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

To orient ourselves in the "post-traditional world" (where the traditional recipes no longer work), to step beyond "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 step beyond our inherited or traditional "frameworks of reference", which keep us confined to the proverbial "box"; 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 as such? 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.

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

Defined by convention, institutions like "science" or "religion" are no longer reified as what they currently are—but defined as functions that those institutions have in our present order of things, or may need to fulfill in the emerging one; which offers us a way to give old institutions a function, and a new life.

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" that motivates this proposal—which is to enable the paradigm to change. Holotopia is a paradigm; and so is transdisciplinarity, as prototyped by knowledge federation.

I use the keyword elephant as a nickname to holotopia when I want to be even more informal—and highlight that in a paradigm everything depends on everything else, as the organs of an elephant do; and to motivate the strategy I just mentioned, by pointing to what might seem as a paradox—namely that comprehensive change, of a paradigm as a whole, can be natural and easy even when small and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible: It is useless to try to fit an elephant's ear onto a mouse! But a paradigm can change effortlessly and almost by itself—when the conditions are ripe.

We live in such a time.

When all the data points for seeing the paradigm we have as dysfunctional and obsolete, and for manifesting a new and radically better one are already there; so that all that remained to be done is—to connect the dots; or more precisely—to restore our collective capability to connect the dots.

The elephant was in the room when the 20th century’s giants wrote or spoke; but we failed to see him because the jungleness of our information; and because of disciplinary and cultural fragmentation; and because our thinking and communication are still as the tradition 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 still ignore!

The Liberation book undertakes to facilitate the paradigm change by drafting an analogy between our contemporary situation and the times and conditions when Galilei was in house arrest, when a landslide paradigm change was about to take place; and by giving the reader a glimpse of the emerging paradigm; and by diagnosing the problem—what exactly hinders us from connecting the dots; and by fostering a social process that will empower us to remedy this problem; and continue cultural evolution.

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 at large.

Materialism

(Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix.)

We may now theorize our existing paradigm; which I'll do by defining or drafting or postulating a theoretical order of things, which I'll, for lack of a better word, call materialism; because what I'm describing is not our contemporary condition as it is—but a theoretical or "ideal" one where people have no ideas or ideals to guide them, but use "material reality" as reference system; so that—their experience of the "material reality" having revealed to them what they want or "need"—all one really needs as information is the technical and practical know-how—the knowledge how to acquire what one wants or "needs".

We can comprehend materialism with the help of tradition and design as (theoretical or ideal) ways of evolving and acting and being in the world; where tradition is inherently conservative (being the manner of evolving that depends on people conforming to what's been inherited); and design is inherently creative. A traditional approach to knowledge will rely on reifying the inherited concepts and other things, and importantly institutions; so that "religion" is understood as the corresponding—existing—institutions and belief systems, "science" is reified as what the scientists are doing etc.

One may also theorize materialism as a result of or form for biological adaptation; and imagine that the adaptive function of the mind—which we humans share with other vertebrates—is being applied to "social reality" too. Think of our society as a bus steered by avoiding trees and ravines: Under materialism, it's "success" and "failure" in the material world that determine what's (considered as) worth doing.

Under materialism we circumvent the complexities and risks of our lives and times by resorting to what Anthony Giddens called (in Modernity and Self-Identity) "ontological security"—where "the threat of personal meaninglessness" is held at bay by "routinised activities [combined] with basic trust"; so that "potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems"; so that "mastery [...] substitutes for morality”.

You may comprehend materialism as a stage in cognitive evolution. "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 a peculiar cognitive phenomenon: 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 makes one believe that the existing social reality is in a similar way immutable and real as the physical reality is.

Doxa offers an explanation why we have candles as headlights.

Having (under materialism) no independent reference system for evaluating our social "reality" and in particular our systems—we simply reified the source of illumination we had, which we've inherited from the past, as headlights! And if we we handled—or mis-handled in this way the system whose function is to provide us vision—you may only wonder what other similar errors we may have made, without noticing!

Materialism makes it impossible to change the paradigm.

Truth by convention is offered as the necessary technical solution—the way to overcome the spell of reification; and move the evolution of culture beyond the traditional frames of reference; and the evolution of society beyond the inherited and largely obsolete systems.

Logos

(René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641)

The natural and perhaps the only way a paradigm can change is by changing the way we think; or the way we use our minds, as I prefer to say it; because by and large—the way we use the mind is our paradigm. So I turned "knowledge federation" into a keyword; intending to use it as a banner, to demarcate the creative frontier where we'll be empowered to do as Descartes and his colleagues did at the point of inception of science—start all the way from the foundation; and rebuild the foundation; and use the new foundation to be creative as they were—and re-create the way we go about pursuing knowledge; so that all the rest can change and evolve knowledge-based.

"In the beginning was logos and logos was with God and logos was God." I use the word logos to motivate this step; by pointing to the historicity of the way we use the mind; that it has changed in the past and will change again. 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 constitute the deadly sin of pride, and a heresy.

The scientific revolution unfolded as a reaction to earlier "teleological" or theological 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 workings of a clockwork.

Science assumed its contemporary pivotal social role—of "the Grand Revelator of modern Western culture" as Benjamin Lee Whorf called it in Language, Thought and Reality—"without intending to"; this was a side-effect of historical and accidental developments. 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.

It was in this way that we ended up with 'candles' as 'headlights'.

Their actual function was not even considered; they were adopted as "right" based on "fundamental" or "ontological" considerations alone.

The key to comprehending how exactly I propose to correct the error I've been telling you about, and modernize the way we think or use the mind—is this amusing ambiguity in the word "foundation"; which to Descartes and his colleagues meant something that will hold the "edifice" of knowledge that is true in an "objective" sense, and hence ever-lasting; which I'll turn into a keyword to give it a subtly different meaning: The foundation is what our information is founded on; which—just like information itself—is a human-made thing for human purposes. Hence we must consciously secure that this foundation—on which our comprehension and handling of "the huge problems now confronting us" depends, and the continuities in cultural evolution too—is broad enough to hold all that may be of value; and also solid enough so that we may rely on the edifice of knowledge it served to develop.

Design epistemology

(Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1958.)

A reason why we must do as Descartes did way back then—and “demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations"—is that he and his colleagues got it all wrong! When they took it for granted that "the foundation" is the sensation of absolute certainty (by which the "objective" and unchanging "truth about reality" is, presumably, revealed to the mind); and hence committed the error that Descartes immortalized by proclaiming "I think, therefore I am!"

You'll comprehend the anomaly that this fundational of holotopia's five points undertakes to resolve, if you consider the fundamental belief on which "the whole edifice" was founded was subsequently disproved and disowned by science itself. When scientists became able to zoom in on the small quanta of energy-matter—they found them behaving in ways that could not be comprehended in the "classical" way (as Descartes and his Enlightenment colleagues demanded); that they even contradicted our 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.

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 and 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?

When I now offer you this most simple solution—that I'll simply conflate logos and knowledge federation, and treat them roughly as synonyms—I imagine you might cry foul: Is Dino out of his mind; is he playing God? But I'm sure you'll calm down when you comprehend that I'm only inviting you to apply the principle that distinguishes the academic tradition—and build on what's been academically established, instead of ignoring it; and more practically—to treat (the way we use) the human mind too as something that needs to fulfill certain human purposes, notably the purpose of giving knowledge a viable foundation, and society its evolutionary guidance; and to then learn about the best way to do that by federating the insights of giants of science, and whatever else may be of relevance; and writing the result as a convention; and treating it as a prototype—and continuing to improve it evidence-based.

The intended effect of this is to liberate logos; to liberate the mind and the academic mind in particular—from the belief that logos can be hard-coded as "formal logic", so that it's enough to adhere to certain rules for our thinking to be correct; and from the suffix "logy" of academic disciplines—which makes it seem that they embody the correct way to use the mind, so that logos is confined to a certain fixed academic procedure. When I say, for instance epistemology—what you may imagine is that (instead of taking it for granted) logos—or knowledge federation—is applied to construct the foundation on which knowledge is to be pursued; and when I say methodology—you'll expect that I'm talking about a federated (update or counterpart to "scientific") method. Dialog will then mean exploring the core themes of our lives and times, and weaving the web of relationships and of knowledge—through logos i.e. through an evolving process that is itself carefully federated.

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 his testament, 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 same 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 allows us to distinguish useless "constructions" from the ones we truly need. But this added function too is only a convention; a different one, and an altogether different way to knowledge can be created by this 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 what knowledge federation initiative undertakes to enable.

Polyscopic methodology

(Abraham Maslow, Psychology of Science, 1966)

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 consider that—as Maslow pointed out—this method is now so specialized, that it compels us to be specialized; and choose our themes and set our 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 (where logos is applied to method), which alleviates this problem, can be created by the proposed approach; by federating the findings of giants of science and the very techniques that have been developed in the sciences; so as 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 rigorously defined ideas to develop clear and rigorous 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.

Convenience paradox

(Aurelio Peccei, One Hundred Pages for the Future, 1981)

You'll appreciate the relevance of the convenience paradox insight if you consider the category it stems from, values—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.

And you'll see the anomaly this point points to if you consider convenience as the result of applying materialism's 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) to this pivotal choice, of goals and values; so that those things and only those things that appear attractive to our senses are considered as real and worth pursuing (technical science here won't be of much help); and if you notice that this way ('in the light of a candle') of conceiving 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.

Knowledge federation

(Doug Engelbart, "Dreaming of the Future*, BYTE Magazine, 1995)

You'll comprehend the relevance of this holotopia's point if you think of communication—the category from which it stems—as the technology-enabled social process by which relatively autonomous individuals are organized into a 'collective organism' of an institution or organization, and ultimately the society; and 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". 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.

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. 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 share several examples of this work on the "Prototypes" or "Applications" page of this website.

So let me here narrow the focus—and zoom in on updating the academic system; and continue the line of thought that this page has been focused on. 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.

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 experts—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, than its more 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! And then with this in mind—consider that this federation process I've just outlined (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 explanation of this process—and makes it available online to be indefinitely improved.

Is this not a better treatment of creativity than a peer review of the ("scientific" nature of) the model?

"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.

Systemic innovation

(Erich Jantsch, Integrative Planning for the "Joint Systems" of Society and Technology—the Emerging Role of the University, MIT Report,1969)

You'll see the relevance of that this insight 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—whether the effects of our work will be problems, or solutions. We had a professional photographer at our Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 event in Belgrade; and she photographed me showing my smartphone to the people in the dialog; which I did to point to the surreal contrast between the dexterity that went into to creation of the minute little thing I was holding in my hand—and the complete negligence of those incomparably larger and equally more important systems we now vitally depend on—to give us vision! You'll begin to see the anomaly this point points to, if you—considering that the system whose function is to (help us) give direction to our creative efforts (by providing us know-what) is still a 'candle'—ask What about all others? How suitable are our financial system, our governance, our international corporation and our education for their all-important roles? Don't they too need to be adapted to the exigences of the post-traditional cosmopolitan world we live in?

In Chapter Seven of the Liberation book I introduced Erich Jantsch's legacy and vision most briefly (and left the details to Book Two of holotopia series) by qualifying them as environmental movement's forgotten history; and its ignored theory; which we need to be able to act instead of only reacting. And I introduced systemic innovation (where we update the systems in which we live and work)—whose name I adopted from Jantsch and turned into a keyword—by outlining most briefly my 2013 talk "Toward a Scientific Comprehension and Handling of Problems"; where I drafted a parallel between systemic innovation and scientific medicine—which distinguishes itself by comprehending and handling unwanted symptoms in terms of the anatomy and pathophysiology that underlie them!

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.” For a while I contemplated calling this insight "The systems, stupid!"—and paraphrasing Bill Clinton's 1992 winning electoral slogan "The Economy, stupid!" Well, of course—in a society where the survival of businesses depends on their ability to sell people things—you have to keep the economy growing if you want to keep business profitable and people employed. But economic growth is not "the solution to our problem"! Systemic innovation is—being (by definition) what makes us capable of adapting systems to their function; instead of letting them shape and dictate what we do and how—all the way to the bitter end.

At knowledge federation's 2011 workshop at Stanford University, within the Triple Helix IX international conference, I introduced systemic innovation as an emerging and necessary or remedial trend in innovation; and (the organizational structure developed and represented by) knowledge federation as an (institutional or systemic) enabler of systemic innovation. We work by creating a prototype of a system and organizing a transdiscipline around it—to update it according to the state-of-the-art insights that its members bring from their disciplines; and to strategically change the corresponding real-life system or systems.

Power structure

(Zygmunt Bauman Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, 1995)

Make note, before we begin: Here we'll see how basic (theoretical...) tenets of materialism are reversed, with a touch of logos.

Before we can reasonably undertake to solve "the huge problems now confronting us"—we must diagnose them correctly.

Power structure is not one of holotopia's five points; I let it here represent its ten themes—which show that when other core human themes are considered in the context of the five points—they too end up being comprehended and handled in an entirely different way; here those themes are democracy and freedom and justice and the political action that's suitable for securing them; and importantly—also ethics. These are the themes with which the Liberation book opens; and one might just as well say that its title theme our liberation from power structure.

Before I say more about it, let me bring all this down to earth by sharing how I became interested in this theme; how I experienced the power structure. When in 1995 this still new and fresh interest began to take shape and I saw its potential—I reconfigured my academic work all the way from algorithm theory, which was the theme of my dissertation, in order to focus fully on fundamental questions in information and knowledge—I anticipated a completely different reaction on the part of my academic friends and colleagues than what actually happened. What I expected was a spirited conversation (and perhaps doubt and disbelief to begin with); what I encountered was—silence; and a vague sense of discomfort; obviously I was doing something I wasn't supposed to do, but even this was not articulated. Having been trained as a theoretical scientist, practically as a mathematician, I was compelled to conclude that our reasoning mind too has a certain domain of definition; as mathematical operations and functions do; and that this domain of definition does not include systems (in which we live and work). From what I've shared above, you may easily comprehend this as a natural consequence of our still traditional mindset and way of evolving; but more—a lot more can be done; and so I undertook a systematic study of related areas, including the humanities, which I knew very little about; and applied the methodology I was developing to developing a high-level view of the relationship between power and belief. The power structure theory resulted.

As a keyword, the power structure is an update to our traditional notion of political "enemy"—as the entity that may thwart our liberties; toward which our political sensibilities and instituted checks and balances need to be directed. You may comprehend it by analogy with a "dictator" (the quintessential enemy of democracy)—the power structure will tend to have similar effects on our minds and our wellbeing as a dictator; and het it will be thoroughly invisible and unrecognizable as long as we look at freedom and justice in the way materialism taught us to see and think.

The power structure is not a conspiracy theory but its exact opposite: It is not a clique of conspirators somewhere out there scheming against us—but all of us working against our best interests or even intentions; without even a faintest clue that this might be the case.

The power structure theory results when we look at power and freedom in the context of five insights.

As soon as (instead of looking at these all-important themes in the way we've inherited) we federate relevant academic results; including Zygmunt Bauman's ideas reported in Modernity and the Holocaust and his subsequent related work. Technically, power structure is not a physical entity but a pattern (abstract relationship); comprising three identifiable entities—power interests, information (and the way we see and think, and our ideas) and wholeness (including both the condition of our systemic, and and our own human condition or qualify of life)—connected by subtle relationships. The key point here (the key to comprehending both the power structure theory or model and the reason why the power structure remained invisible) is that the relationships between those three entities are not physical but evolutionary. Basic insights from from the humanities (revelations of "the banality of evil" by Hannah Arendt and Zygmund Bauman; Pierre Bourdieu's studies of "symbolic power", and his "theory of practice" that explains its dynamic; Antonio Damasio's revolutionary insights in cognitive neuroscience, explained in his book appropriately titled Descartes' Error) were used to theorize and justify this model; the basic insights reaching us from technical fields, including stochastic optimization, artificial intelligence and artificial life, were used to explain the evolution of power structure and its significant "dictatorial" properties. The effect of it all is to demonstrate that the power interests, the condition of our world and our selves and in particular the condition and structure of our systems and importantly our society-and-culture's 'software", including our values, ideas, worldviews etc—are so closely related that we need to see them as one single entity. The power structures exist at distinct levels of generality or details—so that smaller power structures compose together those larger ones; the power structure theory shows (and explains why) they are so closely related (because they co-evolve and by co-evolving adjust to each other) that we are justified in seeing it all as just the (one single) power structure.

Several metaphors can be used to make this still so new notion of "enemy" comprehensible and palpable. One of them is cancer: The power structure is not a thing but a deformation of society's healthy organs and tissues; which—if allowed to grow uncontrolled, if the society's 'immune system' is not equipped to identify it and remedy it—can proliferate and be fatal to the 'organism' of society.

Another metaphor is to see the subtle power as a magnetic field; and self-interest that stems from self-centeredness as 'magnetism'; which harmonizes with Pierre Bourdieu's notions "field" and "game", which he used to point to roughly the same dynamic and phenomenon. Here you may imagine us immersed in a magnetic field, which subtly orients our seemingly free movement and behavior; as iron chips may be aligned with the field of a magnet. But here it is better to imagine us the people as small magnets—where magnetism is our (narrowly perceived) self-interest. As we align our own power with the field—the field becomes stronger. The power structure in this way 'gamifies' our social existence; we lose our human self-identity and identify with our 'avatar'; and consider his "success" in 'the game' as our actual "interest".

The power structure theory thoroughly reverses our core beliefs in several key areas:

• Economics—where "free competition" is considered as the best way to direct our creative abilities; the power structure theory shows that competition fosters an ecology where the most vicious power structures prevail
• Politics—where "democracy" as we have it is considered the solution to humanity's age-old quest of social justice and freedom; now we may see that "democracy" as we have it is vulnerable to power structure; that our society's 'immune system' must urgently be updated
• Ethics—where conforming to the rules of the 'game' is considered as good civil behavior; and minding our own "interests" within its confines as our undeniable right; the power structure theory shows that this is all we need to do to be part of the problem—of society's potentially fatal 'cancer'
• Religion—which the scientifically-minded among us tend to consider as not much more than unwarranted belief held against evidence—whereby one surrenders one's freedom and power to an obsolete institution; the power structure theory shows that this has nothing to do with religion; that the belief system of materialism is just as much part and parcel of contemporary power structure as the beliefs reinforced by Church and Inquisition were supportive of the historical one.

The power structure theory sets the stage for holotopian politics.

Which is no longer "us against them" as it has been through history—but all of us against the power structure.

The revolution to which I am inviting you will be pursued (not through confrontation but) through collaboration!

Holoscope

The holoscope principle.

We do not need the global situation to argument the need to align what we have as information to the pivotal function it needs to fulfill; because this need is obvious in and of itself.

So it is indeed reassuring that this need also follows from seeing the information as we have it as a consequence of a historical fundamental error; which has been academically reported more than a half-century ago, but not yet corrected.

We do not need the holotopia vision to justify this proposal as necessary part of resolving "the huge problems now confronting us"; because in every reasonable solution scenario we the people will need to unite ourselves around an agenda that sees beyond our next salary; or corporate annual report, or re-election.

And yet a positive vision—of a different order of things and way to evolve—does make all the difference!

In the holotopia order of things even "the huge problems now confronting us" can be seen as assets; because they compel us to make the kind of improvements that might—within the still prevailing power structure—be unthinkable. I am considering to use geocide as keyword to emphasize and energize this all-important point. To be culpable of geocide—the cruelest massive crime in human history, which may for all we know bring an end to that history—all we need to do is—"do our job" in the systems as they have become. No, we can no longer afford to remain those busy, down-to-earth hardworking people we are; and not have time for these "philosophical" or "academic" questions we've been talking about here. And in particular—we academic people need to do no more than remain in our "ivory towers", busy with academic business as usual—to be culpable of civilizational demise.

We all need to adapt to our new situation—and collaborate to resolve it.

To see exactly how—you only need to take a step back or more to the point up the metaphorical mountain; and see the Holotopia ideogram even a touch more abstractly; by focusing on its two horizontal lines or "themes", which are emphasized. As I outlined above—the natural way to begin is from the foundation; by re-conceiving information as something that we humans create for human purposes; notably for the purpose of making us informed.

In Holotopia ideogram, from foundational point two other points or insights follow naturally—polyscopic methodology on the left, and knowledge federation on the right; we must adapt both the method and the process (communication) we use to create knowledge to this new way of conceiving what the pursuit of information and knowledge are all about.

Consider the first (going upward) horizontal line, which has the label information; and connects polyscopic methodology (and method as category) on its left with knowledge federation (and communication as category) on its right.

It is only when we've did our job on the theory or methodology side, and explained what information needs to be like—including both its structure and its methods and processes—that we become capable of implementing the corresponding social process and recreate our communication. And furthermore, and most importantly—it is the combination of this theoretical act (and of course all the empowerment that goes with it, through education etc.) with the actual creation of (processes of) information—that provides us a uniquely powerful basis for solving "the huge problems now confronting us"; by empowering us to see things whole.

In the holotopia context this larger-than-life opportunity is pointed to by the coined idiom see things whole as the missing guiding principle or rule of thumb—which will direct (how we handle) information; and by holoscope as keyword metaphorizing information as the 'instrument' that will result and enable us to see things whole.

We need the holoscope to see and comprehend the society's new condition; and to see and diagnose its life-threatening disease.

You may now be sensing some of that enlightened optimism that distinguishes the holotopia: We do not need to wrestle with "the 1%"; we don't need to convince the politicians; information—as the most powerful medium, the strategic leverage point for changing course—is in our hands; in the hands of publicly sponsored intellectuals! The people out there look up to us to tell them how to think (and we also have education in our control); we have the prerogative to say what information needs to be like. To ignite the paradigm change—all we really need to do is to revive and revisit some of those age-old "philosophical" or "academic" questions; not just in academic fora, of course—but bring them out there into the world, among the people, where they can and need to make a difference; or in a word—we need to federate those academic themes.

Holotopia

The holotopia principle.

One more horizontal line comes forth to meet the eye on the Holotopia ideogram—the one that has "action" as label; and joins convenience paradox on the left with systemic innovation on the right; which points to another all-important synergy: It is only when we've comprehended how vast are the opportunities to improve our inner or personal wholeness—that we'll know that the pursuit of success or fortune in the systems as they are has a radically better alternative; and be ready and indeed eager to reconfigure our systems, so that they make the pursuit of our inner wholeness possible. And vice versa—it is by adapting our systems to the functions they need to serve in our society (instead of letting them evolve as means to give us a competitive advantage against other systems, or in other words as (part of) the power structure—that we'll have the free time and the peace of mind necessary for developing those finer potentialities that will bring us into the next phase of our evolution; where the pursuit of wholeness—both inner and outer—will be our shared goal.

A handful of insights and a couple of principles are all we need to comprehend our new situation correctly

And be empowered to act correctly. "A way to change course" becomes as simple as one-two-three-go; where

• One is to update the way we use the mind; to correct the foundation on which we are building the edifice of knowledge
• Two is to update information—to enable us tosee things whole
• Three is act differently—and make things whole.

Dialog

(David Bohm, Problem and Paradox.)

When the way we use the mind is the root of our problems—then this is no longer a problem but a paradox; which turns all our "problems" into paradoxes!

The function of the dialog is to dissolve the paradox.

The point here is that the dialog is not a conversation; it is not even a system; it is a function in society or culture and an evolving prototype implementing this function. The function is the liberation of logos from materialism or power structure; and our own liberation through logos. The key to it all is to develop an entirely different way to be together; and communicate, and collaborate; which is not self-centered but on the contrary—where we liberate ourselves from the spell of "the world" in order to genuinely see and re-create the world.

The Liberation book is not a book in the classical sense—a way to tell you some interesting things about the world and ourselves; it is part of the dialog whose function is to prime the dialog.

Dialog may also be seen as an antidote to the media "spectacle" that keeps us immersed in "the world"—which produces another, real spectacle; where real people collaborate to liberate themselves from nonsense and rise to the occasion—and be part of an evolutionary quantum leap; and evolve an ecology of mind or "public sphere" that gives awareness to democracy.