STORIES
Contents
- 1 Federation through Stories
- 1.1 How does one lift up an insight of a giant out of undeserved anonymity?
- 1.2 We focus on what we must know to make our future sustainable.
- 1.3 The opportunities that become accessible on the new paradigm frontier may sound like a fairy tale.
- 1.4 – Digital technology could help make this a better world. But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
- 1.5 – The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it.
- 1.6 And then there's the invisible elephant!
Federation through Stories
How does one lift up an insight of a giant out of undeserved anonymity?
We tell vignettes – engaging, lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories, to distill core ideas of daring thinkers and make them accessible. By joining vignettes into threads, and threads into patterns, we combine insights across fields of interest and reach general insights that are vital to us all.
We focus on what we must know to make our future sustainable.
We focus on the giants who can inform our core theme – a radically better use of our capacity to create. We tell the stories of Douglas Engelbart – the icon of knowledge federation, and Erich Jantsch, the icon of systemic innovation. We'll see that they have not yet been heard. We'll see that they were not given a place in the academia. We tell their stories to show the zeitgeist we've created, the academic culture – and to make a case for opening up a radically more creative, and responsible, and in a word NECESSARY alternative.
The opportunities that become accessible on the new paradigm frontier may sound like a fairy tale.
But before we begin, let us make sure that the important message is in place: This is not about solving problems. This is about IMPROVING the way we use our time and ingenuity, in a most radical way. So let's share this story to illustrate this central point.
In our second presentation on the Bay Area Future Salon we presented "The Game-Changing Game", a generic prototype method for [[systemic innovation|systemic innovation. The Game-Changing Game is of course not a conventional game, but a game-changing way to conduct one's career, where one does not learn how to perform in a profession and 'plays' competitively, but is empowered to conduct one's career by changing the profession or the system, i.e. by changing the rules.
At the beginning of The Game, which is orchestrated online, one meets a metaphorical fairy who offers to fulfill a most audacious gain or contribution. "Make a fortune in business"; "Save lives and reduce suffering"; "Solve global problems" are some of the choices. Once a choice is made, The Game continues through two modules:
- The Vision Quest, where it is made clear why such larger-than-life achievements are indeed possible by working or "playing" in the specific way that is made possible by The Game
- The Action Quest, where the players receive help to make their dreams real, by co-creating prototypes or projects, or by joining some of the existing ones. </p>
<p> So let us here focus on the specific one of the initial choices which is most closely related with our theme, to make a large contribution to human knowledge. "What is the largest contribution to human knowledge you can imagine?" asks the fairy. You may think of an answer for a moment. Our proposed answer is given in the footnotes at the bottom of this page.. </p></div>
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– Digital technology could help make this a better world. But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
</p> In December of 1950 Engelbart decided to direct his career as it may best benefit the mankind. He thought for three months about the best way to do that, and then had an epiphany... What is it that he saw that he wasn't able to communicate? While the book titled "Systemic Innovation", and subtitled "Democracy for the Third Millennium" (which will be the second book in Knowledge Federation Trilogy) is being written to propose answers, you may already gather sufficient detail on these pages to construct your own ones. </p>
– The task is nothing less than to build a new society and new institutions for it.
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<p> "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."</p>
And then there's the invisible elephant!
<p> We undertake to make a difference by describing the whole thing – and then showing how the pieces fit in and compose its different parts. As the organs of an elephant will only be truly understood when seen as functional parts of the whole big animal, so can the visions and contributions of our giants only be understood when seen in the context of the new order of things to which they are intended to contribute. </p>
By connecting the dots, we provide the context in which the best ideas of our best minds can be understood and appreciated. And what a sight it is!