The Venus Project & comments
Paul D. Fernhout
it before but not looked much at it).
A video entry point:
"The Venus Project"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Y363-gPX8&NR=1
(I used to wear a hat like that in college. :-)
And, surprisingly, even Fox news is willing to cover that:
"The Venus Project On Fox News 7"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNZDCafccyo&feature=related
So, there is something about how he is talking that gets attention. He
dropped out of school at 14. And he says many problems are "bad science".
And also:
"The Venus Project -- Part 1"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf1gZxmIDKw
From that last: "Merely talking about idealism and not designing an
approach does not alleviate the problem. Our main theme and our main reason
for funding is to make these things a reality."
Sounds like fenn. :-)
The rest sounds some like me, too. :-)
Though I think that, ironically, what Jacque Fresco has most to offer us
*is* the idealism, and optimism, and hope, and example. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
Especially because I don't see detailed plans under free and open source
licenses?
Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows are way ahead of us in many ways. Jacque
talks about job loss in the face of automation. And the elimination of
scarcity. And cybernetics. We have walked down some parallel paths.
And that gives me some more confidence in my thinking.
Maybe what is outlined in the video comes across as a little too structured
for me. One issue is whether this is a proof-of-concept so much as a single
vision (it's a little unclear). OSCOMAK was supposed to be a general tool
for multiple communities to use it as they wanted to design their own
communities. But, I'd rather Jacque Fresco's and Roxanne Meadows' vision
than what we have most places (though it is easy for a vision to compete
with a reality with real problems). It is a place to start as far as
inspiring people. Project "Virgle" played that role a bit for me, too. :-)
But there is always the interplay of meshwork vs. hierarchy (Manuel de
Landa) and fire vs. ice and fixedness vs. flabbiness. Or,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world
versus:
"No Utopia" by Jacque Fresco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQXgVb8V9M&NR=1
From the Green perspective, the Venus Project work relates to rethinking
what it means to be green and ecologically minded; perhaps building on ideas
like:
"Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement"
by Murray Bookchin "
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html
And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
"The Ultimate Resource is a 1981 book written by Julian Lincoln Simon
challenging the notion that humanity was running out of natural resources.
It was revised in 1996 as The Ultimate Resource 2."
I think that if the Venus Project ideas were joined with some of the ideas
talked about on the P2P list or here, the approach could be even more
successful. Or even just these ideas by me: :-)
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html
I think what I like most about the Venus Project that it has so much good
imagery. It is true about the "feel, see, and touch" the future mentioned in
the video.
I think the video (including subsequent parts) goes off the rails a little
about talking how "new" it is. The Iroquois had lots of good ideas. There
were pre-scarcity times before that 10000 years ago. And there have been
lots of sci-fi authors (Hogan, Bankes) who talk about envisioning new
worlds. And there is, also in Florida, EPCOT center (Experimental,
Prototypical, Community of Tomorrow, which had a broader vision than what
was realized there, but still is in that direction). Or in 1898 by Ebenezer
Howard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement
Or in the early 1800s by Charles Fourier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re
Still, a massive amount of amazing work. The issue is, how to link it to
other stuff, like what people are doing here? How can it be part of a
positive movement, not an isolated thing?
What seems fairest to me is to say that Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows
have taken a lot of ideas some few steps further. And that is an amazing
accomplishment just by itself. I think in that sense, they do themselves a
disservice by isolating themselves as "new".
But we all need to be careful of ending up feeling isolated, given how much
is happening out there, or has happened:
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/
http://www.amazon.com/Ecocity-Berkeley-Richard-Register/dp/1556430094
http://www.arcosanti.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Alchemy_Institute
http://factorefarm.org/
http://www.amazon.com/Bioshelters-Ocean-Arks-City-Farming/dp/0871563487
http://isles.org/main/
How to bring them together is a big challenge. And a goal of OSCOMAK.
I could probably go on for dozens or hundreds more items and individual. And
that's without research, which I'm sure would produce thousands of related
efforts and individuals, maybe even millions. In "Small is Possible" written
in 1981 by George McRobie (following on Schumacher's 1970s "Small is
Beautiful"), he says, figure out what is going on around you and get involved.
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Possible-George-McRobie/dp/0060906944
A new book with the same title:
"Small is Possible"
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3993
"In an era when incomprehensibly complex issues like Peak Oil and Climate
Change dominate headlines, practical solutions at a local level can seem
somehow inadequate. In response, Lyle Estill's Small is Possible introduces
us to "hometown security," with this chronicle of a community-powered
response to resource depletion in a fickle global economy. True stories,
springing from the soils of Chatham County, North Carolina, offer a positive
counter balance to the bleakness of our age."
Though, there are still issues of appropriate scale for various industries
and issues of how communities grow. It's not even clear to me you can
"design cities of the future" if a lot of the details may emerge
organically. Curitiba is an example of an organically emerging city:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Urban_planning
Still, I don't want to discount Jacque Fresco's (and Roxanne Meadows's) work
in bringing together a lot of ideas. I love the robots moving houses: :-)
"The Venus Project"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Y363-gPX8&NR=1
A big challenge is to take what came together in his mind and make it happen
on the internet someway (like OSCOMAK). So, maybe I should see OSCOMAK as
like making Jacque Fresco's innovative mind available to everyone? :-) This
ability to bring together all those technological ideas, in a socially
progressive context, and apply them to local needs taking advantage of local
resources?
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/goals.htm
"The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in
control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No
single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even
many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project
endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all
fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a
library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve
any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size
community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community
people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending
them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their
needs and ideas."
Wixipedia did not get where it is today by saying it was going to be one
view of knowledge. It grew out of a community with the common interest of
putting together all that knowledge in an interwoven way, so that people
could use it the way they needed to. Even if it took twenty years to realize
Robert Muller's (Assistant Secretary-General of the UN's) vision, quoted here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/origins.htm
"""
The present condition of humanity was best described by the philosopher
Gottfried Leibnitz a few hundred years ago when he said that humans would be
so occupied with making scientific discoveries in every sector for several
centuries that they would not look at the totality. But, he said, someday
the proliferation and complexity of our knowledge would become so
bewildering that it would be necessary to develop a global, universal, and
synthetic view. This is exactly the time and juncture at which we have
arrived. It shows in our new preoccupations with what is called
'interdisciplinary', 'global thinking', 'interdependence', and so on. It is
all the same phenomenon.
One of the most useful things humanity could do at this point is to
make an honest inventory of what we know. I have suggested to foundations
that they ought to bring together the chief editors of the world's main
encyclopedias to agree on a common table of contents of human knowledge. But
it can be a dangerous idea. Why? Well, when the Frenchman Diderot invented
the first encyclopedia, the archbishop of Paris ran to the king of France to
have the book burned because it would totally change the existing value
system of the Catholic church. If we developed a common index of human
knowledge today it would similarly cause a change in our value systems. We
would discover that in the whole framework of knowledge the contest between
Israel and the Muslims would barely be listed because it is such a small
problem in the totality of our preoccupation as a human species. The meeting
might have to last several days before the editors would even mention it!
This is exactly the point: some people don't want to develop such a
framework of knowledge because they want their problem to be the most
important problem on earth and go to great lengths to promote that notion.
So that is what I believe to be most necessary for global security: an
ordering of our knowledge at this point in our evolution, a good, honest
classification of all we know from the infinitely large to the infinitely
small - the cosmos, our planet, humanity, our dreams, our wishes, and so on.
We haven't done it yet, but we will have to do it one way or another.
"""
Jacque Fresco's and Roxanne Meadows' work should inspire us to show what is
possible when all that knowledge comes together in service to humane and
ecological ends. So, Jacque Fresco's life is, in a way, a proof of concept
for OSCOMAK or similar things (SKDB, Appropedia, whatever). :-)
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Edward Miller
I am very friendly to basically all the ideas you mentioned, and the
Venus Project should align closely with my systems-based understanding
of the world. Yet, I have not seen anything from them which is
particularly inspiring.
They come directly out of the Technocracy Movement which is mired in
old ideas about the need for centralization, experts, and command
economies. While I definitely agree with your views on the Basic
Income, and I think it could be a huge boon for Open Source, nothing
in the Venus Project's ideology seems rooted towards fostering
decentralized modes of production. At least on their forums they seem
highly memetically infected with Open Source ideas, but their core
leadership is certainly not.
Here is some evidence from their outreach branch, the Zeitgeist
Movement:
http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28&Itemid=65#30
Furthermore, here is an interview by Alex Jones of Peter Joseph who is
a protege of Fresco. In between the conspiracy theory non-sequiturs
you will notice Mr Joseph explicitly mention "we think that all types
of centralization are bad, but in fact it can be great if done
correctly" or something to that effect. I'm sure Preobrazhensky and
Gottfried Feder would heartily agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XVnhh6Yqec (it doesn't really start
until pt 2)
By the way, the fact that many of them are uncritical enough to accept
many loony conspiracy theories should also warrant some scrutiny.
On Sep 25, 11:23 am, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-
Paul D. Fernhout
Thanks for the insightful comments.
Yes, the Venus Project as outlined looks centralized, from that link:
http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28&Itemid=65#30
"When computers eventually have sensors extended into all areas of the
physical and social complex, we will be able to achieve centralization of
decision-making. In a global resource-based economy, decisions would not be
based on local politics but on a holistic problem solving approach."
=== Centralization and decentralization
I think Jacque Fresco may be missing the notion of "Stigmergy" in that
sense, or other systems with layers of decentralization.
Your comments reflect my feelings about the centralization aspect of the
Venus Project. I feel right now that whatever systems we build should be
"intrinsically secure" and decentralization is part of that (although,
within a balance of meshworks, hierarchies, and interfaces as Manuel de
Landa suggests).
As Manuel de Landa suggests here, even within cybernetic software, one is
seeing a more decentralized paradigm increasing (even as we need both some
centralization and some decentralization):
"Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces"
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"""
For a philosopher there are several interesting issues involved in this new
interface paradigm. The first one has to do with the history of the software
infrastructure that has made this proliferation of agents possible. From the
point of view of the conceptual history of software, the creation of worlds
populated by semi-autonomous virtual creatures, as well as the more familiar
world of mice, windows and pull-down menus, have been made possible by
certain advances in programming language design. Specifically, programming
languages needed to be transformed from the rigid hierarchies which they
were for many years, to the more flexible and decentralized structure which
they gradually adopted as they became more "object-oriented". One useful way
to picture this transformation is as a migration of control from a master
program (which contains the general task to be performed) to the software
modules which perform all the individual tasks. Indeed, to grasp just what
is at stake in this dispersal of control, I find it useful to view this
change as a part of a larger migration of control from the human body, to
the hardware of the machine, then to the software, then to the data and
finally to the world outside the machine. Since this is a crucial part of my
argument let me develop it in some detail. ...
Before returning to our discussion of agent-based interfaces, there is
one more point that needs to be stressed. As both Simon and Deleuze and
Guattari emphasize, the dichotomy between bureaucracies and markets, or to
use the terms that I prefer, between hierarchies and meshworks, should be
understood in purely relative terms. In the first place, in reality it is
hard to find pure cases of these two structures: even the most goal-oriented
organization will still show some drift in its growth and development, and
most markets even in small towns contain some hierarchical elements, even if
it is just the local wholesaler which manipulates prices by dumping (or
withdrawing) large amounts of a product on (or from) the market. Moreover,
hierarchies give rise to meshworks and meshworks to hierarchies. Thus, when
several bureaucracies coexist (governmental, academic, ecclesiastic), and in
the absence of a super-hierarchy to coordinate their interactions, the whole
set of institutions will tend to form a meshwork of hierarchies, articulated
mostly through local and temporary links. Similarly, as local markets grow
in size, as in those gigantic fairs which have taken place periodically
since the Middle Ages, they give rise to commercial hierarchies, with a
money market on top, a luxury goods market underneath and, after several
layers, a grain market at the bottom. A real society, then, is made of
complex and changing mixtures of these two types of structure, and only in a
few cases it will be easy to decide to what type a given institution belongs.
"""
On Jacque Fresco's Wikipedia page it says he has moved away from "Technocracy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
"Jacque Fresco was a member of Technocracy Incorporated for a number of
years. There are major differences between Jacque's ideas and that of
Technocracy Incorporated, though. Jacque is not in favour of the concept of
energy accounting, for example, and he does not consider himself a
"technocrat"."
In watching more of his videos he clearly is open to an experimental
mind-set (it's a major theme of most everything he says, to experiment, look
at results, and iterate, as the "scientific method").
But, with those two points said, I agree that the Venus Project comes across
as very centralized both in how it has happened (two people, Jacque and
Roxanne) and how it is supposed to work (central cybernetic control from a
physical center). I realize that left out is the notion of how all these
cities will coordinate resource use between themselves, either across the
globe or with neighbors?
I think suggesting centralized systems is perhaps a psychological risk of
being a maverick, too, and I could have listed it here in activist failure
modes: :-)
"[p2p-research] devastating story on cradle to cradle founder"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-July/003766.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-July/003768.html
Essentially, if you spend a lot of time out-of-step with mainstream society
(and just, statistically, all the people around you), it is easy to drift
into thinking a centralized solution based around your ideas will make
things better. Which can be ironic if you also believe in decentralization
or experimentation or "power to the people" or whatever. :-) The USSR is
obviously a cautionary tale in that direction.
That is similar to the historic criticism of the "conservatives Republicans"
of the "liberal Democrats" in the USA, with Republicans arguing Democrats
want to raise taxes and centralize spending and services through the
government. I'm not saying the criticism holds up in practice as a political
issue, as the Republicans are big spenders too in practice (often on
extrinsic security through the military instead of intrinsic security like
through decentralized renewable energy), and the Republicans tend to borrow
instead of tax. Also, markets may need to be regulated and taxed by a
hierarchy to remain responsive to various social needs given various market
failure aspects (externalities, systemic risks, demands for government
services for infrastructure, centralization of wealth and the risks of a
rich/poor divide, the breaking of an income-through-jobs link with
increasing unemployment given automation and better design in the face of
limited demand, etc.). But, in any case, there is an echo here from
conservatism.
=== Electoral fraud and cybernetic systems?
Still, Chile before September 11th, 1973 is an example of central planning
working in a cybernetic way similar to what Jacque Fresco talks about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/sep/08/sciencenews.chile
"""
During the early 70s, in the wealthy commuter backwater of West Byfleet
in Surrey, a small but rather remarkable experiment took place. In the
potting shed of a house called Firkins, a teenager named Simon Beer, using
bits of radios and pieces of pink and green cardboard, built a series of
electrical meters for measuring public opinion. His concept - users of his
meters would turn a dial to indicate how happy or unhappy they were with any
political proposal - was strange and ambitious enough. And it worked. Yet
what was even more jolting was his intended market: not Britain, but Chile.
Unlike West Byfleet, Chile was in revolutionary ferment. In the capital
Santiago, the beleaguered but radical marxist government of Salvador
Allende, hungry for innovations of all kinds, was employing Simon Beer's
father, Stafford, to conduct a much larger technological experiment of which
the meters were only a part. This was known as Project Cybersyn, and nothing
like it had been tried before, or has been tried since.
Stafford Beer attempted, in his words, to "implant" an electronic
"nervous system" in Chilean society. Voters, workplaces and the government
were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications
network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly
more equal and responsive than before - a sort of socialist internet,
decades ahead of its time.
When the Allende administration was deposed in a military coup, the 30th
anniversary of which falls this Thursday, exactly how far Beer and his
British and Chilean collaborators had got in constructing their hi-tech
utopia was soon forgotten. In the many histories of the endlessly debated,
frequently mythologised Allende period, Project Cybersyn hardly gets a
footnote. Yet the personalities involved, the amount they achieved, the
scheme's optimism and ambition and perhaps, in the end, its impracticality,
contain important truths about the most tantalising leftwing government of
the late 20th century. ...
Across Chile, with secret support from the CIA, conservative small
businessmen went on strike. Food and fuel supplies threatened to run out.
Then the government realised that Cybersyn offered a way of outflanking the
strikers. The telexes could be used to obtain intelligence about where
scarcities were worst, and where people were still working who could
alleviate them. The control rooms in Santiago were staffed day and night.
People slept in them - even government ministers. "The rooms came alive in
the most extraordinary way," says Espejo. "We felt that we were in the
centre of the universe." The strike failed to bring down Allende. ...
Beer was in London, lobbying for the Chilean government, when he left his
final meeting before intending to fly back to Santiago and saw a newspaper
billboard that read, "Allende assassinated."
The Chilean military found the Cybersyn network intact, and called in
Espejo and others to explain it to them. But they found the open,
egalitarian aspects of the system unattractive and destroyed it. Espejo
fled. Some of his colleagues were not so lucky. Soon after the coup, Beer
left West Byfleet, his wife, and most of his possessions to live in a
cottage in Wales. "He had survivor guilt, unquestionably," says Simon. ...
"""
What is interesting to me about Cybersyn is this blending of meshwork and
hierarchy. Although in passing it is also interesting the risk to Stanford
Beer's sanity in working on it, given the political context. :-(
Still, as with the electronic voting fiascos in the USA, it is clear that
electronic networks can be subverted fairly easily. Where I live, this year
is the first that electronic voting is being implemented, and as someone
with 30 years of work with computers, even while I think voting was a
problematical idea before (money advertising swaying votes), now that
computer voting is being put in where I live, in the context of so much
corruption in government, I wonder if it is worth bothering to go through
the motions anymore? :-( But, I just saw Zeitgeist Addendum yesterday, plus
seeing todays politics about health care, so I'm a little down on voting in
general right now.
"Zeitgeist: Addendum"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912
Still, I don't think Zeitgeist Addendum, like the Venus Project, is fair
enough about the social aspect of these processes. Even if I think our
voting system is becoming compromised, that does not mean I would agree with
Jacque Fresco that the solutions are only about changing the environment.
I'm more in agreement with Doug Engelbart, that what we need is a tool/user
co-evolution (or, co-evolution on larger social levels, as Engelbart also
mentions):
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/dce-bio.htm
"""
This thinking prompted an analysis of what capabilities humans draw from,
aside from what they are born with, to boost their intellect. A myriad of
technical and non-technical elements emerged, such as tools, media,
language, customs, knowledge, skills, procedures, and so on. He recognized
that these elements had co-evolved slowly over centuries, but with the
advent of digital technology, the technical elements would shoot way ahead
of the non-technical, and tend to automate rather than augment human
intellect. What would be needed would be to engineer all the elements in an
accelerating co-evolutionary process, setting up advanced pilot "outposts"
in which to experiment and explore future work modes. He further surmised
that an early target for application should be to support improvement
activities, especially the designers, implementers, and deployers of these
tools and practices (the essence of bootstrapping). ... In keeping with his
Augmentation framework, Engelbart incorporated psychology and organizational
development into his research. He also believed very strongly that the
human-tool co-evolution should be based on rigorous exploratory use in a
wide variety of real-world applications (see Paper #26). So in the mid-'70s
he began building a community of users via the ARPANET and sponsored user
group meetings of "Knowledge Work Architects" to collaborate on pilot trials
and future requirements.
"""
Engelbart's point even applies to human genetic evolution:
"Time changes modern human's face"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4643312.stm
"Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed
significantly over the past 650 years. ... The two principal differences
discovered were that our ancestors had more prominent features, but their
cranial vault - the distance measured from the eyes to the top of the skull
- was smaller. ... "The increase is very considerable. For example, the
vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm -
that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot." He
suggests that the increase in size may be due to an increase in mental
capacity over the ages."
So, that's perhaps a 20% increase in a key area of the brain in less than
1000 years, through a co-evolution of humans and their tools and social
systems. (I'm opening myself up to trashumanism arguments here. :-)
I think that sentiment that tools and social systems need to co-evolve is
reflected in my previous post here, even though I did not cite Engelbart,
but probably should have:
"Getting to 100 social-technical points (was Re: a Change)"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/a7abadb8867dae79?hl=en
In any case, subverting a simple control system is one risk of a project
Cybersyn, in the same way as with "electronic voting":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting
"DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine,
are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil and India, and also on a
large scale in the Venezuela and the United States. They have been used on a
large scale in the Netherlands but have been decommissioned after public
concerns. "
Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
And certainly, our prototype of this cybernetic system in the USA as far as
voting is very problematical socially. From:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
"""
Black Box Voting is writing to express our objection to, and to request your
investigation of, the proposed acquisition of Diebold's Premier Election
Solutions by Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S). This acquisition is
the latest action in a series of events which have created a concentration
in the electronic voting industry. This acquisition will exacerbate and
burden an already non-competitive and restrictive situation for our public
elections, which under the Constitution are an essential part of our
democratic system of government. This acquisition, in addition to
overconcentrating the industry, will put a single company in a position to
shut down federal elections at will. Thus, this overconcentration also
creates a potential national security problem.
"""
One value of the "market" is perhaps in the fact that with so many decision
makers, there is a lot of redundancy, making that control system harder to
subvert in the same way. And many libertarians are correct in pointing out
that (many) of the problems of the marketplace are due to corruption of the
bottleneck of the government (for example, allowing long copyrights, or
allowing tax preferences, or regulators captured by those they regulate, or
other monopoly-supporting government aspects in practice).
Governance done by voting (yes/no, pick from a list) to make a single total
is much more susceptible to covert intervention than, say, how decision
making gets done on mailing lists related to Debian GNU/Linux.
http://www.techforce.com.br/news/linux_blog/scientific_study_about_debian_governance_and_organization
One may question open voting (it could be coerced). But, when decisions are
made by *discussion* and (ideally) consensus then there is not so much this
problem of covert subversion of the community. It's just so much harder to
fake lots of relevant emails or to engage in the overall process.
Still, it can happen, like with groups joining the OLPC board apparently in
order to cause trouble (as if the vision and technical choices were not
problematical enough -- personal computers instead of village computers, and
x86 instead of ARM).
Certainly we see similar things going on in the health care debate or other
key issues, with paid "astroturfing" instead of true grass roots. So, there
remain risks. But, they seem more manageable as long as people have a lot of
autonomy to make their own decisions about how to use some local resources,
and as long as the overall culture has some sustainable core values and is
working in an open way. Here is an example of an attempt to correct
mainstream deceit and astroturfing about universal health care in the USA:
"Defending Canada's Health Care: Truths and Lies"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-layton/defending-canadas-health_b_248212.html
And discussion is a key aspect of democracy. With democracy, we often focus
on the "voting" and forget about the discussion and attempts at consensus
making. Cybersyn and the Venus Project and ideas in the Zeitgeist Addendum
may all fail too in that way, to not see the discussion aspect as hopeful,
and how the internet is empowering that (even with negatives of the
internet). When there is active discussion within a democracy, even with
voting machine fraud, the greater that top level decisions deviate from the
general consensus, the more stress there will be on the system, and the more
likely, overall, the system will eventually correct itself.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27074.html
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some
of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
(Abraham Lincoln)"
Now, if the culture of the USA was different, and if the general election
voting machines were open source, and so on, then threats to accountability
barrier might be lower for simple electronic voting or a unified cybernetic
control system. Even then, what is really the problem with voting with paper
and transferring counts in open ways if it is so important? Isn't it worth
the cost for the accountability? Assuming, at this point, elections really
matter as much as we might hope, given how rarely, at least in the USA,
there is any significant choice, since it takes so much money to get
elected, which means anyone running will be heavily linked to the status quo.
There are a few exceptions (Dennis Kucinich), but they are rare and fight an
uphill battle against a dismissive mainstream media. Maybe after the
mainstream media folds (like newspapers are failing against competition from
the internet), then candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul or Ralph
Nader or others (a Green party) might have a better chance?
The mainstream media is essentially a one-way nervous system (hierarchy to
meshwork), whereas the internet is two-way (including grassroots meshwork
back to hierarchy). In that sense, what we have with the internet is a good
part of what project Cybersyn is about.
In any case, I think the Venus Project misses three key aspects of the
future that go outside a formal controlling hierarchy. One is the gift
economy. Another is local subsistence through 3D printing and other local
production. Another is using a basic income (like in Manna) or some other
way of an egalitarian distribution or ration tokens across a variety of
rationed items (where the abundance is reflected in getting more ration
units than most people might want to spend).
So, while I actually like the idea of a cybernetic backbone (say, to collect
data to be used for planning mining needs or other aggregate needs), it
would be interacting with more locally autonomous systems where resources
were turned into products (as gifts, as local production for oneself, or
through formal rationing). Within that framework, I can wonder if what we
have as far as governance through open public mailing lists like with the
Debian GNU/Linux project is maybe enough already to run a planet well? :-)
Really, is it going to be that much better to have numbers flitting around
unseen through a network and AI than to have people discussing the numbers
on mailing lists? We tradeoff convenient accounting for robust
accountability. :-)
Another excerpt from the link you mentioned about the Venus Project:
"Computers and artificial intelligence will serve as catalysts for change.
They will establish scientific scales of performance. It is doubtful that in
the latter part of the twenty-first century people will play any significant
role in decision-making. Eventually, the installation of AI and machine
decision-making will manage all resources serving the common good."
Well, that would lead us rapidly into complex discussions of any
singularity. :-) And how to keep our systems accountable to human needs. So,
there is some handwaving there. :-)
I just started listing to part two of the interview you provided:
"Alex Jones - Peter Joseph Pt2"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XVnhh6Yqec
and I do think there is a confusion there (by Jacque Fresco and Peter
Joseph) about decision making, assuming the scientific method would be
outside politics. The fact is, as Langdon Winner suggests, that our
infrastructure reflects our politics, and our science even reflects our
politics. And our politics reflects our assumptions and our values, and
different people make different assumptions and emphasize different values,
even within the same culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28personal_and_cultural%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue
While I think Alex Jones makes a lot of good points (including about
replacing one elite with another), some of what he says is also
problematical. He's assuming too much competition as a given in a way the
Alfie Kohn suggests is wrong because we can choose to shape how even the
competition within our society is structured. But, both he and Peter Joseph
can be right in some ways, and both can be wrong in some other ways.
=== Activist failure modes and isolation
Thanks again for the interesting reply and the links. Still, for all the
fact that I think you are right about that sentiment, it is still useful to
have positive visions of the future. Although, for me, I've also found them
in other places. Sealab 2020 was a kid's show I loved growing up (now
lampooned in Sealab 2021).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealab_2020
And space habitats have long been a staple of all sorts of sci-fi. And many
people have envisioned other societies (Charles Fourier from the 1700s, for
example). So, the Venus Project is just one example. Where it has its
biggest problems is probably in not acknowledging all that historical context.
On a personal note, as I mentioned in the two links on activist failure
modes, I can see that in my own development. When younger, I saw one good
idea here, or one person doing good work there, and could not put the pieces
together, especially as many others saw themselves working in isolation. In
"Small is Possible" that point was made about the 1970s and Schumacher
meeting people who did not know of each other. In Blessed Unrest, Paul
Hawken echoes that theme:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
But I can wonder, in the internet age, if the problem is not so much people
knowing each other as knowing what to do about knowing about each other?
With all due respect to Nathan, who started this mailing list, that has
bothered me about some of his initiatives (and I've mentioned it to him
before), to think we (the OM list) will be the group that does it all, or is
the initial spark, or whatever. That just denies how much is going on
already out there in all sorts of ways, from Appropedia to Wikipedia to
Makezine and NIST's SLIM project and so on. I'm mainly just content with
this to be one more learning community among many out there. Maybe bigger
things will come out of this OM list, maybe they won't. I think to approach
it otherwise risks isolation and burnout. Something one can, sadly, see
happening elsewhere, even now:
"Crisis at the Factor E Farm"
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crisis-at-the-factor-e-farm/2009/08/10
But as the Venus Project is an inspiration at least visually (and I praise
it for that), it is also a cautionary tale in other ways beyond this issue
of centralization of cybernetic decision making. The history of the Venus
Project reflects how easy it is to get isolated, even with the best of
intentions and the hardest of work. Even in the 1970s, when the Venus
Project started, there was a lot going on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project
"The organization was started by Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows in 1995,
while their website claims The Project started around 1975. "
I can think of those TV shows I watched in the 1970s as a kid, Thunderbirds,
Star Trek, Sealab 2020, and others. I can think about writers at the time
like EF Schumacher's work, and Gerry O'Neill's work (Space Habitats), and
John Todd's work (New Alchemy), and The Whole Earth Catalog, and Alan Kay,
and Doug Engelbart, and so on. So, even accounting for not having the
internet, there were people one could hook up with back then. Granted, even
since Reagan took office, the social and political climate has been downhill
in many ways, but that is counterbalanced and then some by improvements in
communications and technological possibilities.
I can certainly see that flaw of isolation in my own past. For example,
I've mentioned before, how I could not see a way to work with the New
Alchemy Institute at the time in the 1980s when I gave a talk there, even
thought it might have been a great match in retrospect. Likewise, even when
I was doing my Sunrise stuff around 1990 (even gave a talk about it to a
local Sierra club chapter in NJ) it was too grandiose and isolated.
Although, many of the ideas still make sense, I think, accepting that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
"""
Basically, this all made me realized there is a difference between being an
"employee" (even an employee-owner) with revokable rights or loseable
equity, and being a "citizen" with irrevokable rights.
"""
I would have done better (at least as far as being happier) to find the
right groups to work with. Part of my problem there was also constraints of
money and family and energy and sociality leading me to take short-term
easier roads approaching university professors I knew, leaving me in
graduate programs that were bad matches (ignoring the grad school at all may
have been a bat path). Also, I fell for the whole "academia" line, not
understanding "The Big Crunch" that was happening.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
Of course, decades later, there are a lot more options to choose from now.
Sustainability is a big theme now at many universities; for example, even at
the place that two decades earlier gave me so much trouble for having those
interests:
http://www.princeton.edu/sustainability/
Of course, I'm at a different point in my life and career now, plus I'm down
on academia in many ways, but certainly there are lots of options within
communities to pursue these sorts of things, like the upcoming conference on
Media Ecologies shows, or lots of other conferences or different but related
themes:
http://www.conferencealerts.com/sustain.htm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=media+ecology+conferences
And it is not only character -- I was essentially *taught* to be that way
and the behavior was *modeled* for me that one took ideas and hid them away
until you could make a proprietary fortune off of them (like Bill Gates). A
big break from that for me was in giving away our Garden Simulator with GPL
source around 1998, and then a couple years later, putting my Pointrel
source code onto Sourceforge. So, the open source movement is liberatory for
me in that sense -- not worrying about "non disclosure" agreements and so on
-- stuff as late as 1996 I was worrying about with our Garden Simulator as a
business. Now, there is still the issue of economic survival of course. :-)
But the collaborative possibilities have greatly increased through a free
and open source ideology -- and not just about the code (and I think
collaboration on code is overrated), but in collaboration about ideas and
content and extendable modules, all happening in a stigmergic way.
But, that is not completely fair on character, because there were later
counter-models of some academics who shared their stuff freely or at least
academically by publishing -- my advisor at PU, George Miller with WordNet,
is a great example of deciding to be free, and that was one influence. It
took a long time to overcome being heavily rewarded for writing independent
software in my teens and spending a lot of time around a schoolteacher who
also had a computer business (even though that schoolteacher was something
of a William C. Norris in many ways, but still business oriented. :-) So,
that's one reason perhaps that from my own experience I recognize a similar
trouble someone like Ray Kurzweil may have in approaching a FOSS
singularity. Richard Stallman has really changed the landscape in that sense
by his ethical stand on freedom, as have many people following after him,
bringing some older ideals of academia (sharing knowledge, usually with
credit) to the industrial world (first programming, and more and more
manufacturing).
Now, while you say that the Venus Project is "memetically infected with Open
Source ideas, but their core leadership is certainly not", that may reflect
some of the same situation. But, whereas I in my 20s and 30s could adapt
some to that FOSS idea, and Kurzweil is toe-dipping a bit with it, it is
harder to adapt in your 80s and 90s. I think one can try, and I'm impressed
Jacque Fresco does (it shows his commitment to the "scientific method" and
experiment), but as you get older, it is natural to spend more time telling
stories about your past to instruct the young than to keep changing your
strategy about approaching your projects.
I saw the same thing with the Space Studies Institute. I had been a
supporter in the 1980s as a "Senior Associate" pledging UUS$100 a year (a
lot of money for me then) for five years toward essentially a space version
of the Venus Project. So, maybe I always felt I had an investment in there.
:-) I tried a little around 2000 and later to get SSI to adapt to FOSS and
new visions of space habitats that were not focused on Solar Space
Satellites for funding, and where the Senior Associates played a bigger role
in making things happen (always a theme of SSI, but it could be enlarged)
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
but I failed, and the organization has died. Their domain just goes to an
old blog page now:
http://www.ssi.org/
http://spacestudiesinstitute.wordpress.com/
No more conferences. It's very sad to me. I'd still like to rescue it
somehow. But, in deciding how much time and energy to put into saving SSI as
opposed to doing new things back then, the fact that the existing board as
well as the membership was invested emotionally into the old ways, to honor
the late Gerry O'Neill and his vision, was a big factor in seeing the social
impossibility. Even thought I'm convinced if Gerry were still alive today he
would be embracing FOSS. But maybe that is wishful thinking, since Gerry was
a convinced capitalist, even in the face of repeated business failures
trying to do innovative new things (GPS, wireless networks) to fund the
space stuff. And, from what I saw of the SSI list, it seemed that capitalism
and propertarian libertarianism was a key idea of many SSI supporters.
But it is hard to remember how, in the 1980s of "greed is good", where the
1970s and all that ferment in sustainable design was being actively
suppressed, how the model of growing a big business you control as a way to
do innovation was becoming dominant. And that's what I talked about at New
Alchemy (though as a self-replicating business). And that theme of salvation
through big business was perhaps a variant of the "millionaire wannabee"
problem keeping people isolated and voting or behaving against their own
interests:
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"But here’s something I’ll bet the dittoheads haven’t thought of. Maybe
they’re the chumps. Maybe they’ve been sold a bogus “American dream” that
never existed. Maybe “the rules” they play by were written by the people who
have “made it” - not by the people who haven’t. And maybe - just maybe - the
people who have “made it” wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a
dream that’s a mirage"
So, maybe we need to play with the rules, in an "infinite game" kind of way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
Anyway, there really is a big paradigm shift going on towards FOSS and
community, and it is changing the fundamental rules of the game. Though
maybe more slowly than some of us would like. :-)
Our society is even on a return to many of the ideals of the 1960s and
1970s. The social pendulum is swinging back. :-)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22social+pendulum%22
http://www.conversionchronicles.com/Reality_Branding_-_Are_You_Taking_Advantage_Of_The_40_Year_Social_Pendulum.html
Although, as James P. Hogan suggests in "Voyage from Yesteryear", sometimes
a "phase change" model is better than a social pendulum model. :-)
It is hard to know what is good to take from the past and what is good to
leave behind.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
david_c
My thoughts on the Venus Project are similar to your own. A few other
things are perhaps worth mentioning.
There is by no means a consensus amongst people in the movement over
economic issues. Some of them - like me - are interested in the idea
of a gift economy; others, even if they acknowledge the problems with
the current monetary system, think that some sort of exchange-based
system is needed. Supporters of alternative currencies, LETS, etc.
seem to be crawling out of the woodwork.
There is already an attempt at marrying the ideas of the Venus Project
and the open-source software movement. It's the RBEF ( Resource-Based
Economy Foundation ) : http://www.rbefoundation.com/ . (I mentioned it
here a few months ago incidentally). It does nothing to allay my
concerns about centralization however. And, like lots of other people
in the ZM/VP (Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project), they don't seem to be
interested in the idea of a gift economy per se either.
So, my concerns are pretty much the same as the ones yourself and
Edward mentioned :
(i) centralization
(ii) little or no acknowledgement of the importance of free and open-
source methodology (in the "official" write-ups, that is)
(iii) cybernation (http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/
index.php?Itemid=65#30) (is that a technocratic influence?)
But also, I would like to add :
(iv) lack of clarity or unity over what they actually want (as
regards economic issues)
Briefly, on point (ii), most of their websites seem to be running
Joomla or some other open-source CMS, and - as Edward noted - there
are repeated discussions about the importance of FLOSS amongst its
members - but this is of limited relevance if, when push comes to
shove, their architects decide to use AutoCAD.
Paul D. Fernhout
Edward Miller
On Sep 28, 9:16 am, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
>
> Thanks for the insightful comments.
>
> made by *discussion* and (ideally) consensus then there is not so much this
> problem of covert subversion of the community. It's just so much harder to
> fake lots of relevant emails or to engage in the overall process.
>
> Still, it can happen, like with groups joining the OLPC board apparently in
> order to cause trouble (as if the vision and technical choices were not
> problematical enough -- personal computers instead of village computers, and
> x86 instead of ARM).
>
> Certainly we see similar things going on in the health care debate or other
> key issues, with paid "astroturfing" instead of true grass roots. So, there
> remain risks. But, they seem more manageable as long as people have a lot of
> autonomy to make their own decisions about how to use some local resources,
> and as long as the overall culture has some sustainable core values and is
> working in an open way. Here is an example of an attempt to correct
> mainstream deceit and astroturfing about universal health care in the USA:
> Although, as James P. Hogan suggests in "Voyage from Yesteryear", sometimes
> a "phase change" model is better than a social pendulum model. :-)
>
> It is hard to know what is good to take from the past and what is good to
> leave behind.
>
> > Paul,
>
> > I am very friendly to basically all the ideas you mentioned, and the
> > Venus Project should align closely with my systems-based understanding
> > of the world. Yet, I have not seen anything from them which is
> > particularly inspiring.
>
> > They come directly out of the Technocracy Movement which is mired in
> > old ideas about the need for centralization, experts, and command
> > economies. While I definitely agree with your views on the Basic
> > Income, and I think it could be a huge boon for Open Source, nothing
> > in the Venus Project's ideology seems rooted towards fostering
> > decentralized modes of production. At least on their forums they seem
> > highly memetically infected with Open Source ideas, but their core
> > leadership is certainly not.
>
> > Here is some evidence from their outreach branch, the Zeitgeist
> > Movement:
>
> > Furthermore, here is an interview by Alex Jones of Peter Joseph who is
> > a protege of Fresco. In between the conspiracy theory non-sequiturs
> > you will notice Mr Joseph explicitly mention "we think that all types
> > of centralization are bad, but in fact it can be great if done
> > correctly" or something to that effect. I'm sure Preobrazhensky and
> > Gottfried Feder would heartily agree.
>
Paul D. Fernhout
You don't have to get crude. :-) Iain Banks said money is a sign of poverty,
and James P. Hogan said financial obesity is an ugly thing. :-) And, beyond
a basic income and maybe some experiments, it would all get given away
pretty fast anyway. :-)
From:
"Fernhout's Corollary to Banks' Observation on Money (was Re: Fernhout's
Law of Money)"
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/e4638f0fdd9f7ef1?hl=en
"""
Banks' Observation on Money: "Money is a sign of poverty."
Fernhout's Corollary to Banks' Observation on Money: "The degree to which
money needs to be handled in a society is inversely proportional to the
abundance of imagination, skill, freedom, effort, and community present."
And mathematically:
M = 1 / I * S * F * E * C
"""
So, are you saying I have a lack of imagination, skill, freedom, effort, and
community? Them's fighting words. :-)
But, seriously, thanks for the sentiment and the kind words. I would not
turn the money down. :-) Hopefully I would survive it. :-)
On the other hand, maybe it could just be a trick to show me how much I
don't know? :-)
Or: "When the gods want to laugh, they listen to our plans. When they seek
to destroy us, they answer our prayers." :-)
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Edward Miller
Ryan could go build some awesome city somewhere. Like the Venus
Project only more p2p-minded. Seriously, Peter Thiel gave half a
million dollars to a bunch of "libertarian" nitwits to build an
offshore libertopia, why couldn't someone do that for a more pragmatic
and egalitarian project.
Perhaps I'm just expressing the frustration that is running through
the collective consciousness of the progressive community, as
exemplified by Nader's book "Only the Rich Can Save Us."
Of course you're probably right that it would corrupt you, like it
does anyone. If I there were a God, I would still pray for him/her/it
to grant this wish.
Ok, off to do some more wage slavery to help agribusiness fuck us all.
Cheers
On Oct 3, 3:54 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
>
> You don't have to get crude. :-) Iain Banks said money is a sign of poverty,
> and James P. Hogan said financial obesity is an ugly thing. :-) And, beyond
> a basic income and maybe some experiments, it would all get given away
> pretty fast anyway. :-)
>
> From:
> "Fernhout's Corollary to Banks' Observation on Money (was Re: Fernhout's
> Law of Money)"
> http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/e4638f0fdd9f7ef1?hl=en
> """
> Banks' Observation on Money: "Money is a sign of poverty."
> Fernhout's Corollary to Banks' Observation on Money: "The degree to which
> money needs to be handled in a society is inversely proportional to the
> abundance of imagination, skill, freedom, effort, and community present."
> And mathematically:
> M = 1 / I * S * F * E * C
> """
>
> So, are you saying I have a lack of imagination, skill, freedom, effort, and
> community? Them's fighting words. :-)
>
> But, seriously, thanks for the sentiment and the kind words. I would not
> turn the money down. :-) Hopefully I would survive it. :-)
>
> On the other hand, maybe it could just be a trick to show me how much I
> don't know? :-)
>
> Or: "When the gods want to laugh, they listen to our plans. When they seek
> to destroy us, they answer our prayers." :-)
>
Kostas
don't send the response twice:
Hi to you all,
I've stumbled upon this thread from the main zeitgeistmovement site.
It's my first post in the Open Manufacturing group. I'm glad to hear
such groups exist.
I'm going to attempt to respond to some of the critiques mentioned
here.
The views mentioned here do not in any way represent the formal
position
of TVP and are merely my personal understandings of the principles
behind it.
Firstly I'd like to send some more links with video and audio content
regarding TVP:
http://www.tvp-videos.tk/
http://dotsub.com/view/15872a88-fbfe-4b18-a47f-10e0ae06fa9f
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrFgZpMrKak&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/user/Hurrtin4Certain#p/c/DAEB88B262382BE6
http://thevenusproject.com/ (Especially the articles/FAQ/essay written
by Fresco)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Peter-Joseph (Interviews of TVP every 2
weeks; check the summary of the show to ensure it's one of them)
A document that could be helpful is the following:
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/The%20Zeitgeist%20Movement.pdf
Fresco's book 'The Best that Money Can't Buy, Beyond Politics Poverty
and War'
is also something that can give one a more thorough view of what the
whole thing is about.
Before I get to the points I would like to mention a couple of things.
First of all TVP is more about a sane value system rather than
technology. By sanity I mean
a value system that is towards environmental preservation, and human
social progress for all people,
and not one of narrow self-centeredness, ego and vanity.
And by self-centeredness I consider all different levels that it can
be expressed, either at the individual level, or the
group level such as political party, religion or local community, or
the national level.
What I consider special about TVP is that Fresco has brought all the
sciences together aiming at a global egalitarian society.
Although Fresco has technological blueprints (as he claims) about all
aspects of society, he also focuses on a field
of science not considered very much from other organizations that have
similar goals, that of human behavior.
Finally, an important principle of TVP which in a way encapsulates all
of the above, is that in a RBE society, people are dealing
with the root causes of every problem, be it technological or
societal, and not trying to alleviate the symptoms as the current
society insanely does by enacting new laws.
I consider the laws devised by humans an admission of inability to
find a solution to the problem at hand.
To the points now...
- Centralization
As Fresco mentions in the The New York ZDay Event 2009 - Part 2 - The
Venus Project video (found at http://www.tvp-videos.tk/)
the RBE concept arose from a visit he had to an island in Pacific
named Tuamotu. His description in the video is quite revealing.
From my very limited anthropological research (not hands-on
unfortunately) I have found that there existed and still exist
egalitarian societies
based on similar principles (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people).
Most "civilized" people of the western world, regard such native
hunter gatherer societies as barbaric, mostly due to their
technological primitiveness.
The sad truth is though, that they are centuries ahead of us as far as
values are concerned.
Fresco has also been inspired from nature and living organisms for the
city system, and more generally the global cybernated system. A city
works just as the human body in coordination with the brain does (if
we could separate them in some abstract way :-)).
In the first link above you can find the full Larry King interview
where he mentions similar things.
City systems are independent as far as possible but are also
integrated and interconnected with the global cybernated complex,
in order to ease shortages of specific resources or for other reasons
such as sharing of knowledge etc.
If the copper reserves of Brazil are very low, the cybernated complex
could coordinate the transportation of a quantity from a country
having a surplus.
And it comes down to the human value system again. All this has the
assumption that people on earth have come to the realization that we
are a single family,
the planet is our home and that we should cooperate for global social
progression.
Failures of the cybernated system are dealt with redundancy.
In relation to subversion, the question one has to make is what is the
reason behind it. Is there something to gain from it?
Why corruption occurs? TVP tries to find the root causes of such
problems and eliminate them.
I consider a problem to be solved, when it does not reoccur due to the
exact same underlying reasons.
I estimate that the reason TVP does not talk about local manufacturing
with 3D printing, is due to the fact that this technology is not
mature enough
to be incorporated into a fully functioning city system. Although he
talks about nanotechnology, I doubt his blueprints will include
unimplemented forms of it,
but I could be well wrong.
Larry King asks him explicitly in his interview about whether the
proposal (in 1974) could be built with what was known then.
I think that once the value system changes, and (some)scientists let
go off their egocentric patterns, the arrival at a system which is
more efficient and secure,
whether leaning towards centralization or decentralization, will come
as a natural outcome if the scientific method is used.
Peter Joseph is going to give a lecture on Sunday named 'Where are we
going' (part 2 of the lecture http://vimeo.com/6346955), where he said
he will mention in some more detail how decisions are arrived at.
Despite my views above, I consider Paul's argument regarding
centralization valid, so I'll make a proposition to him at the end of
the post.
Constructive criticism is always welcome.
- Idealism and no tangible open sourced plans
I'd like to underline again that TVP is not merely about advanced
technology. I think the reason that Fresco does not
reveal his blueprints is that he considers the shift in the value
system far more important and that this should happen first.
That's probably why they have as a first goal to make a motion picture
to show how the life would be in an RBE society.
He has applied the scientific method in a small scale by making
inventions in various fields and testing his methods of altering
human behavior by dissolving the KKK in Miami, the White Citizens
Council etc. TVP's website has some more details.
The Florida research center is at a slightly larger scale where the
architecture was actually tested by the hurricane Katrina.
Of course a city system and even more a global system are far more
complex and different. The Aims and Proposals article on the TVP site
mentions some details on the various phases they propose.
- Single vision / Final Frontier
In various of his interviews, Fresco underlines the fact that a RBE
society is an emergent society. That is something that differentiates
it
from current established systems having institutions (obsolete may I
add) that strive to perpetuate themselves.
The RBE will just be a step into the future. Future societies will
make their own societal structures. His proposed architecture
is only conceptual. The important thing is the method and thinking
behind his designs. Someone could notice that many have
similar shape to animals.
- Isolation
Sociocyberneering (previous name of TVP) has been alive at least since
1974, but it has only recently become known to the public.
The biosocial pressures from a collapsing economy have eased the
exposure of the project. The conditions
were not that bad for people to start looking to other directions
until recently. Additionally, the internet helped to awaken a portion
of the dumbed down public from the mass media as well as making
knowledge more easily accessible.
Scientists' studies about environmental problems in the near future
also contribute to start looking for different systems.
The decentralization of the participation has started:
http://www.thevenusprojectdesign.com/
Soon the Zeitgeist Media Project will be implemented which will be
about teams of individuals spreading more awareness across the world.
I think one of the reasons Fresco is not for a community-type of
project is for fearing the project's isolation, as Paul mentioned with
other projects (resource conflict is another major reason).
- Technocracy movement
I think what should be considered is why Fresco left Technocracy. It
seems he has adopted some views from this organization but this should
not make him identical.
In some of his interviews he mentions that he left due to racial
discriminations and a too narrow technological view (nothing regarding
human behavior). TVP is all about eliminating any form of elitism,
even technical.
- LETS / Gift economy / Basic Income
First of all, I'd say that in a post-scarcity society money does not
make sense.
Whatever is needed by someone will be given to him via distribution
centers (or maybe if 3D printing is advanced enough produced right in
your front door).
For scarce items where no way has been found to produce abundance yet,
R&D is performed to provide such abundance.
Until the point we succeed, the model switches to that of a public
library for these scarce items.
The value system is again important here. People will participate in
the society and do things because they will
realize that the advancement of the society as a whole is to their
benefit as well.
This will be the so called 'personal reward'.
When your dad has a health problem you will take care of him.
When a pipe is broken in your house you will try and fix it.
Take these two and replace your family with the whole of humanity and
your house with planet earth.
That's the value system shift the TVP is talking about.
RBE has elements of a gift economy. When a person makes a painting he
enjoys giving it to other people
not expecting money from them or some other form of reward.
LETS and Basic Income I think could be used in the transitional period
towards a post-scarcity society.
- Confusion amongst Zeitgeist Movement
I think one of the biggest problems regarding understanding TVP, is
that people, either
inside or outside the Zeitgeist Movement project their own distorted
values into it.
Personally, I do not find any confusion in terms of economic issues as
expressed by the ideas
from TVP (not whatever is mentioned in the forums).
I hope I didn't sound too much as the lawyer of Fresco and TVP (maybe
I did :-/).
As I said, these are only my understandings of TVP and RBE.
In order to get your questions answered the best way is to visit them
in one of their tours:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/get-involved/tours
I'd suggest to Paul to do that to get the most reliable answers.
TVP will be doing a World Tour on 2010 (as mentioned here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/V-RADIO/2009/11/10/V-RADIO-Jacque-Fresco-and-Roxanne-Meadows),
so you may want to get them in your country so you have an opportunity
to scrutinize their concepts and ideas.
My proposition to Paul is to be a guest in either Neil Kiernan's radio
show (he is a spokesman of TVP) or Peter Joseph's.
What I can do from my part is to send emails to both of them to
suggest you.
It is more likely to be on Neil's show (Some of his guests can be
found here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/V-RADIO).
I would like to get your criticism about TVP out there, and also talk
about OSCOMAK and Open Source Hardware as well.
The scientific peer review is all about scrutinizing the
hypothesis ;).
Regards from Athens.
Paul D. Fernhout
> The first attempt of sending the post seems it failed, so I hope I
> don't send the response twice:
>
> Hi to you all,
Thanks for the wonderful note and related links and suggestions (like the
two radio shows).
Having had my own notions of a self-replicating sustainable community in the
1980s,
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
it seems to me that a big issue these days is how to meld stigmergic ideas
about designing and building digital things through a computer network with
the fact that little gets done physically unless someone does it (or some
somewhat hierarchical community does it). :-)
Well, that may not have expressed what I mean, but consider this idea for
Greece, which is not that different from my 1980s plans:
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international
consortium"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/6336f30458de0648/e009aac004f3ad9d
Essentially, it seems to me we need a lot of people to design together, and
then we need to test those designs.
What Jacque Fresco is doing is good, but it has roots in the old way of one
vision (my own problem too). It's just not clear how to transitions from an
emphasis of hierarchical design with a lot of central design power (even by
one very amazing team like Jacques Fresco and Roxanne Meadows) to one that
is more a meshwork or emerging out of a network with distributed design
power, in the context of actually building real hardware on a huge scale. It
may juts happen organically, perhaps. We'll see. And clearly, from the links
you supply, Jacque is moving in that direction.
But, once we start talking about millions of people participating somehow, I
feel there is going to be some qualitative change -- one which we don't
fully understand, but Debian GNU/Linux and Wikipedia and Apache are somehow
small examples of it. I say small, because even those projects are big by
personal standards, they are nothing compared to rebuilding our global
physical and economic infrastructure.
Anyway, that's just a first response. I'll need to look more at the links
and issues you raise.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Paul D. Fernhout
> In various of his interviews, Fresco underlines the fact that a RBE
> society is an emergent society. That is something that differentiates
> it
> from current established systems having institutions (obsolete may I
> add) that strive to perpetuate themselves.
> The RBE will just be a step into the future. Future societies will
> make their own societal structures. His proposed architecture
> is only conceptual. The important thing is the method and thinking
> behind his designs. Someone could notice that many have
> similar shape to animals.
This is a great ideal. Still it is easier to say than do, in the sense that
designers like to design. There is a current example of this issue of
designers vs. users in conflict because our social system splits up those
functions (in part through closed designs and other planning/monetary
issues). For example, which my wife pointed out to me, consider the
wonderful US$175K "green designs" designers are making to rebuild after Katrina:
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/11/04/new-orleans-in-the-forefront-of-a-green-building-revolution/
They are no doubt wonderful. But they miss the point that much housing
around New Orleans was made by the residents themselves, often very cheaply,
and as a consequence, residents were mortgage free and had a lot of free
time and did not have to work as much. What such users could benefit from is
a design system that is green but cheap and lets people put in a lot of
sweat equity (given they have a lot of time). So, the great design there
misses part of the big picture of how many people want to live there. So,
designers need to rethink their designs in that sense. I can wonder if TVP
has aspects of that?
Now, ultimately, I think we have enough resources so everyone can have both
a nice green home and a lot of free time. But, we need to go further down
the path Jacque Fresco and many others have outlined.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Kostas
> Greece, which is not that different from my 1980s plans:
> "Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international
I've read this thread. Indeed it's really sad what's happening here (I
was in the UK
for 4 years and I just got back). I could be wrong but I think Greece
had a lot less imports
in the past. I'm really shocked when I see at the store pine nuts from
China, when I remember
that I could find them in the streets of Rhodes when I was 7 years
old and have a nice free snack.
Unfortunately a great percentage of the population is either dumbed
down (due to ignorance and
false materialistic values) or merely going against the government
and the police.
As you pointed out in your post, our climate and land could easily
produce food and energy independence,
but instead we burn lignite.
The Zeitgeist Movement in Greece had a meeting with a team of
scientists for a self-sustainance project on a Greek island.
A rough translation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thezeitgeistmovement.gr%2Findex.php%2F___________________________%2F&sl=el&tl=en&history_state0=
> Essentially, it seems to me we need a lot of people to design together, and
> then we need to test those designs.
>
> What Jacque Fresco is doing is good, but it has roots in the old way of one
> vision (my own problem too). It's just not clear how to transitions from an
> emphasis of hierarchical design with a lot of central design power (even by
> one very amazing team like Jacques Fresco and Roxanne Meadows) to one that
> is more a meshwork or emerging out of a network with distributed design
> power, in the context of actually building real hardware on a huge scale. It
> may juts happen organically, perhaps. We'll see. And clearly, from the links
> you supply, Jacque is moving in that direction.
> designers like to design. There is a current example of this issue of
> designers vs. users in conflict because our social system splits up those
> functions (in part through closed designs and other planning/monetary
> issues). For example, which my wife pointed out to me, consider the
> around New Orleans was made by the residents themselves, often very cheaply,
> and as a consequence, residents were mortgage free and had a lot of free
> time and did not have to work as much. What such users could benefit from is
> a design system that is green but cheap and lets people put in a lot of
> sweat equity (given they have a lot of time). So, the great design there
> misses part of the big picture of how many people want to live there. So,
> designers need to rethink their designs in that sense. I can wonder if TVP
> has aspects of that?
like to add a bit on the
issue of cybernation, hierarchy first and then on the design power.
Example of RBE society:
Greece has about 100 universities. Every person has free access to the
university that makes R&D
on the field he is interested in. R&D takes place on the whole country
where knowledge is freely
accessible both locally but also globally. The University of Athens
manages to bio-mimic the creation
of a tree from a seed, but for whole apartments from a small ball of
mixed materials.
Knowledge and blueprints are instantly published on the internet and
other cities in Greece
an in the rest of the world can locally reproduce it (maybe I'm
unknowingly describing the Open Manufacturing process here :)).
Personally, I see cybernation in TVP more in terms of coordination and
integration rather than centralization.
TVP (as most sane people) has the following criteria/principles
(amongst the others I mentioned in my earlier post):
i) Efficiency
ii) Abundance
iii) Sustainability
So taking into account the first principle for example, it would be
insane to be able to produce locally what is needed
but instead wasting resource utilization, energy and time-to-"market"
just to have imports from other countries.
This happen in our current sick monetary culture of globalization, in
order to keep the country enslaved by external entities.
So cities or even individual houses (http://www.thevenusproject.com/
technology/housing) will be as independent as possible
and when there is the need for additional resources, the world will be
a cooperative supplier with the help of cybernation.
Now for the design power.
Firstly, as far as I saw, Fresco changed some of the designs he showed
in the Larry King interview, regarding over-populated city
architecture, and replaced
them with mile-high skyscrapers. So, he is fully aligned with what he
keeps mentioning about an emergent culture.
I don't think he considers his designs as the ones that should be
implemented and adopted.
If you listen to him in the links I sent you, this will be fully
clarified. He really emphasizes on the history of civilization as the
history of change (Future By Design documentary).
As I said, the most important thing to think about, is the reasoning
and thinking behind Fresco's designs and not
Fresco himself. The 3 criteria above are major contributing factors.
Unfortunately, today's architects
put ego reasons in a greater priority than functional utility.
To give you an example of power of individual design in a RBE, he
describes how a couple would actually design its own house:
The couple would be inside a room and both would give their
preferences to a computer. The computer would produce
suggestions holographically and you will be able to walk through your
house.
If your wife thinks the balconies are too small she gives feedback to
the computer and the model is instantly adjusted.
All this is possible due to the vast modularization. Not only for
expressing individuality, but also due to advancement in materials
etc.
in order to keep the house technologically up to date.
I really think you have to do some more reading, watching and
listening :).
Some more material:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/a-designingthefuturee-book.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rLpHt3bL4
Paul D. Fernhout
Another article my wife said relates to this with more details:
"Houses of the Future"
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/curtis-architecture-new-orleans
"""
Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected
boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are
succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the
city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched
culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring
design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation. ...
In the absence of strong central leadership, the rebuilding has atomized
into a series of independent neighborhood projects. And this has turned New
Orleans—moist, hot, with a fecund substrate that seems to allow almost
anything to propagate—into something of a petri dish for ideas about housing
and urban life. An assortment of foundations, church groups, academics,
corporate titans, Hollywood celebrities, young people with big ideas, and
architects on a mission have been working independently to rebuild the
city’s neighborhoods, all wholly unconcerned about the missing master plan.
It’s at once exhilarating and frightening to behold.
“If you look at the way ants behave when they’re gathering food, it looks
like the stupidest, most irrational thing you’ve ever seen—they’re
zigzagging all over the place, they’re bumping into other ants. You think,
‘What a mess! This is never going to amount to anything,’” says Michael
Mehaffy, the head of the Sustasis Foundation, which studies urban life and
sustainability and has worked with neighborhood organizations here. “So it’s
easy to look at New Orleans at the grassroots level and wonder, What’s going
on here?’ But if you step back and look at the big picture, in fact it’s the
most efficient pattern possible, because all those random activities
actually create a very efficient sort of discovery process.”
This process is unfolding in a city where the effects of environmental
disregard—from disappearing wetlands to rising temperatures to encroaching
seas—seem more palpable by the day, and where sustainability seems less like
an annoying buzzword and more like a moral imperative. Add to this the
sudden collapse of the credit and real-estate markets last year, and the
fleeting yet unnerving flirtation with $5-a-gallon gasoline the year before,
and one could be forgiven for seeing a cosmic convergence taking shape.
The architectural historian James Marston Fitch wrote more than a half
century ago that great leaps forward in architecture occur when three
factors—theory, material, and technique—come into alignment under the
pressure of social change. Such “golden moments of equilibrium,” as he
called them, are “brief in time, special in character, delicate in balance.”
He noted that such moments produced the Crystal Palace, the Brooklyn Bridge,
and the Eiffel Tower.
We may be in one of those moments now, with notions of modern design,
advances in green materials, and the technical imperatives of sustainability
all converging toward a great leap in urban architecture. The architecture
writer Andrew Blum has asked whether the Brad Pitt Houses could “become for
the single-family green house what Seaside was for New Urbanism or Pacific
Palisades was for California Modernism”—that is, a project that recasts the
possible for the next generation of architects and developers. As seems
fitting for such a moment, most of the construction projects under way in
New Orleans are informed by seemingly conflicting strands of utopianism. But
their designers are coming to some common, and edifying, conclusions.
...
“When I originally thought of New Orleans, I was conditioned by the press
to think of it as an extremely ill-governed city, full of ill-educated
people, with a great deal of crime, a great deal of dirt, a great deal of
poverty,” said Duany, who grew up in Cuba. “And when I arrived, I did indeed
find it to be all those things. Then one day I was walking down the street
and I had this kind of brain thing, and I thought I was in Cuba. Weird! And
then I realized at that moment that New Orleans was not an American city, it
was a Caribbean city. Once you recalibrate, it becomes the best-governed,
cleanest, most efficient, and best-educated city in the Caribbean. New
Orleans is actually the Geneva of the Caribbean.”
Duany said that many of the shotgun houses in New Orleans were built by
the fathers and grandfathers of people living in them today, and few of them
meet building codes. But no one worries about paying mortgages or insurance.
“The situation is that the housing is essentially paid off, and it allows
people to accumulate leisure,” he said. “What’s special about New Orleans is
that it’s the only place in the United States where you can have a
first-rate urban life for very little money.” What happened after Katrina,
Duany said, was that FEMA and others came to town with detailed requirements
for record-keeping and property titles, then insisted on stringent building
codes that would make all the houses hurricane-proof. This might seem like
common sense, he said, but it’s “essentially unworkable for a Caribbean city.”
So the central problem, according to Duany: “All the do-goody people
attempting to preserve the culture are the same do-gooders who are raising
the standards for the building of houses, and are the same do-gooders who
are giving people partial mortgages and putting them in debt,” he said.
“They have such a profound misunderstanding of the culture of the Caribbean
that they’re destroying it. The heart of the tragedy is that New Orleans is
not being measured by Caribbean standards. It’s being measured by Minnesota
standards.”
As an alternative, Duany argues for “opt-out zones” for some of the
hardest-hit areas, including the Lower Ninth. Within these zones, residents
could rebuild their homes the way the city was originally constructed: by
hand, incrementally, and unencumbered by what Duany calls “gold-plated”
building regulations or bank requirements. Such zones exist in rural areas,
he says, but haven’t been tested in an urban context. He suggested that the
money spent on the Better Living Through Modern Green Design homes would be
far better spent on a widespread, low-cost self-building program. “The deal
is, you can hammer something together any old way, but you won’t have debt.
That should be an option. Carrying debt requires a great deal of employment,
which undermines a culture of leisure. The key is self-building,” he told
me, and added that it might arise somewhere else in the city, perhaps among
the Latino construction workers who arrived on the heels of the storm. “It
always emerges.”
"""
Anyway, so I think this issue is a bit at odds with the sort of
architectural planning that has been portrayed for the Venus Project. That
kind of huge planning involves taking on personal or social debt on an
enormous scale (at least, until we are building and planning from a
"Resource Based Economy" like he advocates, where the laughable rationing
system we now use that mixes fiat dollars and physical things and calls both
"capital" is seen for the confusion it is).
Now, I don't want to say Jacque Fresco would not understand this. From the
videos I've seen of him, like talking about helping kids in juvenile
detention find jobs decades ago, he talks a lot about personal empowerment.
And a major theme is exactly a pay-in-effort-and-materials-as-you-go
resource based economy.
I'm more saying that this kind of openness is difficult to reconcile with
the notion of some really good architects in the context of resource
limitations (since so much of our society's resources have gone to war,
prison, schooling, consumerism, guarding, and an elite). Some of this is a
chicken-and-egg problem -- if we had a resource based economy, then we would
be building in really good ways working from an assumption of abundance. The
transition is what is so confusing.
To help reconcile these things and speed a transition, architects may need
to be thinking at a "meta" level -- in terms of tools, materials,
components, and other modular aspects that are adaptable to local
conditions. As I wrote here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/goals.htm
"""
The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in
control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No
single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even
many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project
endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all
fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a
library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve
any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size
community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community
people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending
them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their
needs and ideas.
"""
For all his great visions, I can wonder if Jacque Fresco is somehow caught
up in this sort of conflict of designing something versus designing the
modular systems that underly it. And certainly I have been at various times,
and the opposite side has its own risks (like also me with the Pointrel
system), focusing so much on tools that you never make things with the tools.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Paul D. Fernhout
>> Well, that may not have expressed what I mean, but consider this idea for
>> Greece, which is not that different from my 1980s plans:
>> "Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international
>> consortium"http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread...
>
> I've read this thread. Indeed it's really sad what's happening here (I
> was in the UK
> for 4 years and I just got back). I could be wrong but I think Greece
> had a lot less imports
> in the past. I'm really shocked when I see at the store pine nuts from
> China, when I remember
> that I could find them in the streets of Rhodes when I was 7 years
> old and have a nice free snack.
Yes, sad. Same for things where I live. Lettuce is imported during the
summer when it could be grown locally easily. Organic milk and milk products
comes from hundreds or thousands of miles away when they could be made
locally. Just a waste of energy.
> Unfortunately a great percentage of the population is either dumbed
> down (due to ignorance and
> false materialistic values)
Or school: :-)
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
> or merely going against the government
> and the police.
Well, they've lost faith. But ultimately, it seems like, as Manuel de Landa
says, all real systems are part meshwork and hierarchy.
> As you pointed out in your post, our climate and land could easily
> produce food and energy independence,
> but instead we burn lignite.
> The Zeitgeist Movement in Greece had a meeting with a team of
> scientists for a self-sustainance project on a Greek island.
> A rough translation:
>
> http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thezeitgeistmovement.gr%2Findex.php%2F___________________________%2F&sl=el&tl=en&history_state0=
That's great. Although transforming the island Agios Efstratios to be mostly
self-sufficient and sustainable is going to be a lot harder then
transforming Greece as a nation.
One can break this into areas with different "time constants" as Prof. Frank
von Hippel suggested to me when I talked with him about the precursor to
OSCOMAK. Consider this list. Things near the beginning of this list are
things we depend on others for minute to minute or day by day, whereas items
later generally last longer or have longer planning cycles:
* electricity
* drinking water
* food
* medicine
* other fuels
* manufactured consumer goods
* tools
* computers and internet and communications.
* shelter
* roadways and other infrastructures like heavy industry or sewage
treatment. (Sewage treatment by itself might be higher up in the sense that
if it fails, you are in bad shape healthwise; on the other hand, outhouses
can work for years without much maintenance.)
If you were in space, "air" might be number one or two on the list. :-)
If you can be more self-reliant for electricity, water, and food, the first
items, then it is safer to trade more about those other things because you
are less desperate for those, since they take longer to get used up or
decay. So, you are more intrinsically secure.
I put electricity first even though it is possible to live without it
because it tends to be needed continuously to support everything else in our
society like water pumping, refrigeration for food and medicine and
communications.
If you do not already have shelter or roadways, that may be a major problem
to get them. But if you do have them, it may take years for them to fall
apart to the point where they are unusable.
So, that island project is starting with electricity, which is good. I would
suggest thinking about the approach on that list in terms of setting
priorities. Still, the list is not absolute. You may need a little
electricity to pump water, but medicine might be more important that
producing lots of electricity to support industry.
I don't see that quite in the way Jacque Fresco is talking about the
cybernetic aspect, which seems to me more like a real time "scheduling" or
"allocating" or "accounting" system. What you are describing seems pretty
independent of all that, and indeed, more like the open manufacturing idea.
> TVP (as most sane people) has the following criteria/principles
> (amongst the others I mentioned in my earlier post):
> i) Efficiency
> ii) Abundance
> iii) Sustainability
What about:
Happiness? :-) Hope? Joy?
Security?
Even equity? Or some sort of fairness?
Jacque Fresco may believe in these, but what about being explicit about
them? But they can be hard to discuss, because not everyone agrees on them.
Even efficiency is an issue -- efficient in what ways?
> So taking into account the first principle for example, it would be
> insane to be able to produce locally what is needed
> but instead wasting resource utilization, energy and time-to-"market"
> just to have imports from other countries.
That's true. On the other hand, efficiency is always relative to values and
priorities. If one values human effort over energy use for transportation,
it may be more "efficient" in human labor to import things, or produce more
happiness. Still, it may be less "secure" to import things.
A major reason I talk about communities that are more self-reliant if they
wanted to be is from a security perspective. Both day-to-day security,
knowing they could not be cut off in a war, and also long term security,
knowing that they have a sustainable future.
> This happen in our current sick monetary culture of globalization, in
> order to keep the country enslaved by external entities.
Yes. It is a culture that also confuses the physical (buildings, trees) with
the imaginary (fiat dollars and euros) and lumps the two together as one
thing called "capital".
> So cities or even individual houses (http://www.thevenusproject.com/
> technology/housing) will be as independent as possible
> and when there is the need for additional resources, the world will be
> a cooperative supplier with the help of cybernation.
Jacque Fresco has a great vision. But the arguments come in the details.
Whose land will the materials be mined from? Who will do the mining? Who
will supply the energy? Will the current government tax all that? What
happens to troublemakers? And so on...
I like what he does, and I find his drawings and models inspiring. And I
like a lot of things he says about improving technology and infrastructure
instead of focusing on laws.
But, again, we need to work out a lot of details. And some of the choices
will flow from history, values, and assumptions, and people are going to
have trouble agreeing on all that.
> Now for the design power.
> Firstly, as far as I saw, Fresco changed some of the designs he showed
> in the Larry King interview, regarding over-populated city
> architecture, and replaced
> them with mile-high skyscrapers. So, he is fully aligned with what he
> keeps mentioning about an emergent culture.
A lot of people might prefer living closer to the ground. :-)
> I don't think he considers his designs as the ones that should be
> implemented and adopted.
> If you listen to him in the links I sent you, this will be fully
> clarified. He really emphasizes on the history of civilization as the
> history of change (Future By Design documentary).
> As I said, the most important thing to think about, is the reasoning
> and thinking behind Fresco's designs and not
> Fresco himself. The 3 criteria above are major contributing factors.
OK. Although, as I mention, they leave out happiness and security. I really
don't mind if systems are very inefficient, or somewhat unsustainable (in a
thousand year timescale we will have better technology), or even if a
society has to ration some scarce thing, if otherwise people generally feel
happy, feel the society is fair, and they feel reasonably secure, and have a
general sense of hope and joy.
> Unfortunately, today's architects
> put ego reasons in a greater priority than functional utility.
Some do. Maybe many do. But it only takes a few working on open designs to
give everyone what they need. Christopher Alexander's Patter Language for
architecture is another approach, which is more modular and adaptable. Example:
http://www.patternlanguage.com/
"These tools allow anyone, and any group of people, to create beautiful,
functional, meaningful places. You can create a living world."
See also my other note in this thread with the elaboration about New Orleans
architecture that I sent before seeing your reply.
> To give you an example of power of individual design in a RBE, he
> describes how a couple would actually design its own house:
> The couple would be inside a room and both would give their
> preferences to a computer. The computer would produce
> suggestions holographically and you will be able to walk through your
> house.
> If your wife thinks the balconies are too small she gives feedback to
> the computer and the model is instantly adjusted.
> All this is possible due to the vast modularization. Not only for
> expressing individuality, but also due to advancement in materials
> etc.
> in order to keep the house technologically up to date.
Sure. And we'll see more of this.
But again, Christopher Alexander was talking about some of this decades ago.
And also, there is a balance that, say, for balconies, as Christopher
Alexander suggests, there is a certain size that tends to work well, and if
you make it a different size (certainly too small, but maybe also too big),
it tends to have problems.
So, this is more a statement of a goal than how to accomplish it.
Christopher Alexander's work is a higher level of detail about the interior
of buildings themselves from what I have seen of Jacque Fresco's in terms of
understanding how to do this in a modular way, even as Jacque Fresco has a
bigger picture that Christopher Alexander does not talk about that I have seen.
> I really think you have to do some more reading, watching and
> listening :).
> Some more material:
>
> http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/a-designingthefuturee-book.pdf
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rLpHt3bL4
I'm sure that's good advice. Thanks. Just wish I had more time right now.
I'm sorry I don't have enough time right now to give TVP the time it
deserves to learn more about it. I'm sure it would just be a lot of fun to
hang out with someone like Jacque Fresco too.
A lot of the things that need to be done are in the details at this point.
Simulation could help with some of that. Helpful too would be real tests
with real communities (although there are some). But there are a lot of
people doing a lot of stuff. Just for one random example I looked at yesterday:
"www.thesolarvillage.com - Passive Solar"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CQVmgLvkco
I think, in that sense, the issue is more how to make the most of "blessed
unrest"
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
rather than everyone get behind one grand vision. I think the grand visions
are helpful. They are inspiring. But what seems to be working out in
practice seems to be different, people being people, and often wanting to
make their own designs.
Unfortunately, there is a big difference between life and death struggles to
build a local community while living in it with few resources versus a
really good experiment. Our global society as a whole could pour literally
trillions of euros each year into trying a lot of alternatives that might be
extensible, and doing it in a systematic way. But we don't. We spend the
money in other ways (especially war, schools, and prisons) instead.
So, we need to do some combination of individual initiatives and getting
government to invest in these areas too. But, these things are happening.
Just it seems so, so slowly. Many of the things we talk about now were just
things that were talked about in the 1970s, but are coming to fruition
finally, through the work of some people like Jacque Fresco, Roxanne
Meadows, and others who kept that faith (like Amory Lovins or John Todd).
I do think Jacque Fresco has more faith than I do in science; my faith in it
is limited for two reason:
* Science is a social enterprise and subject to things like social arguments
over where to invest resources or how to interpret results as well as
individual scientists behaving like human beings (with both good and bad
results sometimes).
* There are issues about assumptions, values, and choice of reasoning tools,
which, to some extent, are outside the scientific process.
I feel it likely that where Jacque Fresco and I might differ, those may be
likely the biggest points.
Anyway, so, as you suggested, I'm working my way through this video (broken
into ten segments):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rLpHt3bL4&feature=related
Here is a sort of stream of consciousness reaction to it.
In the video the first part he talks about a story of asking questions of
some communist party people about how to end corruption or house the masses,
and a need for technical studies of that, and being told to leave because he
was questioning dogma.
I think it likely somewhere between scientism and dogma is some sort of
human middle ground. :-) Maybe it is hard to put in words what I am trying
to say. And I'm not saying Jacque Fresco might not agree. As he says there:
"I wanted answers. I don't want to follow anybody, and I don't want anybody
to follow me. If what I say makes sense, do it. If it doesn't, get off. To
build a following, like people admire you when you walk around, that's
dangerous. I don't want to lead anybody, I just want to point out things,
such as... [aspects of "War is a Racket" by Major General Smedley D. Butler,
independently originated?]..."
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
And cited what I have heard elsewhere, and he cites Alexander P.D. Seversky
about how WWII could have been won easily by bombing electric power plants
(even from German generals). And he points out though, there was no money in
that.
It is funny where he said it would be cheaper to rebuild the world then turn
people into killing machines. I'd say the same thing now about military robots.
He mentions: (But maybe something earlier with the same name?)
http://www.amazon.com/Arms-Men-History-Weapons-Aggression/dp/0195053605
So, wise words. And it's great to listen to him. I've seen a lot of his
youtube videos. I'll try to watch the rest of that two hour special (hosted
by Theo Chalmers). Thanks for the link. (He may go too far in saying
everything is environmental. :-)
I think it would be a lot of fun to work with him and a bunch of other
people about these things. Of course, he's 93 or so now, so that's probably
never going to happen. :-( But, it is nice to bask in the sunlight of his
words (and Roxanne's) for a time. So much to do... I hope he is getting
enough Vitamin D himself. :-)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
He reminds me some of Alan Kay (in the third part of the video). He said any
city he designed would be a straightjacket for children of the future, who
may want something different. So, yes, that does reflect your points you
made earlier.
Alan Kay said something about Squeak Smalltalk (a programming environment),
that it was to be a stepping stone to the next good thing. That was
something many people who used it never did seem to understand, which
frustrated me because I wanted to build something better than it, too, but
building on the core concepts he, Dan Ingalls, and others created with
Smalltalk.
Anyway, one also has to distinguish between clearly stating the problem and
having the exact solution.
He's probably right that we are not wise enough to go into space in some
sense. I agree the best reason to go into space is we are happy down on
Earth. I'm not sure that means we should not think in terms of space though.
Sometimes great challenges or opportunities can bring us together. Or, it
might be a way for some to survive corruption destroying the Earth. But the
best thing is, I agree, to fix up Earth first.
They ask how it can happen. I did have a model myself here: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
"Like any living system, Sunrise will grow over time. Sunrise's growth
strategy will be to replicate itself in other communities. Each institute
will have a Stella system, and the Stella systems will all communicate with
each other to share innovations. In this fashion, Sunrise can help many
communities increase their use of sustainable technology. As the institute
grows, it will market sustainable technology it has invented or discovered
to the surrounding community on an ability to pay basis. In addition it will
provide consulting to organizations increasing their sustainability and
decreasing their negative impact on the environment. "
I think, like many people, even myself sometimes, the is too pessimistic
about change. He says it will only happen when things fail. But, we have put
in place the internet without everything failing, so change can happen.
Likewise, renewables may be providing most of our energy in two to three
decades if you plot the exponential growth rates that have been happening
for the last three decades. Also, 3D printing may mean big changes in
industry. Biotech may mean home gardens might change in what they can
produce as well (I'm not a huge biotech fan, but it is happening). So, we
may see lots of changes without a crash. I'm more concerned how we change
our ideology to better fit a technology of abundance. That is a somewhat
different thing than Jacque says. It is both more optimistic -- we mainly
need to change our stories -- and more pessimistic, because until then, the
technologies of abundance will be wielded by those obsessed with creating
and fighting over artificial scarcity.
In part 4, he talks about a "sensor" that keeps people from crashing their
cars into each other, even on purpose. And then he says today's problems are
technical, not political. But, following some of what Landgon Winner writes,
I think all technical things reflect our politics. In some sense, they are
inseparable. So, I agree where you wrote that the most important first thing
is the values behind his project.
Interesting question from Theo about "who is in charge?". But he does not
answer that. He says it is a scientific group, the Venus plan, and that
decisions are just made following the plan as not an opinion but a finding
base on measurement. But that ignores questions of who makes up the plans,
or how ambiguities in them are resolved, or who is selected to be a
"scientist". Example (and it's funny how even in the movie they propose
there are "schools"):
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
As Theo says, this is a "scientopoly". :-)
Now, that may not be all bad. But somehow, I feel we need something more
somehow. I don't know what feels wrong about that. I think there is some
assumption that it will be accountable. Still, I think it is not
unreasonable for them to advocate some plan. But then, perhaps they should
not call it a "plan" but a "constitution"? Or, perhaps something with
layers, a constitution at the top and then layers of plans under it. But
then, one might ask, what keeps it from juts being what we have now?
Bringing us back to the issue of "corruption". I agree with Jacque that in a
world of abundance there may be less crime (and corruption) about material
things. But, then why do we need detailed plans, other than creating the
tools and ideas to bring about the aboundance (like 3D printing), plus we
need to develop a mythology to go with it? I think somehow that is where
some TVP ideas break down somehow.
And I think some of that is historic. If you took Jacque Fresco and Roxanne
Meadows, and they were both thirty three years younger, and they were just
starting *now*, they might have a somewhat different approach, perhaps with
more aspects of today's internet and social networking? I think what they
are missing is some terms or ideas like "stigmergy".
http://collaboration.wikia.com/wiki/Stigmergic_collaboration
I think it is reasonable to suggest that if things get easier, like machines
can build houses, then the question of who makes decisions is not as
important, because, in practice, everyone is making decisions because
everything is easier to do. 3D printing has aspects of that, with people
able to choose in their homes what to make.
As one person suggests here, in a thread discussing the Venus Project and
Jacques refernece to the KKK (how did he dissolve a chapter?):
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=55303891744&topic=12030&_fb_noscript=1
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know
peace. (Jimi Hendrix)"
That seems to me somehow like a better faith than scientism, as important as
science and engineering are. From:
http://www.auuf.net/about-auuf/sermons/71-caring-sermon
"""
Here’s what Mayeroff says of caring as a way of life: “In the context of a
person’s life, caring has a way ordering other values and activities around
it. When this ordering is comprehensive, because of the inclusiveness of
one’s carings, there is a basic stability in one’s life; one is ‘in-place’
in the world, instead of being out of place. Through caring for certain
others, by serving them through caring, a person lives the meaning of his or
her own life. In the sense in which a person can ever be said to be at home
in the world, he or she is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or
appreciating, but through caring and being cared for.”
"""
Anyway, I think there is a difference in TVP vs. OSCOMAK in the sense that
OSCOMAK was more about being a tool for people to use to design societies,
but not a single design.
By the way, in part 5 where Theo mentions the idea of everyone voting with
pushing a button in front of the television, an Jacque says that's not what
he means, I'd mention that was contemplated in another "cybernetic" system,
for Chile, by Stanfford Beer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/sep/08/sciencenews.chile
"""
During the early 70s, in the wealthy commuter backwater of West Byfleet in
Surrey, a small but rather remarkable experiment took place. In the potting
shed of a house called Firkins, a teenager named Simon Beer, using bits of
radios and pieces of pink and green cardboard, built a series of electrical
meters for measuring public opinion. His concept - users of his meters would
turn a dial to indicate how happy or unhappy they were with any political
proposal - was strange and ambitious enough. And it worked. Yet what was
even more jolting was his intended market: not Britain, but Chile.
Unlike West Byfleet, Chile was in revolutionary ferment. In the capital
Santiago, the beleaguered but radical marxist government of Salvador
Allende, hungry for innovations of all kinds, was employing Simon Beer's
father, Stafford, to conduct a much larger technological experiment of which
the meters were only a part. This was known as Project Cybersyn, and nothing
like it had been tried before, or has been tried since.
"""
So, there actually are aspects of such systems that could work like that.
But, with a basic income, it seems like people could shape the world more to
their ends too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I like what Roxanne said in the fifth part about some people getting
comfortable and wanting to freeze society. Still, part of happiness is
preserving patterns important to you.
Anyway, I think it not unreasonable to say, people will have a constitution,
they will have a judiciary, they will have some form of aggregating public
opinion (representatives, direct voting, market spending, citizens chosen by
lot to uphold the constitution as an executive for a week, a mix). Example:
"Polity and Custom of the Camiroi"
http://books.google.com/books?id=Y_FoU_KMOmkC&pg=PA212&lpg=PA212
There is that proposal for "no people in government", where a system is run
by a computer hooked to sensors, but I think that ignores some key issue:
* who programs these computers with what values?
* who changes them as needed? Or decides they should be changed?
* humans as a collective can make decisions via social networking (like
through email), so that is a different vision from full automation.
I design software programs. Around 1987 I built one of the first simulations
of kinematic self-replicating robots (on a Symbolics), building copies of
themselves from spare parts in a a simulated 2D world. The first thing the
robot did, after duplicating itself (by building up a child copy attached to
it, and then cutting itself in half), was the first robot tried to
canibalize the other half it had just built. I had to add a sense of "smell"
to prevent that, and mark parts as being "self" and "not self". So, I saw
first hand, in simulation how easy it was to make a critical error in
designing such things (luckily, I was working in simulation and not physical
things in our world). So, I think it possible our computers could do
unexpected things. James P. Hogan talks about this in his novel "The Two
Faces of Tomorrow".
Anyway, I don't know if Jacque and I would ever agree on any of this. It
would have been nice to work together somehow in years gone by.
I'm seeing now a conceptual problem in the beginning of part six. It carries
over from part five, where Theo asked if programmers would rule that world,
and Jacque says, no, they would be following the guidelines of the Venus
Project, if they supported it, and if not, they are not involved. But, here
is a big conceptual problem. Where is the room for a programmer to mostly
support the project? Is it "all or nothing"? Then how can it adapt to local
circumstances? How can it be fixed if in error? How can it expand and
change? It may be in the discussions between programmers and others that new
solutions emerge. But, once you accept that, then there can't be just one
TVP plan. You maybe can have a constitution and goals and values and tools
(science, democracy, cybernetics) but then plans become more in a state of
flux. I feel one needs to look at layers of support. You my support a
constitution, and some values, but disagree about specifics in some way.
I don't agree that people go against the grain because they are damaged.
People can disagree about values (including aesthetics) and assumption and
choice of tools without being damaged. There are legitimate disagreements
about values without damage. Two people can look at the same painted picture
and have different aesthetic reactions.
I think, even as he defines problems well, he still gets distracted in
answering some of these basic questions. I can't decide if it is rambling,
or intentional, or just part of his mental style to avoid some hard issues,
even if he has accomplished so much. But, even at 93, he's probably doing
better that I could. :-)
I can agree with his point about resources versus money. I think he needs to
build on some of these resource ideas perhaps more in trying to explain
these things to people. Maybe starting sooner in this presentations.
I dealt with some of this in trying to think about what to say on this Blog
Talk radio interview, and I did not do as good as I could.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fastforwardradio/2009/08/12/The-End-of-Scarcity-and-the-Age-of-Abundance-#comments
I guess I see why people have problems with some of these ideas. And he
cites school again, as people should go back to school to learn to be
parents. I'd agree parents should study in this area. But again, he misses
the point about schools:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Just going past the section of "opinion" in part 6. But, he is ignoring that
experts disagree. And sometimes a person who is not a "expert" may see a
better way. So, I think there is an assumption here that expertise can be
easily identified, or will not be in disagreement with itself. Example:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-feb.shtml
"Professor Barbara Gilchrest is the same Boston University academic who
turned me livid eighteen months ago when she fired Professor Michael Holick
for writing a book. Holick's book simply questioned current dermatology
dogma that sunlight is evil and she fired him: Boston University's version
of academic freedom."
So, both were experts. They disagreed. One got fired (probably the one who
was closer to the truth). With science as a social enterprise, how will this
be prevented?
So, I think Jacque would be on safer ground if he talked about something
being better, as opposed to coming across defending something as being
perfect. He says in places he wants it to be better, but then seems
absolutist in some other discussions of it. He is perhaps conflicted about
this, or maybe some old values of his clash with new values and new ideas he
has developed over the past decades. I can see that in may own writing. :-)
I think Roxanne is doing a better job of presenting those aspects.
I think I would not appreciate this talk as much if I had not seen some of
the youtube shorts with interviews of Jacque Fresco. He has a more coherent
explanation of some of these points in those (from a decade or two ago?) of
how behavior can emerge out of environment. But, I still think there are
aspects of behavior that are more fixed. For example, we tend to think of
symmetrical things as beautiful. And attraction may have to do with genetics
and immune system function.
Books he mentions:
http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Motives-Kenneth-Burke/dp/0520015444
http://books.google.com/books?id=By8AAAAAYAAJ
http://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Words-Stuart-Chase/dp/0156923947
He talks about sharing, and the smarter everyone else is, the richer his
life, and I agree, and it seems like he might do well to focus more on that
theme, building on the work of Alfie Kohn.
I'm getting bored and distracted in the middle of part 7 (sorry) and just
looked at this: :-)
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=114101&videoChannel=6
"Space hotel on schedule to open (02:23) Report Nov 2 - The company behind
plans to open the first hotel in space predicts a holiday in orbit will soon
become a realistic travel option. Galactic Suite say their space station
hotel is on schedule to accept its first paying guests in 2012. "
So, a lot is happening. :-)
We are seeing continued exponential growth in technological capacity. (Even
if I think that is a waste of money compared to what we could do on Earth
with that money).
Back to the video, the section about kids should have art centers. Yes I
agree. And Roxanne saying "Technology is racing forward" and yes, the link
above. And she's saying how it is getting cheaper to automate than
outsource, and they have to. And that is the end of the free enterprise
system. And I've been saying that too. :-)
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005917.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html
Anyway, this is the area of "How do you defeat the Illuminati?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati
I think he misses the picture there. You need to help them grow
mythologically. :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
He mentions "properly educated". Need to distinguish between schooling as we
have it now and education. I don't mind public schools in the future if they
are more like public libraries -- show up whenever you want to learn
whatever you want at the moment. :-)
Onto part 8. (I don't have the time for this, supposed to be earning money
somehow :-), so I'm viewing it all now before I get more distracted. My
quality of response is dropping though.)
I think he says good things on pride and sharing and ego. I feel it likely
if we did have a basic income we might better move past that. A lot of
self-promotion does have to do with earning a living in our current
competitive economic landscape.
The part at 2:15 in part 8 where he says there will be wars, invasions, etc.
*unless* we do these things (TVP). I think he goes to far when he says
"unless". What he might better say is that we can make these things less
likely. Also, I don't agree with all the premises. Like, maybe we should
govern via email and mailing lists and IRC and twitter instead of via some
vast computer system where humans are not much of a part of it. It might, in
theory, be more "efficient" in some way to have an ideal computer do stuff,
but it may be less fun for social people and also just less secure for most
if not all people.
He says he'd be happier to learn how to make it better with constructive
criticism. So, feel free to forward this. :-)
He makes a good point -- the universities are better equipped than ever and
the wars are getting worse. The US has three hundred US subs each one of
which could destroy civilization. But, he does not mention the *irony* of
the situation. That is a theme I have been developing.
Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity
technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people
still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil
instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear
power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html
As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I
think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA
who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would
all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes. It turns out, it takes more
electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same
distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41
miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that
gallon. Alternatively - energy use (electricity and natural gas) state wide
goes DOWN if a mile in a RAV4EV is substituted for a mile in an ICE!"
So, that idea can fit with some notion of rationality and efficiency. But it
is still *political*. There are some few people who are better off (to their
eyes) by having us all use gasoline and more electricity driving ICE cars.
The question is, who pays the costs, and who gets the benefits? Still, maybe
a lot of it is ignorance, or cultural inertia, and not direct calculation of
profit. But profit to onesself often causes one not to look very hard at the
rest of the system, because if seems to be working well for you, why tinker
with it? It is hard to accept even for the affluent it is not working well:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948879/
I think he underemphasizes some issues of psychopathology, even is he may be
right society has a lot to do with creating it or sustaining it:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html
He may be right on the probability and the rate of damage being so high.
But, there is a lot of technology.
Part 9.
Just mentioning a "world's fair". But that was part of the point of Disney's
EPCOT center.
I like his point about the Earth as a beautiful gift we got.
I disagree with his population focus, because it seems to me the Earth can
support a much larger population, as well as people can live in space. I
think we have a declining population in most industrial countries, and so we
need to promote population growth. :-)
I think a big issue when he talks about the difficult transition, is that we
are transitioning anyway. I think the issue is more ideology and mythology.
We are changing everywhere, with more renewables, more social networking,
more free software, more green products, more sustainable architecture, and
so on.
I think they are doing a great job without a major motion picture. Debian
GNU/Linux did not need a major motion picture. Neither did Wikipedia.
There was a section here where Roxanne was cut off. ?
And then there was the question by Theo about "totalitarian".
Still, there is the issue that a global change or paradigm shift is total in
a sense, like the internet is total in a sense, globe spanning.
His comment about "in five years the computers will tell us" something will
happen. But there is chaos theory and other reasons that systems are not so
predictable.
One comment someone posted about have faith people are more enlightened now.
Part 10.
I'm not sure I agree mathematics is not subject to interpretation. :-)
People disagree about assumptions. People disagree about interpretations.
Chaos theory limits predictions. Mainstream macroeconomics has lots of
mathematics in it, but it is still being used to ruin the planet. Again,
there is some deep point about interpretation and context and ambiguity and
values and so on that I think is glossed over here. I just had a similar
discussion about this on the p2p list with someone promoting mathematics. :-)
I also think it's a problematical statement at the end of "if someone came
along ten times smarter than me I'd step out of the way so they could make
my life better." People like to do things. A soup you make yourself may be
more enjoyable than one made by the best chef in the world. And just because
someone is "smart" does not mean they have your best interests at heart, or
that they understand your particular unique needs.
Anyway, if there is pushback on TVP and some of Jacque Fresco's points, I
would think it will come from these directions. But, these are more edge
case. In general, I agree with much of what he says, taken together with
other things I've seen or youtube of his interviews, or in Zeitgeist
Addendum. He is right about many of the problematical decisions made in this
world. He does have an inspiring vision. He's right that we can use
technology to build a better world (as long as it embodies humane and
compassionate values).
====
I hope this all does not come across as too critical. They are an amazing
team. I respect what they are trying, even if I disagree with some aspects
or some of the assumptions. Probably the deepest single issue is that I see
related things happening everywhere now. So, it's not clear what is the best
way for all these projects to interrelate.
I had the OSCOMAK idea (and a precursor twenty years ago, but before then
was Memex, Augment, The Energy Primer (maybe the biggest inspiration), and
The Whole Earth Catalog), but have gotten so distracted so many times by
other things. :-) But especially essay writing and trying to think through
some of these issues, to understand key ideas better like mutual security,
intrinsic security, and that irony of abundance technology used to create
artificial scarcity. And now I am focused just on figuring out a way to
bring in a little income, same as Jacque Fresco wrestled with for decades as
a distraction (and yet, also a source of inspiration and connection to the
rest of the world, like when he talks about designing an artificial limb).
Sometimes, we have to make the most out of our limitations, and see them to
our advantage as best we can.
Anyway, just some rambling thoughts to show you I am trying to follow your
suggestion. About all the time I have for it now though. :-) Maybe I did
this in part to show that it is not that I have not looked at his work, but
I do have some disagreements with some of it. Still, overall, Jacque and
Roxanne are amazing people and I have a lot of respect for them. Any help
people can give them is probably a very good investment in the future. In
practice, the things I point out would probably get worked through as real
systems (physical plus social) get built. We can plan all we want, but
sometimes it is best to just see our plans as education and practice, before
we then have to improvise in the face of unexpected difficulties.
To paraphrase this guy: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder
"No grand plan survives contact with reality." :-)
But it can be fun and instructive to think about them anyway, and to try
them, and see how we can learn and improve.
If there was one final point, and I make it in OSCOMAK, and it builds around
ideas from the Chaordic Alliance, and it is to focus on "the community" more
than the artifact. What TVP lacks, as an idea as I see presented, is the
notion, only emerging now, of building a community or communities. If you
have a great community, then resources will come, things will get made, fun
will be had, and the community may prosper. There are lots of idealized
cities covered with vines in the Americas, and for whatever reason, they
lost their communities. Community is really at the hearth of a city. Jane
Jacobs has a lot to say about how such communities come into being and how
they thrive and how they decline. As do many other people (Clay Shirky, and
even those who disagree with him). So, I think Jacque Fresco and Roxanne
Meadows have half the solution -- good technology. But I still feel the
other half -- good community -- is somehow lacking. And I think Jacque is
handwaving it away, and it has to do with things like songs, stories,
dancing, shared meals, joking around, and all that other human good stuff.
Stuff that cybernetics leaves out. And stuff that many Greek people are good
at. :-)
"Greek Party in Astoria, New York"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOUUljhiHd8
(As are many other cultures. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/
Kostas
answered if you'd looked into TVP a bit more.
I can understand that you may not have as much time available but that
leads to misunderstandings from your side due to limited research.
I'm going to attempt to answer to a few of them anyways.
> I don't see that quite in the way Jacque Fresco is talking about the
> cybernetic aspect, which seems to me more like a real time "scheduling" or
> "allocating" or "accounting" system. What you are describing seems pretty
> independent of all that, and indeed, more like the open manufacturing idea.
interviews but I never
heard him talking about accounting. Do you mean by accounting what I
think the Technocracy Movement
was talking about? (i.e. accounting at an individual level). As you
said into one post you sent, Fresco
does not agree with it.
TVP is all about knowledge sharing and it's mentioned explicit in his
books.
> > TVP (as most sane people) has the following criteria/principles
> > (amongst the others I mentioned in my earlier post):
> > i) Efficiency
> > ii) Abundance
> > iii) Sustainability
>
> What about:
>
> Happiness? :-) Hope? Joy?
>
> Security?
>
> Even equity? Or some sort of fairness?
>
> Jacque Fresco may believe in these, but what about being explicit about
> them? But they can be hard to discuss, because not everyone agrees on them.
>
> Even efficiency is an issue -- efficient in what ways?
distribution and construction. It was a mistake of mine.
The things you mention have their place in a RBE society.
His book The Best That Money Can't Buy, but also Looking Forward
(http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/Looking-Forward-v2.pdf)
mention about these things.
Something that caught my attention, was after I read the following (I
think I found it from you but don't remember exactly):
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
I saw the expression "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
mentioned as a goal. And it's this same expression that is mentioned
in Fresco's book Looking Forward.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, RBE is about a global egalitarian
society, where every single human being has equal opportunities and
equal access to resources. The fundamental mistake many people do when
they hear that, is that they project their current distorted values
into a future RBE society, saying things like..."and what if one wants
to have 1000 yachts?".
I want to underline once again, that RBE is more about a different
value system rather than technology (although it has its part as well
especially for freeing humans).
As for security, what do you mean by security? Do you mean having
increased policemen in every corner (as it starts happening in
Greece)?
Having electric fences around valuable goods so no-one can steal them?
Having an unprecedented military?
Or having an abundance of resources with equal access for everyone,
free access to whatever education you want as well as to the medical
care with the latest biotechnological means for all people?
I assume it's the latter.
I mean efficiency in this way:
What is the means of transportation that can have a minimum
expenditure of energy, maximum safety, maximum time-to-destination,
and minimum waste of resources (in terms of minerals needed to
construct it for example).
> That's true. On the other hand, efficiency is always relative to values and
> priorities. If one values human effort over energy use for transportation,
> it may be more "efficient" in human labor to import things, or produce more
> happiness. Still, it may be less "secure" to import things.
utility or aesthetics for example? That's why I keep emphasizing on
the value system.
Example:
You can build a skyscraper which is the tallest in the world and will
vanish with the first hurricane, and boast about it (distorted values
of the present - (Saudi Arabia wanted to do that)),
Or you can build a not so tall skyscraper which is impervious to
weather and earthquake proof (values more like TVP).
I consider the latter values are saner. So if you want to be part of
TVP you have to accept its value system.
If not you are free to pursuit whatever else you want. But I want to
say something important.
There's no coercion. People of a RBE society willingly help
communities or cultures that do not want to participate (e.g. building
them houses).
If they don't even want the help that's fine. It's up to them.
>
> A major reason I talk about communities that are more self-reliant if they
> wanted to be is from a security perspective. Both day-to-day security,
> knowing they could not be cut off in a war, and also long term security,
> knowing that they have a sustainable future.
If it's community based and you're self-reiant, you might be secure in
terms of resources but you're not secured
from the war itself. You're not secured from an invasion.
And that's where TVP I think stands out by saying:
"We have to declare all of the earth's resources as common heritage of
all the world's people."
> Jacque Fresco has a great vision. But the arguments come in the details.
> Whose land will the materials be mined from? Who will do the mining? Who
> will supply the energy? Will the current government tax all that? What
> happens to troublemakers? And so on...
>
> I like what he does, and I find his drawings and models inspiring. And I
> like a lot of things he says about improving technology and infrastructure
> instead of focusing on laws.
>
> But, again, we need to work out a lot of details. And some of the choices
> will flow from history, values, and assumptions, and people are going to
> have trouble agreeing on all that.
don't see why voluntarism especially for such a cause
would be something unthinkable. Although I doubt that US will be the
first place where the first TVP city could be built.
Some of your questions have been answered by Peter Joseph in his radio
show so you may want to check it.
I agree that for many people who have been indoctrinated in a specific
value system will be difficult to change.
But if things get really worse (which it seems they are), a new value
system might be easier to accept.
>
> > Now for the design power.
> > Firstly, as far as I saw, Fresco changed some of the designs he showed
> > in the Larry King interview, regarding over-populated city
> > architecture, and replaced
> > them with mile-high skyscrapers. So, he is fully aligned with what he
> > keeps mentioning about an emergent culture.
>
> A lot of people might prefer living closer to the ground. :-)
After all his models are only conceptual remember ;).
> OK. Although, as I mention, they leave out happiness and security. I really
> don't mind if systems are very inefficient, or somewhat unsustainable (in a
> thousand year timescale we will have better technology), or even if a
> society has to ration some scarce thing, if otherwise people generally feel
> happy, feel the society is fair, and they feel reasonably secure, and have a
> general sense of hope and joy.
and security") without
having done a good research on it (You only stumbled upon it fairly
recently as you mentioned).
As a programmer myself let me ask you something:
If you've written "Hello World" in Java, and read a chapter about
Primitive Data Types and I/O, can you say that
it's impossible to implement the Observer design pattern with what the
language provides you?
> Sure. And we'll see more of this.
>
> But again, Christopher Alexander was talking about some of this decades ago.
> And also, there is a balance that, say, for balconies, as Christopher
> Alexander suggests, there is a certain size that tends to work well, and if
> you make it a different size (certainly too small, but maybe also too big),
> it tends to have problems.
>
> So, this is more a statement of a goal than how to accomplish it.
> Christopher Alexander's work is a higher level of detail about the interior
> of buildings themselves from what I have seen of Jacque Fresco's in terms of
> understanding how to do this in a modular way, even as Jacque Fresco has a
> bigger picture that Christopher Alexander does not talk about that I have seen.
do not know how detailed
Fresco's blueprints are, simply because we haven't seen them. You can
find one in the Future By Design documentary (link sent in earlier
post).
I find it though a bit ironic that on the one hand more details are
asked and on the other hand we say Fresco's designs might not be
likened by people
or are too structured etc.
> I think it would be a lot of fun to work with him and a bunch of other
> people about these things. Of course, he's 93 or so now, so that's probably
> never going to happen. :-( But, it is nice to bask in the sunlight of his
> words (and Roxanne's) for a time. So much to do... I hope he is getting
> enough Vitamin D himself. :-)
> http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
have a closer look at that :).
> Interesting question from Theo about "who is in charge?". But he does not
> answer that. He says it is a scientific group, the Venus plan, and that
> decisions are just made following the plan as not an opinion but a finding
> base on measurement. But that ignores questions of who makes up the plans,
> or how ambiguities in them are resolved, or who is selected to be a
> "scientist".
are made.
What are the methods and values used to make them.
Are they personal opinions
of utterly corrupted politicians?
I think what he means by Venus Plan, is more the value system behind
TVP.
I've mentioned some above.
I'll say this. You're trying to get answers to difficult questions
from a single interview and its length is not enough.
The Activist Orientation guide and The Best That Money Can't buy have
more details on these issues.
Example (and it's funny how even in the movie they propose
> there are "schools"):
> http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
(which in his words they teach more propaganda than educating)
Again details about this you can find in his book.
And if parents want to unschool their children they will be free to do
so.
As I said there is no coercion.
> But then, one might ask, what keeps it from juts being what we have now?
> Bringing us back to the issue of "corruption". I agree with Jacque that in a
> world of abundance there may be less crime (and corruption) about material
> things. But, then why do we need detailed plans, other than creating the
> tools and ideas to bring about the aboundance (like 3D printing), plus we
> need to develop a mythology to go with it? I think somehow that is where
> some TVP ideas break down somehow.
find the root causes of it.
That's something not many people think about how to deal with the
problems in our society today.
>
> As one person suggests here, in a thread discussing the Venus Project and
I'm sorry that I'm going to be blunt about this, but this post is
ridiculous.
He compares the 2 domain names, when the first one is the wrong one to
begin with.
It's not venusproject.com, it's thevenusproject.com.
And then he fantasizes about eugenics.
If you want to find out how exactly he did it listen to the radio
shows I sent you he explicitly mentions it a couple of times.
As for the reason behind it. Well, from what I see he's not a person
that merely talks about things and science.
He actually applies the scientific method to test his hypothesis.
That's what he did with animals initially and then with humans to
see if he can change people (for the better of course).
> "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know
> peace. (Jimi Hendrix)"
> That seems to me somehow like a better faith than scientism, as important as
> science and engineering are. From:http://www.auuf.net/about-auuf/sermons/71-caring-sermon
> """
> Here’s what Mayeroff says of caring as a way of life: “In the context of a
> person’s life, caring has a way ordering other values and activities around
> it. When this ordering is comprehensive, because of the inclusiveness of
> one’s carings, there is a basic stability in one’s life; one is ‘in-place’
> in the world, instead of being out of place. Through caring for certain
> others, by serving them through caring, a person lives the meaning of his or
> her own life. In the sense in which a person can ever be said to be at home
> in the world, he or she is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or
> appreciating, but through caring and being cared for.”
> """
(and what do actually mean by this term)
but I'm afraid I'm going to become tiresome and say that it's more
about the value system and then science and technology.
>
> By the way, in part 5 where Theo mentions the idea of everyone voting with
> pushing a button in front of the television, an Jacque says that's not what
> he means, I'd mention that was contemplated in another "cybernetic" system,
> During the early 70s, in the wealthy commuter backwater of West Byfleet in
> Surrey, a small but rather remarkable experiment took place. In the potting
> shed of a house called Firkins, a teenager named Simon Beer, using bits of
> radios and pieces of pink and green cardboard, built a series of electrical
> meters for measuring public opinion. His concept - users of his meters would
> turn a dial to indicate how happy or unhappy they were with any political
> proposal - was strange and ambitious enough. And it worked. Yet what was
> even more jolting was his intended market: not Britain, but Chile.
> Unlike West Byfleet, Chile was in revolutionary ferment. In the capital
> Santiago, the beleaguered but radical marxist government of Salvador
> Allende, hungry for innovations of all kinds, was employing Simon Beer's
> father, Stafford, to conduct a much larger technological experiment of which
> the meters were only a part. This was known as Project Cybersyn, and nothing
> like it had been tried before, or has been tried since.
> """
>
> So, there actually are aspects of such systems that could work like that.
>
> But, with a basic income, it seems like people could shape the world more to
> their ends too.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
> http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
>
for a transitional period.
In a post-scarcity society they are meaningless.
> There is that proposal for "no people in government", where a system is run
> by a computer hooked to sensors, but I think that ignores some key issue:
> * who programs these computers with what values?
> * who changes them as needed? Or decides they should be changed?
> * humans as a collective can make decisions via social networking (like
> through email), so that is a different vision from full automation.
with the values proposed by it.
>
> I design software programs. Around 1987 I built one of the first simulations
> of kinematic self-replicating robots (on a Symbolics), building copies of
> themselves from spare parts in a a simulated 2D world. The first thing the
> robot did, after duplicating itself (by building up a child copy attached to
> it, and then cutting itself in half), was the first robot tried to
> canibalize the other half it had just built. I had to add a sense of "smell"
> to prevent that, and mark parts as being "self" and "not self". So, I saw
> first hand, in simulation how easy it was to make a critical error in
> designing such things (luckily, I was working in simulation and not physical
> things in our world). So, I think it possible our computers could do
> unexpected things. James P. Hogan talks about this in his novel "The Two
> Faces of Tomorrow".
deadline.
Be it market-race or conference-race (for an academic publication).
Things are not tested a they should do nowadays. I'm not saying
everything is going to be
perfect, but I could make a counter argument by saying look at all
these automated technologies
that work today.
> But, here is a big conceptual problem. Where is the room for a programmer to mostly
> support the project? Is it "all or nothing"? Then how can it adapt to local
> circumstances? How can it be fixed if in error? How can it expand and
> change? It may be in the discussions between programmers and others that new
> solutions emerge. But, once you accept that, then there can't be just one
> TVP plan. You maybe can have a constitution and goals and values and tools
> (science, democracy, cybernetics) but then plans become more in a state of
> flux. I feel one needs to look at layers of support. You my support a
> constitution, and some values, but disagree about specifics in some way.
But I'd like to add something.
I agree that TVP should be scrutinized (although most of the questions
are due to insufficient research about it),
but we can't expect it to be perfect. And that's where emergence comes
in as well.
> I dealt with some of this in trying to think about what to say on this Blog
Heard it, interesting views. I liked the "gainful unemployment".
> I guess I see why people have problems with some of these ideas. And he
> cites school again, as people should go back to school to learn to be
> parents. I'd agree parents should study in this area. But again, he misses
> the point about schools:
> http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
>
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Really interesting. But as I said earlier the schools Fresco is
talking about are very different.
> Just going past the section of "opinion" in part 6. But, he is ignoring that
> experts disagree. And sometimes a person who is not a "expert" may see a
> better way. So, I think there is an assumption here that expertise can be
> easily identified, or will not be in disagreement with itself. Example:
> http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-feb.shtml
> "Professor Barbara Gilchrest is the same Boston University academic who
> turned me livid eighteen months ago when she fired Professor Michael Holick
> for writing a book. Holick's book simply questioned current dermatology
> dogma that sunlight is evil and she fired him: Boston University's version
> of academic freedom."
>
> So, both were experts. They disagreed. One got fired (probably the one who
> was closer to the truth). With science as a social enterprise, how will this
> be prevented?
of the ability to participate.
If he had an idea the idea would be evaluated and he could become an
"expert" himself.
Now you'll say, well look at the example above. Well, even experts
today are full of ego.
So it really comes down to values again to be honest. As Fresco said
in the interview you watched...
if someone has a design better than mine I get the hell out of the way
because he makes my life better.
Some more details exist in the Orientation Guide I sent in my first
post.
>
> So, I think Jacque would be on safer ground if he talked about something
> being better, as opposed to coming across defending something as being
> perfect. He says in places he wants it to be better, but then seems
> absolutist in some other discussions of it. He is perhaps conflicted about
> this, or maybe some old values of his clash with new values and new ideas he
> has developed over the past decades. I can see that in may own writing. :-)
> I think Roxanne is doing a better job of presenting those aspects.
system he proposes is only far better than what we have now, not
perfect.
>
> I think I would not appreciate this talk as much if I had not seen some of
> the youtube shorts with interviews of Jacque Fresco. He has a more coherent
> explanation of some of these points in those (from a decade or two ago?) of
> how behavior can emerge out of environment. But, I still think there are
> aspects of behavior that are more fixed. For example, we tend to think of
> symmetrical things as beautiful. And attraction may have to do with genetics
> and immune system function.
>
http://www.thevenusproject.com/get-involved/media-archives (The Living
On Purpose one)
And there are a few more in some other radio shows from the ones I
posted.
> Books he mentions:http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Motives-Kenneth-Burke/dp/0520015444http://books.google.com/books?id=By8AAAAAYAAJhttp://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Words-Stuart-Chase/dp/0156923947
> He talks about sharing, and the smarter everyone else is, the richer his
> life, and I agree, and it seems like he might do well to focus more on that
> theme, building on the work of Alfie Kohn.
>
http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/Booklist.pdf
>
> The part at 2:15 in part 8 where he says there will be wars, invasions, etc.
> *unless* we do these things (TVP). I think he goes to far when he says
> "unless". What he might better say is that we can make these things less
> likely. Also, I don't agree with all the premises. Like, maybe we should
> govern via email and mailing lists and IRC and twitter instead of via some
> vast computer system where humans are not much of a part of it. It might, in
> theory, be more "efficient" in some way to have an ideal computer do stuff,
> but it may be less fun for social people and also just less secure for most
> if not all people.
>
a proposal is to get together and propose ideas while they are
presented in real time (maybe in 3D or holographically)
among all participants (I assume whoever wants to participate).
and the computer may give some criticism and suggest alternatives.
> As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I
> think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA
> He may be right on the probability and the rate of damage being so high.
> But, there is a lot of technology.
>
> Part 9.
>
> Just mentioning a "world's fair". But that was part of the point of Disney's
> EPCOT center.
>
> I like his point about the Earth as a beautiful gift we got.
>
> I disagree with his population focus, because it seems to me the Earth can
> support a much larger population, as well as people can live in space. I
> think we have a declining population in most industrial countries, and so we
> need to promote population growth. :-)
>
issue and promoting growth.
> I'm not sure I agree mathematics is not subject to interpretation. :-)
> People disagree about assumptions. People disagree about interpretations.
> Chaos theory limits predictions. Mainstream macroeconomics has lots of
> mathematics in it, but it is still being used to ruin the planet. Again,
> there is some deep point about interpretation and context and ambiguity and
> values and so on that I think is glossed over here. I just had a similar
> discussion about this on the p2p list with someone promoting mathematics. :-)
communication I think the
best place to look is Alfred Korzybski and the book Science and
Sanity.
The Tyranny Of Words from Stuart Chase is also a good one.
>
> ====
>
> I hope this all does not come across as too critical. They are an amazing
> team. I respect what they are trying, even if I disagree with some aspects
> or some of the assumptions. Probably the deepest single issue is that I see
> related things happening everywhere now. So, it's not clear what is the best
> way for all these projects to interrelate.
society with a saner value system.
your hypothesis in the physical world ;) )
> If there was one final point, and I make it in OSCOMAK, and it builds around
> ideas from the Chaordic Alliance, and it is to focus on "the community" more
> than the artifact. What TVP lacks, as an idea as I see presented, is the
> notion, only emerging now, of building a community or communities. If you
> have a great community, then resources will come, things will get made, fun
> will be had, and the community may prosper. There are lots of idealized
> cities covered with vines in the Americas, and for whatever reason, they
> lost their communities. Community is really at the hearth of a city. Jane
> Jacobs has a lot to say about how such communities come into being and how
> they thrive and how they decline. As do many other people (Clay Shirky, and
> even those who disagree with him). So, I think Jacque Fresco and Roxanne
> Meadows have half the solution -- good technology. But I still feel the
> other half -- good community -- is somehow lacking. And I think Jacque is
> handwaving it away, and it has to do with things like songs, stories,
> dancing, shared meals, joking around, and all that other human good stuff.
> Stuff that cybernetics leaves out. And stuff that many Greek people are good
> at. :-)
I mentioned why a community-based solution could have problems from a
global perspective.
Anyways, if I may have sounded too critical, I apologize.
But I think you need to research it more.
Today at 7.30 CST Peter Joseph will give a presentation where he will
talk about the specifics of a RBE and TVP.
There will be a live webcast through www.thezeitgeistmovement.com .
Regards
J. Andrew Rogers
> One problem in our current society is that everyone is running for a
> deadline. Be it market-race or conference-race (for an academic
> publication).
>
> Things are not tested a they should do nowadays. I'm not saying
> everything is going to be perfect, but I could make a counter
> argument by saying look at all these automated technologies
> that work today.
Open Source philosophies have shown that there is a valid concept of
"premature testing" that is akin to "premature optimization". Better
to set an arbitrarily short deadline and fix any issues with a patch
or in the next version.
The market has taken on the appearance of a Red Queen's Race in part
because there is a lot of literature supporting the "release early,
release often" model, foregoing some quality control for shortened
development and release cycles. Organizations have reoriented their
product (in the broadest sense of that term) development to be quickly
delivered and easily upgradeable once the inevitable bugs and failures
materialize. This is basically an Open Source notion that has crept
into many other types of endeavors.
There are two main reasons why research suggests foregoing quality for
release rate can be a very good idea. First, it keeps you from wasting
a lot of time carefully crafting high-quality implementations of
things end-users aren't even interested in. The early feedback lets
you eliminate pointless effort much earlier. Second, and perhaps more
importantly, there is a fair amount of research that supports the idea
that you will converge on a high-quality product significantly faster
absent rigorous quality control and a short release cycle than if you
do careful quality control in-depth before the first release. Even a
number of academic fields routinely publish papers that are iterative
works in progress. This method is messier, but more efficient and less
wasteful of resources.
The messiness does not appeal to many peoples' aesthetic sense, but
the proof is in the pudding. Evolution still has a place in
effectively shaping complex systems.
--
J. Andrew Rogers
realityminer.blogspot.com
Kostas
On Nov 16, 2:31 am, "J. Andrew Rogers" <reality.mi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I agree that too much crafting could potentially lead to some form of
standstill.
But we should also look at other industries as well.
I think history has shown detrimental consequences of premature
release of vaccines and drugs (or even hormones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBGH).
So maybe it has to do with relation to safety. In such cases a release-
early release-often but in simulation could be employed I guess.
I've recently read something from Ray Kurzweil saying that the
simulation technology is also advancing quite fast.
Paul D. Fernhout
> First of all I want to say that some of your questions would have been
> answered if you'd looked into TVP a bit more.
> I can understand that you may not have as much time available but that
> leads to misunderstandings from your side due to limited research.
> I'm going to attempt to answer to a few of them anyways.
Maybe. But I still think TVP makes a significant error, either in design or
presentation. Consider:
"Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 "
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
"""
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty
may prosper together. ...
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed
by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same
fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas
and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of
research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract
becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old
blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect
of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project
allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be
regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as
we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that
public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological
elite.
"""
See, in Eisenhower's spectrum, there is a dictatorship by a
military-industrial elite at one end, but there is a dictatorship by a
scientific-techological elite at the other.
As I'll say in responding to your other comments below, a real society is
not all-or-nothing. If TVP is, by implication of what you and Jacque have
both essentially said, "my way or the highway", what kind of a society is
that? I know you don't phrase it that way. As below you phrase it more
politely as "So if you want to be part of TVP you have to accept its value
system. If not you are free to pursuit whatever else you want.
But it comes down to the same thing. Realizing that, as I tried to draft the
first "Employment Agreement" for "Sunrise Universal Services" around 1990
was one thing that game me pause in pursuing it.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
"""
What this all made me realize
It was writing and reading "two weeks notice" that eventually made me
realize it would never work. Again: "So, when you get "fired" at Virgle --
it's out the airlock without a helmet?
And all "intentional communities" have related issues with equity.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22intentional+communities%22+equity
http://everything2.com/e2node/Legal%2520Structures%2520for%2520Intentional%2520Communities%2520in%2520the%2520United%2520States
Basically, this all made me realized there is a difference between being
an "employee" (even an employee-owner) with revokable rights or loseable
equity, and being a "citizen" with irrevokable rights.
"""
So, let's say someone has been a citizen of TVP for twenty years, devoted
their entire life to making it work, and there is a disagreement about
something (for example, like whether round cities are better than square
cities). What happens? Or what if the disagreement is about something more
subtle, like whether the central computer has been programmed "optimally"?
I'm not saying there are not all sorts of possible solutions. But, what
comes across to me is essentially, if you deviate from the plan you agreed
with at the start, you are ostracized and ejected. If you are willing to
say, "no, that's not what we mean", then I'd suggest "politics" has reared
its ugly head in TVP.
So, while I agree Jacque has great ideas, the central issue of keeping
systems accountable to human needs and desires remains. And the issue is
even more complex, because people may have different preferences which are
somewhat mutually incompatible. It can't be magicked away by just using the
word "cybernetics". This problem can be dealt with (we are dealing with it
now in various ways around the globe, to better or worse results) but it
won't just go away, even in a world of abundance. It may be *easier* to deal
with in a world of abundance, but it won't go away. For example, with lots
of resources, people might just say, "OK, Paul, we'll build a square city to
try it out, and if nobody likes it, we'll just recycle it later after
everyone moves out".
Jacque says the wanted to understand how to get rid of "corruption" from
human affairs. I guess I don't think that is possible, in part because
"corruption" is in the eye of the beholder. Like mildew, or maybe cancer,
the fight against corruption is an eternal struggle. I feel we may make more
healthy progress if we accept that then if we try to engineer it away. We
can make the struggle easier, but we can't end it. And, on the flip side, we
have to be careful that in the struggle against corruption, we don't become
corrupt, or set off arms races, or wander into lots of other failure modes.
>> I don't see that quite in the way Jacque Fresco is talking about the
>> cybernetic aspect, which seems to me more like a real time "scheduling" or
>> "allocating" or "accounting" system. What you are describing seems pretty
>> independent of all that, and indeed, more like the open manufacturing idea.
>
> I've read his book, articles about TVP, watched and listened to
> interviews but I never
> heard him talking about accounting. Do you mean by accounting what I
> think the Technocracy Movement
> was talking about? (i.e. accounting at an individual level). As you
> said into one post you sent, Fresco
> does not agree with it.
I don't know in depth what the "Technocracy Movement" says. But "accounting"
is all part of moving resources around. You track what resources you have,
where they go, and what you expect to have in the future. How you "allocate"
or "schedule" what you can "account" for to specific individuals is another
issue. If demand by healthy humans is limited, then the more resources you
have, the less scheduling and allocation conflicts you might have. This is
even simple things, like how long someone waits for a personal transit pod.
> TVP is all about knowledge sharing and it's mentioned explicit in his
> books.
Great.
>>> TVP (as most sane people) has the following criteria/principles
>>> (amongst the others I mentioned in my earlier post):
>>> i) Efficiency
>>> ii) Abundance
>>> iii) Sustainability
>> What about:
>>
>> Happiness? :-) Hope? Joy?
>>
>> Security?
>>
>> Even equity? Or some sort of fairness?
>>
>> Jacque Fresco may believe in these, but what about being explicit about
>> them? But they can be hard to discuss, because not everyone agrees on them.
>>
>> Even efficiency is an issue -- efficient in what ways?
>
> I was referring to these principles more in terms of production,
> distribution and construction. It was a mistake of mine.
OK.
> The things you mention have their place in a RBE society.
> His book The Best That Money Can't Buy, but also Looking Forward
> (http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/Looking-Forward-v2.pdf)
> mention about these things.
> Something that caught my attention, was after I read the following (I
> think I found it from you but don't remember exactly):
> http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Well, I do cite it a lot, but I hope you saw it somewhere else, which would
mean more people like it too. :-)
> I saw the expression "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
> mentioned as a goal. And it's this same expression that is mentioned
> in Fresco's book Looking Forward.
>
> As I mentioned in an earlier post, RBE is about a global egalitarian
> society, where every single human being has equal opportunities and
> equal access to resources.
Sounds nice, but in practice "equal" is a slippery subject. This book goes
into that:
"Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, Revised Edition" by
Deborah Stone
http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Paradox-Political-Decision-Revised/dp/0393976254
An example from that book (from memory, it might be a little different).
Let's say you are having a party and bake a cake to give equally to
everyone. There are five people at the party, and so how do you cut it?
Well, five equal parts?
What if someone does not want cake?
What if someone really likes cake more that anyone?
What if someone missed lunch and has to go run across town to help take care
of their ill mother?
OK, so you divide it up and two of the people have taken their cake and
started eating it. Suddenly three more people show up at the party. How do
you cut the remaining cake on the table now that you have eight guests, two
of whom have some cake?
So, "equal" is not such an easy idea to deal with many times.
Again, abundance makes this easier though (not in the book). If you were on
board the Star Trek enterprise, you'd just ask the Matter Replicator to make
more cake. And the energy use would be trivial compared to what the ship's
engines use to travel at Warp Speed, so the tiny amount of energy to make
more cake would not need to be rationed. Perhaps even if you printed a
thousand cakes every day for a hundred years it would not take as much
energy as the engines needed to run for a fraction of a second? So, in such
a world of abundant resources, rationing birthday cake based on energy would
be silly. Even if it might make sense for individuals to ration their cake
consumption for health reasons. :-)
> The fundamental mistake many people do when
> they hear that, is that they project their current distorted values
> into a future RBE society, saying things like..."and what if one wants
> to have 1000 yachts?".
> I want to underline once again, that RBE is more about a different
> value system rather than technology (although it has its part as well
> especially for freeing humans).
I understand. But what if an individual wants to go on a trip to Jupiter?
It's not unreasonable for someone to want that, even if it might take as
much resources as building a city (far more that 1000 yachts). What do you
do then? Tell them no? Who says that? OK, well then you have done rationing.
Does it make a difference if they say the have some lofty scientific
purpose? Then do they get the resources? What if they want to do it to make
a paintin? What if they just want the experience?
To be clear, even when rationing goes away for the personal needs that
people today worry about (food, shelter, medicine, consumer goods,
information, and so on), there may still be rationing of some sort at larger
levels. And that rationing may happen on more aesthetic or even political
grounds. If someone is really annoying about wanting to fly to Jupiter,
everyone might just say, alright already, we'll build the spaceship just to
get rid of you. :-) But, see, that's politics. :-)
Or, do they just get kicked out? :-(
> As for security, what do you mean by security? Do you mean having
> increased policemen in every corner (as it starts happening in
> Greece)?
> Having electric fences around valuable goods so no-one can steal them?
> Having an unprecedented military?
> Or having an abundance of resources with equal access for everyone,
> free access to whatever education you want as well as to the medical
> care with the latest biotechnological means for all people?
> I assume it's the latter.
It is neither. When I talk about intrinsic security, is an assurance that
the system will continue despite unexpected events. So, whether hit by a
hurricane or an H-bomb, how well does it survive? Or how well can in repair
itself afterward? And how many alternative nodes (cities, or whatever) are
there in a larger survivable network if some are irreparably damaged?
Extrinsic security might mean weapons or other means to defend something. In
general, that's not what I'm talking about.
When I talk about mutual security, it is about how confident does everyone
feel that everyone is looking out for each others needs and is not going to
launch some deadly assault (physically, socially, digitally, economically,
etc.) to get their way over something or out of fear they might be attacked
first?
Unilateral security might mean dominating other actors (usually through
weapons, but maybe in other means). Again, in general, that's not what I am
talking about.
To the extent abundance may reduce some tensions, mutual security is dealt
with to some extent. Intrinsic security has more to do with design priorities.
Our current system in the USA is built mostly on the assumption of extrinsic
security and unilateral security. That is why it is so brittle.
> I mean efficiency in this way:
> What is the means of transportation that can have a minimum
> expenditure of energy, maximum safety, maximum [minimum? :-)] time-to-destination,
> and minimum waste of resources (in terms of minerals needed to
> construct it for example).
Well, even there, judgment is required. Would it be better to put more R&D
into transportation rather than build things with what we know now? How
important is human labor versus pollution caused or materials used? What are
our expectations about how soon the transportation system will be replaced
for whatever reason (planned or unplanned obsolescence, aesthetics,
population shifts)? What are our projections about access to minerals in the
future? How much resources would we rather devote to housing?
These are not easy questions. The market is one way of answering them,
though it has its own flaws. Central planning is another way of answering
them. Discussions on mailing lists are yet another way of answering them.
:-) Making a computer program is another way -- and then what parameters go
into the program? So, there are lots of issues with even this simple system
-- lots of political and aesthetic issues including guesses about the
future. So, this means some politics is involved, too. :-)
>> That's true. On the other hand, efficiency is always relative to values and
>> priorities. If one values human effort over energy use for transportation,
>> it may be more "efficient" in human labor to import things, or produce more
>> happiness. Still, it may be less "secure" to import things.
>
> I can agree that it's also about values. Do you prioritize functional
> utility or aesthetics for example? That's why I keep emphasizing on
> the value system.
> Example:
> You can build a skyscraper which is the tallest in the world and will
> vanish with the first hurricane, and boast about it (distorted values
> of the present - (Saudi Arabia wanted to do that)),
> Or you can build a not so tall skyscraper which is impervious to
> weather and earthquake proof (values more like TVP).
Sure, what you say sounds more reasonable, put that way. But, what if there
is a disagreement about predictions on weather patters? What if people
disagree about structural strength of the building under various types of
expected loads? What if someone wants to make the building able to
simultaneously survive a hurricane, an earthquake, a tidal wave, and an
airplane crash? Where do you draw the line? See how fast "engineering"
becomes "politics"? Even among people who may share most of their values?
A joke about that, people agreeing on almost everything, and what happens:
http://www.humnri.com/HumZ/Jokesread2004_11_3485_1955.html
Here's the thing, if I want my skyscrapers to survive both hurricaines and
aircraft at the same time, are you going to kick me out of the TVP? No? But
you were ready to do it to people who wanted different design skyscrapers.
So what is different?
Now, what if I want, as above, my skyscrapers to survive everything all at
once? It would take a lot of resources for very few skyscrapers. How do we
resolve this? Some sort of jury trial? A science board? What if I lobby the
board? What do these people make their decisions on? Do we use a computer
program to decide instead? Who wrote the software? What were the assumptions
in the software? Or the values? What if I disagree with them?
I'm not saying these are easy issues to resolve. We can and do resolve them
every day, sometimes in rather arbitrary ways. And people may prefer to live
with the arbitrary nature than protest. But, this is all still aspects of
politics -- which ultimately, is about setting priorities (and the power to
set them).
> I consider the latter values are saner.
Well, without also surviving floods, aircraft, nuclear bombs, fires, meteor
strikes, and earthquakes, all at the same time, :-) maybe I think your
values are reckless and show a wanton disregard for safety? :-)
Oh, more important things than safety, like building the most buildings.
Well, why did you not say so. So, let's build something really tall.
Oh, it will fall over in the first hurricane? Well, but you said you wanted
the most buildings?
So make up your mind. :-) Safe or big?
Something in between? OK, where in between? :-) And does everyone agree?
> So if you want to be part of
> TVP you have to accept its value system.
"My way or the highway"?
I'm not saying that is wrong. We do have a constituion in the USA that if
you violate aspects of it you get fined or go to jail or get executed or
whatever. But, at least the USA does not pretend it does not have a
constitution. And for whatever its flaws, the USA does have a court system,
and jury trial, and so on. Lots of problems, but, would I rather risk that,
or risk having "the computer" decide my fate based on being "unmutual?
http://www.theunmutual.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Change_of_Mind
"Number 6's exposure of a community "rehab" process causes the committee to
label him uncooperative, and he is taken to a medical facility where he
meets a villager (with a scar on his temple) who says he had been labelled
as "unmutual" but is now cured. Number 6 again appears before the committee
and told he will be labelled for conversion if he doesn't fall into line. He
then reads in the "Tally-Ho" and hears over the tannoy that he has been
labelled "unmutual"."
I have been trying to explore (and advocate) Manuel de Landa's idea of a
balance of meshworks and hierarchies, arrived at by experiment.
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the
solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental
attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the
complexity of reality itself seems to call for."
Perhaps TVP can accommodate that kind of experiment. But, it may require
doing more that stating that "you have to accept its value system"?
Besides, human belong to communities. They have families. What happens if
one person in a family is ejected, but the rest of the family is unhappy?
Where is the cybernetic efficiency at creating happiness there?
Again, no easy answers. With people, sometimes there may even be no happy
answers at all. But, I can accept that, sadly, even if I can try my hardest
to find them. I wonder if TVP can, too?
> If not you are free to pursuit whatever else you want.
Meaning, "my way or the highway", again? :-)
> But I want to
> say something important.
> There's no coercion. People of a RBE society willingly help
> communities or cultures that do not want to participate (e.g. building
> them houses).
> If they don't even want the help that's fine. It's up to them.
There are many ways of coercion, and many levels. It does not all have to be
either gunpoint or lobotomy.
I know there will be unlikely to be coercion of certain forms in a society
of abundance. A good book on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
An example story:
"""
"The Man Who Ate the World" (originally published in Galaxy in 1956) tells
the story of Anderson Trumie who had a scarring experience in his childhood,
before Morey Fry changed the world. All he wants is a teddy bear, but his
parents' lifestyle of frantic consumption won't allow him to have one
anymore. As an adult, he is a compulsive consumer. He has taken over North
Guardian Island and he is putting a burden on the local infrastructure. A
psychist, Roger Garrick, with the help of Kathryn Pender, find a way to heal
Anderson and end his exorbitant consumption.
"""
Still, there may be disagreements. I think it is hand waving to just say,
the smart computer will decide. I've written a lot of software, and a read a
lot more. Computer software is woven through and through with assumptions,
values, aesthetic judgments, and so on.
And values still need to be acted on, and that requires perceptions and
judgments on which people of good will may disagree. Jacque talks (as I hear
him) like these problems don't (or won't) exist in TVP.
He gets a lot right, but there can still be things that are wishful
thinking. He's to be credited for what he has done, including seeing through
all the contradictions and flaws in our current system.
Still, most of what I've seen of his work has been through the videos. Maybe
if I read more I'll get a different perception.
>> A major reason I talk about communities that are more self-reliant if they
>> wanted to be is from a security perspective. Both day-to-day security,
>> knowing they could not be cut off in a war, and also long term security,
>> knowing that they have a sustainable future.
>
> I would say that this is actually a problem.
> If it's community based and you're self-reiant, you might be secure in
> terms of resources but you're not secured
> from the war itself. You're not secured from an invasion.
Yes, that is quite true. But, I don't think "invasion" is likely these days.
Plague and nuclear war seem more likely than invasion. What is there to
invade over? It is mostly nonsense to invade. The USA invaded Iraq -- and
where did that get anyone? The US taxpayers got soaked for trillions of
dollars going to the war industry. Invasion might happen, as there are
exapmles, and there are certain borders where it is more likely, but
overall, I don't see it as a big issue in a global society. Ideological
"invasion" may be a different issue, of course. But fences and guns don't do
much to stop that. :-)
> And that's where TVP I think stands out by saying:
> "We have to declare all of the earth's resources as common heritage of
> all the world's people."
I like that. But the "basic income" people have some things to say like
that. Countries in the UN have been saying that for years, especially about
the oceans, the Moon, Antarctica, and some other issues.
But sure, that's a good statement.
Although, then this brings us back to, what does "fairness" mean in dividing
a cake? The USA has already had a big piece of cake. Should we now divide
what is left evenly? With or without the USA? Evenly by land mass? By
current population? By projected population growth? By age structured
population? By previous wealth? By previous poverty? By proximity? And so
on... Politics.
>> Jacque Fresco has a great vision. But the arguments come in the details.
>> Whose land will the materials be mined from? Who will do the mining? Who
>> will supply the energy? Will the current government tax all that? What
>> happens to troublemakers? And so on...
>>
>> I like what he does, and I find his drawings and models inspiring. And I
>> like a lot of things he says about improving technology and infrastructure
>> instead of focusing on laws.
>>
>> But, again, we need to work out a lot of details. And some of the choices
>> will flow from history, values, and assumptions, and people are going to
>> have trouble agreeing on all that.
>
> Given that there are millions of volunteers in the US every year, I
> don't see why voluntarism especially for such a cause
> would be something unthinkable.
I agree. There might be lots of free labor. But the materials and energy
still need to come from somewhere. And then countries try to impose taxes on
the results.
> Although I doubt that US will be the
> first place where the first TVP city could be built.
Well, good points and bad points about the USA. :-)
> Some of your questions have been answered by Peter Joseph in his radio
> show so you may want to check it.
Which one?
> I agree that for many people who have been indoctrinated in a specific
> value system will be difficult to change.
> But if things get really worse (which it seems they are), a new value
> system might be easier to accept.
I'm not so sure. I know Jacque Fresco said something like this too. But when
fearful or worried, often people become more conservative, and shut their
minds to new ideas. A playful and fun attitude might get people to accept
change and try new things.
OK.
Ah, but that's not the situation as I see it. Metaphorically, I see it more
like someone saying that Object Oriented programming solves all possible
programming problems in the simplest and most efficient way, including
gather requirements and doing testing and documentation and sales
presentations. And that if only I'd read more about OO, I would understand
that. :-)
I'm responding to stuff that I have heard Jacque say on video that I feel is
problematical conceptually. Or that you have written just now (in that case).
>> Sure. And we'll see more of this.
>>
>> But again, Christopher Alexander was talking about some of this decades ago.
>> And also, there is a balance that, say, for balconies, as Christopher
>> Alexander suggests, there is a certain size that tends to work well, and if
>> you make it a different size (certainly too small, but maybe also too big),
>> it tends to have problems.
>>
>> So, this is more a statement of a goal than how to accomplish it.
>> Christopher Alexander's work is a higher level of detail about the interior
>> of buildings themselves from what I have seen of Jacque Fresco's in terms of
>> understanding how to do this in a modular way, even as Jacque Fresco has a
>> bigger picture that Christopher Alexander does not talk about that I have seen.
>
> In terms of details, I think the wisest would be to say that we both
> do not know how detailed
> Fresco's blueprints are, simply because we haven't seen them.
Then how open are they?
> You can
> find one in the Future By Design documentary (link sent in earlier
> post).
But you say you have looked through all this but not seen them?
> I find it though a bit ironic that on the one hand more details are
> asked and on the other hand we say Fresco's designs might not be
> likened by people
> or are too structured etc.
Yes, you are right, that is an issue. The biggest issue I have is probably
around this handwaving that cybernetics will solve all political issues. I
read that in sci-fi stories from the 1950s (like Isaac Asimov and Multivac)
and I've seen endless stories since then (example, 2001 with HAL 9000) about
how that can go wrong.
>> I think it would be a lot of fun to work with him and a bunch of other
>> people about these things. Of course, he's 93 or so now, so that's probably
>> never going to happen. :-( But, it is nice to bask in the sunlight of his
>> words (and Roxanne's) for a time. So much to do... I hope he is getting
>> enough Vitamin D himself. :-)
>> http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
>
> Thanks for that. As I'm eating a plant-based diet I'm gonna have to
> have a closer look at that :).
Great.
>> Interesting question from Theo about "who is in charge?". But he does not
>> answer that. He says it is a scientific group, the Venus plan, and that
>> decisions are just made following the plan as not an opinion but a finding
>> base on measurement. But that ignores questions of who makes up the plans,
>> or how ambiguities in them are resolved, or who is selected to be a
>> "scientist".
>
> The important question is not who makes the decisions, but how they
> are made.
Well, humans being humans, those are related. :-)
> What are the methods and values used to make them.
Except this get complex very quickly, as tradeoffs need to be made and you
need to *weight* different values. Is safety more important than speed? Is
maximum units of housing more important than how wind resistant they are?
And so on. Different people have different levels of risk tolerance.
Different people have different aesthetic preferences.
I think a "basic income" is fairer in that sense that saying a cybernetic
system will just decide.
> Are they personal opinions
> of utterly corrupted politicians?
What is not a personal opinion?
Even a statement about the weight of an oxygen atom has some fudge factors
in it. What if we are dreaming? What if this is a simulation? What if
quantum physics or relativity is wrong? Etc.
What most people would agree on is that there are some generally agreed on
scientific facts (like the weight of different isotopes of oxygen atoms
relative to other isotopes). After that, the "facts" become hazier, the
conclusions harder to draw, the projections more uncertain, and issues of
planning become more issues of opinion.
> I think what he means by Venus Plan, is more the value system behind
> TVP.
> I've mentioned some above.
Can you provide any details of what this means? Like for example, how would
the skyscraper argument above get resolved?
> I'll say this. You're trying to get answers to difficult questions
> from a single interview and its length is not enough.
> The Activist Orientation guide and The Best That Money Can't buy have
> more details on these issues.
I've also seen a bunch of his youtube videos.
> Example (and it's funny how even in the movie they propose
>> there are "schools"):
>> http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
> The schools Fresco talks about are different than the current ones
> (which in his words they teach more propaganda than educating)
> Again details about this you can find in his book.
> And if parents want to unschool their children they will be free to do
> so.
OK.
> As I said there is no coercion.
Except, if you don't agree 100% with all the values of TVP, including what
you teach your kids, you may not visit or live there? What are these values
in detail?
Are they like or unlike these principles?
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
"""
I read down through the principles. Each one was very short:
1. Everyone is equal
2. Everything is reused
3. Nothing is anonymous
4. Nothing is owned
5. Tell the truth
6. Do no harm
7. Obey the rules
8. Live your life
9. Better and better
"""
Or are they something different? Maybe the answer is in there, but if you
advocate TVP, surely you can answer this?
>> But then, one might ask, what keeps it from juts being what we have now?
> The value system will be very different.
OK. Details please. And what is the process by which values are translated
into judgments and actions?
>> Bringing us back to the issue of "corruption". I agree with Jacque that in a
>> world of abundance there may be less crime (and corruption) about material
>> things. But, then why do we need detailed plans, other than creating the
>> tools and ideas to bring about the aboundance (like 3D printing), plus we
>> need to develop a mythology to go with it? I think somehow that is where
>> some TVP ideas break down somehow.
>
> About corruption (or any other problem) TVP mentions that we have to
> find the root causes of it.
> That's something not many people think about how to deal with the
> problems in our society today.
Many people do. Sociologists. Anthropologists. Political Scientists.
Writers. Going back centuries. It's just a hard problem in practice,
including if you have a plan, those in power may not like it. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_the_cat
>> As one person suggests here, in a thread discussing the Venus Project and
>> Jacques refernece to the KKK (how did he dissolve a chapter?):http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=55303891744&topic=12030&_fb_nos...
>
> I'm sorry that I'm going to be blunt about this, but this post is
> ridiculous.
> He compares the 2 domain names, when the first one is the wrong one to
> begin with.
> It's not venusproject.com, it's thevenusproject.com.
> And then he fantasizes about eugenics.
> If you want to find out how exactly he did it listen to the radio
> shows I sent you he explicitly mentions it a couple of times.
And that method was? I mean, why listen to several hours of radio to get to
one point?
> As for the reason behind it. Well, from what I see he's not a person
> that merely talks about things and science.
> He actually applies the scientific method to test his hypothesis.
> That's what he did with animals initially and then with humans to
> see if he can change people (for the better of course).
But "better" is a matter of opinion often times. Sure, maybe not with the
KKK, but what about many other situations? And that's part of the issue. How
do these matters of opinion get worked out?
>> "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know
>> peace. (Jimi Hendrix)"
>> That seems to me somehow like a better faith than scientism, as important as
>> science and engineering are. From:http://www.auuf.net/about-auuf/sermons/71-caring-sermon
>> """
>> Here’s what Mayeroff says of caring as a way of life: “In the context of a
>> person’s life, caring has a way ordering other values and activities around
>> it. When this ordering is comprehensive, because of the inclusiveness of
>> one’s carings, there is a basic stability in one’s life; one is ‘in-place’
>> in the world, instead of being out of place. Through caring for certain
>> others, by serving them through caring, a person lives the meaning of his or
>> her own life. In the sense in which a person can ever be said to be at home
>> in the world, he or she is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or
>> appreciating, but through caring and being cared for.”
>> """
>
> I don't know where you made the conclusion that TVP proposes scientism
> (and what do actually mean by this term)
> but I'm afraid I'm going to become tiresome and say that it's more
> about the value system and then science and technology.
Again, what are the values and how do they get translated into practice, and
how are conflicts among values dealt with?
Well, again, it depends on the magnitude of what people want to do. Sure,
for basics (anything a millionaire has now materially) that would be true.
But even in a TVP world, they offer a way to arbitrate some of these
possible value conflicts on big things.
>> There is that proposal for "no people in government", where a system is run
>> by a computer hooked to sensors, but I think that ignores some key issue:
>> * who programs these computers with what values?
>> * who changes them as needed? Or decides they should be changed?
>> * humans as a collective can make decisions via social networking (like
>> through email), so that is a different vision from full automation.
>
> Obviously the people that will participate in TVP will have aligned
> with the values proposed by it.
100% aligned? 99% aligned? 50% aligned? 10% aligned? 1% aligned?
>> I design software programs. Around 1987 I built one of the first simulations
>> of kinematic self-replicating robots (on a Symbolics), building copies of
>> themselves from spare parts in a a simulated 2D world. The first thing the
>> robot did, after duplicating itself (by building up a child copy attached to
>> it, and then cutting itself in half), was the first robot tried to
>> canibalize the other half it had just built. I had to add a sense of "smell"
>> to prevent that, and mark parts as being "self" and "not self". So, I saw
>> first hand, in simulation how easy it was to make a critical error in
>> designing such things (luckily, I was working in simulation and not physical
>> things in our world). So, I think it possible our computers could do
>> unexpected things. James P. Hogan talks about this in his novel "The Two
>> Faces of Tomorrow".
>
> One problem in our current society is that everyone is running for a
> deadline.
> Be it market-race or conference-race (for an academic publication).
>
> Things are not tested a they should do nowadays. I'm not saying
> everything is going to be
> perfect, but I could make a counter argument by saying look at all
> these automated technologies
> that work today.
Even testing can create risks. Deciding about these is a tough thing. And
again, may relate to "intrinsic security" or "mutual security".
>> But, here is a big conceptual problem. Where is the room for a programmer to mostly
>> support the project? Is it "all or nothing"? Then how can it adapt to local
>> circumstances? How can it be fixed if in error? How can it expand and
>> change? It may be in the discussions between programmers and others that new
>> solutions emerge. But, once you accept that, then there can't be just one
>> TVP plan. You maybe can have a constitution and goals and values and tools
>> (science, democracy, cybernetics) but then plans become more in a state of
>> flux. I feel one needs to look at layers of support. You my support a
>> constitution, and some values, but disagree about specifics in some way.
>
> Some of these I consider them valid questions so I keep them in mind.
> But I'd like to add something.
> I agree that TVP should be scrutinized (although most of the questions
> are due to insufficient research about it),
> but we can't expect it to be perfect. And that's where emergence comes
> in as well.
OK, but I've seen Jacque speak, and many of these questions come from what
he says, or what he doesn't, even when pressed on some of these issues.
>> I dealt with some of this in trying to think about what to say on this Blog
>> Talk radio interview, and I did not do as good as I could.http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fastforwardradio/2009/08/12/The-End-of-S...
>
> Heard it, interesting views. I liked the "gainful unemployment".
Bob Black probably used that first. :-)
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
>> I guess I see why people have problems with some of these ideas. And he
>> cites school again, as people should go back to school to learn to be
>> parents. I'd agree parents should study in this area. But again, he misses
>> the point about schools:
>> http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
>>
>
> I've read one of the articles from Gatto I found from you:
> http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
Also:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
> Really interesting. But as I said earlier the schools Fresco is
> talking about are very different.
Great.
>> Just going past the section of "opinion" in part 6. But, he is ignoring that
>> experts disagree. And sometimes a person who is not a "expert" may see a
>> better way. So, I think there is an assumption here that expertise can be
>> easily identified, or will not be in disagreement with itself. Example:
>> http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-feb.shtml
>> "Professor Barbara Gilchrest is the same Boston University academic who
>> turned me livid eighteen months ago when she fired Professor Michael Holick
>> for writing a book. Holick's book simply questioned current dermatology
>> dogma that sunlight is evil and she fired him: Boston University's version
>> of academic freedom."
>>
>> So, both were experts. They disagreed. One got fired (probably the one who
>> was closer to the truth). With science as a social enterprise, how will this
>> be prevented?
>
> I don't think that a person who is not an "expert" would be deprived
> of the ability to participate.
> If he had an idea the idea would be evaluated and he could become an
> "expert" himself.
Evaluated by whom? Also, the person who was fired was also a Professor with
a PhD. This was a battle by "experts".
> Now you'll say, well look at the example above. Well, even experts
> today are full of ego.
OK.
> So it really comes down to values again to be honest.
Except values are only part of things. That's why we have a judiciary in
addition to a constitution and laws. The judiciary interprets the "values"
as it were. And things rapidly become matters of opinion. In part because of
the complexity and uncertainty of things.
> As Fresco said
> in the interview you watched...
> if someone has a design better than mine I get the hell out of the way
> because he makes my life better.
That's a great sentiment.
> Some more details exist in the Orientation Guide I sent in my first
> post.
OK, I'll need to look at that at some point.
>> So, I think Jacque would be on safer ground if he talked about something
>> being better, as opposed to coming across defending something as being
>> perfect. He says in places he wants it to be better, but then seems
>> absolutist in some other discussions of it. He is perhaps conflicted about
>> this, or maybe some old values of his clash with new values and new ideas he
>> has developed over the past decades. I can see that in may own writing. :-)
>> I think Roxanne is doing a better job of presenting those aspects.
>
> He actually explicitly mentions it in the Future By Design that the
> system he proposes is only far better than what we have now, not
> perfect.
Great.
>> I think I would not appreciate this talk as much if I had not seen some of
>> the youtube shorts with interviews of Jacque Fresco. He has a more coherent
>> explanation of some of these points in those (from a decade or two ago?) of
>> how behavior can emerge out of environment. But, I still think there are
>> aspects of behavior that are more fixed. For example, we tend to think of
>> symmetrical things as beautiful. And attraction may have to do with genetics
>> and immune system function.
>>
>
> One interview where he talks about behavior:
> http://www.thevenusproject.com/get-involved/media-archives (The Living
> On Purpose one)
>
> And there are a few more in some other radio shows from the ones I
> posted.
OK.
>> Books he mentions:http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Motives-Kenneth-Burke/dp/0520015444http://books.google.com/books?id=By8AAAAAYAAJhttp://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Words-Stuart-Chase/dp/0156923947
>>
>> He talks about sharing, and the smarter everyone else is, the richer his
>> life, and I agree, and it seems like he might do well to focus more on that
>> theme, building on the work of Alfie Kohn.
>>
>
> Some more of the books they propose:
> http://www.thevenusproject.com/images/stories/Booklist.pdf
OK. I've read or seen maybe ten of those.
I see he's a Skinner fan. :-) On book he left off he may have read then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Two
Now I see where some of his comments and my objections might be coming from. :-)
Some of this revolves around assumptions about "human nature".
>
>> The part at 2:15 in part 8 where he says there will be wars, invasions, etc.
>> *unless* we do these things (TVP). I think he goes to far when he says
>> "unless". What he might better say is that we can make these things less
>> likely. Also, I don't agree with all the premises. Like, maybe we should
>> govern via email and mailing lists and IRC and twitter instead of via some
>> vast computer system where humans are not much of a part of it. It might, in
>> theory, be more "efficient" in some way to have an ideal computer do stuff,
>> but it may be less fun for social people and also just less secure for most
>> if not all people.
>>
>
> Humans will also have a saying in "governance". For some issues
> a proposal is to get together and propose ideas while they are
> presented in real time (maybe in 3D or holographically)
> among all participants (I assume whoever wants to participate).
> and the computer may give some criticism and suggest alternatives.
Well, we can't do that now (the computer part, at least, not in that sense).
These are the deep issues people ask about. Accountability. Transparency.
Equity. Diversity. Defense of minority viewpoints.
>> As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I
>> think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA
>> I think he underemphasizes some issues of psychopathology, even is he may be
>> right society has a lot to do with creating it or sustaining it:http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-N...
>>
>> He may be right on the probability and the rate of damage being so high.
>> But, there is a lot of technology.
>>
>> Part 9.
>>
>> Just mentioning a "world's fair". But that was part of the point of Disney's
>> EPCOT center.
>>
>> I like his point about the Earth as a beautiful gift we got.
>>
>> I disagree with his population focus, because it seems to me the Earth can
>> support a much larger population, as well as people can live in space. I
>> think we have a declining population in most industrial countries, and so we
>> need to promote population growth. :-)
>>
>
> I think Albert Bartlett would disagree with you here on the population
> issue and promoting growth.
I know, lots of people would disagree. They'd probably be wrong. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bartlett
See my comments in the threads here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/thread.html#4123
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/thread.html#4153
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/thread.html#4174
Just list the birth rates of the top ten industrialized countries and you'd
see what I mean. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate
For example, all the countries in this list below around Tonga (#112 in the
list) are dying off in terms of population:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
The ones at the bottom are dying faster. That includes the USA, Bermuda,
France, the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark, Iran, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and
so on. All have aging populations and in a few thousand years at that rate
will probably be all gone. :-)
>> I'm not sure I agree mathematics is not subject to interpretation. :-)
>> People disagree about assumptions. People disagree about interpretations.
>> Chaos theory limits predictions. Mainstream macroeconomics has lots of
>> mathematics in it, but it is still being used to ruin the planet. Again,
>> there is some deep point about interpretation and context and ambiguity and
>> values and so on that I think is glossed over here. I just had a similar
>> discussion about this on the p2p list with someone promoting mathematics. :-)
>
> In order to understand where Fresco is coming from in terms of
> communication I think the
> best place to look is Alfred Korzybski and the book Science and
> Sanity.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski#Criticisms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Semantics#Criticism
Chaos theory?
Uncertainty?
Value conflicts?
Adaptive feedback?
Unexpected creativity?
> The Tyranny Of Words from Stuart Chase is also a good one.
Probably less disagreement: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Chase
>> ====
>>
>> I hope this all does not come across as too critical. They are an amazing
>> team. I respect what they are trying, even if I disagree with some aspects
>> or some of the assumptions. Probably the deepest single issue is that I see
>> related things happening everywhere now. So, it's not clear what is the best
>> way for all these projects to interrelate.
>
> I'd agree on the last one.What I can't wait to see is a post-scarcity
> society with a saner value system.
Me too. :-)
Great. :-)
>> If there was one final point, and I make it in OSCOMAK, and it builds around
>> ideas from the Chaordic Alliance, and it is to focus on "the community" more
>> than the artifact. What TVP lacks, as an idea as I see presented, is the
>> notion, only emerging now, of building a community or communities. If you
>> have a great community, then resources will come, things will get made, fun
>> will be had, and the community may prosper. There are lots of idealized
>> cities covered with vines in the Americas, and for whatever reason, they
>> lost their communities. Community is really at the hearth of a city. Jane
>> Jacobs has a lot to say about how such communities come into being and how
>> they thrive and how they decline. As do many other people (Clay Shirky, and
>> even those who disagree with him). So, I think Jacque Fresco and Roxanne
>> Meadows have half the solution -- good technology. But I still feel the
>> other half -- good community -- is somehow lacking. And I think Jacque is
>> handwaving it away, and it has to do with things like songs, stories,
>> dancing, shared meals, joking around, and all that other human good stuff.
>> Stuff that cybernetics leaves out. And stuff that many Greek people are good
>> at. :-)
>
> Again values are first, technology is second.
OK, but now we are talking details about the values for resolving conflicts
among values. :-)
> I mentioned why a community-based solution could have problems from a
> global perspective.
Sure.
> Anyways, if I may have sounded too critical, I apologize.
Thanks for making a lot of great points.
> But I think you need to research it more.
> Today at 7.30 CST Peter Joseph will give a presentation where he will
> talk about the specifics of a RBE and TVP.
> There will be a live webcast through www.thezeitgeistmovement.com .
Thanks.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
J. Andrew Rogers
> From what I understand you are talking about the software industry.
> I agree that too much crafting could potentially lead to some form of
> standstill.
It is more noticeable in software, but it has been creeping into most
other industries for some time. Conventional manufacturing is now
almost as iterative as software and reacts nearly as fast. It is
impressive when you think about it.
> I think history has shown detrimental consequences of premature
> release of vaccines and drugs (or even hormones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBGH).
For these types of products, it is hard to define "premature release".
Not only is it effectively impossible to characterize the safety a
new product across a global population, there is also the calculus
that the extra years of testing rapidly go upside down in terms of
lives saved. There is the tradeoff of a thousand lives saved from
unnecessary adverse interaction that is difficult to isolate in
exchange for ten thousand lives lost because the product was not
available. Or vice versa. It is very hard to tell, and you never get
sued for the lives lost because you spent two years on additional
testing that deliver little of value.
In any case, drugs and similar *are* tested on an iterative basis as
they try to characterize them prior to general release, they just have
a smaller number of parameters they can tweak in the process since the
basic formula is set. Instead of modifying the drug, they modify the
end-user population and delivery protocols.
> So maybe it has to do with relation to safety. In such cases a release-
> early release-often but in simulation could be employed I guess.
> I've recently read something from Ray Kurzweil saying that the
> simulation technology is also advancing quite fast.
Simulations are definitely useful, but you can only explore so much of
the phase space. And in any case, many people won't trust simulations
because they are based on math. :-)
Kostas
> military-industrial elite at one end, but there is a dictatorship by a
> scientific-techological elite at the other.
>
> As I'll say in responding to your other comments below, a real society is
> not all-or-nothing. If TVP is, by implication of what you and Jacque have
> both essentially said, "my way or the highway", what kind of a society is
> that? I know you don't phrase it that way. As below you phrase it more
> politely as "So if you want to be part of TVP you have to accept its value
> system. If not you are free to pursuit whatever else you want.
model
which yuo say is different, in parallel with TVP.
> And all "intentional communities" have related issues with equity.http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22intentional+communities%22+eq...http://everything2.com/e2node/Legal%2520Structures%2520for%2520Intent...
> an "employee" (even an employee-owner) with revokable rights or loseable
> equity, and being a "citizen" with irrevokable rights.
human rights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiBt-pqp0E&feature=related
> So, let's say someone has been a citizen of TVP for twenty years, devoted
> their entire life to making it work, and there is a disagreement about
> something (for example, like whether round cities are better than square
> cities). What happens? Or what if the disagreement is about something more
> subtle, like whether the central computer has been programmed "optimally"?
scientists do today)
a lot of these issues can very easily be resolved.
You test all of the proposals in the physical world by applying the
scientific method
and you check the results. Now of course you have the part of the
interpretation of the results.
Well that's where peer reviewing comes in or some more experimentation
than can
render valid or invalid some interpretations.
Sane people, that are devoid of egocentric patterns of behaviour, and
use the scientific method as a means
of ascertaining hypotheses and claims, plus the process of peer
reviewing, would render the silly arguments
many people (and even scientists) have today as utterly primitive.
>
> I'm not saying there are not all sorts of possible solutions. But, what
> comes across to me is essentially, if you deviate from the plan you agreed
> with at the start, you are ostracized and ejected. If you are willing to
> say, "no, that's not what we mean", then I'd suggest "politics" has reared
> its ugly head in TVP.
understandings
that is not the case. I think what Fresco mentions with the word plan
is more on the saner value system that TVP proposes.
But I think it's better for me to cite the official aims and proposals
(Phase 3 mentions them):
http://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/aims-proposals
> So, while I agree Jacque has great ideas, the central issue of keeping
> systems accountable to human needs and desires remains. And the issue is
> even more complex, because people may have different preferences which are
> somewhat mutually incompatible. It can't be magicked away by just using the
> word "cybernetics". This problem can be dealt with (we are dealing with it
> now in various ways around the globe, to better or worse results) but it
> won't just go away, even in a world of abundance. It may be *easier* to deal
> with in a world of abundance, but it won't go away. For example, with lots
> of resources, people might just say, "OK, Paul, we'll build a square city to
> try it out, and if nobody likes it, we'll just recycle it later after
> everyone moves out".
away by the word cybernetics.
I'm afraid that's a misunderstanding from your side.
Some things can be verified in a much earlier stage than actually
building the city,
such as energy consumption from the transportation system due to the
city's shape, time-to destination,
or you can have a virtual 3D world first of the city if you want to
focus on the "aesthetics" aspect (which will
have a smaller priority amongst people with saner values, in
comparison with functional utility).
>
> Jacque says the wanted to understand how to get rid of "corruption" from
> human affairs. I guess I don't think that is possible, in part because
> "corruption" is in the eye of the beholder. Like mildew, or maybe cancer,
> the fight against corruption is an eternal struggle. I feel we may make more
> healthy progress if we accept that then if we try to engineer it away. We
> can make the struggle easier, but we can't end it. And, on the flip side, we
> have to be careful that in the struggle against corruption, we don't become
> corrupt, or set off arms races, or wander into lots of other failure modes.
been regarded
as another eternal struggle. If you actually study some hunter
gatherer societies
that existed or even exist now, you will see that corruption is
something unknown to them.
The following book has more details on the Piraha culture that I
mentioned in an earlier post:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258381266&sr=8-1
As I mentioned again, we have to look at the root causes of the
problems in order to eliminate them.
I'm sorry but my limited creative mind cannot accept such absolute
statements as 'corruption cannot be ended'.
>
> I understand. But what if an individual wants to go on a trip to Jupiter?
> It's not unreasonable for someone to want that, even if it might take as
> much resources as building a city (far more that 1000 yachts). What do you
> do then? Tell them no? Who says that? OK, well then you have done rationing.
> Does it make a difference if they say the have some lofty scientific
> purpose? Then do they get the resources? What if they want to do it to make
> a paintin? What if they just want the experience?
current values.
About 1 year ago I was a person with a vast number of distorted
values.
But once I saw the information (e.g.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&ei=1WEBS6-mGoPO2QKCwsiLAg&q=century+of+the+self&view=2#)
my value system has utterly changed.
> It is neither. When I talk about intrinsic security, is an assurance that
> the system will continue despite unexpected events. So, whether hit by a
> hurricane or an H-bomb, how well does it survive? Or how well can in repair
> itself afterward? And how many alternative nodes (cities, or whatever) are
> there in a larger survivable network if some are irreparably damaged?
solution
for this kind of security.
> Well, even there, judgment is required. Would it be better to put more R&D
> into transportation rather than build things with what we know now? How
> important is human labor versus pollution caused or materials used? What are
> our expectations about how soon the transportation system will be replaced
> for whatever reason (planned or unplanned obsolescence, aesthetics,
> population shifts)? What are our projections about access to minerals in the
> future? How much resources would we rather devote to housing?
>
> These are not easy questions. The market is one way of answering them,
> though it has its own flaws. Central planning is another way of answering
> them. Discussions on mailing lists are yet another way of answering them.
> :-) Making a computer program is another way -- and then what parameters go
> into the program? So, there are lots of issues with even this simple system
> -- lots of political and aesthetic issues including guesses about the
> future. So, this means some politics is involved, too. :-)
system of the people instead.
> Sure, what you say sounds more reasonable, put that way. But, what if there
> is a disagreement about predictions on weather patters? What if people
> disagree about structural strength of the building under various types of
> expected loads? What if someone wants to make the building able to
> simultaneously survive a hurricane, an earthquake, a tidal wave, and an
> airplane crash? Where do you draw the line? See how fast "engineering"
> becomes "politics"? Even among people who may share most of their values?
concluding
which shape has greater structural strength?
You put both into test, as engineers do, subjecting them to winds,
earthquakes you name it
and you see what stands still and what doesn't. I will have to repeat
one of my previous sentences:
Sane people, that are devoid of egocentric patterns of behaviour, and
use the scientific method as a means
of ascertaining hypotheses and claims, plus the process of peer
reviewing, would render the silly arguments
many people (and even scientists) have today, utterly primitive.
> Here's the thing, if I want my skyscrapers to survive both hurricaines and
> aircraft at the same time, are you going to kick me out of the TVP? No? But
> you were ready to do it to people who wanted different design skyscrapers.
> So what is different?
that want to design different
skyscrapers, please do not distort my arguments.
>
> Now, what if I want, as above, my skyscrapers to survive everything all at
> once? It would take a lot of resources for very few skyscrapers. How do we
> resolve this? Some sort of jury trial? A science board? What if I lobby the
> board? What do these people make their decisions on? Do we use a computer
> program to decide instead? Who wrote the software? What were the assumptions
> in the software? Or the values? What if I disagree with them?
What's the incentive?
Satisfying their ego?
You are asking questions you have asked before and I've answered them.
> Well, without also surviving floods, aircraft, nuclear bombs, fires, meteor
> strikes, and earthquakes, all at the same time, :-) maybe I think your
> values are reckless and show a wanton disregard for safety? :-)
>
an earthquake?
These are really simple questions.
> Oh, more important things than safety, like building the most buildings.
> Well, why did you not say so. So, let's build something really tall.
>
> Oh, it will fall over in the first hurricane? Well, but you said you wanted
> the most buildings?
>
> So make up your mind. :-) Safe or big?
>
> Something in between? OK, where in between? :-) And does everyone agree?
>
Saner people in the future will not be dominated by ego. Instead they
will have humbleness.
> I have been trying to explore (and advocate) Manuel de Landa's idea of a
> balance of meshworks and hierarchies, arrived at by experiment.
> http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
> "Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the
> solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental
> attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the
> complexity of reality itself seems to call for."
>
> Perhaps TVP can accommodate that kind of experiment. But, it may require
> doing more that stating that "you have to accept its value system"?
experimentation.
On the contrary it would welcome it.
> Meaning, "my way or the highway", again? :-)
given to you(as there is an abundance of it).
> Although, then this brings us back to, what does "fairness" mean in dividing
> a cake? The USA has already had a big piece of cake. Should we now divide
> what is left evenly? With or without the USA? Evenly by land mass? By
> current population? By projected population growth? By age structured
> population? By previous wealth? By previous poverty? By proximity? And so
> on... Politics.
ownership.
Again, look at the public library model.
And as you answered your own question, in a world of abundance a lot
of these concerns vanish.
> > show so you may want to check it.
>
> Which one?
more interested in TVP.
> I'm not so sure. I know Jacque Fresco said something like this too. But when
> fearful or worried, often people become more conservative, and shut their
> minds to new ideas. A playful and fun attitude might get people to accept
> change and try new things.
> Ah, but that's not the situation as I see it. Metaphorically, I see it more
> like someone saying that Object Oriented programming solves all possible
> programming problems in the simplest and most efficient way, including
> gather requirements and doing testing and documentation and sales
> presentations. And that if only I'd read more about OO, I would understand
> that. :-)
>
> I'm responding to stuff that I have heard Jacque say on video that I feel is
> problematical conceptually. Or that you have written just now (in that case).
happiness and security?
In that case yes.
But what you are doing is judging a book by just having read its
Introduction.
> >> Sure. And we'll see more of this.
>
> >> But again, Christopher Alexander was talking about some of this decades ago.
> >> And also, there is a balance that, say, for balconies, as Christopher
> >> Alexander suggests, there is a certain size that tends to work well, and if
> >> you make it a different size (certainly too small, but maybe also too big),
> >> it tends to have problems.
>
> >> So, this is more a statement of a goal than how to accomplish it.
> >> Christopher Alexander's work is a higher level of detail about the interior
> >> of buildings themselves from what I have seen of Jacque Fresco's in terms of
> >> understanding how to do this in a modular way, even as Jacque Fresco has a
> >> bigger picture that Christopher Alexander does not talk about that I have seen.
>
> > In terms of details, I think the wisest would be to say that we both
> > do not know how detailed
> > Fresco's blueprints are, simply because we haven't seen them.
>
> Then how open are they?
your questions you know :D.
>
> But you say you have looked through all this but not seen them?
I have not visited them in Florida. There is one (or maybe more that I
missing) that were showed in the Future By Design.
How about you check it out for yourself. Don't take my word for
anything.
> What is not a personal opinion?
>
> Even a statement about the weight of an oxygen atom has some fudge factors
> in it. What if we are dreaming? What if this is a simulation? What if
> quantum physics or relativity is wrong? Etc.
>
> What most people would agree on is that there are some generally agreed on
> scientific facts (like the weight of different isotopes of oxygen atoms
> relative to other isotopes). After that, the "facts" become hazier, the
> conclusions harder to draw, the projections more uncertain, and issues of
> planning become more issues of opinion.
>
because he says so,
and then I weigh myself on the scale, I'll accept the "opinion" of the
scale.
> Can you provide any details of what this means? Like for example, how would
> the skyscraper argument above get resolved?
> > I'll say this. You're trying to get answers to difficult questions
> > from a single interview and its length is not enough.
> > The Activist Orientation guide and The Best That Money Can't buy have
> > more details on these issues.
>
> I've also seen a bunch of his youtube videos.
learn more details
and get answers to more questions.
>
> Are they like or unlike these principles?
> http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
> """
> I read down through the principles. Each one was very short:
> 1. Everyone is equal
> 2. Everything is reused
> 3. Nothing is anonymous
> 4. Nothing is owned
> 5. Tell the truth
> 6. Do no harm
> 7. Obey the rules
> 8. Live your life
> 9. Better and better
> """
>
> Or are they something different? Maybe the answer is in there, but if you
> advocate TVP, surely you can answer this?
>
I'm going to comment on the number 7.
This implies more an established society not an emergent. People will
question things
in such a society not obey rules.
And if you're about to ask, will the values be questioned too? I'd say
sure (If only I could take a snapshot of your reaction right now :D ).
And maybe history could give us a helping hand on deciding which are
saner and which not.
> And that method was? I mean, why listen to several hours of radio to get to
> one point?
asking?
One of the things he mentioned was that he had them listen to
different voices of people
and ask them what they think that person was. And the face of the
person was revealed.
So they were listening to an aeronautical engineer and then saw he's
black.
I think he also explained them why blacks have this kind of skin
colour.
> > Obviously the people that will participate in TVP will have aligned
> > with the values proposed by it.
>
> 100% aligned? 99% aligned? 50% aligned? 10% aligned? 1% aligned?
> Evaluated by whom? Also, the person who was fired was also a Professor with
> a PhD. This was a battle by "experts".
Fresco's book.
> Now I see where some of his comments and my objections might be coming from. :-)
>
> Some of this revolves around assumptions about "human nature".
interesting topic :).
I afraid this moves toward a win-lose debate and I'm not for that, so
I'm going to have to stop this sequence of long posts.
I'd suggest you read the Orientation Guide and his book The Best That
Money Can't Buy.
The best way would probably be to visit/meet them.
Thanks for the various links. I'm sure they will be helpful.
Regards
Eugen Leitl
> TVP as I mentioned is aiming at eliminating all forms of elitism.
Good luck with that.
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Paul D. Fernhout
>> Some of this revolves around assumptions about "human nature".
>
> I'm sure you'd have fun having a chat with him on this very
> interesting topic :).
>
> I afraid this moves toward a win-lose debate and I'm not for that, so
> I'm going to have to stop this sequence of long posts.
> I'd suggest you read the Orientation Guide and his book The Best That
> Money Can't Buy.
> The best way would probably be to visit/meet them.
>
> Thanks for the various links. I'm sure they will be helpful.
> Regards
Thanks for the interesting discussion as well.
By the way, as I had mentioned community, like created (in part) by Greek
dancing in a previous reply, I looked in "Designing the Future" and saw the
word "community" is only used twice in 79 pages, in these contexts:
"In our resource-based economy, there are comprehensive studies of the
environmental and human impact before starting any large projects. The
major concern is to protect and restore the environment for the benefit of
all living creatures in the community of life. The purpose of the
construction and development of these power projects is to free human
beings from unnecessary laborious tasks. In order to achieve this society,
we will need to automate most jobs as quickly as possible."
and:
"Where a project of this magnitude is concerned, like other resources, it is
imperative that benefits be shared equally by the entire global
community. The mineral wealth of the oceans and the other resources of
our world must be shared by all nations as the common heritage of
humankind."
Maybe Jacque Fresco just takes "community" for granted?
I'm not sure one can really design a healthy and joyful future without
putting more emphasis on "community". The scientific method may be used by a
community, but, by itself, it does not make a community. People can be happy
with very little material goods (like the society you point to), but without
a healthy and joyful community around them, most people are likely to be
miserable, even introverts. As a matter of emphasis, it would seem the
design principles should start from the question of, what makes healthy and
joyful communities?
A healthy and joyful human community can probably resolve many disputes
about perspectives with a laugh. :-) One without joy and health may fight to
the end about the simplest dispute in all sorts of ways. Example: :-)
http://everything2.com/title/Cat+Religion+in+Red+Dwarf
"A civilization of cat-people rose and fell on Red Dwarf in the 3,000,000
years between its leaving Earth and the time the radiation reached a low
enough level that Lister could safely be let out of stasis. Like most
civilizations, this one had its own religion and the episode Waiting for God
gives quite a strong message on religion in general. Just stuff to think
about. ... Most of the cats on Red Dwarf died in Holy Wars fought between
the two factions -- those who thought the hats should be red and those who
thought the hats should be blue. Daft, especially since, according to
Lister, they were supposed to be green. The cats not killed in Holy Wars
built two arks, one for red-hats and one for blue-hats, and they left Red
Dwarf in search of Fushal. They used a star chart Cloister supposedly left
for Frankenstein. The sacred writings read "Seven socks. One shirt."
Unfortunately, Lister had lined Frankenstein's basket with his laundry list.
So one ark crashed into a comet, and the other flew onward forever."
Be careful that a faith in science and technology does not become a new
religion with similar problems of "religious" disagreements. Look at all the
disagreements people are still having about how and why the WTC towers fell
-- with scientists on both sides of the argument about seeming obvious
"facts" like the structural strength of steel in a building.
All decisions require assumptions, values, and a choice of reasoning tools.
None of those can be picked at the start by the scientific method. One can
perhaps iterate on some of them from a starting point towards consilience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience
But, where you end up may still depend on where you start, as well as what
the community around you believes. And even "consilience" is a value or
assumption.
In the book, on page 30 it says: "In planning the cities, computers will
help determine the design based on the most comprehensive analysis of data
about the environment and human needs."
Well, IMHO the most important need for humans to be humans is community. :-)
Almost everything else is optional. If we start from there, will we get a
very different set of designs? Including the design for how decisions are
made and disputes settled?
Related, note the copyright from that PDF: "No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing
from The Venus Project, Inc. except by a reviewer, who may quote brief
passages in a review. All rights reserved"
So, only "freedom 0", to get one copy (and that by implied permission to
download):
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
So, still some work yet to do on "community". :-)
(And frankly, I only know how important community is because I'm probably so
terrible at it. :-) When a Greek-American freshman woman's mom at college
got a bunch of kids together to do Greek dancing the first day or two she
was there in the big dining hall (the student was terribly embarrassed by
her mom doing this :-), I don't recall joining in. Maybe my life would have
been much better if I had.)
J. Andrew Rogers
<pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> Be careful that a faith in science and technology does not become a new
> religion with similar problems of "religious" disagreements. Look at all the
> disagreements people are still having about how and why the WTC towers fell
> -- with scientists on both sides of the argument about seeming obvious
> "facts" like the structural strength of steel in a building.
This "disagreement" is just a form of appeal to improper authority. An
argument from ignorance is not scientific just because the people
espousing it are nominally scientists.
The arguments over WTC structural matters is an embarrassing episode
of exactly this. The structural steel behaved exactly as anyone who
has taken the undergrad materials science required by many engineering
programs can tell you it should. Unambiguously. Yet there are many
people who insist on pretending that the entire body of literature on
engineering steel structures does not exist because it suits their
prejudices.
A similar story exists with the people who think demolition brought
down the WTC if we allow that the structure was built with magical
steel. Structural demolition does not work or look the way they are
claiming, but it is more convenient to ignore the entire body of
knowledge and experience related to explosive demolitions.
Magical steel being cut with magical demolitions. I find it hard to
characterize this as a scientific argument. Most popular arguments
that nominally appeal to science are of this type. Or worse, *both*
mainstream opinions are anti-scientific, which also happens far more
often than it should.
> Well, IMHO the most important need for humans to be humans is community. :-)
> Almost everything else is optional. If we start from there, will we get a
> very different set of designs? Including the design for how decisions are
> made and disputes settled?
The English Common Law (so-called -- it pre-dates the Angles) is
probably the best living example of this, after a few thousand years
of convergent iteration over edge cases in small communities. There is
a lot of well-tested and robust wisdom in that tradition.
One of the peculiarities of international business is that contracts
are commonly executed under the jurisdiction of English Common Law
even if none of the parties is in a jurisdiction that recognizes it.