Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

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<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
  
<p>The <em>holoscope</em> distinguishes itself by allowing for <em>multiple</em> ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called <em>scopes</em>. The <em>scopes</em> and the resulting <em>views</em> have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing.</p>  
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<p>The <em>holoscope</em> distinguishes itself by allowing for <em>multiple</em> ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called <em>scopes</em>. The <em>scopes</em> and the resulting <em>views</em> have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing. The <em>views</em> that show the <em>whole</em> from a certain angle are called <em>aspects</em>.</p>  
  
<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed <em>creation</em> of the ways in which we look at the world—has become <em>necessary</em> in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with our conventional ones.</p>  
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<p>This <em>modernization</em> of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed <em>creation</em> of the ways in which we look at any theme or issue—has become <em>necessary</em> in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with our conventional ones.</p>  
  
 
<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>In the <em>holoscope</em>, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.</blockquote>  
  
<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or must (also) be perceived as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scopes</em>); and to do that collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>  
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<p>We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something <em>is</em> as stated, that <em>X</em> <em>is</em> <em>Y</em>—although it would be more accurate to say that <em>X</em> can or need to (also) be perceived as <em>Y</em>. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered <em>scopes</em>); and to do that collaboratively, in a [[dialog|<em>dialog</em>]].</p>  
  
 
<p>To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>  
 
<p>To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of <em>scopes</em>, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy. </p>  
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<p>One of them is obvious: If we should use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>  
 
<p>One of them is obvious: If we should use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>  
  
<p>In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. Wiener made that point by talking about ants and bees. It is the nature of the communication that determines a social system's properties, and behavior.  Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis, but let us here use this more contemporary one) the <em>sustainability</em> of a system. The full title of Wiener's book was  "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>  
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<p>In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. Wiener made that point by talking about ants and bees. It is the nature of the communication that determines a social system's properties, and behavior.  Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", but let us here use this more contemporary one) the <em>sustainability</em> of a system. The full title of Wiener's book was  "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>  
  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
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<p>We have assembled a formidable collection of academic results that shared the same fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. The link between communication and action having been broken—the academic results will tend to be ignored <em>whenever they challenge the present "course"</em> and point to a new one!</p>
 
<p>We have assembled a formidable collection of academic results that shared the same fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. The link between communication and action having been broken—the academic results will tend to be ignored <em>whenever they challenge the present "course"</em> and point to a new one!</p>
  
<p>To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see so many best ideas of our best minds ignored. Why publish more—if even the most <em>elementary</em> insight that our field has produced, the one that <em>motivated</em> our field and our work, has not yet been communicated to the public?</p>  
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<p>To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds remained ignored. Why publish more—if even the most <em>elementary</em> insight that our field produced are still widely unknown?</p>  
  
 
<p>This sentiment is transformed into <em>holotopian</em> optimism when we look at 'the other side of the coin'—the creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed <em>obliged</em> to reinvent <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>, by recreating the very communication that holds them together. Including, of course, our own, academic system, and the way in which it interoperates with other systems—<em>or fails</em> to interoperate. </p>   
 
<p>This sentiment is transformed into <em>holotopian</em> optimism when we look at 'the other side of the coin'—the creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed <em>obliged</em> to reinvent <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>, by recreating the very communication that holds them together. Including, of course, our own, academic system, and the way in which it interoperates with other systems—<em>or fails</em> to interoperate. </p>   
  
<p>Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> commonly ignored fact:</p>  
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<p>Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also <em>this</em> widely ignored fact:</p>  
  
<blockquote>The information technology we now commonly use to communicate with the world was <em>created</em> to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.</blockquote>  
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<blockquote>The information technology we now use to communicate with the world was <em>created</em> to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.</blockquote>  
  
<p>'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have just been created—in order to <em>enable</em> the development of the new kinds of 'socio-technical machinery' that our society now urgently needs.</p>  
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<p>'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have already been created—to <em>enable</em> us to create the kind of 'headlights' that our society urgently needs.</p>  
  
<p>Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that—given the vast volumes of our information—our knowledge work must be organized <em>in a way that enables us to benefit from each other's thinking</em>. That technology and processes must be devised to enable us to in effect "connect the dots" or think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. Bush described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>  
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<p>Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that—given the vast volumes of our information—our knowledge work must be organized <em>in a way that enables us to benefit from each other's thinking</em>. Bush's point was that technology and processes must be devised to enable us to in effect "connect the dots" or think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>  
  
<p>Douglas Engelbart, however, took Bush's idea in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. </p>  
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<p>Douglas Engelbart, however, took Bush's idea significantly further than Bush himself envisioned, and indeed in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. </p>  
  
<p>Notice that the earlier innovations in this area—including both the clay tablets and the printing press—required that a physical object be <em>transported</em>; this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>  
+
<p>All earlier innovations in this area—the clay tablets <em>and</em> the printing press—required that a physical object with a message be <em>physically transported</em>.</p>  
  
<blockquote> We can now develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em>! We can have results <em>instantly</em>!</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</blockquote>  
  
<p>Engelbart saw in this new technology exactly what we need to become able to handle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which grows at an accelerated rate. </p>  
+
<p>We can now develop insights and solutions  <em>together</em></p>  
  
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the planetary <em>systems</em>, and our "development, integration and application of knowledge" to begin with. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then our old man put his fingers on his forehead, and looked up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential is not only large, it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that is both necessary and possible is <em>qualitative</em>—from a system that doesn't work, to one that does.</p>  
+
<p>Engelbart conceived this new technology as a necessary step toward becoming able to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate. </p>  
  
<p>To Engelbart's dismay, this new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that <em>broadcast</em> information. </p>
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<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", will give us an opportunity for a pause and an illuminating reflection. Think about the prospects of improving the planetary <em>collective mind</em>. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then our old man put his fingers on his forehead, and raised his eyes up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential is not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that is both necessary and possible is <em>qualitative</em>—from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that <em>broadcast</em> information. </p>
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
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</p>  
 
</p>  
  
<blockquote>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on our culture; and on "human quality".</blockquote>  
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<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the effects that our dazzled and confused <em>collective mind</em> had on our culture; and on "human quality".</p>
  
<p>Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>  
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<p>Our sense of meaning having been drowned in an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>  
  
<p>But that is exactly what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
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<blockquote>But that is exactly what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>!</blockquote>
  
  
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<p>Engelbart left us a clear and concise answer; he called it <em>bootstrapping</em>.</p>  
 
<p>Engelbart left us a clear and concise answer; he called it <em>bootstrapping</em>.</p>  
  
<p>His point was that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done would not have an effect (the tie between information and action having been broken). <em>Bootstrapping</em> means that we consider ourselves as a part in a larger whole; and that we self-organize, and behave, as it may best serve to restore its <em>wholeness</em>. Which practically means that we either <em>create</em> a new system by using our own minds and bodies, or help others do that.</p>  
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<p>His point was that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done would not have an effect (the tie between information and action having been broken). <em>Bootstrapping</em> means that we consider ourselves as <em>parts</em> in a <em>collective mind</em>; and that we self-organize, and <em>act</em>, as it may best serve its restoration to <em>wholeness</em>.</p>
  
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was created by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> may now simply be understood as the functioning of a proper <em>collective mind</em>; including all the functions and processes this may require. Obviously, the impending <em>collective mind</em> re-evolution itself requires a <em>system</em>, or an institution, which will assemble and mobilize the required knowledge and human and other resources toward that end. Our first priority must be to secure that. Presently, Knowledge Federation is (a complete <em>prototype</em> of) the <em>transdiscipline</em> for <em>knowledge federation</em>—ready for inspection and deployment. We offer it as a proof-of-concept implementation of our call to action.</p>
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<blockquote>The key to solution is to either <em>create</em> new systems with the material of our own minds and bodies—or to <em>help others</em> do that.</blockquote>  
  
<p>The <em>praxis</em> of  <em>knowledge federation</em> itself must be <em>federated</em>. In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers, working on technology and processes for collective sense making). </p>  
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<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was conceived by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is simply an umbrella term for a variety of activities and social processes that together comprise the function of a <em>collective mind</em>. Obviously, the development of the <em>collective mind</em> [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] will requires a <em>system</em>, a new kind of institution, which will assemble and mobilize the required knowledge and human and other resources toward that end. Presently, Knowledge Federation is a complete <em>prototype</em> of the <em>transdiscipline</em> for <em>knowledge federation</em>, ready for inspection, co-creative updates and deployment.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The <em>praxis</em> of  <em>knowledge federation</em> itself must, of course, also be <em>federated</em>.</blockquote> 
 +
 
 +
<p>In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers, working on technology and processes for collective sense making). </p>  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:BCN2011.jpg]]<br>
 
[[File:BCN2011.jpg]]<br>
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<p>Other <em>prototypes</em> contributed other <em>design patterns</em> for restoring the severed link between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 <em>prototype</em> showed what may constitute the <em>federation</em> of a research result—which is written in an esoteric academic vernacular, and has large potential general interest and impact. The first phase of this <em>prototype</em>, completed through collaboration between the author and our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams, and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile, televised and live streamed event, where the result was made public. The third phase, implemented on Debategraph, modeled proper online collective thinking about the result—including pros and cons, connections with other related results, applications etc. </p>  
 
<p>Other <em>prototypes</em> contributed other <em>design patterns</em> for restoring the severed link between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 <em>prototype</em> showed what may constitute the <em>federation</em> of a research result—which is written in an esoteric academic vernacular, and has large potential general interest and impact. The first phase of this <em>prototype</em>, completed through collaboration between the author and our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams, and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile, televised and live streamed event, where the result was made public. The third phase, implemented on Debategraph, modeled proper online collective thinking about the result—including pros and cons, connections with other related results, applications etc. </p>  
  
<p>The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> is a conceived as a <em>direct</em> remedy for the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This <em>prototype</em> models a system by which an academic community can <em>federate</em> a single message into the public sphere. The message in this case was also relevant—it was whether or not we can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the functioning of our <em>systems</em> (or whether we must use its alternative—namely the knowledge developed in the systems sciences). </p>  
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<p>The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> is a conceived as a <em>direct</em> remedy for the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This <em>prototype</em> models a system by which an academic community can <em>federate</em> a single message into the public sphere. The message in this case was also relevant—it was whether or not we can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the functioning of our <em>systems</em>; or whether we must use its alternative, namely the knowledge developed in the systems sciences. </p>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
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<blockquote>In the course of our modernization, we made a <em>fundamental error</em>.</blockquote>   
 
<blockquote>In the course of our modernization, we made a <em>fundamental error</em>.</blockquote>   
  
<p>From the traditional culture we have adopted a <em>myth</em> far more disruptive of modernization than the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; and that the purpose of information, and of our pursuit of knowledge, is to "know the reality" objectively, as it truly is. It may take a moment of reflection to see how much this <em>myth</em> permeates our popular culture, our society and institutions; how much it marks "the relationship we have with information"—in all its various manifestations.</p>  
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<p>From the traditional culture we adopted a <em>myth</em> far more disruptive of modernization than the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; and that the purpose of information, and of our pursuit of knowledge, is to "know the reality" objectively, as it truly is. It may take a moment of reflection to see how much this <em>myth</em> permeates our popular culture, our society and institutions; how much it marks "the relationship we have with information"—in all its various manifestations.</p>  
  
 
<p>This fundamental error has subsequently been detected and reported, but not corrected. (We again witness that the link between information and action has been severed.)</p>  
 
<p>This fundamental error has subsequently been detected and reported, but not corrected. (We again witness that the link between information and action has been severed.)</p>  
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<blockquote>The "reality", the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>The "reality", the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>construct</em>. </blockquote>  
  
<p>Our "construction of reality" turned out to be a complex and most interesting process, in which our cognitive organs and our society or culture interact. From the cradle to the grave, through innumerably many "carrots and sticks", we are <em>socialized</em> to organize and communicate our experience <em>in a certain specific way</em>. </p>
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<p>This "social construction of reality" turned out to be a result of complex interaction between our cognitive organs and our society or culture. From the cradle to the grave, through innumerably many "carrots and sticks", we are <em>socialized</em> to organize and communicate our experience <em>in a certain specific way</em>. </p>
  
 
<p>The vast body of research, and insights, that resulted in this pivotal domain of interest, now allows us and indeed <em>compels us</em>  to extend the <em>power structure</em> view of social reality a step further, into the cultural and the cognitive realms.</p>  
 
<p>The vast body of research, and insights, that resulted in this pivotal domain of interest, now allows us and indeed <em>compels us</em>  to extend the <em>power structure</em> view of social reality a step further, into the cultural and the cognitive realms.</p>  
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<p>We have deliberately chosen Socrates (the forefather of Academia) and Galilei (a pioneer of science) to represent the academic tradition in our proposal. Both Socrates and Galilei were charged and sentenced for "impiety" (challenging <em>socialized reality</em>), and for <em>epistemology</em> (which Socrates practiced through <em>dialogs</em>, and Galilei by allowing the reason to challenge the truth of the Scripture). Thereby we pointed out that substituting <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> for <em>socialized reality</em> construction has been <em>the</em> core theme of the academic tradition since its inception. </p>  
 
<p>We have deliberately chosen Socrates (the forefather of Academia) and Galilei (a pioneer of science) to represent the academic tradition in our proposal. Both Socrates and Galilei were charged and sentenced for "impiety" (challenging <em>socialized reality</em>), and for <em>epistemology</em> (which Socrates practiced through <em>dialogs</em>, and Galilei by allowing the reason to challenge the truth of the Scripture). Thereby we pointed out that substituting <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> for <em>socialized reality</em> construction has been <em>the</em> core theme of the academic tradition since its inception. </p>  
  
<blockquote>But <em>socialized reality</em> construction is not only or even primarily an instrument of power struggle. It is, indeed, also <em>the</em> way in which the traditional culture reproduces itself and evolves. It is the very 'DNA' of the traditional culture, and often the only one that was available.</blockquote>  
+
<p>But <em>socialized reality</em> construction is not only or even primarily an instrument of power struggle. It is, indeed, also <em>the</em> way in which the traditional culture reproduces and evolves.</p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>The <em>socialized reality</em> has served as the very 'DNA' on which the evolution of culture depended.</blockquote>  
  
<p>We may perceive the traditional "realities"—such as the belief in heavenly reward and the eternal punishment—as instruments of power; <em>and</em> we may also see them as ways in which certain cultural values, and certain "human quality", were maintained. Both perceptions correct; and both are relevant. </p>   
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<p>We may perceive the traditional "realities"—such as the belief in heavenly reward and the eternal punishment—as instruments of power; <em>and</em> we may also see them as ways in which certain cultural values, and certain "human quality", were maintained. Both perceptions are correct; both are relevant. </p>   
  
 
<p>It is their historical <em>interplay</em> that is most interesting to study—how the best insights of the best among us, of the historical enlightened beings and "prophets", were diverted to serve the <em>power structure</em>, and turned something quite <em>opposite</em> from what was intended. In the Holotopia project we engage in this sort of study to develop answers to perhaps <em>the</em> most interesting question, in any case from the point of view of the <em>holotopia</em>:</p>
 
<p>It is their historical <em>interplay</em> that is most interesting to study—how the best insights of the best among us, of the historical enlightened beings and "prophets", were diverted to serve the <em>power structure</em>, and turned something quite <em>opposite</em> from what was intended. In the Holotopia project we engage in this sort of study to develop answers to perhaps <em>the</em> most interesting question, in any case from the point of view of the <em>holotopia</em>:</p>
  
<blockquote>What would our world be like, if we <em>liberated</em> the culture from the <em>power structure</em>?</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>What would our world be like, if culture were finally <em>liberated</em> from <em>power structure</em>?</blockquote>  
  
<p>Some of the consequences of the historical error under consideration (that we adopted <em>reification</em> as "the relationship we have with information") include the following.</p>  
+
<p>The corrected errors would include the following.</p>  
  
 
<ul>  
 
<ul>  

Revision as of 05:11, 30 August 2020

Imagine...

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

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

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

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram


Our proposal

The core of our knowledge federation proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.

What is our relationship with information presently like?

Here is how Neil Postman described it:

"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."

Postman.jpg
Neil Postman

What would information and our handling of information be like, if we treated them as we treat other human-made things—if we adapted them to the purposes that need to be served?

By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would information be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted and applied? What would public informing be like? And academic communication, and education?

The substance of our proposal is a complete prototype of knowledge federation, where initial answers to relevant questions are proposed, and in part implemented in practice.
Our call to action is to institutionalize and develop knowledge federation as an academic field, and a real-life praxis (informed practice).
Our purpose is to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge.

A proof of concept application

The Club of Rome's assessment of the situation we are in, provided us with a benchmark challenge for putting the proposed ideas to a test.

Four decades ago—based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future"—Aurelio Peccei issued the following call to action:

"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."


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

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

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Aurelio Peccei

This conclusion, that we are in a state of crisis that has cultural roots and must be handled accordingly, Peccei shared with a number of twentieth century's thinkers. Arne Næss, Norway's esteemed philosopher, reached it on different grounds, and called it "deep ecology". In what follows we shall assume that this conclusion has been federated—and focus on the more interesting questions, such as how to "change course"; and in what ways may the new course be different.

In "Human Quality", Peccei explained his call to action:

"Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world."

The Club of Rome insisted that lasting solutions would not be found by focusing on specific problems, but by transforming the condition from which they all stem, which they called "problematique".

Could the change of 'headlights' we are proposing be "a way to change course"?


A vision

Holotopia is a vision of a possible future that emerges when proper 'light' has been 'turned on'.

Since Thomas More coined this term and described the first utopia, a number of visions of an ideal but non-existing social and cultural order of things have been proposed. But in view of adverse and contrasting realities, the word "utopia" acquired the negative meaning of an unrealizable fancy.

As the optimism regarding our future waned, apocalyptic or "dystopian" visions became common. The "protopias" emerged as a compromise, where the focus is on smaller but practically realizable improvements.

The holotopia is different in spirit from them all. It is a more attractive vision of the future than what the common utopias offered—whose authors either lacked the information to see what was possible, or lived in the times when the resources we have did not yet exist. And yet the holotopia is readily actionable—because we already have the information and other resources that are needed for its fulfillment.

The holotopia vision is made concrete in terms of five insights, as explained below.


A principle

What do we need to do to "change course" toward the holotopia?

The five insights point to a simple principle or rule of thumb—making things whole.

This principle is suggested by the holotopia's very name. And also by the Modernity ideogram. Instead of reifying our institutions and professions, and merely acting in them competitively to improve "our own" situation or condition, we consider ourselves and what we do as functional elements in a larger system of systems; and we self-organize, and act, as it may best suit the wholeness of it all.

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

A method

"The arguments posed in the preceding pages", Peccei summarized in One Hundred Pages for the Future, "point out several things, of which one of the most important is that our generations seem to have lost the sense of the whole."

To make things wholewe must be able to see them whole!

To highlight that the knowledge federation methodology described and implemented in the proposed prototype affords that very capability, to see things whole, in the context of the holotopia we refer to it by the pseudonym holoscope.

While the characteristics of the holoscope—the design choices or design patterns, how they follow from published insights and why they are necessary for 'illuminating the way'—will become obvious in the course of this presentation, one of them must be made clear from the start.


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Holoscope ideogram

To see things whole, we must look at all sides.

The holoscope distinguishes itself by allowing for multiple ways of looking at a theme or issue, which are called scopes. The scopes and the resulting views have similar meaning and role as projections do in technical drawing. The views that show the whole from a certain angle are called aspects.

This modernization of our handling of information—distinguished by purposeful, free and informed creation of the ways in which we look at any theme or issue—has become necessary in our situation, suggests the bus with candle headlights. But it also presents a challenge to the reader—to bear in mind that the resulting views are not "reality pictures", contending for that status with our conventional ones.

In the holoscope, the legitimacy and the peaceful coexistence of multiple ways to look at a theme is axiomatic.

We will continue to use the conventional way of speaking and say that something is as stated, that X is Y—although it would be more accurate to say that X can or need to (also) be perceived as Y. The views we offer are accompanied by an invitation to genuinely try to look at the theme at hand in a certain specific way (to use the offered scopes); and to do that collaboratively, in a dialog.

To liberate our worldview from the inherited concepts and methods and allow for deliberate choice of scopes, we used the scientific method as venture point—and modified it by taking recourse to insights reached in 20th century science and philosophy.

Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention. The holoscope is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see any chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in proportion.

A discovery of a new way of looking—which reveals a structural problem, and helps us reach a correct general assessment of an object of study or a situation as a whole (see whether the 'cup' is 'broken' or 'whole') is a new kind of result that is made possible by th general-purpose science that is modeled by the holoscope

To see more, we take recourse to the vision of others. The holoscope combines scientific and other insights to enable us to see what we ignored, to 'see the other side'. This allows us to detect structural defects ('cracks') in core elements of everyday reality—which appear to us as just normal, when we look at them in our habitual way ('in the light of a candle').

All elements in our proposal are deliberately left unfinished, rendered as a collection of prototypes. Think of them as composing a 'cardboard model of a city', and a 'construction site'. By sharing them we are not making a case for a specific 'city'—but for 'architecture' as an academic field, and a real-life praxis.


Scope


What is wrong with our present "course"? In what ways does it need to be changed? What benefits will result?

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Five Insights ideogram

We use the holoscope to illuminate five pivotal themes, which determine the "course":

  • Innovation—the way we use our ability to create, and induce change
  • Communication—the social process, enabled by technology, by which information is handled
  • Epistemology—the fundamental assumptions we use to create truth and meaning; or "the relationship we have with information"
  • Method—the way in which truth and meaning are constructed in everyday life, or "the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it"
  • Values—the way we "pursue happiness", which in the modern society directly determines the course

In each case, we see a structural defect, which led to perceived problems.

Those structural defects can be remedied.

Their removal naturally leads to improvements that are well beyond the removal of symptoms.

The holotopia vision results.

The key to comprehensive change is the same as it was in Galilei's time—a method that allows for creation of general principles and insights. But since "a great cultural revival" is our next goal, this new method allows for the creation of insights about the most basic themes that mark our social and private existence.

A case for our proposal is thereby also made.

In the spirit of the holoscope, we here only summarize the five insights—and provide evidence and details separately.


Scope

What do we need to do, to become capable of "changing course"?

"Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it", observed Peccei. Imagine if some malevolent entity, perhaps an insane dictator, took control over that power.

The power structure insight shows that no dictator is needed.

Albeit in democracy, we are in that situation already.

While the nature of the power structure will become clear as we go along, imagine it, to begin with, as our institutions; or more accurately, as the systems in which we live and work (which we simply call systems).

Notice that systems have an immense power—over us, because we have to adapt to them to be able to live and work; and over our environment, because by organizing us and using us in a certain specific way, they decide what the effects of our work will be.

The power structure determines whether the effects of our efforts will be problems, or solutions.

Diagnosis

How suitable are the systems in which we live and work for their all-important role?

Evidence shows that they waste a lion's share of our resources. And that they either cause problems, or make us incapable of solving them.

The root cause of this malady is readily found in the way in which systems evolve.

Survival of the fittest favors the systems that are predatory, not the ones that are useful.

This excerpt from Joel Bakan's documentary "The Corporation" (which Bakan as a law professor created to federate an insight he considered essential) explains how the most powerful institution on our planet evolved to be a perfect "externalizing machine" ("Externalizing" means maximizing profits by letting someone else bear the costs, notably the people and the environment), just as the shark evolved to be a perfect predator. This scene from Sidney Pollack's 1969 film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" will illustrate how the power structure affects our own condition.

The systems provide an ecology, which in the long run shapes our values, and our "human quality". They have the power to socialize us in ways that suit their needs. "The business of business is business"—and if our business is to succeed in competition, we must act in a certain way. We either bend and comply—or get replaced. The effect on the system will be the same.

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A consequence, Zygmunt Bauman diagnosed, is that bad intentions are no longer needed for bad things to happen. Through socialization, the power structure can co-opt our duty and commitment; and even our heroism and honor.

Bauman's insight that even the holocaust was only a consequence and a special case, however extreme, of (what we are calling) the power structure, calls for careful contemplation: Even the concentration camp employees, Bauman argued, were only "doing their job"—in a system whose nature and purpose was beyond their ethical sense, and power to change.

While our ethical sensitivity is tuned to the power structures of the past, we are committing (in all innocence, by acting through the power structures that bind us together) the greatest massive crime in human history.

Our children may not have a livable planet to live on.

Not because someone broke the rules—but because we follow them.

Remedy

The fact that we will not "solve our problems" unless we develop the capability to update our systems has not remained unnoticed.

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The very first step that the The Club of Rome's founders did after its inception, in 1968, was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adapted that as one of our keywords.

The work and the conclusions of this team were based on results in the systems sciences. More recently, in "Guided Evolution of society", systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy made a thorough review of relevant research, and concluded in a truly holotopian tone:

We are the first generation of our species that has the privilege, the opportunity and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed chosen people. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These two are core requirements, because what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.

In 2010, Knowledge Federation began to self-organize to become capable of making further headway on this creative frontier. The procedure we developed is simple: We create a prototype of a system, and organize a transdisciplinary community and project around it, to update it continuously. This enables the insights reached in the participating disciplines to have real or systemic impact directly.

Our very first project of this kind, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism in 2011, developed a prototype of a public informing that turns perceived problems (that people report directly, through citizen journalism) into systemic understanding of causes and recommendations for action (developed by involving academic and other domain experts, and having their insights made accessible by a communication design team).

The experience with this prototype revealed a general paradox we were not aware of: The senior domain experts we brought together to represent (in this case) journalism cannot change their own system (their full capacity being engaged in performing their role within the system). What they, however, can and need to do is empower their next-generation (students, junior colleagues, entrepreneurs...) to do that. A year later we created The Game-Changing Game as a generic way to change systems—and hence as a "practical way to craft the future". We subsequently created The Club of Zagreb, as an update (necessary to unravel this paradox) of The Club of Rome. The Holotopia project builds further on the results of this work.

Our portfolio contains about forty prototypes, each of which illustrates systemic innovation in a specific domain. Each prototype is composed by weaving together design patterns—problem-solution pairs, which are ready to be adapted to other design challenges and domains.

The Collaborology prototype, in education, will highlight some of the advantages of this approach.

An education that prepares us for yesterday's professions, and only in a certain stage of life, is obviously an obstacle to systemic change. Collaborology implements an education that is in every sense flexible (self-guided, life-long...), and in an emerging area of interest (collaborative knowledge work, as enabled by new technology). By being collaboratively created itself (Collaborology is created and taught by a network of international experts, and offered to learners world-wide), the economies of scale result that dramatically reduce effort. This in addition provides a sustainable business model for developing and disseminating up-to-date knowledge in any domain of interest. By conceiving the course as a design project, where everyone collaborates on co-creating the learning resources, the students get a chance to exercise their "human quality". This in addition gives the students an essential role in the resulting 'knowledge-work ecosystem' (as 'bacteria', extracting 'nutrients') .


Scope

We have just seen that our evolutionary challenge and opportunity is to develop the capability to update our institutions or systems, to learn how to make them whole.

Where—with what system—shall we begin?

The handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons.

One of them is obvious: If we should use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.

In his 1948 seminal "Cybernetics", Norbert Wiener pointed to another reason: In social systems, communication is what turns a collection of independent individuals into a system. Wiener made that point by talking about ants and bees. It is the nature of the communication that determines a social system's properties, and behavior. Cybernetics has shown—as its main point, and title theme—that "the tie between information and action" has an all-important role, which determines (Wiener used the technical keyword "homeostasis", but let us here use this more contemporary one) the sustainability of a system. The full title of Wiener's book was "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, to be able to "change course" when the circumstances demand that, to be able to continue living and adapting and evolving—a system must have suitable communication and control.

Diagnosis

That is presently not the case with our core systems; and with our civilization as a whole..

The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed.

Our society's communication-and-control is broken; it needs to be restored.

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To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising their communication their next highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.

These calls to action remained, however, without effect.

"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm. Wiener too entrusted his insight to the communication whose tie with action had been severed.

We have assembled a formidable collection of academic results that shared the same fate—to illustrate a general phenomenon we are calling Wiener's paradox. The link between communication and action having been broken—the academic results will tend to be ignored whenever they challenge the present "course" and point to a new one!

To an academic researcher, it may feel disheartening to see that so many best ideas of our best minds remained ignored. Why publish more—if even the most elementary insight that our field produced are still widely unknown?

This sentiment is transformed into holotopian optimism when we look at 'the other side of the coin'—the creative frontier that is opening up. We are invited to, we are indeed obliged to reinvent the systems in which we live and work, by recreating the very communication that holds them together. Including, of course, our own, academic system, and the way in which it interoperates with other systems—or fails to interoperate.

Optimism will turn into enthusiasm, when we consider also this widely ignored fact:

The information technology we now use to communicate with the world was created to enable a paradigm change on that very frontier.

'Electricity', and the 'lightbulb', have already been created—to enable us to create the kind of 'headlights' that our society urgently needs.

Vannevar Bush pointed to the need for this new paradigm already in his title, "As We May Think". His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that—given the vast volumes of our information—our knowledge work must be organized in a way that enables us to benefit from each other's thinking. Bush's point was that technology and processes must be devised to enable us to in effect "connect the dots" or think together, as a single mind does. He described a prototype system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.

Douglas Engelbart, however, took Bush's idea significantly further than Bush himself envisioned, and indeed in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when each of us humans are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system.

All earlier innovations in this area—the clay tablets and the printing press—required that a physical object with a message be physically transported.

This new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" concurrently, as cells in a human nervous system do.

We can now develop insights and solutions together

Engelbart conceived this new technology as a necessary step toward becoming able to tackle the "complexity times urgency" of our problems, which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate.

This three minute video clip, which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", will give us an opportunity for a pause and an illuminating reflection. Think about the prospects of improving the planetary collective mind. Imagine "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then our old man put his fingers on his forehead, and raised his eyes up: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential is not only large; it is staggering. The improvement that is both necessary and possible is qualitative—from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.

To Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the old processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press. The ones that broadcast information.

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The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the effects that our dazzled and confused collective mind had on our culture; and on "human quality".

Our sense of meaning having been drowned in an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.

But that is exactly what binds us to power structure!


Remedy

What is to be done, to restore the severed link between communication and action?

How can we begin to change our collective mind—as our technology enables, and our situation demands?

Engelbart left us a clear and concise answer; he called it bootstrapping.

His point was that only writing about what needs to be done would not have an effect (the tie between information and action having been broken). Bootstrapping means that we consider ourselves as parts in a collective mind; and that we self-organize, and act, as it may best serve its restoration to wholeness.

The key to solution is to either create new systems with the material of our own minds and bodies—or to help others do that.

The Knowledge Federation transdiscipline was conceived by an act of bootstrapping, to enable bootstrapping.

What we are calling knowledge federation is simply an umbrella term for a variety of activities and social processes that together comprise the function of a collective mind. Obviously, the development of the collective mind paradigm will requires a system, a new kind of institution, which will assemble and mobilize the required knowledge and human and other resources toward that end. Presently, Knowledge Federation is a complete prototype of the transdiscipline for knowledge federation, ready for inspection, co-creative updates and deployment.

The praxis of knowledge federation itself must, of course, also be federated.

In 2008, when Knowledge Federation had its inaugural meeting, two closely related initiatives were formed: Program for the Future (a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Doug Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Global Sensemaking (an international community of researchers and developers, working on technology and processes for collective sense making).

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Patty Coulter, Mei Lin Fung and David Price speaking at the 2011 An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism workshop in Barcelona

We use the above triplet of photos ideographically, to highlight that Knowledge Federation is a true federation—where state of the art knowledge is combined in state of the art systems. The featured participants of our 2011 workshop in Barcelona, where our public informing prototype was created, are Patty Coulter (the Director of Oxford Global Media and Fellow of Green College Oxford, formerly the Director of Oxford University's Reuter Program in Journalism) Mei Lin Fung (the founder of Program for the Future) and David Price (who co-founded both the Global Sensemaking R & D community, and Debategraph—which is now the leading global platform for collective thinking).

Other prototypes contributed other design patterns for restoring the severed link between information and action. The Tesla and the Nature of Creativity TNC2015 prototype showed what may constitute the federation of a research result—which is written in an esoteric academic vernacular, and has large potential general interest and impact. The first phase of this prototype, completed through collaboration between the author and our communication design team, turned the academic article into a multimedia object, with intuitive, metaphorical diagrams, and explanatory interviews with the author. The second phase was a high-profile, televised and live streamed event, where the result was made public. The third phase, implemented on Debategraph, modeled proper online collective thinking about the result—including pros and cons, connections with other related results, applications etc.

The Lighthouse 2016 prototype is a conceived as a direct remedy for the Wiener's paradox, created for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. This prototype models a system by which an academic community can federate a single message into the public sphere. The message in this case was also relevant—it was whether or not we can rely on "free competition" to guide the evolution and the functioning of our systems; or whether we must use its alternative, namely the knowledge developed in the systems sciences.

Scope

"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Of course political leaders love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them to do was to 'hit the brakes'; and when the 'bus' they are believed to be 'driving' is inspected, it becomes clear that the 'brakes' too are missing. The job of a politician is to keep 'the bus on course' (the economy growing) for yet another four years. Changing the 'course' or the system is well beyond what they are able to do, or even imagine doing.

The COVID-19 pandemic may require systemic changes now.

So who, what institution or system, will lead us through our next evolutionary challenge—where we will learn how to recreate the systems in which we live and work; in knowledge work, and beyond?

Both Erich Jantsch and Doug Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But the universities ignored them—just as they ignored Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and so many others who followed.

Why?

Isn't the call to restore agency to information and power to knowledge deserving of academic attention?

It is tempting to conclude that the university institution followed the general trend, and evolved as a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.

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We readily find them in the way in which the university institution originated.

The academic tradition did not originate as a way to practical knowledge, but to freely pursue knowledge for its own sake; in a manner disciplined only by knowledge of knowledge—which philosophers have been developing since antiquity. Wherever this free-yet-disciplined pursuit of knowledge took us, we followed.

And as we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, by highlighting the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest,

it was this free pursuit of knowledge that led to the last "great cultural revival".

We asked:

Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

The key to the positive answer to this question—which is obviously central to holotopia—is in the historicity of "the relationship we have with knowledge"—which Stephen Toulmin explicated so clearly in his last book, "Reurn to Reason", from which the above quotation was taken. So that is what we here focus on.

As Toulmin pointed out, at the time when the modern university was taking shape, it was the Church and the tradition that had the prerogative of telling the people how to conduct their daily affairs and what to believe in. And as the image of Galilei in house arrest might suggest—they held onto that prerogative most firmly! But the censorship and the prison could not stop an idea whose time had come. They were unable to prevent a completely new way to explore the world to transpire from astrophysics, where it originated, and transform first our pursuit of knowledge—and then our society and culture at large.

It is therefore natural that at the universities we consider the curation of this approach to knowledge to be our core role in our society. At the universities, we are the heirs and the custodians of a tradition that has historically led to some of the most spectacular evolutionary leaps in human history. Naturally, we remain faithful to that tradition. We do that by meticulously conforming to the methods and the themes of interests of mathematics, physics, philosophy, biology, sociology, philosophy and other traditional academic disciplines, which, we believe, embody the highest standards of knowledge of knowledge. People can learn practical skills elsewhere. It is the university education that gives them them up-to-date knowledge of knowledge—and with it the ability to pursue knowledge correctly in any field of interest.

We must ask:

Can the academic tradition evolve further?

Could this tradition once again give us a completely new way to explore the world?

Can the free pursuit of knowledge, curated by the knowledge of knowledge, once again lead to "a great cultural revival" ?

Can "a great cultural revival" begin at the university?


Diagnosis


In the course of our modernization, we made a fundamental error.

From the traditional culture we adopted a myth far more disruptive of modernization than the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; and that the purpose of information, and of our pursuit of knowledge, is to "know the reality" objectively, as it truly is. It may take a moment of reflection to see how much this myth permeates our popular culture, our society and institutions; how much it marks "the relationship we have with information"—in all its various manifestations.

This fundamental error has subsequently been detected and reported, but not corrected. (We again witness that the link between information and action has been severed.)

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It is simply impossible to open up the 'mechanism of nature', and verify that our ideas and models correspond to the real thing!

The "reality", the 20th century's scientists and philosophers found out, is not something we discover; it is something we construct.

This "social construction of reality" turned out to be a result of complex interaction between our cognitive organs and our society or culture. From the cradle to the grave, through innumerably many "carrots and sticks", we are socialized to organize and communicate our experience in a certain specific way.

The vast body of research, and insights, that resulted in this pivotal domain of interest, now allows us and indeed compels us to extend the power structure view of social reality a step further, into the cultural and the cognitive realms.

In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann left us an analysis of the social process by which the reality is constructed—and pointed to the role that "universal theories" (which determine the relationship we have with information) play in maintaining a given social and political status quo. An example, but not the only one, is the Biblical worldview of Galilei's persecutors.

To organize and sum up what we above all need to know about the nature of socialization, and its relationship with power, we created the Odin–Bourdieu–Damasio thread, consisting of three short real-life stories or vignettes. (The threads are a technical tool we developed based on Vannevar Bush's idea of "trails"; we call them "threads" because we further weave them into patterns.) These insights are so central to holotopia, that we don't hesitate to summarize them also here, however briefly.

The first, Odin the Horse story, points to the nature of turf struggle, by portraying the turf behavior of horses.

The second story, featuring Pierre Bourdieu as leading sociologist, shows that we humans exhibit a similar behavior—albeit in far more varied, complex and subtle ways. In effect, Bourdieu's experiences and insights in Algeria, which led to the formulation of his "theory of practice", allow us to perceive the human culture as—a complex 'turf'.

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Bourdieu used interchangeably two keywords—"field" and "game"—to refer to this 'turf'. By calling it a field, he suggested something akin to a magnetic field, which orients our seemingly random or "free" behavior—mostly without anyone noticing that. By calling it a game, he sugged something that structures or "gamifies" our social existence, by giving each of us certain "action capabilities" pertaining to a social role. Those "embodied predispositions" or capabilities, which Bourdieu called "habitus", tend to be transmitted from body to body directly—without anyone noticing that a subtle "turf strife" is at play. Everyone bows to the king, and spontaneously we do too. In this way we are socialized—through innumerably many carrots and sticks—to accept those roles, and the behaviors or capabilities associated with them, as simply the "reality"—and hence as similarly immutable or "objectively" given as the reality of the material world. Bourdieu called this experience, that (our perception of) the social and natural "reality" is the only one possible, doxa.

The third story, featuring Antonio Damasio in the role of a leading cognitive neuroscientist, completes this thread by explaining that we, humans, are not the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Each of us has an embodied cognitive filter, which determines what options we are able to rationally consider. This cognitive filter is programmed through socialization. Damasio's insight allows us to understand why we civilized humans don't even rationally consider taking off our clothes and walking into the street naked; and most importantly—why we don't consider changing the systems in which we live and work.

The most important insight reached is the following.

Socialized reality construction constitutes a pseudo-epistemology.

Socialization can make certain things and ideas seem real—and others unreal.

We have deliberately chosen Socrates (the forefather of Academia) and Galilei (a pioneer of science) to represent the academic tradition in our proposal. Both Socrates and Galilei were charged and sentenced for "impiety" (challenging socialized reality), and for epistemology (which Socrates practiced through dialogs, and Galilei by allowing the reason to challenge the truth of the Scripture). Thereby we pointed out that substituting knowledge of knowledge for socialized reality construction has been the core theme of the academic tradition since its inception.

But socialized reality construction is not only or even primarily an instrument of power struggle. It is, indeed, also the way in which the traditional culture reproduces and evolves.

The socialized reality has served as the very 'DNA' on which the evolution of culture depended.

We may perceive the traditional "realities"—such as the belief in heavenly reward and the eternal punishment—as instruments of power; and we may also see them as ways in which certain cultural values, and certain "human quality", were maintained. Both perceptions are correct; both are relevant.

It is their historical interplay that is most interesting to study—how the best insights of the best among us, of the historical enlightened beings and "prophets", were diverted to serve the power structure, and turned something quite opposite from what was intended. In the Holotopia project we engage in this sort of study to develop answers to perhaps the most interesting question, in any case from the point of view of the holotopia:

What would our world be like, if culture were finally liberated from power structure?

The corrected errors would include the following.

  • Undue limits to creativity. On the one side we have a vast global army of selected, specially trained and publicly sponsored creative workers having to produce more articles in the traditional academic fields as the only way to be academically legitimate. On the other side of our society, and of our planetary ecosystem, in dire need for new ideas, for new ways to be creative. Imagine the amount of benefit that could be reached in that situation— by liberating the contemporary Galilei to once again bring completely new ways to create and handle knowledge!
  • Severed link between information and action. The (perceived) purpose of information being to complete the 'reality puzzle'—every new piece appears to be equally relevant as the others, and necessary for completing this project. In the sciences, and in media informing, we keep producing large volumes of data every minute—as Neil Postman diagnosed. As the ocean of documents rises, we begin to drown in it. Informing us the people in some functional way becomes impossible.
  • Loss of cultural heritage. We may as well here focus on the cultural heritage whose purpose was to cultivate "human quality". Already this trivial observation might suffice to make a point: With the threat of eternal fire on the one side, and the promise of heavenly pleasures on the other, a 'field' is created that orients the people's behavior toward what the tradition considered ethical. To see that those ancient myths are, however, only the tip of an iceberg (or more to the point, only elements in a complex ecosystem whose purpose is socialization) a one-minute thought experiment—an imaginary visit to a cathedral—will be sufficient. There is awe-inspiring architecture; frescos of masters of old on the walls; we hear Bach cantatas; and there's of course the ritual. All this comprises an ecosystem—where emotions such as respect and awe make one to listening and learning in certain ways, and advancing further. The complex dynamics of our cultural ecosystem, and the way we handled it, bear a strong analogy with our biophysical environment, with one notable difference: We have neither concepts nor methods, we have nothing equivalent to the temperature and the CO2 measurements in culture—to even diagnose the problems; not to speak about legislating remedies.
  • "Human quality" abandoned to power structure. Advertising is everywhere. And explicit advertising too is only a tip of an iceberg, the bulk of shich consists of a variety of ways in which "symbolic power" is used to socialize us in ways that suit the power structure interests. As a rule, this proceeds without anyone's awareness, as Bourdieu observed. But the organized and deliberate, and even research-based manipulation should not be underestimated! Here the person and the story of Edward Bernays, Freud's American nephew who became "the pioneer of modern public relations and propaganda", is iconic.


This conclusion suggests itself.

The Enlightenment did not liberate us from power-related reality construction, as it is believed.
Our socialization only changed hands—from the kings and the clergy, to the corporations and the media.

Ironically, our carefully cultivated self-identity—as "objective observers of reality"—keeps us, academic researchers, and information and knowledge at large, on the 'back seat'—and without impact. We can, and do, diagnose problems; but we cannot be an active agent in their solution.

Remedy

In the spirit of the holoscope, we introduce an answer by a metaphorical image, the Mirror ideogram. As the ideograms tend to, the Mirror ideogram too renders the essence of a situation, in a way that points to a way in which the situation may need to be handled—and to some subtler points as well.

The main message of the Mirror ideogram is that the free-yet-methodical pursuit of knowledge, which distinguishes the academic tradition, has brought us to a certain singular situation, which requires that we respond in a certain specific way. The mirror is inviting us, and indeed compelling us to interrupt the busy work we are doing, and to self-reflect in a similar manner and about similar themes as Socrates taught, at the point of the Academia's inception many centuries ago.

When we look at a mirror, we see ourselves—and we see ourselves in the world. The mirror metaphor is intended to reflect two insights, or two changes in our habitual self-identity and self-perception, which a self-reflection about the underlying issues of meaning and purpose, based on the academic insights reached in the past century, will lead us to.

The first insight is that we must put an end to reification. Seeing ourselves in the mirror is intended to signify that the methods and vocabularies of the academic disciplines were not something that objectively existed, and was only discovered. We (the founders of our disciplines) created them. For many reasons, some of which have been stated above, we must liberate ourselves, and the people, from reification of our institutions, our worldviews, and of the very concepts we use to communicate.

The liberation from reification is the liberation from the systems we have been socialized to accept as "reality"—and hence also from the power structure.

Mirror2.jpg
Mirror ideogram

The second consequence is the beginning of accountability. The world we see ourselves in is a world that needs new ideas, new ways of thinking, and of being. It's a world in dire need for creative yet methodical and accountable change. We see the key role that information and knowledge have in that world, and that situation.


We see ourselves holding the key.

An important point here is that the academia finds itself in a much larger and more important role than the one it was originally conceived for. The reason is a historical accident: The successes of science discredited the foundations, beginning from its socialized reality, on which the traditional culture relied in its function.

The key question then presents itself:

How should we continue?

Yes, we do want to respond to our new role; indeed we have to, because nobody else can.

At the same time—we do want to continue our tradition, of free–yet-methodical pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

The most interesting insight reflected by the mirror is that we can do both. There is a way to both take care of the fundamental problem (liberate ourselves and the people from reification) and respond to this larger role.

Philosophically, and practically, this seemingly impossible or 'magical' way out of our double-bind, is to walk through the mirror. This can be done in only two steps.

The first is to use what philosopher Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention"—which we adapted as one of our keywords.

Quine–TbC.jpeg

Quine opened "Truth by Convention" by observing:

"The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science."

But if truth by convention has been the way in which the sciences augment the rigor of their logical foundations—why not use it to update the logical foundations of knowledge work at large?

As we are using this keyword, the truth by convention is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let X be Y. Then..." and the argument follows. Insisting that x "really is" y is obviously meaningless. A convention is valid only within a given context—which may be an article, or a theory, or a methodology.

The second step is to use truth by convention to define an epistemology.

We defined design epistemology by turning the core of our proposal (to change the relationship we have with information—by considering it a human-made thing, and adapting information and the way we handle it to the functions that need to be served) into a convention.

Notice that nothing has been changed in the traditional-academic scheme of things. The academia has only been extended; a new way of thinking and working has been added to it, for those who might want to engage in that new way. On the 'other side of the mirror', we see ourselves and what we do as (part of) the 'headlights' and the 'light'; and we self-organize, and act, and use our creativity freely-yet-responsibly, and create a variety of new methods and results—just as the founding father of science did, at the point of its inception.

In the "Design Epistemology" research article (published in the special issue of the Information Journal titled "Information: Its Different Modes and Its Relation to Meaning", edited by Robert K. Logan) where we articulated this proposal, we made it clear that the design epistemology is only one of the many ways to manifest this approach. We drafted a parallel between the modernization of science that can result in this way and the emergence of modern art: By defining an epistemology and a methodology by convention, we can do in the sciences as the artists did—when they liberated themselves from the demand to mirror reality, by using the techniques of Old Masters.

As the artists did—we can become creative in the very way in which we practice our profession.

To complete this proposal—to the academia to 'step through the mirror' and to guide our society to a new reality—we developed the two prototypes—of the holoscope (to model the academic reality on the other side) and of the holotopia (to model the social reality).

Technically or academically, each of them is a model of a paradigm—hence we have a paradigm in knowledge work ready to foster for a larger societal paradigm—exactly as the case was in Galilei's time.

We bring these lofty and "up in the air" possibilities down to earth, by discussing one of the more immediately practical consequences of the proposed course of action.


The keywords we've been using all along are all defined by convention.

The discussions of two examples—of design and implicit information—which we offer separately, and here only summarize—will illustrate subtle yet central advantages this approach offers. Each of those keywords has been proposed to corresponding academic communities, and well received. Hence they are also prototypes—illustrating the possibility and the need for assigning purpose, by convention, to already existing academic fields and practices.

The definition of design allowed us to capture the essence of our post-traditional cultural condition—and suggest how we need to adapt to it—in a single word.

We defined design as "alternative to tradition", where design and tradition are two alternative ways to wholeness. Tradition relies on spontaneous, gradual, Darwinian-style evolution. Change is resisted. Small changes are tried—and tested and assimilated in the culture as a whole through generations of use. We practice design when we consider ourselves accountable for the wholeness of the result. The point here is that when tradition cannot be relied on—design must be used.

The situation we are in—as depicted by the bus with candle headlights—can be understood as a result of a transition: We are no longer traditional (our technology evolves by design); but we are not yet designing ("the relationship we have with information" is still traditional). Our proposal can now be understood as the call to complete modernization.

Reification can now be understood as the foundation for truth and meaning that suits the tradition; truth by convention is what empowers us to design.


We proposed this definition, and the insights and the methodology it is pointing to, to the design community as a way to develop its logical foundations. In the PhD Design's online conference the question, "What does it mean to give a doctorate in design?" Or in other words, "What should the academic criteria and the methods in design be based on?" The natural answer, the community leaders thought, would be classical philosophy; it is, after all, a philosophy doctorate that is being awardd. We proposed that classical philosophy as foundation also has its problems. But that we can design a foundation—by using truth by convention, and the approach we've drafted.

We offer the fact that Danish Designers chose our presentation to be repeated as opening keynote at their tenth anniversary conference, out of about three hundred that were shared at the triennial conference of the European Academy of Design, as a sign that this praxis, of assigning a purpose to a discipline and a community, and building a methodology on that basis, can be practically acceptable and useful.


The definition of implicit information and of visual literacy as "literacy associated with implicit information for the International Visual Literacy Association was in spirit similar—and the point was similarly central.

Whowins.jpg

We showed the above ideogram as depicting a situation where two kinds of information—the explicit information with explicit, factual and verbal warning in a black-and-white rectangle, and the visual and "cool" rest—meet each other in a direct duel. Our immeiate point was that the implicit information wins "hands down" (or else this would not be a cigarette advertising). Our larger point was that while our legislation, ethical sensibilities and "official" culture at large are focused on explicit information, our culture is largely created through subtle implicit information. Hence we need a literacy to be able to decode those messages. It is easy to see how this line of thought and action directly continues what's been told above about the negative consequences of reification.



Scope

We have just seen, by highlighting the historicity of the academic approach to knowledge to reach the socialized reality insight, that the academic tradition—now instituted as the modern university—finds itself in a much larger and more central social role than it was originally conceived for. We look up to the academia (and not to the Church and the tradition) to tell us how to look at the world, to be able to comprehend it and handle it.

That role, and question, carry an immense power!

It was by providing a completely new answer to that question, that the last "great cultural revival" came about.

Could a similar advent be in store for us today?


Diagnosis

How should we look at the world, to be able to comprehend it and handle it?
Nobody knows!

Of course, countess books and articles have been written about this theme since antiquity. But in spite of that—or should we rather say because of that—no consensus has been reached.

Meanwhile, the way we the people look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it, shaped itself spontaneously—from the scraps of the scientific ideas that were available around the middle of the 19th century, when Darwin and Newton as cultural heroes replaced Adam and Moses. What is today popularly considered as the "scientific" worldview shaped itself then—and remained largely unchanged.

As members of the homo sapiens species, this worldview makes us believe, we have the evolutionary privilege to be able to comprehend the world in causal terms, and to make rational choices based on such comprehension. Give us a correct model of the natural world, and we'll know exactly how to go about satisfying our needs (which we of course know, because we can experience them directly). But the traditional cultures, being unable to understand how the nature works, put a "ghost in the machine"—and made us pray to him to give us what we needed. Science corrected this error—and now we can satisfy our needs by manipulating the nature directly and correctly, with the help of technology.

It is this causal or "scientific" understanding of the world that makes us modern. Isn't that how we understood that women cannot fly on broomsticks?

From our collection of reasons why this way of looking at the world is neither scientific nor functional, we here mention two.

Heisenberg–frame.jpeg

The first is that the nature is not a "machine".

The mechanistic or "classical" way of looking at the world that Newton and his contemporaries developed in physics, which around the 19th century shaped the worldview of the masses, has been disproved and disowned by modern science. Even physical phenomena, it has turned out, exhibit the kinds of interdependence that cannot be understood in causal terms.

In "Physics and Philosophy", Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, described how "the narrow and rigid frame" as the way of looking at the world that our ancestors concocted from the 19th century science was damaging to culture, and in particular to religion and ethical norms on which the "human quality" depended. And how the prominence of "instrumental" thinking and values resulted, which Bauman called "adiaphorisation". Heisenberg explained how the modern physics disproved that worldview. Heisenberg expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be on culture—by allowing it to evolve further, by dissolving the narrow frame.

In 2005, Hans-Peter Dürr (considered in Germany as Heisenberg's intellectual and scientific "heir") co-wrote the Potsdam Manifesto, whose title and message is "We need to learn to think in a new way". The proposed new thinking is conspicuously similar to the one that leads to holotopia: "The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. (...) We need to reach a fundamentally new way of thinking and a more comprehensive under­standing of our Wirklichkeit (world, or reality), in which we, too, see ourselves as a thread in the fabric of life, without sacrificing anything of our special human qualities. This makes it possible to recognize hu­manity in fundamental commonality with the rest of nature (...)"

The second reason is that even complex "machines" ("classical" nonlinear dynamic systems) cannot be understood in causal terms.

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It has been observed that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Research in systems sciences, and in particular in cybernetics, has explained that curious phenomenon in a scientific way: The "hell" (which you may imagine as global issues, or the 'destination' toward which our 'bus' is diagnosed to be headed) is largely a result of various "side effects" of our best efforts and "solutions", resulting from "nonlinearities" and "feedback loops" in natural and social systems we are trying to govern.

Hear Mary Catherine Bateson (cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, and the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who pioneered both fields) say:

"The problem with Cybernetics is that it is not an academic discipline that belongs in a department. It is an attempt to correct an erroneous way of looking at the world, and at knowledge in general. (...) Universities do not have departments of epistemological therapy!"

Remedy

The remedy we offered builds upon the foundation we proposed related to the socialized reality insight.

We showed how truth by convention allows us to explicitly define a way to look at the world, which allows us to truly comprehend it and handle it.

We called the result a general-purpose methodology; we called our prototype the Polyscopic Modeling methodology or polyscopy.

A methodology is in essence a toolkit; any sort of rules could do, as long as they give us the insights we need. We, however, defined polyscopy by turning the core findings in 20th century science into conventions. (While a thorough federation was conducted, Einstein's "Autobiographical Notes" alone were sufficient for our purpose.) In this way we repaired the severed link between information and action also in this fundamental domain, where scientific findings meet the popular worldview.

The methodology definition is conceived as a handful of crisp and very brief aphorismic axioms; by using truth by convention, we gave them exact interpretation that is needed.

The first postulate defines information as "recorded experience". It is thereby made explicit that the substance communicated by information is not "reality", but human experience. Furthermore, since human experience can be recorded in a variety of ways (a chair is a record of human experience related to sitting and chair making), the notion of information vastly surpasses written documents. This first postulate enables knowledge federation across cultural traditions and fields of interests—by reducing everything to human experience, as common denominator.

The second postulate postulates that the scope (the way we look) determines the view (what is seen). According to this axiom, in polyscopy the experience (and "reality" or whatever is "behind" experience) does not have an a priori structure. We attribute a structure to it with the help of our concepts and other elements of our scope. This postulate enables scope design—and the general-purpose science modeled by the holoscope.

In polyscopy we did not talk about knowledge; knowledge federation was developed later. We may now improvise a new axiom.

Knowledge must be federated

This axiom only expresses clearly the intuitive or conventional idea of "knowledge": If we should ever be able to say that we "know" something, we must federate not only the supporting evidence, but also potential counter-evidence—and hence information in general. This, of course, is what the academic peer reviews are all about; the difference is that peer reviews are limited to a certain subdomain of science—something a general approach to knowledge cannot afford.

An explicitly defined general purpose methodology introduces to knowledge work the kind of change that constitutional democracy introduced to political and legal practice. Even a hated criminal has the right for a fair trial; similarly, even a most implausible idea or experience has the right to be federated. Based on this simple rule of thumb, we could, for instance, not ignore Buddhism because we don't find it appealing; or because we don't believe in reincarnation. The work of knowledge federation is here similar to the work of a dutiful attorney—who does his best to gather suitable evidence, and back his client with a convincing case.

The overall goal, "to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge", can then be served by federating ideas into general insights or principles or rules of thumb—which orient action; and into prototypes—which directly impact the systems in which we live and work.

A methodology allows us to state explicitly what information needs to be like; and what being "informed" means. We modeled this intuitive notion with the keyword gestalt. To be "informed", one needs to have a gestalt that is appropriate to one's situation. "Our house is on fire" is a canonical example. The knowledge of gestalt is profoundly different from knowing only the data (the room temperatures, CO2 levels etc.).

How can we be uninformed—in the midst of all the information we have? For an intuitive explanation, imagine that you are talking on the phone with your neighbor, that he's at work and you are at home, and that you see that his house is on fire. Yet you talk to him about the sale in the neighborhood fishing equipment store (which interests your neighbor, because he's an avid fisherman. "One cannot not communicate", reads one of Paul Watzlawich's axioms of communication. Although when seen from a factual point of view nothing is wrong our media informing (and with your communication with your neighbor), in this informed approach to information we are proposing it is profoundly and dangerously deceptive, because it communicates a wrong gestalt. The situation we are in may now be understood as a result of such traditional or factual approach to public informing—as the bus with candle headlights metaphor might suggest.

Polyscopy offers a collection of techniques for communicating and 'proving' or justifying general or high-level insights and claims. Knowledge federation is conceived as the social process by which such insights can be created and maintained.


This new approach to academic knowledge work we are proposing, where instead of relying on inherited interests and methods we federate a methodology, is a practical way to respond to the demand for academic accountability, which, we proposed, follows from the situation the academic tradition now finds itself in. And indeed in two ways. It allows us to vastly broaden the scope of academic work, by using the methodology to create new kinds of results—according to the contemporary needs of people and society. And it allows us to define what "scientific thinking" and "scientific worldview" are truly about—in a way that can be read and understood; and in a way that evolves, and remains in sync with the contemporary state of the art of academic knowledge of knowledge.

This approach is similar to the dynamics that led to the emergence of science in Galilei's time—where a certain methodological idea, developed in astrophysics, ended up defining a general approach to knowledge in the sciences. To create the polyscopy as a prototype of a general-purpose methodology we federated methodological insights and techniques across the board:

  • Patterns have a closely similar function as mathematics does in traditional sciences—and at the same time completely generalize the implementation of this function
  • Ideograms allow us to include the expressive power and the insights and techniques from art, advertising and information design
  • Vignettes implement the basic technique from media informing, where an insight or issue is made accessible by telling illustrative and engaging or "sticky" real-life people and situation stories
  • Threads implement Vannevar Bush's technical idea of "trails" as a way to combine specific ideas into higher-level units of meaning


The following vignette will further illustrate the nuances of this approach, by explaining how a single specific methodological idea—the object oriented methodology in computer programming—has been federated.

A situation with overtones of a crisis, closely similar to the one we now have in our handling of information at large, arose in the early days of computer programming, when the buddying industry undertook ambitious software projects—which resulted in thousands of lines of "spaghetti code", which nobody was able to understand and correct. The story is interesting, but here we only highlight the a couple of main points and lessons learned.

Dahl-Vision.-R.jpeg

They are drawn from the "object oriented methodology", developed in the 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Krysten Nygaard. The first one is that—to understand a complex system—abstraction must be used. We must be able to create concepts on distinct levels of generality, representing also distinct angles of looking (which, you'll recall, we called aspects). But that is exactly the core point of polyscopy, suggested by the methodology's very name.

Let us here highlight is is the academia's accountability for the method. Any sufficiently complete programming language, even the "machine language" of the computer, will allow the programmers to create any sort of program. The creators of the "programming methodologies", however, took it upon themselves to provide the programmers the kind of programming tools that would not only enable them, but even compel them to write comprehensible, reusable, well-structured code.

The object oriented methodology provided a template called "object"—which "hides implementation and exports function". What this means is that an object can be "plugged into" more general objects based on the functions it produces—without inspecting the details of its code! (But those details are made available for inspection; and of course also for continuous improvement.)

To see the extent of this analogy, think of the academia becoming accountable for the tools and processes it provides to the world—both to the people at large and to the practicing academics. Imagine a highly talented young person, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu to make this concrete, learning how to be a researcher. The academia will give Bourdieu a certain way to render his results, which he'll be using throughout his career. The "usability", comprehensibility and in a word—the usefulness of Bourdieu's life work will highly depend on the format in which he'll render his results. This format, however, will not be in his power to change, and it is likely that he won't even think about such change.

Bourdieu is, however only a single drop—and the academia is an endless flow of such people. Could a similar approach as object orientation have a similarly large effects also there, in this much more general application domain? <p>The solution for structuring information we provided in polyscopy, called information holon, is closely similar to the "object" in object oriented methodology. Information, represented in the Information ideogram as an "i", is depicted as a circle on top of a square. The circle represents the point of it all (such as "the cup is whole"); the square represents the details, the side views.

When the circle is a gestalt, it allows this to be integrated or "exported" as a "fact" into higher-level insights; and it allows various and heterogeneous insights on which it is based to remain 'hidden', but available for inspection, in the square. When the circle is a prototype it allows the multiplicity of insights that comprise the square to have a direct systemic impact, or agency.

Information.jpg
Information ideogram

The holotopia may now be understood as the circle by which our knowledge federation proposal is federated; a vision is not only provided and published—but already turned into a collaborative strategy game whose goal is to "change course".

A prototype polyscopic book manuscript titled "Information Must Be Designed" is structured as an information holon. Here the claim made in the title (which is the same we made in the opening of this presentation by talking about the bus with candle headlights) is justified in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it.

It is customary in computer methodology design to propose a programming language that implements the methodology—and to bootstrap the approach by creating a compiler for that language in the language itself. In this book we did something similar. The book's four chapters present four angles of looking at the general issue of information, identify anomalies and propose remedies—which are the design patterns of the proposed methodology. The book then uses the methodology to justify the claim that motivates it—that makes a case for the proposed paradigm, by using the paradigm.


Scope

We turn to culture and to "human quality", and ask:

Why is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?

What insight, and what strategy, may divert our"pursuit of happiness" from material consumption to human cultivation?

We may approach our theme also from a different angle: Suppose we substituted real information, federated from the world traditions, academic disciplines and other relevant sources, for advertising, and allowed it to orient our values and our choices. What new insights would emerge? What difference would they make?

During the Renaissance, preoccupations with "original sin" and "Heavenly reward" were replaced by a pursuit of beauty and happiness here and now—and their celebration through the arts.

What might the next "great cultural revival" be like?

Diagnosis

Nowhere are our cultural biases as clearly visible as here.

To pursue happiness 'in the light of a candle' means to pursue convenience—whatever appears attractive at the moment. Convenience has the added advantage that it appears to us as empirical and exact, and hence "scientific".

There is, in addition, the value of egotism or ego-centeredness—endlessly supported by advertising. Egotism too appears "scientific"—being, according to Darwin, the way in which the nature herself pursues wholeness.

Remedy

The convenience paradox insight—by which we point to a remedial course—may be understood in terms of three more specific insights. In a quite spectacular manner, those three insights become transparent as soon as we abandon our fascination with the stories or socialized realities—and focus on the relevant human experience that our traditions embody.

  • Human wholeness exists—and it feels dramatically or qualitatively better than what our culture lets us experience, or even conceive of
  • The way to it is paradoxical—and needs to be illuminated by suitable information
  • Human quality plays in it an essential role

While these insights will become clear as we make progress toward holotopia, a few hints will suffice to prime that quest.

The first of the three insights, which we've branded "the best kept secret of human culture", is what made our ancestors flock around "enlightened" beings like the Buddha or the Christ. It can, however, also be easily verified by simply asking the people who have "done the work".

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To get a glimpse of the second insight, compare the above typical utterances by Lao Tzu, with what Christ taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Why was Teacher Lao saying that "the weak can defeat the strong"? Why did the Christ demand to "turn the other cheek"?

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To get a glimpse of the third, we may zoom in on a contemporary story. Coming from a family that gave some of Britain's leading scientists, Aldous Huxley undertook to federate some of the core elements of the new kind of science that we here see emerge. His "Perennial Philosophy" is alone largely sufficient to make a convincing case for the basic insight—that there is a "natural law" governing human wholeness, which we in our culture vastly violate and ignore. On a much more subtle note, the above quotation, from "The Art of Seeing", will suggest that overcoming egotism is necessary even for mastering physical skills!

We conclude this very brief exploration of our cultural blind spots and emergent opportunities by a handful of keywords and prototypes. As always, the design patterns they embody will illustrate our handling of the larger issue at hand—how the change of the relationship we have with information (as modeled by the holoscope) can illuminate the way to "a great cultural revival" (modeled by the holotopia).

We motivated our definition of culture by discussing Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis"—where Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and reached the conclusion that they are so diverse that they cannot be reconciled with one another. How can we develop culture as praxis—if we don't know what "culture" means? The change of the relationship we have with information, or in other words of epistemology, allowed us to define culture as a way of looking at the real thing or phenomenon—which illuminates its core aspect that tends to be ignored. We defined culture by de defined culture as "cultivation of wholeness", where the keyword cultivation is defined by analogy with planting and watering a seed. A key point here (intended as a parable) is to observe that no amount of dissecting and studying a seed would suggest that it needs to be planted and watered. And hence that cultivation profoundly depends on taking advantage of the experience of others—regarding how certain actions produce certain effects in the long run. As soon as we apply the same idea to human cultivation—similarly spectacular insights and the opportunities come within reach.

We motivated our definition of addiction by observing that evolution equipped us with pleasant and unpleasant emotions to guide our choices toward wholeness. But we humans has devised ways to deceive our perception—by creating attractive and pleasurable things that lead us away from wholeness. We defined addiction as a pattern, and offered it as a conceptual remedy for this anomaly. Since selling addictions has always been lucrative yet destructive, the traditions identified certain activities or things (such as opiates and gambling) as addictions and developed suitable legislation and ethical norms. But with the help of technology, contemporary industries can develop hundreds of new addictions—without us having a way to even recognize them as that.

We defined religion as "reconnection with the archetype". The archetypes here include "justice", "beauty", "truth", "love" and anything else that may make a person overcome egotism and convenience and serve a "higher" ideal.

We developed the "Movement and Qi" educational prototype as a way to add to the conventional academic portfolio a collection of ways to use human body as medium—and work with "human quality" directly.

The book "Liberation" subtitled "Religion beyond Belief" is an ice breaker. It federates "the best kept secret", and creates a dialog.


A great cultural revival

The five insights together compose a vision of "a great cultural revival". They complete the analogy between our time and the situation at the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance, which we've been pointing to by using the iconic image of Galilei in house arrest.

A revolution in innovation

By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution promised to liberate our ancestors from hardship and toil, so that they may focus on developing culture and "human quality". The power structure, however, thwarted our aspirations. This issue can be resolved, and progress can be resumed, by learning to "make things whole" on the level of the systems in which we live and work.

A revolution in communication

The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy and communication. The collective mind insight shows that the new information technology can power a similar revolution—whose effect will be a revolution of meaning. The kind of revolution that can make the differences that needs to make, in a post-industrial society.

A revolution in the relationship we have with information

By reviving the academic tradition (which had remained dormant for almost two thousand years), the Enlightenment empowered our ancestors to use reason to comprehend the world, and to evolve faster. The socialized reality insight shows that the evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to a new turning point—which will liberate us from reifying our inherited systems and worldviews; and to enable our culture to evolve in a similar way and at a similar rate as science and technology have been evolving. This fundamental change will empower us to be creative in ways and on the scale that a "great cultural revival" requires.

A revolution in method

Galilei in house arrest was really science in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The narrow frame insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that science left in the dark.

A revolution in culture

The Renaissance was a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, and developing the arts. The convenience paradox insight shows that our culture has once again become a victim of power structure; and that the liberation will lead us to a whole new way of evolving.


The sixth insight


When the five insights are combined together, they readily lead to a more general sixth insight, which is even more germane to the holotopia's message and spirit. The sixth insight may be roughly formulated as follows:

To change anything, we need to change the whole thing.

The reason is the close co-dependence of both the structural problems the five insights reveal, and of their solutions.

We have seen (while exploring the power structure insight) that we will not be able to resolve the characteristic contemporary issues and resume our cultural and societal evolution, unless we learned to direct our power to innovate by using suitable information and knowledge, instead of the "free competition" and the market. But that requires (as we have seen while exploring the collective mind insight) that we restore the severed tie between information and action—that instead of merely broadcasting information, we learn to federate the insights that can motivate and inform action. This, however (as the socialized reality insight showed) requires that we change the relationship we have with information—from considering it as a mirror image of reality, to considering it a vital element of our core systems, which must be adapted to the purposes it needs to serve within those systems.

When that is done (the narrow frame insight showed)—the opportunity opens up to create "the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it", to be used both by academic researchers who wish to work in this way, and the general public. And when that is in place (we showed while exploring the convenience paradox insight), the resulting informed way of "pursuing happiness" will lead to completely different values, and direction. Furthermore, the values that result will be exactly those that are needed to empower us to resolve the power structure issue, by self-organizing and co-creating systems that resolve our problems. This closes the circle.

A strategic insight results:

A large change may be easy; small changes may be difficult or impossible.

But a large and comprehensive change has its own logic, or process, or "leverage points".

And the most powerful kind of leverage point, Donella Meadows pointed out, is "the power to transcend paradigms". It is exactly that power that we are proposing to restore.


We summarize the case for our proposal by a warning reaching us from sociology.

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Beck continued the above observation:

"Max Weber's 'iron cage' – in which he thought humanity was condemned to live for the foreseeable future – is for me the prison of categories and basic assumptions of classical social, cultural and political sciences."

The 'candle headlights' (inheriting the way we look at the world, try to comprehend it and handle it) is what keeps us in 'iron cage'.

A created way, modeled by the holoscope, is an academically rigorous way out.

The holotopia is offered as the vision that results.

The Holotopia project is conceived as a way to streamline the actualization of that vision.

When making this proposal, we are not saying anything new; we are indeed only federating the call to action that many have made before us.

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We are now, however, backing their calls to action and ideas by federating them, and showing that they form a consistent and complete academic paradigm.

This Holotopia project description will be completed by elaborating:

The Holotopia project is conceived as a co-creative strategy game.

The project is conceived as a space—where we are empowered to use our creativity to "change course", and create a future. This "future", however, begins instantly.

We implement a strategy that federates Margaret Mead's specific insights, how to respond to the situation we are in :

"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."

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Margaret Mead


To the above co-creative space we bring a portfolio of assorted tactical assets.


To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen.


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