Clippings

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CLIPPINGS, newest on top


Local-Global.jpg
BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool for shifting positions, which was part of our pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen, suggests how this proposed information is to be used—by transcending fixed relations between top and bottom, and building awareness of the benefits of multiple points of view; and moving in-between.



The ideograms as they presently are in the holoscope serve as a laceholder—for a variety of techniques that can be developed by using contemporary media technology. The point here is to condense lots and lots of insights into something that communicates them most effectively—which can be a poem, a picture, a video, a movie....

An ideogram the naturally serves for composing the circle–which condenses a wealth of insights into a simple, communicated message.

Instead of using media tools addictively, and commercially, we use them to rebuild the culture—as people have done through ages. The difference is made by the knowledge federation infrastructure—which secures that what needs to be federated gets federated.



We are dazzled and confused

The unstructured nature of our information, in combination with the immersive nature of our media, have the effect of leaving us dazzled and confused.

The nature of our information is such that it not only fails to help us comprehend our world—but it imperils our very ability to comprehend.

Of the many studies that support this conclusion (which, however, remained without effect...), we here offer two threads.

Nietzsche–Ehrlich–Giddens

Giddens-OS.jpeg

The insight that the complexity of our world, combined with the inadequacy of our information, leaves us no other way of coping than to resort to what Anthony Giddens called "ontological security" is summarized by the above slide, and summarized here.

McLuhan–Postman–Debord

Here is another, a bit more profound stream of thought. From McLuhan and Postman we need only an overarching insight they share, namely that the medium has the power to limit and direct what can be said, and to even impact if not determine our very capability to express ourselves and comprehend. Debord took this a step further, by treating it as a power-related phenomenon.

We must act, not only observe

Two points remain to be highlighted.

The first is that the academia itself cannot be considered immune to the deep problems we've just outlined. The academia is not only failing to produce a guiding light to our society—but also to itself! Is the academic discipline on the way to become (what Giddens called) an "internally referential system"?

The second is that to restore agency to information, and power to knowledge, the academia must step beyond its traditional "objective observer" stance, and develop ways to turn knowledge into systems. And into action.


An academic core issue

Consider the academia as a system: It has a vast heritage to take care of, and make use of. Selected creative people come in. They are given certain tools to work with, certain ways how to work, certain communication tools that will take their results and turn them into socially useful effect. How effective, and efficient, is the whole thing as a system? Is it taking advantage of the invaluable (especially in this time when our urgent need is creative change) resources that have been entrusted to it?

Enter information technology...

The big point here is that the academia's primary responsibility or accountability is for the system as a whole, and for each of its components. The academia had an asset, let's call him Pierre Bourdieu. This person was given a format to write in—which happened to be academic books and articles. He was given a certain language to express himself in. How good are those tools? Could there be answers to this question (which the academi has, btw, not yet asked in any real way) that are incomparably, by orders of magnitude, better than what the academia of his time afforded to Bourdieu? And to everyone else, of course.


Analogy with the history of computer programming

We point to the analogy between the situation in computer programming following the advent of the computer, in response to which computer programming methodologies were developed—and the situation in our handling of information following the advent of the Internet. In the first years of computing, ambitious software projects were undertaken, which resulted in "spaghetti code"—a tangled up mess of thousands of lines of code, which nobody could understand, detangle and correct. The programmers were coming in and out of those projects, and those who stepped in later had to wonder whether to throw the whole thing away and begin from scratch—or to continue to try to correct it.

A motivating insight that needs to be drawn from this history is that a dramatic increase in size of the thing being handled (computer programs and information) can not be effectively responded to by merely more of the same. A structural change (a different paradigm) is what the situation is calling for.

A new paradigm is needed

Edsger Dijkstra, one of the pioneers of the development of methodologies, argued that programming in the large is a completely different thing than programming in the small (for which textbook examples and the programming tools at large were created at the time):

“Any two things that differ in some respect by a factor of already a hundred or more, are utterly incomparable.”

Doug Engelbart used to make the same point (that the increase in size requires a different paradigm) by sharing his parable of a man who grew ten times in size (read it here).

The key point

The solution was found in developing structuring and abstraction concepts and methodologies. Among them, the Object Oriented Methodology is the best known example.

The key insight to be drawn from this analogy: computers can be programmed in any programming language. The creators of the programming methodologies, however, took it as their core challenge, and duty, to give the programmers the conceptual and technical tools that would coerce them to write code that is comprehensible, maintainable and reusable. The Object Oriented Methodology responds to this challenge by conceiving of computer programming as modeling of complex systems—in terms of a hierarchy of "objects". An object is a structuring device whose purpose is to "export function" (make a set of functions available to higher-order objects), and "hide implementation".

Without recognizing that, the academia now finds itself in a similar situation as the creators of computer programming methodologies. The importance of finding a suitable response to this challenge cannot be overrated.

Implications for cultural revival

There is also an interesting difference between computer programming and handling of information: The fact that a team of programmers can no longer understand the program they are creating is easily detected—the program won't run on the computer; but how does one detect the incomparably larger and more costly problem—that a generation of people can no longer comprehend the information they own? And hence the situation they are in?



Having used the holoscope to illuminate our general condition, and to federate The Club of Rome's core findings and call to action, we are now ready to revisit our proposal, and see how it firs into the big picture we've created. Let's begin by re-emphasizing our main point, that "the core of our proposal is to change the relationship we have with information". In the language of our metaphor, we are not saying "Here is a 'lightbulb', to replace those 'candles'."

By proposing to academia to add knowledge federation to its repertoire of activities and fields, we are proposing an 'electromechanical workshop', which will develop and install new 'sources of illumination', and to improve them continuously—by taking advantage of new knowledge of knowledge, and information technology.

In what follows we look at this proposal from several points of view.

Use of knowledge resources

The point of view here is the academia's prerogative to give to the academic workers, and to the rest of the world, conceptual and methodological tools, processes and institutional structures for handling knowledge. The question here is how this prerogative is used.

It is the prerogative of academia to tell everyone what information and knowledge are about, how they are to be created and used etc. Considering that our theme of focus is "a great cultural revival", we are especially interested in the workflow of knowledge in and from the humanities.

Considering that the tools, processes and institutional structures in knowledge work will decide the effects and the effectiveness of knowledge work, we must ask—how are those tools, processes and institutional structures created?

The obvious answer is that they are not. They are simply inherited from the past. Instead of considering them as part of their creative frontier par excellence, the academic workers are socialized to accept them as part and parcel of their vodation. That is what (applied to the academia) the metaphor of the candle headlights is intended to signify.

Then our next question must be—how well do those tools and processes serve us?

Here we may bring up, fir instance, Bourdieu's "theory of practice". If you are a sociology student, you will probably study it as one of the theories, among so many others; but you won't be asked to do anything with it. And if you are not a sociology student, the chances are (as we have seen) that not only you've never heard about Bourdieu, but that your ideas about the social world are in stark contradiction to whatever Bourdieu was trying to tell us. Put simply, our collective mind has no connections between the research in sociology and the rest of us.

Bourdieu happened to notice this general issue. When a decade ago, when we were "evangelizing" for our reorganization of Knowledge Federation as a transdiscipline, we told the story how Bourdieu teamed up with Coleman, and undertook to put sociology back together. And how Bourdieu made a case for this attempted structural change of sociology, by arguing why it may be "the largest contribution" to the field. It remained to point to the obvious—that Bourdieu's observation is far more true when we look at sociology as a piece in a larger puzzle, of our society.

To become "a sociologist", one is given a certain 'toolkit' that goes with that title.

Add to this picture the new media technology—which enabled the power over knowledge, that the "official culture" earlier secured through its control over the media (publishing agencies, opera houses etc.), to escape the "official culture" and fall into the hands of counterculture.

It takes a bit of courage now to lift up the eyes from these details, and see that in the large picture—the nature and the quality of the academia's 'toolkit' could be such that it renders even an extraordinarily talented individual, a one who could change the world—entirely useless to the world!


Information ideogram

The Information idogram, shown on the right, explains how the information we propose to create is different from the one we have.

The ideogram shows an "i", which stands for "information", as composed of a circle placed on top of a square. The square stands for the details; and also for looking at a theme of choice from all sides, by using diverse kinds of sources and resources. The circle, or the dot on the "i", stands for the function or the point of it all. That might be an insight into the nature of a situation; or a rule of thumb, pointing to a general way to handle situations of a specific kind; or a project, which implements such handling.

Information.jpg Information ideogram

By showing the circle as founded on the square, the Information ideogram points to knowledge federation as a social process (the 'principle of operation' of the socio-technical 'lightbulb'), by which the insights, principles, strategic handling and whatever else may help us understand and take care of our increasingly complex world are kept consistent with each other, and with the information we own.

Knowledge federation is itself a result of knowledge federation: We draw insights about handling information from the sciences, communication design, journalism... And we weave them into technical solutions.


Holoscope and Holotopia

Some rudimentary understanding of our holoscope prototype is necessary for understanding what is about to follow.

The Holoscope ideogram serves to explain the role this has in the inner workings of the holoscope. If one should inspect a hand-held cup, to see whether it is cracked or whole, one must be able to look at it from all sides; and perhaps also bring it closer to inspect some detail, and take it further away and see it as a whole. The control over the scope is what enables the holoscope to make a difference.

Holoscope.jpeg
Holoscope ideogram

To be able to say that a cup is whole, one must see it from all sides. To see that a cup is broken, it is enough to show a single angle of looking. Much of the art of using the holoscope will be in finding and communicating uncommon ways of looking at things, which reveal their 'cracks' and help us correct them.

The difference between the paradigm modeled by the holoscope and the traditional science can easily be understood if one considers the difference in the purpose, or epistemology. When our goal is to "see things whole", so that we can make them whole, a discovery of a way of looking that reveals where a 'crack' might exist, although we might not (yet) be able to see it, can be a valuable contribution to knowledge, as a warning to take precaution measures against the potential consequences of an undetected 'crack'. In science, on the other hand, where our goal is to discover only the most solid 'bricks', with which we can construct the edifice of a "scientific reality picture"—such ways of looking and hypothetical 'cracks' are considered worthless, and cannot even be reported.

To fully understand the "course" we are proposing, it is important to consider what those 'cracks' really are: They are 'crevices on the road', they are 'wrong turns'—which can lead to a civilization-wide disaster, with all the imaginable and unimaginable tragic consequences this might imply. It then follows from our stated purpose (to evolve suitable 'headlights') that our handling of information must "change course": We must look at all sides, not only one!

A subtlety follows—which is, however, required if one should step into the holotopia development and contribute. We will be using the usual manner of speaking, and making affirmative statements of the usual kind, that a certain thing or issue X "is" so and so. Those statements need to be interpreted as meaning "please see if you can see X (also) in this way". In other words, our statements need to be interpreted and handled in the manner of the dialog.



in the way that's intended—namely as views resulting from specific scopes. A view is offered as sufficiently fitting the data (the view really serves as a kind of a mnemonic device, which engages our faculties of abstraction and logical thinking to condense messy data to a simple and coherent point of view)—within a given scope. Here the scopes serve as projection planes in projective geometry. If a scope shows a 'crack', then this 'crack' needs to be handled, within the scope—regardless of what the other scopes are showing.

Hence a new kind of "result", which the holoscope makes possible—to "discover" new ways of looking or scopes, which reveal something essential about our situation, and perhaps even change our perception of it as a whole.

"Reality" is always more complex than our models. To be able to "comprehend" it and act, we must be able to simplify. The big point here is that the simplification we are proposing is a radical alternative to simplification by reducing the world to a single image—and ignoring whatever fails to fit in. This simplification is legitimate by design. The appropriate response to it (within the proposed paradigm) is dialog, not discussion—as we shall see next.

Or in other words—aiming to return power to knowledge, we shall say things that might sound preposterous, sensational, scandalous... Yet they won't be a single bit "controversial"—within the order of things we are proposing, and using. They are ways of looking that (as we'll carefully show) must be considered—so that the 'cracks' may be revealed.




"Reality" is a basic human need

Aaron Antonovsky and salutogenesis

Among the women who survived the Holocaust, about two thirds later developed a variety of psychosomatic problems. Aaron Antonovsky focused his research on the ones that didn't. He found out that what distinguished them was their greater "sense of coherence"—which he defined as "feeling of confidence that one's environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected". Today Antonovsky is considered an iconic progenitor of "salutogenesis"—the scientific study of conditions for and ways to health.

We mention Antonovsky to point to what is perhaps intuitively obvious: That a shared "reality" is a basic human need. Every social group provided its members with a shared "sense of coherence" (a predictable environment, a relatively stable role and "habitus" recognized by others, a shared way to comprehend the world...) But at what price!


Socialization determines our awareness

Antonio Damasio and Descartes' error

The second main component of the socialized reality insight represents a major turning point from the self-image which the Enlightenment gave us, humans; and which served as the foundation for our democracy, legislature, ethics, culture... Here too we represent a large body of research with the work of a single researcher—Antonio Damasio.

The point here—which Damasio deftly coded into the very title of his book "Descartes' Error"—is that we are not the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Damasio showed that the very contents of our rational mind (our priorities, and what options we are at all capable to conceive of and consider) are controlled by a cognitive filter, which is pre-rational and embodied.

Damasio's theory synergizes beautifully with Bourdieu's "theory of practice", to which it gives a physiological explanation.

George Lakoff and philosophy in the flesh

Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, and Johnson, a philosopher, teamed up to give us a revision of philosophy, based on what the cognitive science found, under the title "philosophy in the flesh". The book's opening paragraphs, titled "How Cognitive Science Reopens Central Philosophical Questions", read:

The mind is inherently embodied.

Thought is mostly unconscious.

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

These are three major findings of cognitive science. More than two millennia of a priori philosophical speculation about these aspects of reason are over. Because of these discoveries, philosophy can never be the same again.

When taken together and considered in detail, these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy. They require a thorough rethinking of the most popular current approaches, namely, Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy.

"Reality" is a product of socialization

Bourdieu's "theory of practice"

We have now come to the first of the three main components of the socialized reality insight—that what we consider "reality" is really a product of socialization. But what exactly does this mean? What is socialization?

While a wealth of academic insights may be drawn upon to illuminate this uniquely relevant idea, we here represent them all by the work of a single researcher, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. His "theory of practice" is the theory of socialization.

Specifically, the meaning of Bourdieu's keyword doxa (which he adopted from Max Weber, and whose usage dates all the way back to Plato) points to an essential property of what we call socialized reality. Bourdieu used this keyword to point to the common experience that people had through the ages—that the societal order of things in which they lived was the only possible one. "Orthodoxy" implies that more than one are possible, but that only one ("ours") is the "right" one. Doxa ignores even the possibility of alternative options.

Two other Bourdieu's central keywords, "habitus", and "field", will provide us what we need to take along. Think of "habitus" as embodied predispositions to act and behave in a certain way. Think of "field" as something akin to a magnetic field, which deftly draws each person in a society to his or her "habitus". Instead of theorizing more, we provide an intuitive explanation in terms of a common situation, which is intended to serve as a parable.

From Bourdieu's theory, "reality" emerges as a structured 'turf'; each "habitus" ("king", "page", "cardinal" and so on) is a result of past structuring—and the starting point of new socialization into these roles; which can of course change with time, as results of future 'turf strife'.

What makes a real king real

The king enters the room and everyone bows. Naturally, you bow too. Even if you may not feel like doing that, deep inside you know that if you don't bow down your head, you may lose it.

So what is it, really, that makes the difference between "a real king", and an imposter who "only believes" that he's a king? Both consider themselves as kings, and impersonate the corresponding "habitus". In the former case, however, everyone else has also been successfully socialized accordingly.

A "real king" will be treated with highest honors. An imposter will be incarcerated in an appropriate institution. Despite the fact that all too often, a single "real king" caused far more suffering and destruction than all the madmen and criminals combined.


Key Point Dialog

This dialog was one in a series of experiments, where we experimented with dialog as a means for igniting "a great cultural revival". The Bohm's circle was turned into a high-energy cyclotron. Provisions for spreading the dialog through the media were made. See the report.

An important point is to see the KPD as a set of evolving tactical tools.

The scheme is fault-tolerant, and there are no failures. A group of knowledgeable people talking about how to change, for instance, religion, is a prime spectacle, vastly surpassing anything that DT can provide the media. But a group of homo ludens characters attacking these views, or even just being unable to say or think anything that is not within the paradigm, can be an even greater spectacle. With proper camera work, and set in the right context, of course. This can act as a mirror—reflecting back how we are, what we've become.

Add Debategraph ++ — the use of new dialog mapping etc. tools — and you'll see a most wonderful playground, where our collective mind is being changed as we speak!



Socialization and symbolic action

Socialization must be understood as a surrogate epistemology. We don't "know" because we've considered the data—but because we've been socialized to believe we know.

During the past century we've learned to harness the power of... Now our task is to harness the power that's remain as largest—the power of our socialization. It is largest because it determines how all other powers will be used.

We adopted the symbolic action keyword from Murray Edelman. It serves to point to a behavioral pattern—having been socialized to stay within certain limits of thought and behavior, and nonetheless seeing that something must be done, we act out our duties and fears in a symbolic way: We write a paper; we organize a conference.

We use symbolic as roughly an antonym to systemic: Impact, if it is to be real, must be able to affect our systems, that is, the power structure; not just do things within it.

homo ludens and academia

<p>The homo ludens is the socialized human. Our shadow side. He's the power structure man. Adjusts to the field—gives it his power, and receives an illusion of power.

We once again emphasize that homo ludens and homo sapiens are not distinct things, our there; they are two perfect and abstract scopes, or ways of looking. Each of us humans has those two sides. The issue here is to see the other side, and to develop culture that helps us evolve as homo sapiens, not as homo ludens.

We don't need to do this—but it is interesting to imagine that the homo ludens was really what The Club of Rome was up against. And that what we call the homo sapiens re-evolution is what Peccei was calling for. In The Last Call trailer, there are TWO beautiful examples on record (SHOW THEM).

The academia is defined as "institutionalized academic tradition". We are proposing to update the academia by adding knowledge federation as field of interest and praxis. The point of this definition, and the stories that support it, is to go back to Socrates and Galilei, and show that homo sapiens evolution was what the academic tradition has really been about since its inception.

To make this even more clear, we talk about homo ludens academicus–a cultural subspecies, which according to ordinary logic should not even exist. The point is is to illuminate the question—whether the ecology of the contemporary academia (with its specific approach to education, "publish or perish" etc.)—is an ecology that favors the homo ludens academicus (which would mean that this institutionalization ha a 'crack', and needs to be repaired).



Causal comprehension is not a reality test

It takes only a moment of reflection to see just how much the "aha feeling"—when we understand how something may result as a consequence of known causes—has been elevated to the status of the reality test. But is it really that?

The Enlightenment empowered the human reason to comprehend the world. Science taught us that women cannot fly on brooms—because that would violate some well established "natural laws". Innumerable prejudices and superstitions were dispelled.

But we've also thrown out the baby with the bathwater!


At the 59th yearly meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, whose title theme was "Governing the Anthropocene", a little old lady was wheeled to the podium in a wheelchair. She began her keynote by talking at length about how, while in the cradle, we throw our pacifier to the ground, and mother picks it up and gives it back to us; and we say "hum".

Mary Catherine Bateson is an American cultural anthropologist and cybernetician, the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, two prominent historical figures in anthropology and cybernetics. The insight she undertook to bring home in this way is alone large enough to hold the socialized reality insight and the call to action it points to—if it can be understood. Her point was that from the cradle on we learn to comprehend and organize our world in terms of causes and effects—which makes us incapable of understanding things truly, that is systemically. Or to use the way of looking at our contemporary condition—from "seeing things whole" and "making things whole". And hence from "changing course".

Click here to hear Mary Catherine Bateson say, in her keynote to the American Society for Cybernetics:

The problem of 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. And there are all sorts of abstruse and sophisticated things that can be done with it, but on some level, what we would like is to affect what people think is common sense. Things that they take for granted, in fact are problematic: about causality; about purposes; about relationships... Universities don't have departments of epistemological therapy.

The problem we are talking about underlies each of the five insights—and hence is a key to holotopia. Isn't our "pursuit of happiness" misdirected by our misidentification of happiness with what appears to cause it—which we called convenience. And more generally, by our supposition that we know what goals are worth pursuing, because we can simply feel that. And in innovation—our ignoring of the structure of systems, and abandoning it to power structure. And in communication—our ignoring of the workings of our collective mind, and abandoning that too to power structure. And even our socialized reality is a result of our supposition that the "ana feeling" we experience when things (appear to) fit causally together as a sure sign that we've discovered the reality itself. And finally in method—which is consistently focused on finding for instance "disease causes" and eliminating them through chemical or surgical interventions and so on.

Reason cannot know "reality"

Common sense is a product of experience

Oppenheimer–U.Sense.jpeg

Even our common sense is a product of (our and our culture's) experience, with things such as pebbles and waves of water. We have no reason to believe that it will still work when applied to things that we do not have in experience, such as small quanta of matter—and it doesn't!. A complete argument, based on the double-slit experiment, is in Oppenheimer's essay "Uncommon Sense".

"Reality" has no a priori structure

Indeed, when the insights reached in the last century's science and philosophy are taken into account, the reason is compelled to conclude that there is no "the reality" out there, waiting to be discovered. All we have to work with is human experience—of a world that, to our best knowledge, has no a priori structure.

A piece of material evidence is Einstein's "epistemological credo", which we commented here.

"Reality" is the problem

Let this redesign of Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan, which marked the beginning of an era, point to a remedial strategy and a new era.

The following excerpt from Berger and Luckmann's "Social Construction of Reality" is relevant:

As more complex forms of knowledge emerge and an economic surplus is built up, experts devote themselves full-time to the subjects of their expertise, which, with the development of conceptual machineries, may become increasingly removed from the pragmatic necessities of everyday life. Experts in these rarefied bodies of knowledge lay claim to a novel status. They are not only experts in this or that sector of the societal stock of knowledge, they claim ultimate jurisdiction over that stock of knowledge in its totality. They are, literally, universal experts. This does not mean that they claim to know everything, but rather that they claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does. Other men may continue to stake out particular sectors of reality, but they claim expertise in the ultimate definitions of reality as such.

This theory about the nature of reality, then, becomes an instrument par excellence for legitimizing the given social reality:

Habitualization and institutionalization in themselves limit the flexibility of human actions. Institutions tend to persist unless they become ‘problematic’. Ultimate legitimations inevitably strengthen this tendency. The more abstract the legitimations are, the less likely they are to be modified in accordance with changing pragmatic exigencies. If there is a tendency to go on as before anyway, the tendency is obviously strengthened by having excellent reasons for doing so. This means that institutions may persist even when, to an outside observer, they have lost their original functionality or practicality. One does certain things not because they work, but because they are right – right, that is, in terms of the ultimate definitions of reality promulgated by the universal experts.


Power structure

The power structure models the key political notions of the "enemy"; and of the "power holder".

Related to the power structure insight we have already learned to perceive the power structure as "systems in which we live and work"—which determine our live ecology, our cultural ecosystem and (not the least) what the effects of our work will be. We now invite you to put also the socialized reality into this view.

The power structure was originally defined in that way—as a structure comprising power interests (represented by the dollar sign in the Power Structure ideogram), our ideas about the world (represented by the book) and our own condition or "human quality" (represented by the stethoscope). The resources we pointed to above may already suggest why—and a more complete explanation is provided in the literature of the power structure entry here.

The primary power structure in Galilei's time was, of course, represented by the synergy between the power of the kings and the worldview provided by the Church—and the consequences to people's wellbeing, or to "human quality", may be obvious. The interesting question is—how might the same basic relationship (or technically a pattern) be reproduced in our own time?

Who may be holding Galilei in house arrest today?

Power Structure.jpg
Power Structure ideogram


Academia

Academia is institutionalized academic tradition.

You have already seen that. Our reason to come back to this definition is to point to a subtlety, which sets the stage for the proposed dialog.

We have that our worldview can be shaped through socialization by power structure. But there is an alternative—to use reason, and knowledge and knowledge, to re-examine our beliefs; and to in that way create better and more solid ways to knowledge. And that is what "academic tradition" here stands for. Our references to Socrates and to Galilei as academia's iconic figures are meant to re-emphasize that the academic tradition found its purpose, and drew its strength, from inspired individuals who dared to stand up to the power structure of the day, and by continuing the academic tradition bring the progress of knowledge, and of humanity, a step forward.

The question (to be asked and reflected on in front of the mirror is whether the contemporary academia is still institutionalizing the academic tradition?

Or has it become a (part of the) power structure—in a similar way as the Church was in Galilei's time?

Notice that the answer here is not either "yes" or "no". Our point is that we must look at our theme from both sides.


Dialog

We have introduced the dialog as a principle of communication. The association with the dialogs that Socrates had as his core activity, as recorded by Plato, was an obvious point. No less important was the subsequent work on this theme by David Bohm and others, the shoulders on which we stand to continue this work.

What we want to emphasize here as a subtle yet essential point is a wealth of tactical assets that the dialog as technique brings along. The central point here is that the dialog is not only a medium for creating knowledge, but also and above all the very functioning of our collective mind—and hence also the way to change it. Here tools like the Debategraph (...) need to be mentioned. But also judicious uses of the camera—whereby the breaches of the ethos of the dialog can be made clearly visible; and valuable feedback for bringing us back on track can be provided (...).


Homo ludens

Here's another way to summarize the above-mentioned resources: The Enlightenment has given us the homo sapiens self-identity. Which makes it all seem so deceptively easy—by making knowing our evolutionary birth right. We don't really need to do much in order to know...

We update this flattering but distorted picture by pointing to another side: We can also evolve and act as homo ludens—who shuns knowledge, and simply learns what works and what doesn't from experience (or through socialization). The homo ludens does not care about overarching principles and purposes; he learns his various professional and social roles as one would learn the rules of a game, and performs in them competitively.

It is interesting to notice that the homo sapiens and the homo ludens represent two completely different ways to knowledge, and kinds of knowing. A consequence is that each of them may see himself as the epigone of evolution, and the other as going extinct. The homo sapiens looks at the data; the homo ludens just looks around...

And now a hint about setting the stage for the dialogs, by combining the conceptual 'technology' outlined here and the hardware technology: The producers of the trailer for The Last Call documentary (where some of the most interesting developments subsequent to The Club of Rome's more specific call to action are reported, voiced in their report "The Limits to Growth") gave us a couple of instances of the homo ludens on record:

  • A conversation between Dennis Meadows (representing the homo sapiens side) and an opponent, which begins here
  • Ronald Reagan wiping it all off, with a most simple (homo ludens) gesture, and a most charming smile, see it here
Yes, the homo ludens had no difficulty obstructing the re-evolution that The Club of Rome was trying to ignite. Can we learn from their experience, and do better?



Prototype

As we have seen, prototypes are characteristic products of knowledge work on the other side of the mirror. The point here is to move knowledge workers and knowledge itself from 'the back seat', i.e. from its observer role, to 'the driver's seat'. By federating insights directly into prototypes, we give them a place in the world; and a power to make a difference.



A vocabulary

Science was not an exception; every new paradigm brings with it a new way of speaking.

The following collection of keywords will provide an alternative, and a bit more academic and precise entry point to holoscope and holotopia.

Truth by convention and keywords

Truth by convention is the technical foundation of the holoscope; and the principle of operation of the 'lightbulb'. This principle can be easily understood by thinking of our usual, traditional usage of the language (where the meanings of concepts are inherited from the past and determined in advance) as 'candles'. Truth by convention allows us to give concepts completely new meaning; and by doing that, create completely new ways to see the world.

Truth by convention is the only truth that is possible in holotopia.

Truth by convention is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics; when we say "Let X be..." we are making a convention. It is meaningless to discuss whether X "really is" as defined.

Truth by convention is a way to liberate our language and ideas from the bondage of tradition. It provides us an Archimedean point for changing our worldview—and 'moving the world'.

Just like everything else here, truth by convention is a result of knowledge federation: Willard Van Orman Quine identified the transition from traditional reification to truth by convention as a way in which scientific fields tend to enter a more mature phase of evolution.

The keywords are concepts defined by convention. Until we find a better way, we distinguish them by writing them in italics.

It must be emphasized that while the complexities and the subtleties of the world and the human experience are always beyhond what we can communicate, the keywords, being defined by convention, can have completely precise meanings. They are instruments of abstraction; we can use them to develop theories—even about themes that are intrinsically ambiguous or vague.

Scope and view

Defined by convention, keywords become ways of looking or scopes. Scopes have a central role in the approach to knowledge modeled by the holoscope.

When we, for instance, say that "culture is cultivation of wholeness", we are not claiming that culture "really is that". We are only defining a way of looking at "culture". We are saying "see if you can see culture (also) in this way".


The Holoscope ideogram serves to explain the role this has in the inner workings of the holoscope. If one should inspect a hand-held cup, to see whether it is cracked or whole, one must be able to look at it from all sides; and perhaps also bring it closer to inspect some detail, and take it further away and see it as a whole. The control over the scope is what enables the holoscope to make a difference.

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Holoscope ideogram

To be able to say that a cup is whole, one must see it from all sides. To see that a cup is broken, it is enough to show a single angle of looking. Much of the art of using the holoscope will be in finding and communicating uncommon ways of looking at things, which reveal their 'cracks' and help us correct them.

The difference between the paradigm modeled by the holoscope and the traditional science can easily be understood if one considers the difference in the purpose, or epistemology. When our goal is to "see things whole", so that we can make them whole, a discovery of a way of looking that reveals where a 'crack' might exist, although we might not (yet) be able to see it, can be a valuable contribution to knowledge, as a warning to take precaution measures against the potential consequences of an undetected 'crack'. In science, on the other hand, where our goal is to discover only the most solid 'bricks', with which we can construct the edifice of a "scientific reality picture"—such ways of looking and hypothetical 'cracks' are considered worthless, and cannot even be reported.

Human lives are in question, very many</em human lives; and indeed more, a lot more. The task of creating the 'headlights' that can illuminate a safe and sane course to our civilization is not to be taken lightly. An easy but central point here is that this task demands that information be federated, not ignored (when it fails to fit our "reality picture", and the way we go about creating it).

Here is a subtlety—whose importance for what we are about to propose, and for paving the road to holotopia, cannot be overrated. We will here be using the usual manner of speaking, and make affirmative statements, of the kind "this is how the things are". Such statements need to be interpreted, however, in the way that's intended—namely as views resulting from specific scopes. A view is offered as sufficiently fitting the data (the view really serves as a kind of a mnemonic device, which engages our faculties of abstraction and logical thinking to condense messy data to a simple and coherent point of view)—within a given scope. Here the scopes serve as projection planes in projective geometry. If a scope shows a 'crack', then this 'crack' needs to be handled, within the scope—regardless of what the other scopes are showing.

Hence a new kind of "result", which the holoscope makes possible—to "discover" new ways of looking or scopes, which reveal something essential about our situation, and perhaps even change our perception of it as a whole.

"Reality" is always more complex than our models. To be able to "comprehend" it and act, we must be able to simplify. The big point here is that the simplification we are proposing is a radical alternative to simplification by reducing the world to a single image—and ignoring whatever fails to fit in. This simplification is legitimate by design. The appropriate response to it (within the proposed paradigm) is dialog, not discussion—as we shall see next.

Or in other words—aiming to return knowledge to power, we shall say things that might sound preposterous, sensational, scandalous... Yet they won't be a single bit "controversial"—within the order of things we are proposing, and using. It may require a moment of thought to understand this fully.

Gestalt and dialog

When I type "worldviews", my word processor signals an error; in the traditional order of things, there is only one single "right" way to see the world—the one that "corresponds to reality". In the holoscope order of things we talk about multiple ways to interpret the data, or multiple gestalts (see the Gestalt ideogram on the right).

A canonical example of a gestalt is "our house is on fire"; in the approach to knowledge modeled by the holoscope, having a gestalt that is appropriate to one's situation is tantamount to being informed.

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Gestalt ideogram

As the Gestalt ideogram might illustrate, the human mind has a tendency to "grasp" one gestalt, and resist others. The dialog is an attitude in communication where we deliberately aim to overcome that tendency. In the holoscope, the dialog plays a similar role as the attitude of an "objective observer" does in traditional science.

We practice the dialog when we undertake to suspend judgement, and make ourselves open to new and uncommon ways of seeing things.

Our conception and praxis of the dialog are, of course, also federated. Socrates, famously, practiced the dialog, and gave impetus to academia. David Bohm gave the praxis of dialog a more nuanced and contemporary meaning.

Wholeness

We define wholeness as the quality that distinguishes a healthy organism, or a well-configured and well-functioning machine. Wholeness is, more simply, the condition or the order of things which is, from an informed perspective, worthy of being aimed for and worked for.

The idea of wholeness is illustrated by the bus with candle headlights. The bus is not whole. Even a tiny piece can mean a world of difference.

A subtle but important distinction needs to be made: While the wholeness of a mechanism is secured by just all its parts being in place, cultural and human wholeness are never completed; there is always more that can be discovered, and aimed for. This makes the notion of wholeness especially suitable for motivating cultural revival and human development, which is our stated goal.

Tradition and design

Tradition and design are two alternative ways to wholeness. Tradition relies on Darwinian-style evolution; design on awareness and deliberate action. When tradition can no longer be relied on, design must be used.

In a more detailed explanation, we would quote Anthony Giddens, as the icon of design and tradition, to show that our contemporary condition can be understood as a precarious transition from one way of evolving to the next. We are no longer traditional; and we are not yet designing. Which is, of course, what the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.

Socialization and epistemology

Although these two keywords are not exactly antonyms, we here present them as two alternative means to the same end. Aside from what we can see and experience ourselves—what can make us trust that something is "true" (worthy of being believed and acted on)? Through innumerably many subtle 'carrots and sticks', often in our formative age when our critical faculties are not yet developed, we may be socialized to accept something as true. Epistemology—where we use reasoning, based on knowledge of knowledge, is the more rational or academic alternative.

Pierre Bourdieu here plays the role of an icon. His keyword "doxa", whose academic usage dates back all the way to Plato, points to the experience that what we've been socialized to accept as "the reality" is the only one possible. Bourdieu contributed a complete description of the social mechanics of socialization. He called it "theory of practice", and used it to explain how subtle socialization may be used as an instrument of power. To the red thread of our holotopia story, these two keywords contribute a way in which (metaphorically speaking) Galilei could be held in "house arrest" even when no visible means of censorship or coercion are in place.

Reification and design epistemology

By considering the available knowledge of knowledge (or metaphorically, by self-reflecting in front of the mirror), we become aware that reification — the axiom that the purpose of information is to show us "the reality as it truly is" (and the corresponding reification of our institutions, knowledge-work processes and models) can no longer be rationally defended. And that, on the other hand, our society's vital need is for effective information, the one that will fulfill in it certain vitally important roles. The design epistemology is a convention, according to which information is an essential piece in a larger whole or wholes—and must be created, evaluated, treated and used accordingly. That is, of course, what the bus with candle headlights is also suggesting.

The design epistemology is the crux of our proposal. It means considering knowledge work institutions, tools and professions as systemic elements of larger systems; instead of reifying the status quo (as one would naturally do in a traditional culture).

The design epistemology is the epistemology that suits a culture that is no longer traditional.

The design epistemology is a convention that defines the new "relationship with knowledge", which constitutes the core of our proposal.

Notice that design epistemology is not another reification. This epistemology is completely independent of or 'orthogonal to' whether we believe in "objective truth" etc. The design epistemology provides us a foundation for truth and meaning that is independent of all reifications.


Prototype

A prototype is a characteristic "result" that follows from the design epistemology.

When Information is no longer conceived of as an "objective picture of reality", but an instrument to interact with the world around us—then information cannot be only results of observing the world; it cannot be confined to academic books and articles. The prototypes serve as models, as experiments, and as interventions.

The prototypes give agency to information.

Prototypes also enable knowledge federation—a transdiscipline is organized around a prototype, to keep it consistent with the state of the art of knowledge in the participating disciplines.

Holoscope, holotopia and knowledge federation

The following must to be emphasized and understood:

What we are proposing is a process—and not any particular result, or implementation, of that process.

Everything here are just prototypes—both because everything here serves to illustrate the process; and because the nature of this process is such that everything is in continued evolution. The point of knowledge federation is that both the way we see and understand things, and the way we act etc., is in constant evolutionary flow, to reflect the relevant information.

Holoscope is a prototype of a handling of information where knowledge is federated. holotopia is a prototype of a societal order of things that results.

And so holoscope may be considered a scope; and holotopia the resulting view

Elephant

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Elephant ideogram

Let us conclude by putting all of these pieces together, into a big-picture view.

Let's talk about empowering cultural heritage, and knowledge workers, to make the kind of difference that Peccei was calling for. That's what the Elephant ideogram stands for.

The structuralists attempted to give rigor (in the old-paradigm understanding of rigor) to the study of cultural artifacts. The post-structuralists deconstructed this attempt—by arguing that writings of historical thinkers, and cultural artifacts in general, have no "real" interpretation. And that they are, therefore, subject to free interpretation.

Our information, and our cultural heritage in general, is like Humpty Dumpty after the great fall—nobody can put it back together! That is, within the old paradigm, of course.

But there is a solution: We consider the visionary thinkers of the present and the past as those proverbial blind-folded men touching an elephant. We hear one of them talk about "a fan", another one about "a water hose", and yet another one about "a tree trunk". They don't make sense, and we ignore them.

Everything changes when we understand that what they are really talking about are the ear, the trunk and the leg of the big animal—which, of course, metaphorically represents the emerging paradigm! Suddenly it all not only makes sense—but it becomes a new kind of spectacle. A real one!

In an academic context, we might talk, jokingly about post-post-structuralism. The elephant (as metaphor) is pointing to a way to empower academic workers to make a dramatic practical difference, in this time of need—while making their work even more rigorous; and academic!