body language. Could it be that the academic culture is not steered by academic logos, as I took it for granted; but by something quite different, which I could not even name? The experience was disheartening; it's as if you put all your chips on being a painter; and work with all your power to manifest all those wonderful images you were carrying in intuition—only to realize that your fellow painters and gallerists are color blind! But when I explored this phenomenon a bit, I realized that what I was experiencing was not just some weird anomaly, but the problem—that's preventing us from solving "the grave problems now confronting us"; and so naturally, I undertook to research it thoroughly. It was at that point that I undertook to explore the related results humanities, about which I knew next to nothing.

Here in front of me on the table I have Zygmunt Bauman's book Modernity and the Holocaust; which—as I am now re-reading it—reflects back to me a closely similar message—namely that there is something essential we still ignore about ourselves and our society, and importantly—about the relationship between us and society (Bauman's "we" included his fellow sociologists). When we theorize the Holocaust while ignoring that all-important something—we see it as "an interruption in the normal flow of history, a cancerous growth on the body of civilized society, a momentary madness among sanity"; whereas when we look carefully at how it really developed (as documented by the historians)—we are bound to see it as just an extreme case of a pathology that permeates our society; which by being so extreme—invites us to comprehend that all-permeating pathology. Hannah Arendt left us a similar message when she talked about "banality of evil"; but her diagnoses too were ignored, and considered "controversial".

These warning we must urgently attend to.

Because the banal evil is acquiring grotesque proportions! I am considering to use geocide as keyword to rub it in; but perhaps you already got my point?

At InfoDesign 2000 conference in Coventry, GB, I presented the power structure theory alongside with polyscopic methodology; and introduced the former as a proof-of-concept application of the latter.

We must look through the holoscope to diagnose the society's deadly disease!

In Coventry I was invited to elaborate both ideas in Information Design Journal; which resulted in two publications: "Designing Information Design" introduced the methodological or design approach to information and gave (an early version of) the same call to action I am proposing here; "Information for Conscious Choice" introduced the power structure theory and a pragmatic argument for that call to action: "Free competition" and the related notion of "free choice" is what's breeding the power structure and driving us to extinction; our choices must be illuminated by suitable or designed information.

The Power Structure ideogram consists of three white entities joined together by three black arrows; and suggests that the power structure is not a distinct thing but a structure—comprising known entities and their subtle relationships. The entities are power (represented in the ideogram by a dollar sign), information (represented by a book), and our personal and socio-cultural wholeness (represented by a stethoscope). The point here is that "the enemy", that what really has the power over us the people is not any of those three things alone—but their combination; or more to the point—their synergy.

The reason why those relationships remained invisible and ignored is that they are not mechanical but evolutionary; it is (not deliberate scheming but) evolution that adjusts those three (obviously co-dependent) entities to each other; and turns them into something that for all practical purposes acts as an organism.

I used results and insights from multiple fields of science to elaborate the power structure as a pattern: The basic insights from stochastic optimization, artificial intelligence and artificial life—to show that co-dependent entities can co-evolve to form a coherent structure, which can behave as if it were intelligent and alive; Antonio Damasio's revolutionizing insights in cognitive neuroscience, explained in his book appropriately titled Descartes' Error—to point to the pre-conscious and embodied and hence 'programmable' nature of (what's believed to be) "free choice"; and Pierre Bourdieu's explorations of of "symbolic power" and his "theory of practice" to explain the power structure dynamic; and how it's related to economic and political power.

The power structures exist at distinct levels of generality or details; smaller power structures compose together larger ones; so that we are justified in seeing it all as just the (one single) power structure.

I used metaphors to make this invisible enemy comprehensible and palpable; one of which was cancer: The power structure is a cancer-like deformation of society's 'tissues and organs'; which—unless it's recognized and countered by society's 'immune system'—can proliferate and be fatal.

Bourdieu left us a pair of useful metaphors and keywords, "field" and "game"; which he used interchangeably to describe the dynamics of power structure. imagine us all as tiny magnets immersed in a large magnetic field; which subtly orients our seemingly free or random behavior; which—as we align ourselves with it—becomes stronger. The power structure, or "field", then gamifies the society; and reduces for each of us the disturbing complexity of our world to just learning a social role and performing in it; which gives us "ontological security" and eliminates the need for ethics and for knowledge, as Giddens pointed out.

Power structure is not a pejorative label but a way of looking.

As long as we live in a society—we are affected by power structure and we must see to it that this co-dependence is minimal; because both our freedom and our society's future depend on our liberation.

Power structure is not one of holotopia's five insights; it is, however, a theme that permeates all of them, and the Liberation book; which gives us a way to revisit and revise other themes including

  • Ethics; to be part of the societal 'cancer', and be culpable of geocide, we need to do no more than—"do our job"; in "the impersonal, adiaphorized network of modern organization" (Bauman used this keyword, "adiaphorized", to delineate the style of thinking I've asked you to associate with materialism—which is "purely rational", devoid of ethical or emotional concerns; we do something not because it's right or just—but because it is "our job", or "good for business"); or even more simply—act in materialism's characteristically self-centered way (which turns us into 'little magnets'...)
  • Politics; the geocide is not in anyone's "interest"; the holotopian politics is not conceived as "us against them", as it's been usual—but as all of us against the power structure
  • Religion; in Chapter Ten of the Liberation book, titled "Liberation of Religion", I defined religion as a function in culture—to help us counteract self-centeredness; and see ourselves as parts in a larger whole.

You may now comprehend the Liberation book's subtitle "Religion beyond Belief" a notch deeper; and see the evolution of religion as having three stages; so that in the first, the beliefs of tradition were used to coerce everyone to do the right thing (which, needless to say, didn't always work as intended); and in the second, the beliefs of materialism gradually made us do the wrong thing; so that we have a chance to bring religion into its third phase of evolution—by founding it on knowledge, not belief.

You may now also see science and the way the pursuit of knowledge has been institutionalized, and the ontological argument for our (lack of) foundation, in a completely new light. In their 1966 classic Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann told us that societies have a special category of people, suitably institutionalized, whose prerogative is to define "reality" for us; they called them "universal experts", and explained that "[t]his does not mean that they claim to know everything, but rather that they claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does. Other men may continue to stake out particular sectors of reality, but they claim expertise in the ultimate definitions of reality as such." The social function of "ultimate definitions of reality as such" has been to maintain the given social order by inhibiting change: "Habitualization and institutionalization in themselves limit the flexibility of human actions. Institutions tend to persist unless they become ‘problematic’. Ultimate legitimations inevitably strengthen this tendency. The more abstract the legitimations are, the less likely they are to be modified in accordance with changing pragmatic exigencies. If there is a tendency to go on as before anyway, the tendency is obviously strengthened by having excellent reasons for doing so. This means that institutions may persist even when, to an outside observer, they have lost their original functionality or practicality. One does certain things not because they work, but because they are right – right, that is, in terms of the ultimate definitions of reality promulgated by the universal experts."

See things whole.
The holoscope principle.

Holoscope

René Descartes pointed out in his testament, his unfinished Règles pour la direction de l’esprit (Rules for the Direction of the Mind)—as Rule One: “The objective of studies needs to be to direct the mind so that it bears solid and true judgments about everything that presents itself to it.” And pointed to academic specialization as the impediment to practicing Rule One: “In truth, it surprises me that almost everyone studies with greatest care the customs of men, the properties of the plants, the movements of the planets, the transformations of metals and other similar objects of study, while almost nobody reflects about sound judgment or about this universal wisdom, while all the other things need to be appreciated less for themselves than because they have a certain relationship to it. It is then not without reason that we pose this rule as the first among all, because nothing removes us further from the seeking of truth, than to orient our studies not towards this general goal, but towards the particular ones.”

You have seen four independent arguments for developing knowledge on pragmatic foundation.

See them as four ways of looking, as four projection planes corresponding to the edges of the rectangle from which my main point follows as "the dot on the i"; which is, as I said, not a statement of fact but a course of action and an invitation to act: To enable knowledge-based evolution of culture and society by instituting academic transdisciplinarity.

Those four arguments are:

  • (Pragmatic argument) it stands to reason that our species will quite surely be eliminated from the evolutionary scene unless we learn to use information as guiding light, to provide us know-what; and vice-versa—(as I will demonstrate in a moment) developing knowledge on a pragmatic foundation will lead to comprehensive change of course in two natural and easy steps; the change that is the solution to "the huge problems now confronting us
  • (Fundamental argument) the ontological foundation rests upon historical beliefs about knowledge, reality and human mind that have been proven wrong and disowned by the giants of science; developing knowledge on pragmatic foundation is a way to restore to information and knowledge the quality that is most closely associated with the word "academic"; and to continue academic evolution
  • (Political and ethical argument) "the correspondence theory of truth" or reification, which underlies ontological foundation, is (needs to be seen as) an instrument of power structure; the change to pragmatic foundation is the way to liberation
  • (IT argument) It is only when we see information as something we humans make for human purposes, and learn to tailor it to the most vital among those purposes—that we'll be able to (stop reproducing old systems in new technology, and) take advantage of the intrinsic properties of new information technology to provide us new collective capabilities; on which our future depends.

Comprehensive paradigm shift follows from this change of foundation.

You'll see it if you take another look at Holotopia ideogram; and see its four side edges as forming a "V" for (our conclusive) "victory" (over power structure); which stems from design epistemology as root or foundation.

The bottom edge on the left, connecting design epistemology with polyscopic methodology, points to the first step that naturally follows from pragmatic foundation—where we specify (or more precisely federate) what information needs to be like (which includes, once again, the methods by which information is created and structured, and the ways it needs to be used) by creating a methodology.

The bottom edge on the right, connecting design epistemology with knowledge federation (as and up-to-date technology-enabled social process of communication), points to the other, parallel step that naturally follows from pragmatic foundation—where we (acknowledging that the use of new technology to publish or broadcast documents, and make the processes that have evolved based on the printing press as technology more effective, has given us overloads of documents that by many orders of magnitude exceed what any human mind can process, and made knowledge impossible) create processes and systems that complement document publishing by structuring information; and organize us in creating meaning; and restore the severed tie between information and action; or in a word—which federate knowledge.

Look now at the horizontal line (in Holotopia ideogram) that connects polyscopic methodology with knowledge federation; which has "information" as label; and points to the synergy between those two points of action: It is only when we develop an academic i.e. well-founded and relied on theory of what information needs to be like—that we'll be able to develop the corresponding communication (both academically, and in real-life practice). And vice-versa: It is only when we have knowledge federation as process that we'll be able to create and evolve this theory; because information is by its nature transdisciplinary; its informed creation and use need to draw insights from a number of disciplines, and other traditions.

I gave this new information the name holoscope.

In order to highlight that the university institution must give us the people (not only the likes of the microscope and the telescope, but also) a way to see the world that is functional by design; which makes us functional. And I coined a suitable rule of thumb, see things whole, and called it holoscope principle; to pinpoint the distinguishing character of this new way to see the world.

We need the holoscope, alias knowledge federation, to make knowledge possible.

I explained in Liberation: "It may seem to me that the Earth is flat and I might even believe that; but people have traveled around the Earth; and others saw it from outer space. When I take account of evidence—I cannot but change my mind."

Make things whole.
The holotopia principle.

Holotopia

Have a look now at the next level on Holotopia ideogram; see the edge connecting polyscopic methodology with convenience paradox on the left: When we adapt and apply (the method and the approach that distinguishes) science to life's core themes, and use it to orient our "pursuit of happiness" and inform our values—wholeness will be our value of choice; and the aim of our pursuits. And with such radical shift in orientation—the change of course will most naturally follow; as we'll evolve toward wholeness. And since guiding insights will be drawn (or federated) from all world traditions, including the disciplines of science—the continuities in cultural evolution too will be restored.

Look now at the edge connecting knowledge federation with systemic innovation on the right: It is only when we'll have knowledge federation in place, as instituted social process that empowers us to configure (prototypes of) systems evidence-based—that we'll be able to adapt systems to their function; and to the exigencies of our new situation; and it is only when we'll have knowledge federation as technology-enabled communication infrastructure or "collective nervous system" that we'll be able to give the society's systems the faculty of vision they necessitate; to be viable or "sustainable" or whole.

Look at the horizontal line connecting convenience paradox on the left and systemic innovation on the right; which has "action" as label: It is only we've become sufficiently whole, by pursuing "human development" or wholeness as value—that we'll have the moral strength to collaborate and co-create our systems; and it is only when our systems liberate us from struggle and competition, and afford us the free time—that we'll become capable of cultivating our inner wholeness.

I call this new informed action holotopia.

In order to highlight that it has all the "beyond belief" qualities of a utopian vision—in addition to this all-important distinguishing one: Holotopia is a realistic future scenario; the belief that we can continue to live without radical change is what's utopian.

I coined a suitable rule of thumb, make things whole, and called it holotopia principle; to pinpoint the distinguishing character of this new way to act.

And so to sum up: As soon as we develop information on a pragmatic foundation—it will be obvious that information must enable us to see things whole; and it is only when our course is illuminated by such information—that we'll be able to make things whole.

– As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved.
(David Bohm, Problem and Paradox.)

Dialog

Whenever the way we think is part of the problem—and this is clearly the case with "the huge problems now confronting us"—what we are up against is not a problem but a paradox. And yet we must conform to the common way to think to be able to communicate with people; and function in society.

To liberate myself sufficiently and be able to complete the knowledge federation prototype, I withdrew into a self-imposed quarantine; which lasted about five years. I am now coming out—and entering the next phase of this creative process; whose focus will be on communication, and collective action toward implementation and scaling. But I don't intend to come out of holotopia, where I've made myself a home during this period; why would I?

I invite you to meet me half way.

Which is what the dialog is about: Instead of thinking and speaking as we've been socialized to—we'll federate a suitable new way or a collection of new and better ways to think and communicate; and we'll use them to explore the core themes of our lives and times; and we'll rebuild our "public sphere" or collective mind as we go along.

The dialog is (a way to develop) our society's new 'headlights'.

I'll illustrate a broad range of resources we'll bring together to inform the dialog by a single one—David Bohm's related legacy. You'll find this on BohmDialogue.org: "Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process." This website further explains: "Dialogue, as David Bohm envisioned it, is a radically new approach to group interaction, with an emphasis on listening and observation, while suspending the culturally conditioned judgments and impulses that we all have. This unique and creative form of dialogue is necessary and urgent if humanity is to generate a coherent culture that will allow for its continued survival."

What I have in mind is not a single prototype but a broad variety of them; and it is this variety that attracts me most strongly; knowledge federation has been prototyping dialogs all along; some of them are described in Liberation book; others are outlined in the concluding ("conversations" or "action") page of this website.

In Chapter Nine of Liberation (which has "Liberation of Science" as title) I talk about the academic dialog in front of the (metaphorical) mirror; which is a self-reflective dialog whose goal to liberate us from the "objective observer" self-identity that now so narrowly confines academic thought and action; and to empower the academia to act in the guiding role it already has—and guide us the people to new thinking; and toward the emerging paradigm.

I see the larger, public dialog as up-to-date alternative and antidote to the media "infotainment" or "spectacle"; which will document and facilitate the emergence of the real spectacle—the elephant that has all too long remained the room unnoticed. It is by giving voice to the people who have knowledge, and by using knowledge to elevate us collectively to simple and empowering insights—that the dialog will give the new media technologies the function they can and must have.