Towards Improving Design Science by using Design Science
Paul D. Fernhout
http://challenge.bfi.org/main.php
I missed the deadline for last year's challenge; I thought it was the end of
the month somehow -- careless of me not to notice "30" instead of "31".
Maybe some ideas can be used here. --Paul Fernhout]
The Problem
It is not easy for the average person to do Design Science, even if they are
already technologically literate. It is not yet as easy and accessible as,
say, placing sticks and stones in the sand to design a new human habitat,is
perhaps accompanied by some sketching and making some lists.
[Picture 1 -- Designers and Space Habitat: http://www.freevolution.net/ ]
Designing a new human habitat
Maybe it never will be, but the situation can hopefully improve over the
current situation, where Design Science remains essentially inapproachable
for the average interested person, given the complexity of all the things
one must consider to be comprehensive, anticipatory, ecologically
responsible, verifiable, replicable, and achievable. Like mastering baseball
or writing a good novel, it looks easy, yet most people talk about it rather
than do it -- because it is harder than it looks. There is only so much the
unaided human mind can do in a short time using paper and pencil. Even
Bucky's own gifted efforts sometimes fell short, like when fireproofing was
not adequately considered in an early dome design for The Expo '67 in Montreal.
While nothing will completely remove the need for trial-and-error in the
physical world, what would Bucky have done with the computers of today? How
would his Chronofile look on a modern quad-core desktop computer with a
terabyte of storage, four gigabytes of RAM and multiple displays, attached
to the internet, and networked to a billion other Design Scienceis
chronofiles? What Design Science software would he design? He would have to
consider Moore's law, which (broadly interpreted) predicts computers at
least 100 times more powerful or 100 times cheaper in about ten years or so,
and as accelerating rates of change compound, predicts computers at least
10,000 times more powerful on the desktop by 2027. Essentially today's
supercomputers (like BlueGene) will become desktops in two decades, and the
desktop computer of today will become a toy given out free on the back of
cereal boxes or embedded in a birthday greeting card. What would Bucky have
done with this? How might he have used today's computers, working within a
Design Science framework, to improve Design Science itself?
The Freevolution Design Science Library Community
My vision for the future of design science is the creation of a free and
open design science community making artifact designs and other content
which are shared under free and open source licenses, supported by free and
open source software web and desktop tools, which all co-evolve. My working
title for the system I envision, and the project, is "Freevolution".
I see Freevolution as a Wikipedia for design science, but supported by a
rich desktop client more than a web site, because of the greater capacity of
the rich client for complex tasks such as the simulation of large networks
of interdependent manufacturing processes. A web site would be part of the
project, but would act more as a coordinating tool for the related community
and as a way to casually browse information in larger published design
science repositories. The interaction between web site and rich client will
be similar to how visitors can view a Subversion source code archive by
browsing it on the web, but in practice most people use a local copy of a
source code control system client to work heavily with the code.
is
To be clear, a free and open source solution will happen with or without
this particular project. It will happen with or without me. It will happen
with or without BFI's involvement. It is happening already, as people make
free software for design, simulation, coordination, programming, and so on.
BFI already has the beginning of such a community, though it seems more
oriented to discussing proprietary solutions, and so sharing and
participation becomes more difficult than with a free and open source focus.
But, this project has the potential to make the Design Science revolution
happen a little faster and hopefully a little better. And it will hopefully
be fun for everyone to be involved rather than to be bystanders cheering on
the sidelines. Steering the emergence of a free and open community in a
positive way, embracing ideals of freedom and equity and abundance and
technological literacy into the very nature of the software and related
community culture, is a way to act as a trimtab toward a stronger worldwide
design science. Supporting new tools and broader community support may in
turn then help with BFI's current initiatives in emergency shelter, the
Spaceship Earth multi-player game, and EARTHscope.
Envisioning Freevolution
Every human-made artifact connects to a larger web of technology that
surrounds it. Making a greenhouse might require glass, a metal frame, a
concrete foundation, insulation, a furnace, clay pots, fasteners, tools for
assembly, and many other things. Making glass may require a furnace, raw
materials, a rolling mill, and many other things. A furnace may require
coal and iron and other things. The increasing complexity rapidly exceeds
what the unaided human mind can easily follow. While one should never
underestimate the power of the unaided human imagination, better tools can
still sometimes help in supporting and amplifying that imagination,
Imagine having a computerized library of technological artifacts and their
interactions arranged in such a way to allow anyone to explore the
implications of any technological artifact or assembly. Imagine studying the
automobile. One could examine all the separate component parts --
windshields, frame, radio, tires -- on a computer workstation. One could
also examine all the systems needed to put the automobile together.
Pictures would appear for all the diverse elements. Then one could explore
the tire, and all the technology required to create it. One could exploreis
this network indefinitely, and examine all the connections fundamental to
the industrialized economy we live in. The software would display graphical
networks of such relationships.
[Picture 2 -- StoryHarp Network:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/StoryHarp/screens.htm ]
An example of a graphical depiction of a networked system
Imagine the benefits of understanding such a web. With powerful enough
information management tools, one could invent new technological webs.
These new webs might be simpler or more robust than the one we live with
now. A new web might be designed that would be more sustainable. It might
consist of products that were more secure, self-reliant, self-replicating,
durable, low cost, non-polluting, energy efficient, evolving, and pleasant
to use. For example, it might have at its base solar collectors, windmills,
renewable fuels, and organic farming. The system could help answer
questions like what do we need for such a technology and what don't we need?
One could analyze the implications of, say, a specific set of technological
zoning guidelines -- which, for example, the Amish have within their
communities. One could look more easily look at the "Cradle to Cradle"
implications of design decisions. One could even imaging linking this
knowledge base to evolutionary tools which let you evolve solutions through
competition user-defined fitness or user-steered evolutionary processes.
[Picture 3 -- PlantStudio breeder:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/screens.htm ]
An example of evolutionary tools for "breeding" possibilities
I would also like to include historical aspects in the system, which
broadens the appeal to historians and historical societies across the globe.
In this way knowledge of old (and even ancient) ways of doing things can be
captured and analyzed, and can form the basis for new ways of doing things.
In addition, historical simulations of older economies can add insight.
Indeed, economies which operated primarily on a "gift" basis seem to beis
coming back full circle to modern times with free and open source software,
and soon RepRap for free 3D objects.
http://reprap.org/
Understanding how such old gift-economies worked physically and culturally
might better prepare us for the future.
At the same time, I also would like to reach out to all the diverse and
often competing interests in future-oriented space settlement, to give
people with different interests in building habitats on Mars, the moon, the
asteroids, and around other star systems a way to cooperate in a synergistic
way instead of competing for limited money related to spaceflight. To do
this, I would present the project to get feedback from these various groups
via the web and through some conferences. One other possibility is to
integrate Freevolution into future Space Settlement contests run by NASA for
K-12 students.
Over the next five to ten years or so computers will continue to improve in
performance for the same price. So, one could expect this software to soon
run on extremely low-cost computers, like ones from the One Laptop per Child
project or similar projects. This would finally make Design Science
accessible to every person on the planet.
Freevolution Compared to Other Possibilities
Various pieces of proprietary software exist within companies to do some of
what is described here, but bringing them together is difficult because they
cannot be customized or improved upon. Bringing Freevolution tools and
knowledge repositories into the public eye, with a free-as-in-freedom
license (for example the General Public License, or GPL) that allows others
to use and improve the system, could create a new and bigger playing field
for design scientists. In the same way that lawyers can charge high hourly
rates to craft client-specific solutions using essentially public domain
knowledge they have studied in detail (the law), I expect the described
system to allow Design Scientists to make a good living working with free
information -- maybe even a better living than at present, if for example
Design Science became more and more popular through the success of such a
system.
Freevolution would be like a combination of the Electronic Whole Earth
Catalog, the Appropriate Technology Source Book and Microfiche library,
AutoCad, HyperCard, Sim-City, a geographic information system, and an expert
system. It would also merge ideas from Vannevar Bush's Memex, Buckminster
Fuller's Chronofile, Doug Engelbart's Augment, and Alan Kay's Squeak Smalltalk.
Many collections of technology have been created. For example in the past
there was the Whole Earth Catalog, the Energy Primer, and the Appropriate
Technology Sourcebook. In the present there is makezine, how-it-works,
humaninfo, as well as ThinkCycle and similar projects.
What distinguishes Freevolution from those efforts is that it will have a
far more interrelated computerized technology library at its core. This
project goes beyond other approaches of simply cataloging technology and
categorizing pictures of it. The heart of Freevolution lies in modeling the
interrelations of technology using the emerging computer technology of
hypertext and network modeling. This interdisciplinary and integrative
approach will provide new insights into the nature of existing technology.
It will allow one to design more than specific technological artifacts; it
will make possible the design of entire technological webs, and eventually,
the economies that accompany them. For example, it will make possible
tracking specific substances, like lead, in a technological system, and
figuring out ways to eliminate their use. Freevolution will allow people to
mix and match technologies and see what industries are required for them to
have the artifacts they want. It will go beyond the idea of manufacturing
recipe, beyond the idea of a knowledgebase of recipes, to the idea ofis
understanding and modeling networks of manufacturing recipes.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/prototype.htm
Details
The Freevolution system as it has been envisioned will be implemented using
the (now free-as-in-freedom) Java platform, primarily in Jython initially;
this would allow easy support for most major operating systems. A prototype
version of the software was used to work on this document, based on the
Pointrel data repository system already developed by the investigator. The
Pointrel system stores information in a format similar to the W3C's Resource
Description Framework (RDF) triples, which has become a popular approach for
developing ontologies.
[Picture 4: Pointrel browser
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=6010 ]
A browser based on the Pointrel data repository
Overall there are five deliverables:
1. Tools to organize human knowledge related to design science.
2. The actual organized content, in terms of a network of manufacturing
recipes encoded in some form, perhaps NIST's Process Specification Language
(PSL).
3. Additional educational content related to physics, chemistry, geometry,
sustainability, and other things needed to be a good designer of both
physical artifacts and technology webs.
4. An example use case for the system, possibly designing semi-autonomous
homes (ones with arbitrarily long time-scales of self-reliance), linked into
some sort of simulation framework, likely in a multi-user game-like way.
5. The community of people who use the system and improve software and content.
[Picture 5: Garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/sc_four.htm ]
An example of a simulation that might be included in an autonomous house
framework
Of these, the last, the community, is most important. BFI has already
created such a community, and I hope to leverage off of that and make itis
even bigger and more productive, working in the realm of free content.
However, it will take tools and content to bring people into a coherent
community whose culture co-evolves with the tools and content, to form what
Doug Engelbart might call a "Networked Improvement Community".
I would expect the process of building Freevolution to proceed in a
stygmergic way (think how termites build mounds) -- where the artifacts in
Freevolution help to coordinate the efforts of volunteers worldwide.
However, to do this, I need to spend a lot of time seeding the repository
with knowledge derived from Bucky's work and the work of others. And I would
need to spend time coordinating volunteers. Sustainable technologies I would
expect to research, develop and deploy would include (but not be limited to)
agriculture, greenhouses, aquaculture, energy production, transportation,
communication, vocational training, computation, publishing, clothing,
household goods, general manufacturing, recycling, conservation, controlled
environments, self-replicating systems, and underwater, arctic, desert, and
space habitats. This broad range is necessary because of the holistic
systems nature of sustainable technology.
History
I envision Freevolution as a synthesis of two previous efforts I have talked
about (sometimes with my wife, Cynthia Kurtz).
One is "OSCOMAK: The Open Source Community on Manufacturing Knowledge",
which was suggested to NASA around ten years ago to essentially make a
design science library (I didn't want to use the term "Design science"
because I was unaffiliated with BFI). I have since refined those ideas, in
part by learning from Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap community.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/index.htm
The second effort is a 2001 paper presented as a Space Studies Institute
conference on licensing and collaboration for developing self-replicating
space habitats.is
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
That paper basically makes the point that every engineer in the developed
world today has computing power in their personal home undreamed of by
engineers in the 1970s. There are no significant hardware barriers to
creating a free design science library with information well-organized and
interlinked. The problems are now mainly related to software, licensing, and
motivation. Simulation can now substitute for some of the real-world testing
which might have been needed up front in the past for designs. The key is to
create a community with a free and open source license as a foundational
constitution. The General Public License (GPL) is an example of one such
license which essentially forms the constitution of a collaborative community.
The Future
I hopefully believe in "design it, and they will come", in terms of the
world's billionaires (as well as all those with only time to give). For
example, there are already several billionaires involved with creating space
launch systems. My thought is that if I and many others can create a library
with designs ranging from sustainable villages on earth to space habitats
that can replicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore starting from
a seed which can be launched on one rocket, a billionaire might just step up
to the plate and help bring these designs into reality. But first we (and by
"we" I mean the planet's people) need the *trillions* of dollars of unpaid
volunteer labor to create these designs.
Freevolution is about using a very small amount of money to leverage
eventually trillions of dollars worth of volunteer labor to build designs,
like what happened with GNU/Linux. For a more down-to-earth example (and a
more realistic starting point), I plan to focus the first real test project
within the system on designing semi-autonomous houses or homesteads. If good
designs are developed at that scale, only millionaires would be required to
actually build them (and the USA alone has millions of millionaires). Then,
when that works, we can think about moving on to bigger things like networks
of semi-autonomous space settlements, which might provide room to house
trillions of people in the solar system in style beyond even what
millionaires on Earth experience. It could provide a hopeful future. It
would point out how there is so much abundance in the universe if we work
together, and that there is not much point to fighting about a tiny amount
of, say, oil, in the here and now. :-)
Funding
$100K could support me for three years working half-time to improve the
software, add content, and help manage the community. After that, if it is a
success, in the short-term, donations, grants, and perhaps offering related
services or advertising could help support the effort (like Wikipedia or any
other not-for-profit developing free and open content). Ideally, in the very
long term, Freevolution would contribute to a change in the entire economic
landscape to become more of a "gift economy" where it could easily be
supported by society out of universal abundance. In any case, since all the
work will be done under free licenses, anybody will be able to continue to
expand the work. That's an important part of being free -- anyone can take
the ideas forward to the next level.
My Background
I have been programming since the 1970s. I have co-developed several small
and medium-sized pieces of software from idea to implementation to new
versions (CAI, garden simulator, evolutionary design tools, story networks,
an IDE -- all the images linked here were drawn from these projects).
[Picture 6: PataPata IDE:
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=165910 ]
An example of a (small) system I have created to help people learn about
prototyping as a way of developing software
I received an undergraduate degree from Princeton related to cognitive
psychology, and a Master's degree from SUNY Stony Brook related to ecology
and evolution. I have participated in several open source communities.
I have been working towards the ideas outlined here for about twenty-five
years, mostly inspired by the idea of designing a self-replicating space
habitat. That challenge led me to consider a variety of design and
sustainability issues, while gradually broadening the scope of my efforts to
shorter-term, down-to-earth projects, culminating in developing a garden
simulator as a first step towards space settlements (since we all have to eat).
Difficulties
Unfortunately many engineers are under "we own everything you think of in
your spare time" arrangements with their employers. So, I expect that most
professional engineers (especially in the USA) will not be able to
participate in such a system as I have described here without special
waivers from their company. So I would need to recruit those engineers
internationally who are not under such restrictions, as well as rely heavily
on retired engineers and college students as volunteers (or "Professional
Amateurs"). The management of waivers and such things, like the Free
Software Foundation does, is something that ultimately would take an
organization like BFI to coordinate.
A second difficulty is that, while I would discourage such activities,
design knowledge can be used to make weapons or other noxious products, and
it can also be used to make copies of information which is considered
proprietary or illegal in some jurisdictions, which potentially creates a
liability for any group hosting that information. That is one reason I want
to focus on desktop peer-to-peer tools (think Groove-like, or now
Chandler-like) where ownership of content is distributed to other people
engaged in a small group collaboration. A web site would be mainly used as a
coordinating tool and a place to publish information which has been
peer-reviewed in some manner.
To be frank, I am more of an introvert, so while I want to build the
software infrastructure for design and simulation, add content, do some
promotion of the idea, provide technical support, and manage the software
and databases through multiple versions of improvements, this project will
not succeed without a partner like the staff and board of BFI playing an
active role to help manage a growing community, in the same way BFI
currently does with its own community-driven website. I admit that is a
weakness of this proposal. I feel confident I can "build it", but I will
need organizational help from more extroverted people who like running
communities, to keep things going when "they come". :-)
Picture Credits
Freevolution artwork derived from NASA artwork by Rick Guidice on Space
Colonization blended with a modified version of the Land-use plan artwork by
Richard Iriga from the Development Art collection using The GIMP under
Debian GNU/Linux.
mike1937
economy at the moment, and that your project is the best way to move
towards one (if I had any real software engineering experience I would
help, but I don't). Two things occur to me:
1) the abundance required for this, being created by technology, is
being consumed just as quickly by population growth, and possibly
corporate greed. An objective should be the green industrialization of
third world countries to slow their growth while improving quality of
life; this seems far away since we ourselves can't manage to be green.
2) Natural selection works the same way on the societal scale as it
does on the molecular one: engineers work for people who pay them,
they are not ethically more advanced than the rest of the population.
If earth is unable to create a gift economy due to the capitalist (I
know thats not exactly the right adjective, but defining the correct
one would take a few paragraphs) system that has been in place since
it spread from Europe and Asia, then one can still certainly be
created in a completely new place, which is the beauty of virgle. A
colony will likely start off very small and very managable, with
people working together much like the the pre-columbus americans.
Because the colony is born of an open source project, the parallel of
a gift economy, and this time the people have knowledge of
"capitalism," it is fairly likely that a gift economy can be
maintained and eventualy create the (I hesitate to use utopian, the
word has been hijacked too many times) best society humanity has yet
created.
Thus I believe a community driven colonization isn't just superior in
terms of expediency, it also could be the only way to create a
philisophicaly superior society.
I am reminded of a planet of "voluntary communism" from one of Orson
Scott Card's books, however this is almost the opposite of any form of
communism, a point that I predict will need to be argued many times in
the future. Perhaps creating a name besides "gift economy" that
doesn't remind people of communism would be helpful, as would
expounding that democracy is, in fact, the perfect form of choosing
leadership and that we only deal with economic theory.
On Apr 7, 10:52 am, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
>
> Overall there are five deliverables:
> 1. Tools to organize human knowledge related to design science.
> 2. The actual organized content, in terms of a network of manufacturing
> recipes encoded in some form, perhaps NIST's Process Specification Language
> (PSL).
> 3. Additional educational content related to physics, chemistry, geometry,
> sustainability, and other things needed to be a good designer of both
> physical artifacts and technology webs.
> 4. An example use case for the system, possibly designing semi-autonomous
> homes (ones with arbitrarily long time-scales of self-reliance), linked into
> some sort of simulation framework, likely in a multi-user game-like way.
> 5. The community of people who use the system and improve software and content.
>
Paul D. Fernhout
> I agree that a gift economy born of abundance is the best form of an
> economy at the moment, and that your project is the best way to move
> towards one (if I had any real software engineering experience I would
> help, but I don't).
Most effort will be content, like with Wikipedia.
> Two things occur to me:
>
> 1) the abundance required for this, being created by technology, is
> being consumed just as quickly by population growth, and possibly
> corporate greed.
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. The overarching thesis on
why there is no resource crisis is that as a particular resource becomes
more scarce, its price rises; this rise of price creates an incentive for
people to discover more of the resource, ration it and, eventually, develop
substitutes. The “ultimate resource” is not any particular physical object
but the capacity for humans to invent and adapt."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_simplicity
"Simple living (or voluntary simplicity) is a lifestyle individuals choose
to minimize the 'more-is-better' pursuit of wealth and consumption.
Adherents choose simple living for a variety of reasons, such as
spirituality, health, increase in 'quality time' for family and friends,
stress reduction, conservation, social justice or anti-consumerism. Others
choose it for personal taste, personal economy or as participating in
sustainable development. Simple living as a concept is distinguished from
those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice.
Although asceticism may resemble voluntary simplicity, proponents of simple
living are not all ascetics. The term "downshifting" is often used to
describe the act of moving from a lifestyle of greater consumption towards a
lifestyle based on voluntary simplicity."
http://siivola.org/monte/papers_grouped/uncopyrighted/Misc/corporate_psychopathy.htm
"A corporation has been endowed with personhood by the Supreme Court. It is
not a person but it is run by persons. If the ethical standards of those at
the top fail to maintain a certain level of social responsibility, the
result is the insidious onset of corporate psychopathic behavior. A few get
very rich and the others wake up one day to find themselves abandoned by the
institution they trusted. We now have to take into account the corporation
as a psychopathic entity outfitting all prior attempts on the part of
governmental regulating agencies to control its behavior. A reactionary
government succumbing to corporate power colludes in this happening by
weakening regulatory controls, In his book "The Corporation", Joel Bakan
offers a thorough account of corporate psychopathy, The damage in human
terms resulting from psychopathic behavior, individual or corporate, leaves
a destructive trail behind. The individual psychopath contaminates whatever
circle he moves in. Corporate psychopathy contaminates the government which
is responsible for setting certain ethical limits to corporate behavior.
Excessive lobbying and financial largesse influences those who make the laws
and those who have the responsibility for executing the laws"
> An objective should be the green industrialization of
> third world countries to slow their growth while improving quality of
> life; this seems far away since we ourselves can't manage to be green.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_Cradle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_Cradle:_Remaking_the_Way_We_Make_Things
"Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things' is a 2002 book by German
chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough. It is a manifesto
calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically
intelligent design. Through historical sketches on the roots of the
industrial revolution; commentary on science, nature and society McDonough
and Braungart make the case that a maladapted industrial system can become a
creator of goods and services that generate ecological, social and economic
value. Their vision is based on a system of "lifecycle development"
initiated by Braungart and colleagues at the Environmental Protection
Encouragement Agency (EPEA) in the 1990s, which has been cited by the
Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in its early 1990s
publication A Technical Framework for Life-Cycle Assessment."
> 2) Natural selection works the same way on the societal scale as it
> does on the molecular one: engineers work for people who pay them,
> they are not ethically more advanced than the rest of the population.
So true. And it is also more than money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_ethics
"Fundamental Canons
1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the
public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable
development in the performance of their professional duties.
..."
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/924_reg.html
"As engineers undertake to mobilize people and resources to effect change,
they will encounter a growing need to understand the social values that
drive their decisions as well as the ethical consequences of those
decisions. Books like The Ethical Engineer can greatly assist in this
process. The Ethical Engineer is a good book at the right time."
—Frederick C. Nelson, Dean of Engineering, Tufts University
Unfortunately, most engineers have to overcome this:
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class
position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional
self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are prime training for
permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of
their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from
its own original logic: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth
of the school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of
industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, has enlarged this
institution's original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and
daughters of the middle classes as well. Is it any wonder Socrates was
outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then,
philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of
teaching would take, preempting the teaching function, which belongs to
everyone in a healthy community."
Then it is off to grad school:
"Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the
Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about
the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace
is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate
school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is
inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their
own vision and maintain strict “ideological discipline.” The hidden root of
much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional’s lack of
control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many
professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to
their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment
abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which
professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining
the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and
to pursue one’s own social vision in today’s corporate society. He shows how
an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee
can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one
who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."
The usual result:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19791013.htm
"QUESTION: One major focus of your book is the role of the American press,
The New York Times, the wire services, and so on, in filtering the
information that reaches the American public about repressive regimes.
Several times you compare the the information reaching Americans with that
reaching the Soviet people through a system of strict state censorship. With
an uncensored media in the United States, how is this possible?
CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, notice that we don't say, and it wouldn't be
correct to say, that the devices are the same, or even that the impact is
quite the same. The American system, however, does have the same effect in
many cases as the system of state censorship. It is more diverse, and far
wealthier, and operates by entirely different mechanisms. The way it works
here is far more subtle: it works by a system of shared interests. The media
are major corporations, and they share the ideological commitments of the
core capitalist elite that controls most of the economy and most of the
state as well. And, in fact, if they ever began to deviate from these
commitments, they would probably go out of business. Furthermore, for
individuals to work their way up into the media system, with rare
exceptions, they must share these professional interests or they are not
going to make it in this system of indoctrination. And the sort of backing
for this is that the intelligentsia as a whole tend to share the doctrines
of the state religion so that the pool of people you have to select from is
already pre-selected. They would never have worked through the educational
system and made it into positions of academic power or professional power if
they hadn't worked pretty much within the framework of these assumptions.
Now, always there are a few exceptions. But this whole system of conformity
is so overwhelming that, simply allowing that it operates by its own
dynamism, there's going to be a very narrow spectrum of opinion expressed,
and also a very narrow interpretation of current history which will conform
to that of the state propaganda system."
Also, even the enlightened engineers face an almost impossible task:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langdon_Winner
"In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody social relations i.e.
power[1]. To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner
identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first,
involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the
invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes
a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way “transcends
the simple categories of ‘intended’ and ‘unintended’ altogether,
representing “instances in which the very process of technical development
is so thoroughly biased in a particular direction that it regularly produces
results heralded as wonderful breakthroughs by some social interests and
crushing setbacks by others” (Winner, p. 25-6, 1999). It implies that the
process of technological development is critical in determining the politics
of an artifact; hence the importance of incorporating all stakeholders in
it. (Determining who the stakeholders are and how to incorporate them are
other questions entirely.) The second way in which artifacts can have
politics refers to artifacts that correlate with particular kinds of
political relationships, which Winner refers to as inherently political
artifacts (Winner, p. 22, 1999). He distinguishes between two types of
inherently political artifacts: those that require a particular sociological
system and those that are strongly compatible with a particular sociological
system (Winner, p. 29, 1999). A further distinction is made between
conditions internal to the workings of a given technical system and those
that are external to it (Winner, p. 33, 1999). This second way in which
artifacts can have politics can be visualized as a 2-by-2 matrix, consisting
of four ‘types’ of artifacts: those requiring a particular internal
sociological system, those compatible with a particular internal
sociological system, those requiring a particular external sociological
system, and those compatible with a particular external sociological system."
http://www.langdonwinner.org/index.html
"""
As Langdon explains his position, "I regularly praise technologies that
reflect reasonable practices of democracy, justice, ecological
sustainability, and human dignity. Unfortunately, a great many of the
technical devices and systems that surround us are designed, built and
deployed in flagrant disregard of humane principles. To an astonishing
degree, today's technological society is based upon a collection of bad
habits inherited from the past. A partial list of these habits includes:
- waste of material resources;
- destruction of living species and ecosystems;
- exploitation of working people;
- pollution of the air, land and water;
- surveillance as a means of social control;
- homogenization of cultural expression;
- militarism as first response to disagreement and conflict.
"To oppose these bad habits and the systems that embody them, as well as to
suggest alternatives to them, is enough to get branded 'anti-technology'
these days. Again and again, we are urged to celebrate the latest so-called
'innovations' regardless of the deranged commitments and disastrous
consequences they often involve. What passes for leadership in our
technoculture echoes the corruption of the Renaissance popes and foreshadows
a new reformation. As Martin Luther King once observed, 'A nation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.'"
"""
> If earth is unable to create a gift economy due to the capitalist (I
> know thats not exactly the right adjective, but defining the correct
> one would take a few paragraphs) system that has been in place since
> it spread from Europe and Asia, then one can still certainly be
> created in a completely new place, which is the beauty of virgle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
"""
Soon after the probe is launched, a major global war breaks out, but it is
not as devastating as anticipated. It only takes several decades for the
survivors to rebuild civilization, but as a repressive, authoritarian shadow
of its former self. This is the civilization that receives a message from
Alpha Centauri, signaling the success of the Kuan-Yin's mission. An
Earth-like planet has been found in the system, and the Kuan-Yin has
successfully raised its first generation of human children. They have dubbed
the planet Chiron, after the mythological centaur.
On Earth, the old international hostilities which led to war are still
evident, and so the three major power blocs — North America, Asia, and
Europe — each send a starship to Alpha Centauri to reclaim the colony there.
The starship from North America, the Mayflower II, arrives first, however
its attempts to open a political dialogue with the inhabitants of Chiron
fails when it becomes apparent that Chironian society has developed as an
adhocracy.
Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated
labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use
money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as
symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of
one's social standing-resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and
must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the
competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the
colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical
talent-and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of
people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected
to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities-some would say they
have no government at all.
The government of the Mayflower II utilizes various methods used throughout
human history in its attempts to exert control over the Chironians;
bureaucratic legislature, a capitalist financial system, proselytizing
religion. However, they are frustrated by failure at every turn: as a people
that have never been exposed to Earth's coercive authorities, the Chironians
lack the social conditioning to even comprehend the attempts at subversion.
Soon many of the crew from the Mayflower II are abandoning their
increasingly futile positions in the invading hierarchy in favor of adopting
the more rewarding Chironian lifestyle. Amid widespread speculation that a
violent conflict will soon break out, some of the people who arrived on the
Mayflower II realize that the Chironians do not intend to harm the majority
of the ship's occupants, but rather use a form of satyagraha (Mahatma
Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent noncompliance) to integrate the peaceful
travelers into their society and isolate the small number who present a real
threat.
"""
> A
> colony will likely start off very small and very managable, with
> people working together much like the the pre-columbus americans.
> Because the colony is born of an open source project, the parallel of
> a gift economy, and this time the people have knowledge of
> "capitalism," it is fairly likely that a gift economy can be
> maintained and eventualy create the (I hesitate to use utopian, the
> word has been hijacked too many times) best society humanity has yet
> created.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation
"The Evolution of Cooperation the title of a 1981 article and a related 1984
book by political science professor Robert Axelrod. The nine-page article,
co-written with the late evolutionary biologist William D. Hamilton, has
garnered over 8000 citations. The article and book explore the conditions
under which fundamentally selfish agents will spontaneously cooperate."
> Thus I believe a community driven colonization isn't just superior in
> terms of expediency, it also could be the only way to create a
> philisophicaly superior society.
We are doing it here: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Cooperation
"""
The Complexity of Cooperation is the sequel to The Evolution of Cooperation.
It is a compendium of seven articles on related topics. They include more
complex forms of cooperation than the two-person iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
(IPD) problem considered in The Evolution of Cooperation. The articles
appeared in journals on a variety of subjects, and have been largely
inaccessible to workers in other fields and to the general public.
Tit for tat (TFT) emerged as the most robust strategy in early IPD
tournaments on computer, combining a willingness to cooperate with a
determination to punish non-cooperation. It turns out that under various
circumstances such as the possibility of error, strategies that are a little
more cooperative or a little less punitive do even better than TIT FOR TAT.
Generous TFT, or GTFT, cooperates a bit more often than TFT, while Contrite
TFT or CTFT defects less frequently.
Axelrod applies various models related to IPD to a variety of situations,
drawing conclusions from these simulations about the ways in which groups
form, adhere, oppose or join other groups, and other topics in the fields of
genetic evolution, business, political science, military alliances, wars,
and more. He has added introductions to these articles explaining what
real-world issues drove his research.
1. Evolving New Strategies
2. Coping with Noise
3. Promoting Norms
4. Choosing Sides
5. Setting Standards
6. Building New Political Actors
7. Disseminating Culture
"""
Also:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or
symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or
Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It
seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal
moment in human history."
> I am reminded of a planet of "voluntary communism" from one of Orson
> Scott Card's books, however this is almost the opposite of any form of
> communism, a point that I predict will need to be argued many times in
> the future. Perhaps creating a name besides "gift economy" that
> doesn't remind people of communism would be helpful, as would
> expounding that democracy is, in fact, the perfect form of choosing
> leadership and that we only deal with economic theory.
Again:
http://siivola.org/monte/papers_grouped/uncopyrighted/Misc/corporate_psychopathy.htm
"In a democratic society government is supposed to serve the needs of every
member of that society. There are two models for such societies, Both
involve capitalism. The social democratic societies, such as in Scandinavia,
temper the profit motive so as to restrict the massive inequities and ensure
that health, education, security and opportunity is available to all. They
do this by a system of taxation that succeeds in narrowing the gap between
the haves and the have-nots so that a significant proportion of the
population is not in trouble. In the United States where capitalism is given
a much freer rein there is the possibility of the profit motive getting so
out of hand that those on top are enriched at the expense of those left
behind, That is "wild capitalism". The recent run of failures of formerly
very profitable corporations are a prime example of that, and how painful it
is for those who are ultimately victimized by it. Victimhood is the
characteristic feature of psychopathy."
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making
"Consensus decision-making is a decision-making process that not only seeks
the agreement of most participants, but also to resolve or mitigate the
objections of the minority to achieve the most agreeable decision. Consensus
is usually defined as meaning both general agreement, and the process of
getting to such agreement. Consensus decision-making is thus concerned
primarily with that process. While not as common as other decision-making
procedures, such as majoritarian voting, consensus is used by a wide variety
of groups. Religious denominations such as the Quakers, economic policy
bodies including the Dutch Polder Model and historical Hanseatic League,
anarchist organizations such as Food Not Bombs and various infoshops, many
non-governmental organizations, and even entire nations such as the
Haudenosaunee use consensus decision-making. Majoritarian voting is
considered the last resort in several democracies, consensus decision-making
being the preferred process. Examples include Switzerland and Belgium, where
consensus is an important feature of political culture, so as to prevent the
domination of one linguistic or cultural group in the political process."
Perhaps "post-scarcity economy"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity
Thanks for the dialogue.
--Paul Fernhout
mike1937
things to be reformed. Also several forms of democracy from European
countries need to be investigated, and we can now add "adhocracy" to
our list of self-describing adjectives. One relevant piece of
literature I'm reminded of is Chinua Achebes "Things Fall Apart," in
which three of the characters are symbolic of a gift society, a
corrupt society of abundance, and a society forced to be materialistic
due to scarcity; at least thats how I interpreted it. Achebe explores
whether the source of corruption in an abundant society is nationalism
and blindly following the most expedient dogma (though that is at best
a minor theme in the novel).
Thanks for all the time you put into your posts, they are always
educational and entertaining.
On Apr 7, 6:28 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-fernhout.com>
wrote:
> not a person but it is run by persons. If the ethical standards of those at
> the top fail to maintain a certain level of social responsibility, the
> result is the insidious onset of corporate psychopathic behavior. A few get
> very rich and the others wake up one day to find themselves abandoned by the
> institution they trusted. We now have to take into account the corporation
> as a psychopathic entity outfitting all prior attempts on the part of
> governmental regulating agencies to control its behavior. A reactionary
> government succumbing to corporate power colludes in this happening by
> weakening regulatory controls, In his book "The Corporation", Joel Bakan
> offers a thorough account of corporate psychopathy, The damage in human
> terms resulting from psychopathic behavior, individual or corporate, leaves
> a destructive trail behind. The individual psychopath contaminates whatever
> circle he moves in. Corporate psychopathy contaminates the government which
> is responsible for setting certain ethical limits to corporate behavior.
> Excessive lobbying and financial largesse influences those who make the laws
> and those who have the responsibility for executing the laws"
>
> > An objective should be the green industrialization of
> > third world countries to slow their growth while improving quality of
> > life; this seems far away since we ourselves can't manage to be green.
>
>
> read more >>