isenhand

From Nature to a Moneyless Sustainable Society

2011-12-16T05:06:00.000-08:00

Taking nature as asource of inspiration as as an example of a sustainability, we couldbuild a society that spreads power among the people. Building up inlayers of teams that interact like life on this planet in what werefer to as a holarchy.

Natureand its complex interactions

Nature presents aspectacular array of different types of interacting organisms. Forthe micro level of germs to the largest mammals on the planet. Theseinactions sometimes work for the benefit of all those involved andsometimes not. The symbiosis of clown fish and the sea anemone aswell as the oxe pecker and the zebra or even the bacteria we have inour stomachs all form examples of positive interactions where bothlife forms benefit from the other. However, pray / predator andparasites and well as virus or bacteria caused disease form examplesof interaction where one side looses out to the other.

Interactions don't justwork at the animal lever but at other levels in the natural world;from molecules and atoms to the way star systems and galaxiesinteract with each other producing all kinds of ordered, stable,structures. We could see a sort of hierarchy of interactions innature; from atoms interacting with each other to form molecules andmolecules with other molecules to form parts of cells and then thecells themselves. We could then look at cells interacting to produceorgans in the body which in turn form a body. People then interactwith other people to form families, clubs, clans and tribes whichthen form nations and societies.

All these interactions,useful or harmful, produce a state of dynamic equilibrium. Asustainable state that has existed, for life on Earth, for over 4Gyears.

Partsand wholes

From such anobservation of nature, Arthur Koestler coined the term “holon” todescribe the part - whole structure of nature where entireties work,in their own right, autonomously yet join together with others toform a whole; bridging the gap between the atomistic and holisticview of nature.

Holons in nature existswhen we find parts that form an integrated part of a whole yet theywork without the direct control of the whole; so the parts exists asmore than appendages and the whole more than an aggregation of parts.The parts work autonomously, according to a set of rules andcontributing to and overall goal of the whole. They work together toproduce the behaviour of the whole. The parts also have aself-regulating nature, thus contribute to the stability andsustainability of the whole.

The cells in our bodyform just one example of a holon; they exists in thier own right yethave organelles forming them as well as forming part of organs. Thecells follows rules; the laws of chemistry. Cells work autonomouslyneeding no direction form a central source. Cells contribute to theoverall objective of keeping the whole alive and functioning.

Other examples ofholons include the words you read now. A word that forms part of asentence, yet has letters composing it. Entities within entities;parts within wholes which form parts themselves.

When we see suchinteractions in nature we refer to the whole set of holons as aholarchy. It differs from a hierarchy as it has no centralised pointof command at the top. The parts could also exists separate from themain holarchy. The holarchy as a depth composed of the number oflayers. It also has a span composed of the number of holons on eachlayer.

As the holons followsrules and interact with other holons they tend to self-organise,working toward the same goals. They can change and adapt to changesin the world around them, evolving as they do so. The interactionsbetween holons on the same layer form communications channels thataid in self-regulation for the parts as well as the whole.

In nature, lower levelsin the holarchy tend to manage simpler, mechanical function such aseveryday living for a cell. Higher levels tend to handle more complextasks and have less predictable behaviour patters (such as humans).Theses higher level functions, such as life or intelligence, tend toemerge from the lower level functions.

FromNature to Society: A Holonic Approach to a Moneyless World

We can emulate the waynature works, forming holons and laying the foundations of amoneyless world forming a holarchy. For our future society we canstart with individuals on the lower level of a holarchy.

Individuals differ fromone another. They have different skills, knowledge and abilities aswell as interests which can change over time. The difference inpeople can work as a strength in a team or group. For a society tofunction, we need work done. A team composed of individuals withdifferent abilities could focus on a problem appropriate to theircombined expertise.

As most people willhave some kind of skill, knowledge and ability, especially after anumber of years of study and training, most people would have a placein the holarchy where they can make decisions and contribute to thewhole.

Groups working togetherwould form the next layer of holarchy above the individual. Teamswould work on a local level. Working on the functions andsustainability of a sustainable community but they could also workwith teams in other communities building the next layer up for aholarchy, a zone. Each community would then become a sustainablebuilding block for a world around sustainable society.

Zones, formed fromteams, would work together on tasks that effect a number of localcommunities. Zones could link up to form larger teams, called areas,that work on larger tasks that cover the size of a nation. We canthen build upon the areas to have sectors that work on larger partsof the planet such as a continent. Sectors could join up to work onglobal tasks. Thus, we move in steps from the local to the globalproducing a moneyless society where nearly everyone can contribute tothe decision making that effects them through contributing their ownunique set of skills, knowledge and abilities.

Such a holonic societywould need channels of communication and a sense of openness so thatit can self regulate. It would also need a goal that each layer inthe holarchy would work towards autonomously. Each holon need notwork to the overall goal directly but would need compatible goals. Acell, for example, does not have the goal of keeping the whole alivebut does work toward maintaining itself which results in helping tokeep the whole live.

Summary

From emulating thelayer interactions of nature we could build up a holonic,sustainable, moneyless, society that gives people the power on alocal level. Form the local level it works towards a achieve anoverall global goal.

Seeing Like a State - EOS and TVP

2011-11-01T04:34:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting article show to me regarding the problems with TVP and Zeitgeist ideology. I think it summed up a basic problem that I’m aware of with any ideology; what looks good on paper does not always translate well into reality.

The article also pointed out some of the problems that I have seen with TVP and I hope that we in EOS do not make the same mistakes. I’ll quote from the article:

“The most important element is what Scott refers to as “high modernist ideology,” which he defines thusly:
“[High modernism] is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws. It originated, of course, in the West, as a by-product of unprecedented progress in science and technology.”

This definition describes the Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project perfectly.”

It also highlights a major difference between EOS and TVP. EOS, like TVP, also aims to place science at the core of our ideology and build rational social order. However, we differ from the above in that we make a distinction between people and technology. People, of course, form part of any society but EOS does not aim to reorganise society on rational grounds all the way. Instead we make a distinction between the “people” side of society and the “technological” side. We then have little to say on the people side, preferring instead to allow people to organise themselves (within certain bounds) and then we concentrate on the technological side, where we have expert management of the means of production.

“Scott’s analysis, however, does not bode well for high modernist projects. The thesis of Seeing Like a State is that high modernist ideology ignores the complexity, expansiveness, and functional chaos of systems and social structures that develop organically”

The separation between “people” and “technology” and allowing people to organise themselves takes into account the organic nature but we also take into consideration the organic nature of social structures in another way; holons.

The concept of holons comes from observation of how nature works and allows groups to form and disband as needed. It also allows the system to grow in a very organic way rather than having a centralised authority impose the system from above. It also allows us to have a great deal of variety within the system so …

“What does this all have to do with the Zeitgeist Movement? Just this: Zeitgeist wants the entire human race to adopt a high modernist ideology regarding the production and distribution of resources.”

EOS does not expect the whole human race to adopt the same ideology. We concentrate on the management of resources without money but communities within the system can run as they wish so long as they allow others to do the same. We can have from very religious communities to atheist to primitives to transhumanist. We see strength within the diversity. It also allows us to preserve history, languages and cultures. Power becomes distributed and localised with people controlling their own fate. We don’t need everyone to change to fit into our vision of the future.

The distributed holonic approach also allows us a different way to implement the system.

“If the Zeitgeisters ever got their way, this would be the inevitable result. The change they envision for society is so massive, so sweeping and so total that the only way it could ever be implemented would be by force—probably by the force of a large authoritarian government or perhaps multi-national coalition.”

Instead of imposing the system from top down, the holonic approach allows us to build up communities and add to them so the system grows in a very organic and natural way. I think this highlights another difference, which the article didn’t bring out; we aim to test things. So we build module by module and as we do so we test so we build on working foundations.

Oddly for an ideology that says it has its roots in the application of science to society, TVP does appear to lack any testing; no experimental communities or test cities. Yet testing and experimentation forms the core of science.

Testing and experimentation forms the only realistic way of knowing if what EOS or TVP or any other ideology proposes actually works. If we just implement TVP without any verification we have the potential to cause more suffering than we find in the world already.

Lost in Delusion

2011-08-26T00:15:00.000-07:00

We’re in trouble! Yeap, we know that (not that many people actually care) but we have entered a time where we could, in the worst case, see most of the spices on the planet disappear, including ourselves.

We have global warming which threatens to raise sea level and cause the extinction of many life forms on the planet. We have environmental destruction as we clear away forest after forest and pollute the rest of the planet with toxic waste. We have problems with our resources where we could start to run low on things we need to keep us going such a metals and oil. We have problems with our financial system with the failure to fix the last recession (the “fixes” implement will problem make the next recession even worse). We have population pressures as well just to top it off.

Yet with all these serious problems and serious threats to our planet and even to our very existence what do we see as popular solutions? Spend more money! Everyone should live the life style of the people in the Amazon cos they live a happy and healthy life style! Everyone live in a little garden where they spend their lives tending the plants with no technology! Or have a “love” economy where we just all have to share our “love”. Or even; the rainbow dolphin will save us as the age of Aquarius starts (or something like that)!

I find this odd. It suggests to me not only a failure to see the problem but also a failure for basic survival instincts to click in as people get lost in delusion with no idea of reality!

We have a serious physical world problem that we have created. A physical problem that has to do with the real physical environment; with real physical resources. We have created it as a by-product of current socioeconomic system; the one that has brought us so many good things also bring with it the seed of our own destruction! We will not fix this through throwing money at (i.e. do the same thing that cause the problem), no by relying on an idealised view of humans (we should all love each other!) nor by hoping for some kind of deus ex machina.

We made these problem and we need to solve them. We can do that through understanding the problem and through building up an alternative but we have to do that through understanding nature and not through dilutions.

We can understand nature through observations, testing and the application of logic and then implementing things that we can show work. We propose such approach in EOS. We propose a system based on how the real world works; an emulation of nature that works with nature and not against nature. A system that we aim to test so we build on what we can demonstrate will work. A sustainable system that doesn’t use money.

Quick update

2011-05-27T02:35:00.000-07:00

Here's just a quick update of what we have going on at the moment. EOS has expanded with new members and new activity on the forum We have also have some organisations interested in joining the technate. EOS now has some access to some land but we need to sort out a few legal things before we can start using it. Also, on the hydroponic from I have had some good growth. And lastly, we have in motion a plan to start training / education, perhaps next year.

Plants growing nicely in the lab window

New Hydroponic System

2011-04-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

This is my new hydroponic system. That I got a new pump last year second hand which has a bit more power than my last pump. Also, I have a number of small buckets which it can connect and disconnect instead of one large bucket as last year. This makes the system a bit more modular or have I can extend this next year.

Smaller buckets

The new pump

The timer used to start the pump twice a day

A review of "Plan B" by Lester R. Brown

2011-04-21T03:12:00.000-07:00

This book I feel starts off well. He gives a good overview and presentation of the problems that we face, although he does seem to concentrate on the symptoms such as population pressure and water supply. However he does seem to give some indication of understanding the core of the problem. In the chapter on water supply he does point out exponential growth.

Why are we in this problem? If we live within the carrying capacity of the earth we would not have problems with water supply, we would not have population pressure. These symptoms result from the fact that we have started pushing ourselves beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth because we live in a system that must constantly grow exponentially, precisely like the lily pond example in the book.

The book then goes on to look at a solution but a solution that aims to fix symptoms not core problem. He goes on to talk about improving energy efficiency. Fine, we need to do that but in a system that expands exponentially how long will it take even with the energy efficiency to end up back where we started? This can go for many of the other measures proposed; necessary but not sufficient. Whether we talk about designing cities for people or new manufacturing methods but unless we deal with exponential growth we achieve nothing in the end.

Understand the world in anthropomorphic terms

2011-04-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

I am going to start with what might appear as dogmatic statements but I do have a reasoning behind these:

People have a very wrong, intuitive, understanding of how the world works.
Nature does not care.

People have a very wrong, intuitive, understanding of how the world works

Hunter gather; the type of society we have evolved to live in.


Gaia

Essentially, human beings have evolved as hunter gathers, living in small communities. We have evolved a number of characteristic behaviours that help us lived in such groups. We understand each other in emotional terms; “love”, “hate”, “hope” etc., the dictionary has many words that help us to describe the emotional state and motivations of other people. We project ourselves outwards as we try to understand others (and then get surprised when people do things we would not do)

To a limited degree, this intuitive understanding of other people helps us understand the world around us. We project our human understanding into the world around us and understand the world in anthropomorphic terms; “Jack Frost”, “Death”, “spirits”, “wights”, The Earth goddess Gaia etc., mythology has many examples of creatures that we create to explain the world around us. Extending this idea further we end up with religion were we explain the world around us as “divine will”. Yet, we have it wrong when trying to understand the world in such terms because …

Nature does not care

Animals inflict suffering on other animals; nature doesn't care! (photo: jeffrey sohn)

We tend to have this impression of nature as a “caring and loving mother” (because we do care), and use other anthropomorphic understandings of the world. We see mother nature as nurturing us (an example of our anthropomorphic understanding of the world) . Yet, if we were to go out and explore the world we can see that nature does not care. Animals inflict suffering and harm on other animals, cats torment their prey, diseases inflict suffering. Perhaps you have to live in a survival situation to understand how little nature cares; make a mistake and you can die. We have a recent example of how nature doesn't care in the nuclear accident in Japan.

Building a future world

This understanding of the world causes us many problems. In a way, the problems we have today result from a lack of understanding of how nature works; as if we see ourselves as something special and exempt from laws of nature. I also see this same problem reoccurring when people talk about solutions to our current problem.

Essentially we have to deal with the real world. We have physical resources, energy and physical needs. We need to manage these within the limits that nature provides. To do so, we have to understand nature not in anthropomorphic terms of “mother nature” but as a real physical system and work with nature.

However, instead of working with nature, I see people proposing solutions based on our erroneous anthropomorphic understanding of the world. So we get things like “we need a love economy” or a “gift economy”.

Instead, EOS proposes a different way of dealing with this; treat people as people and nature as nature. Let people deal with each other in our anthropomorphic terms which works so well when dealing with human relationships but when it comes to dealing with the physical world we use an approach based in how nature actually works not in our emotional anthropomorphic understanding of the world.

So, on one side we have communities of people managing their own affairs on the other side we have people with the knowledge and skills and understanding of the natural world to manage the natural systems in this world.

The Latest Energy Credit Simulator

2011-04-13T00:24:00.001-07:00

I have finished the latest Energy Credit simulator and run some basic tests and I have assembled at all in at package. I have uploaded the sim to the EOS file site in a zip format but only members can access that area. I will look at making it more public if I can.

The zip file contains:

EnergyCredit Sim.jar

The main jar file. If you run this from the command line you would get lots of text output otherwise you will get two file dialogue windows. In the first, navigate to an select the setup file. In the second, navigate to and select the results file.

EnergyCredit simulator.pdf

This file describes the format of the input files for the simulator.

Three directories

Each directory contains the setup files for a simulation. Run the jar file, navigate to one of these directories and load in the setup file.

This represents, as far as I’m aware, the only attempt to scientifically research an alternative, energy based, resource allocation system to our current, money based, socioeconomic system.

The Design

2011-02-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

EOS aims to propose an alternative, moneyless, socioeconomic system to our current system through the application of science to society. Basically, we can take the word "engineering" as meaning the "application of science". So essentially, we aim to engineer society.

An engineering project begins with a "customer specification", which describe something about the end result but not really how will we should achieve that. It becomes the engineers jobs to translate that vague customer specification into a solid implementation in a number of steps. We often begin with developing prototypes and after testing out a number of prototypes we move on to what we call a top level design document. The top level design document specifies in a bit more detail how we should achieve the end result. We can then progress to a more detailed design document which describes in more detail the implementation. We then go into implementation where we actually built what the customer originally desired, or as close as we can practically get.

The design process doesn't necessary follow the above linear path. As we learn more we can go back to earlier stages and redo things so the designed becomes a circular process. It is easier to correct mistakes in the earlier phase of design than to correct mistakes in the implementation so we should spend some time on getting the design right.

In EOS, we have a vision of a future, sustainable, moneyless world around civilisation. That forms our customer specification. We then see around this planet a number of groups exploring similar visions. Effectively, all these groups are exploring different prototypes so we have moved on to the top level design for a proposal of an alternative socioeconomic system. We simply call our design "The Design" and we have worked on it over the last five or six years. I have been putting all our work together and am now produced a draft document that covers most of the aspects of our design. I have now send it around to a number of people to review. We still have more work to do but it feels like we're heading towards something that we could start testing; heading towards a moneyless society.

Understanding holons

2011-01-24T03:59:00.000-08:00

I've noticed that some people have trouble understanding the idea of holons and how a holonic society works. As the idea of holons forms an important part of the socioeconomic design that EOS presents I thought I would try an present an overview of the idea in the hope it clarifies some points.

The whole idea of holons comes from observations of nature so in proposing a holonic structure EOS presents a structure that emulates nature. Nature organises herself in a bit of a different way to humans and I suspect that the main problem people have with the holonic concept stems from this difference. People tend to form hierarchies around a leader and when people come to EOS they tend to look for a centralised leadership; "show me my leader and I'll pledge obedience". However, a holonic system has no centralised leadership. This doesn't mean that it has no leaders at all but it means we have no one overall leader. Instead we have a distributed form of governance.

A holonic system has a number of groups or organisations and individuals that form a network. Each group within the network runs itself the way that it wants to. Which means it can have leaders within the group or not, depending on the group.

What keeps the whole thing together? In a word; goals. The whole system, exists to achieve a goal. In the case of EOS we aim for an overall goal of a sustainable, technological, moneyless society that offers a high standard of living for everyone. We aim to achieve this through the appliance of science to society. Each group in the network can work towards its own goals its own way so long as those goals fit in with the overall goal. We do envision that groups will work on projects so will have some kind of project leader and coordinators to help cooperation with other groups. These act to achieve the goals of the group. We also envision people having technical expertise in each group and the technical experts will make the decisions within their domain.

All the groups within the network cooperate; each putting something into the network and each getting something out of it in a symbiotic relationship (again, like in nature). When two or more groups find that they have something in common they can elect to work together on that common project. In doing so they form a new group higher up the holarchy. This enables multiple groups to combine resources to efficiently achieve a common goal. Those higher up holons can form, themselves, other higher up holons. Much like cells in a body form organs which in turn form a body.

Where groups differ with other groups they can go their own way and do their own thing, within the limits of the overall goal. A holonic system allows diversity and differences and sees them as strengths. We do not see the need to control everyone nor have everyone do the same thing; people have a great deal of freedom to get on and do things with out having to have someone to stand over them and constantly tell them what to do. Thus, we accept groups that have their differences and welcome that difference. This allows us to test out new ideas and explore other alternatives. So EOS doesn't need to dominate other groups nor absorb them into EOS. Pick a project you would like to work on. Does it fit in with the goal (check with a director if unsure). Yes? Then get on with it!

The system does have a hierarchy of functional sequences on the side. This structure has appointed directors that match onto the holarchy. The directors have the job of ensuring communications between groups and ensuring that each group has compatible goals but the directors do not interfere with the internal running of the group.

The Terran Technate as of early 2011

For more on holons see:

http://www.panarchy.org/koestler/holon.1969.html

http://www.beyondwilber.ca/AQALmap/bookdwl/files/WAQALMB_1.pdf

http://wiki.eoslife.eu/index.php/Engineering_Society

Zeitgeist III - Moving Forward

2011-01-16T01:17:00.000-08:00

Last night EOS had a showing of "Zeitgeist III - Moving Forward", the latest film from Peter Joseph, at Umeå University. The event went really well and we had 42 people along, some stayed for a chat afterwards. I think I would class this as the best ZM film so far. It does a good overview of our socio-economic system and human nature. Most of the film I would agree with with. Nice to see that in the human nature part the film pointed out that human behaviour results from a combination of environment and genes but it did place more emphasis on the environment. On the violence part; yes, children of violent parents tend to behave violently themselves but does such behaviour only result from the environment? Also, we have a body of evidence that shows that past societies had more violence than today's (see Steven Pinker's TED talk).

The film gave a good overview of The Venus Project design for a city, although I had hoped for more details. The animations in the film ranks among the best! Given the title, I though it a bit odd it didn't cover more about moving forward such as a transition plan but then we do have a number of groups, including EOS, working on moving away from our current socio-economic system to a moneyless one. Another odd thing in the film; given the emphasis on science applied to society and the central roll of testing in science and the fact that Jaqcue Fresco mentioned the need for testing in the film yet the film didn't say anything about testing out any alternative to our current system.

Overall, very well worth seeing!

The ZM III Showing, Umeå University, 15 January 2011.

It's all a conspiracy!

2011-01-04T01:52:00.000-08:00

Recently I had a link to the “light bulb conspiracy” presented to me. Basically it has for a subject “programmed obsolescence”. The term “programmed obsolescence” refers to the industrial practice of designing for failure. Manufactures produce items at the minimum level of quality they feel they can get away with, but not too high a quality, so that items fail; thus people have to go back to buy replacement products. The film then calls this a “conspiracy”. I disagree. Yes, manufactures do indeed produce items to fail but that does not equate to a conspiracy. The word “conspiracy” means:

Conspiracy (civil), an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights, or to gain an unfair advantage
Conspiracy (crime), an agreement between persons to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement
Conspiracy (political), the overthrow of a government

[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy]

Thus, we can define the essential elements of a conspiracy as a plot, normally in secret, to carry out something illegal or to gain an unfair advantage. “Programmed obsolescence” does not fall into the category of something illegal (no government makes it so) nor into the category of “gaining an unfair advantage” as all manufactures either practice it or have the opportunity to practice it.

It seams to me that calling things a conspiracy has come into vogue; from 9/11 to NWO to the 2012 Olympics. Whether its alien, lizards or the a secret society. Sometime it appears to me as if the expressions “think for yourself” and “get educated” means “believe in the latest conspiracy theory without question”!!!

Where others see plots carried out in secret to do something illegal I see multi-agents interacting. I see self organising networks of individuals at work but most of all I see emergent phenomena.

Have a look at a dot and see what properties it has. Then arrange a number of dots in an arc and see what properties we then have. Dots arranged in an arc have properties such as length and angle that the single dot does not. These new properties emerge from the way we have ordered the dots.

Emergence: dots in a line have properties that no individual dot has.

Dots in a line forms a very simple example of emergence. Society forms a more complex example of the same phenomena. Here, instead of dots, we have people and instead of arranging them in a line we have dynamic social interactions forming networks; people know other people. We have on average six links between us and almost everyone else on the planet! Some people have more power to effect the world we live in than others. Some groups also have such power but the world doesn't run according to the plans of any one person or group but instead as a result of the interactions of many people and many groups.

Everybody interacts with other people through following a set of rules. Rules that define acceptable social behaviour, laws or arrangements and even rules that tell you how you can break other rules; like a kind of game. All these rules form what we call the socioeconomic system that we live in. This, like programmed obsolescence, emerge out of this interaction. To play the game in our current socioeconomic system companies must make profit. One way to do that would involve getting people to come back and buy a new product again and again. Making the product to fail after a certain time gets people to come back and buy them again. Our socioeconomic system has other means to get people to buy and buy again with fashion coming to mind first; throw away perfectly good clothes so you can buy this years fashion.

Our socioeconomic system produces a number of other undesirable emergent phenomena from concentration of wealth in the hands of a minority to enforced poverty to environmental damage. We can even see “dumbing down” of TV and the education system as emergent phenomena of our (free) market economy; you want to maximise profits you need to appeal to the majority and intelligent people form a minority (don' forget, half the population fall below average intelligence to start with) so you have to appeal to the “dumb” majority of society through “dumbing” down; TV reflects the type of society we live in!

We also have another interesting emergent property of our current socioeconomic system; conspiracy theories. In a (free) market economy where we can't trust manufactures to tell the truth ( “buy brand X, its much better than brand y, honest”! ) we find people having to exercise the paranoid aspect of their nature. In a society that breeds distrust does anyone wonder why we have so many conspiracy theories?

We get the society we deserve!

Instead of looking for conspiracies and the imaginary evil groups behind them we instead should realise what we see around us results from the socioeconomic system we live in. If we don't like the destruction of the environment, the level of distrust, the dumbing down of our education and TV, the enforced poverty and the hindrance to our own advancement we need to redesign and build a new system. A system that has a new set of rules; one without money, without profit seek behaviour and without the need for paranoia.

EOS works on the design for an alternative socioeconomic system. A moneyless system that gives everyone equal access to what they need. One that maintains a balance with the ecosystem. What to know more, see: www.eoslife.eu.

An undiscovered island

2010-12-29T03:01:00.000-08:00

Imagine, if you will, that we have landed on the sandy shores of an undiscovered island. Not just us but a number of other expedition shave also landed on the same golden shore line. Before us lies the think green undergrowth that marks the edge of a deep dark forest beyond which lies a mountain, the highest point on the island. All the expeditions, each with their own characteristics and peculiarities, decide that we should explore the island and head towards the distant mountain. But how to get there? Each group has their own ideas of which ways they should go; head in land from where we first landed, explore the coast line more, look for a river or just head into the

We each set of on our different route but we agree to keep in contact with each other via radio and to help each other if we can. As the expeditions advance, each on their own route following their own ideas, we make progress into the unknown. As we learn new things about the island we pass on the information; the animals we find, the lie of the land, food and water supplies. Each group makes progress but each runs into problems. When a group has difficulty the other try and help them out. Some times it can mean change in course as one group find an easy path and informs groups that have met with impenetrable forest. So times it just advice; look out for a eye plants!

I see a future society working like this; one that does not fear differences and has to make everyone the same but acknowledges deliverances and see the advantages they can bring. A society that lets people live their own life but bring them together when needed to help each other.

Although each group has its differences we all have a common goal. Through acknowledging our differences we gain strength. Knowledge learnt in one group helps another and visa verse. As no one group knows the right way forward having differences allows us to search different alternatives as we all head for the same goal. Through working together on the points we have in common allows to maximise our resources on a focused area. Through networking we gain the advantage s of multiple approaches and strength though numbers.

In engineering we would call this approach of exploring the unknown prototyping. In software engineering we would call it forking.

Cooperation

2010-12-13T01:31:00.000-08:00

Cooperation poses a bit of a problem; when selfishness represents the optimal strategy why would entities op to cooperate, especially if it means losing out in the short term and opening up oneself to exploitation? We can show acting for one's own self interest, regardless of anyone else's, represents the optimal strategy through game theory, especially prisoner's dilemma which shows defecting as the optimal strategy. This forms the foundation in classical economics of the "economic man"; a rational entity that seeks to optimise personal gain. Yet such a model doesn't fit with reality. Experiments and real world applications of the prisoner's dilemma has demonstrated that it doesn't model real world human interaction in either a social or economic sense and it fails (actually, it works well for psychopaths and economists but not for the rest of us). Psychology has show that the foundation of economics, the "economic man", also fails to model reality well. In reality we tend to favour cooperation over purely selfish actions. Why?

Why should we cooperate? Axelrod and Hamilton looked at the evolution of cooperation through the application of multiple prisoner's dilemma. They found that if rational entities could meet again and play prisoner's dilemma over and over that tit-for-tat represented the optimal strategy. They ran hundreds of trials with many different strategies and although tit-for-tat didn't come top it came second more time than other strategies meaning that overall it represented the best strategy. In tit-for-tat, cooperation gets rewarded with cooperation and defecting gets punished with defection, thus each entity has a vested interest in cooperating. So long as entities have a chance of meeting again and so long as defecting or freeloading gets punished cooperation represents to optimal strategy for self interested entities, which matches closer what actually happens in the real world.

The real world example of reciprocal altruism comes close to theoretical model of tit-for-tat from game theory. Examples include symbiosis between different animals such as cleaner fish or human actions such as voluntary charity work. This strategy can give greater benefits to those involved if those involved meet multiples times and can spot free loaders and punish them.

In the end, cooperation can work as the optimal strategy for selfish entities giving them greater benefits, especially in the long run, than purely selfish actions provided the entities interact multiple times over time and freeloaders or those that would explode the cooperation get pushed and thus, do not gain from the exportation.

Cooperation forms an important part of the socioeconomic design of EOS. We propose a network multiple autonomous entities working together and cooperating on common tasks. These entities remain separate with their own ideas doing their own things but as each works towards a common overall goal they can come together to form common project as needed. This results in entities forming higher entities to work on a common project in a holonic system of cooperation.

Fixing the facade

2010-10-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Once there was a man who had a house. One day he noticed a crack in the walls of the house so he patched it up and gave in new coat of paint and all looked well. Some months later he saw another crack so he did the same; filled in the crack and painted it over. Some weeks later he saw two more crack so, again, he filled them in and painted them over. It wasn't long before a friend pointed out that he had a number of cracks in the wall of his house. His friend said it looked bad and that he should do something about the problem. The man told him he was working on the problem and they both went out to patch up the wall and paint it over and all looked well. Some time after more cracks appeared and the man got busy working on the problem. He was annoyed that more cracks appeared but he was happy that he was doing something to address the problem. However, the more he patched up the house the more the cracks would appear. Soon cracks were appearing faster than he could patch them up and it wasn't long before the whole house collapsed. Then the man realised the problem wasn't the cracks in the wall but what was causing the cracks to appear! The house was rotten to the core and while he had spent his time tackling the cracks the real problem got worse. Even worse for the man, because he had spent his time fixing cracks he had felt he was doing something about the problem so didn't look further into the problem. As the cracks had got worse he had spent all his time and energy on fixing the cracks that he didn't have any more time for investigating the problem.

I look at today's society and what we do and I see a man fixing the facade of a rotten building. We have things like ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 attempting to address the problem but do nothing about the core problem so they become filling in the cracks. Are we doing something? Do things like ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 make a difference? Yes, we do do something and ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 do make an impact but do we do anything about the core problem? No, we don't. Sooner or later the good things that might come out of ISO 14000 and 20-20-20 will get lost when the building collapses.

It appears to me the term "sustainable development" forms an example of an oxymoron!

The Venus Project in Stockholm, Sweden

2010-08-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

Preparations before the talk

The big event for EOS this year : The Venus Project in Stockholm. I organised the lecture that Roxanne Meadows and Jacque Fresco gave at the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm.

The event when really well. I got to meet with a lot of like minded people. Everything went smoothly and we had over 300 people at the event.

Afterwards we had a meal that Jim from Rent-a-chef organised and we also had a BBQ on the following day, that Jim also arranged.

All in all, I think we can say the event turned out a big success and that everyone involved really enjoyed.

Thanks to all those who helped.

Roxanne Meadows

Jacque and Roxanne talking to member of the audience during a break

The meal afterwards

Engineering Society

2010-07-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

I have now finsihed the next part of the design and you can find it here:

Engineering Society

I'm now getting quite busy as The Venus Project event in Stockholm come closer!

ui

Experiments with green stuff

2010-06-15T22:16:00.001-07:00

I have worked on a few experiments; one with growing hydroponics, one with permaculture and one with oil algae.

At the moment they all look as if they have worked and will continue to work well. I've managed to grow some lettuce in the hydroponics and plant the pernamculture plants and I have some algae growing in my photo bio-reactors.

For the hydroponics, next year I want to start looking at producing my own nutrients. For the permaculture I need to see if the plants last the winter. I don't know of anyone who has tried permaculture this far north (63 deg). For the algae I now need to see if I can harvest them and produce some oil.

Energy Accounting Design ready for review

2010-06-07T03:02:00.000-07:00

I think I now have the energy accounting design ready for review. If you would like to look at it and comment.

Energy Accounting Design

NB, if you don't like the idea of ECs and would prefer the TVP idea then just ignore that bit. With or without ECs we would still need the second part of the system of "expert management".

Thx

ui

New site up and running

2010-05-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

The lads down in Slovenia have worked hard on designing and constructing our new EOS sit. Now they have it up and ready. Well, almost, we have a few bits here and there to fix but most of it runs well.

You can find the new site here:

EOS

Thermoeconomics: The use of Exergy in Alternative Socioeconomics

2010-03-31T01:47:00.000-07:00

I've worked a bit more of the design of an alternative to our current money based socioeconomic system. This actually formed part of a cause I have just finished in Thermoeconomics. The paper I wrote was on the use of exergy for an energy accounting system.

You can find it here:

Thermoeconomics: The use of Exergy in Alternative Socioeconomics

ui

Lecturing at Umeå University

2010-02-25T01:05:00.001-08:00

Some months ago I revived an invitation to speak at Umeå University of the subject of "Alternative Socioeconomics" from UpF (a student political interest group). I thought it very nice to get such an invite :)

The lecture talked about why we need to look at alternative socioeconomics (looking at exponential growth) then went on to resent EOS and The Venus Project as two alternatives. I then looked at implementation plans. At then end I left space for questions and answers and the student bombarded me with quite a few of them!

I did the lecture last week and it went well even if it was not my best performance (I had a cold at the time). I received an email yesterday saying that it sparked quite a bit of discussion!

I hope I will get the opportunity to do more lectures, perhaps at other Universities?

ui

Racing snails

2010-02-25T01:03:00.000-08:00

Well, at least some times it does feel like that! We make progress but we make such slow progress! On the NPO front we have decided on a name for the translation company; "nu ridle". Which means "readable" or "something that you read" in Loglan. Now we need to actually form the company. We have someone working on that now; filling in the forms and registering the company. Next we will need a web page then get some customers so we can have some money input into building communities and start moving away from this money based system!

ui

NET to EOS

2010-01-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

EOS - European Organisation for Sustainability. Aiming to build a moneyless sustainable society.

The word "technocracy" means "rule of the skilled", in other words it means a system of government where the people who can make competent decisions get to make those decisions. Such a system differs greatly form our current oligarchy where we have elected representatives who get elected, as it appears to me, because they look good on TV or make nice sounding promises not because they have the competence to actually do something. Often it appears to me they only have any competence in looking after themselves (ever met a poor politician?). So, to me "technocracy" would signify something positive, a break from our current self disructive system to something better.

Unfortunately, not every body see it in such a positive light. The word "technocracy" has gained a negative connotation with people using it as an insult or thinking it means "techno-fascism" (far from the actual meaning the word). This means people often jump to conclusions about the type of sustainable sociality NET proposes and don't even listen to what we say. We have known of this problem for some time but we were unable to come up with an alternative - until now!

We have agreed to change NET to EOS - European Organisation for Sustainability. Not only does that represent what we aim to achieve for our society but also as the name "Eos" refers to the Greek Goddess of the dawn the name also symbolises the new dawn of a new sustainable, moneyless, civilisation that we envision.

The Venus Project to come to Sweden

2010-01-12T22:26:00.000-08:00

The main thing I have worked on before the holidays was getting the Jacque Fresco for the Venus Project to come to Sweden. Jacque will come in July and we have a site up selling tickets to cover the cost of the visit.

The Venus Project event in Sweden : Attend This Event

We as in NET have also worked more on establishing the (proto-)technate. We now need a formal meeting of the board to agree on the translation company which I hope we will arrange soon.

Work on going

2009-11-30T01:37:00.000-08:00

We always seam to make slow progress in NET but at least we make progress!

So far I have worked on getting the documentation together for seeing up an NPO for the proto-technate. I have now completed the first draft of that and have it on the wiki for NET. We need to work some more on that, especially the web page text.

I have started to look again at the Energy Credit sim. The lads down in Slovenia need it as they work towards creating a moneyless society test platform there. We need more work on the simulation, especially with the outputs but I hope the sim will work for now and then we can modify it to get a good experimental platform working.

ui

Visit to London

2009-10-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

I had an invitation to visit London and meet with Jacque Fresco, Roxanne Meadows and the Venus Project Design team. I flew out there and met up with them at a part on Friday evening and then on Saturday I attended Jacque's lecture at the London City University. On Sunday I talked with Jacque and Roxanne as well as members of Venus Project Design team. Jacque gave interview after interview on the Sunday to magazines and TV reporters.

I found it very interesting to talk to Jacque. He has a very comprehensive view of the future and what form society could take. What you see of the Venus Project on the web and in films represents only the tip of an iceberg. Although I might not agree with everything I find I am in agreement with far more than I disagree with and those I see as minor.

To me, I would see this as a great opportunity for NET to cooperate and work with the Venus Project Design team as we head towards a common vision for the future.

The Venus Project

Venus Project Design

Energy Credit Sim

2009-09-25T03:59:00.000-07:00

I've worked some more on the Energy Credit Sim. I have added in the stats manager class so now the system records events going on and will save the to a csv file at the end. That makes it easy to load up the stats and gain some idea of what went on. Now the code needs longer testing just to make sure it does what I think it should do. I will also need to write a user manual so other people can use it. After that we will need to design some experiment to see how a moneyless society using energy credits might work.

ui

Off to England!

2009-09-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

I have done some more work on the energy credit sim. I have added in a class that keeps track of statistics in the sim. I have almost completed it, when I get a bit more time I hope to finish it off. I just have to write a bit of code that outputs the stats to a file so we can analysis them. After that I plan to run a number of test to make sure the code works and does what we thing it should do before starting some experiments.

In the mean time, I received an invitation to travel to the Zeitgeist / Venus Project event in London in October. So I shall pop over there and giver a presentation of NET and meet up with other interesting folk and hopeful we will have some good opportunities to work with others towards a better, sustainable moneyless sociality.

At Umeå University we showed the "Future by Design" film. The film has Jacque Fresco as the subject matter. It went well and we had a quite a few people turn up.

In addition, we have our weekly loglan meeting up and running again after the holidays. We have had then running for a few weeks now every Saturday in second life.

ui

Back from holiday!

2009-09-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

I have had a nice long summer holiday :) Now I'm back and I'm getting on top of things again. I have mainly worked on the business plan for a translation company. The translation company will not exist for the purpose of making a profit, but any money it does make should go back into NET and help towards the proto-technate. I have sent the plan around to people for comment and I hope we can have a talk about it this weekend at the next NET meeting.

What I have done!

2009-07-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm now back after having a stomach bug for a few days. :( But the following summarises what I was up to before I was ill.

I have done some more work on the design for an Energy Accounting system. The write up appears on the NET wiki here: Energy Accounting Design. Mostly I have added a bit about the flow in the system and about the thermal dynamics of our current system.

I have started working on the relations kit, especially the NET constitution here: NET Constitution. The main bits I have added really come from other bit with have son this document just groups together bits we have in other places so far.

The last think I was working on was to do with the proto-technate. I have started on the business plan for a another NPO. This NPO will handle translation work. I have also started on developing a robot that I hope will form a product for a robotics NPO.

ui

meetings, meetings and meetings!!!

2009-05-21T02:14:00.000-07:00

I've have had a somewhat busy time with meetings just recently. First we had the NET AGM in Umeå, Sweden. That went really well. It was good to meet up with people I have worked with for years but have never met in RL!I think close communications like that enabled us to sort out our ideas more clearly then we ever have just on the forum. I gave a talk on the design and what we need to do next as well as a talk on Loglan.

The second meeting was over the Net with a group in Australia. This was part of a meeting at the Foresight Innovation & Sustainability Hothouse held in Sydney. I gave a very short talk on our ideas in NET for building a sustainable society based around a network of communities called a proto-technate. I then answered some questions from the audience there. The whole talk was only a few minutes but it went well with some good questions.

The third meeting will happen this weekend. I'm giving a talk in Extropia, Second Life on money to the Imagine network. The talk will concentrate on why we cannot sustain our current system and, therefore, why we should look at alternatives.

ui

Energy Credit Sim

2009-04-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

I have now finished the first run though of the energy credit sim. We need now to look at it and see what we want to do with it and what we want to get out of it. Then we need to start running simulations.

At the moment I feel its too simple and perhaps we need to look at cases that would add some more complexity to it.

ui

Earth Day

2009-04-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day!

Every year NET is Umeå has an Earth Day lecture. This year we worked in cooperation with the Imagine Network in Second Life and the lecture was broadcast live in Second Life as part of the Earth Week event as well.

This year, the talk was about an idea for going from today's unsustainable system to a better sustainable system. I started of looking at our vision of a futuer sustainable system and then looked at today's unsustainable system. I argued that climate change, poverty and the unsustainablelity of today's system results from the way we do things thus if we wish to move to something sustainable then we need to look at an alternative socio-economic system.

I then went on the present the proto-technate as an idea for moving form today's system to tomorrow sustainable system. The proto-technate forms a collection of cooperative communities embedded in the current money system. Internally it doesn't use money and experts manage the technical side with direct democracy for the people side.

At the end of the talk I had quite a lot of questions both from the audience in Umeå and in Second Life. In the end the whole event went really well.

ui

The Physical Foundations of Economics

2009-04-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was reading a book called "The Physical Foundations of Economics". The author presents some interesting ideas of economics, and social systems, as type of thermodynamic systems. He sees the systems as attempting to create minimum entropy structures. As information has links with entropy, we can also see economic systems and information system. The author brings in some interesting points about value and sees that as information. Also the author has an information / entropy definition of value and sees systems as either having fixed costs or flexible costs as entropy functions. The author links back to empirical data and shows how an thermodynamic interpretation matches the empirical data better than neoclassical economics.

I have an interest in this because it links to NETs ideas of using thermodynamics as a way to interpret economics as as the foundation of Energy Credits. I think the theroy preseted in the book will offer us a better foundation for ECs and for making a comparison with current economic theory.

ui

Oil Algea and Earth Day

2009-04-07T00:24:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a meeting with another algae expert who specialises in fresh water algae. From what we talked about it looks like we might have a couple of problems.

First, I will need to maintain the temperature at around 18 Deg C. This I had a look at over the weekend and with out active cooling the best I could do was 23 Deg C. Come summer time I expect the temperature of the lab to go up to about 30 Deg C. The could cause the algae population to crash and encourage the growth of other, toxic, algae.

Second, I was hoping this would form part of a cyclic system that we will need for sustainability reasons. The waste from one system would form the input to another. As such I was hoping to use urine as a food source for the algae but this probably wont work as it will have some important trace elements missing. I will have to look at this again.

As for this week, I am concentrating of the Earth Day lecture. That lecture will take place at Umeå University on the 21st at 19:30. The subject will cover the proto-technate as a means for moving from today's unsustainable system to a future sustainable system.

ui

EC Sim Update

2009-04-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

I have a "working" version of the energy credit sim running now. I say "working" because I still,need to go through it to see that it does do what I think it should do. Once I have done that I will release the code to NET and we can look at it and see what do we want to get out of. So far, I can see that I should imp+lement a class to collect stats but I will wait till we have looked at the simulatuion and decided what data we want to collect.

On the oil algea front; I have talked to another miocrobiologist and we will ahve a meeting on Friday to talk aout oil algae.

ui

Energy Survey

2009-03-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

This week I have concentrated ion the energy survey. The energy survey project has to goal of assessing the resource in Europe to see whether or not we have the resource base to establish a full technate. So far we have conducted a survey of the solar potential of Europe which shows that Europe has the capacity to produce all its energy needs from solar energy. Currently I am working on the next step of the survey; food production and consumption.

I have collect date for the food part and I have started on putting the data together. I do have some problems with the data as a consumption category does not all ways match with a production category, like "grapes" in production and "wine" in consumption. So I'm having to do the best I can to match consumption with production. Despite a few problems, the data does appear at this point in time to show that Europe has the capacity to produce its own food with the exeption of some more luxury items such as coffee.

Oil Algae

2009-03-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

I had a meeting yesterday with a microbiologist and she was very helpful giving advice on algae that I could use for my oil algae experiments. She recommended either Rhodomonas Sp, Chlamydomouas or Scendesmus as good starign algae. They all grow in frees water and I should have no trouble growing them. She has also given me contact information to talk to some other scientist who might help.

Oil algae has an interest to NET as we aim for a sustainable solution to today's problems due to our current socioeconomic system as it allows us to produce bio-diesel in less area than other crops for more oil. Thus presenting a better solution than today's distructive means of producing bio-diesel.

Zeitgeist in Umeå

2009-03-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Last night NET conducted a showing of the second Zeitgeist film, Zeitgeist Addendum, at Umeå University in Sweden. The event went really well, despite some technical problems at the start. We had 15 people there and most where really interested in the film and stayed for a discussion afterwards.

Although NET doesn't form part of the Zeitgeist movement we do have a lot in common. We share a common evaluation of the money system and the unsuitability of such a system. We aim to move away from today's destructive money based system towards a sustainable moneyless system that balances our needs with the eco-system. We also share common ground with the Venus Project, although we do have our differences and we tend to concentrate more on scientific verification and implemnetaion ideas. NET has had involvement with TVP for a number of years and we have regualrly shown "Futuer by Design" at Umeå University.

Hydroponics

2009-03-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend just gone I managed to get my hydroponics experiment set up. This year I will just grow lettuce. Hydroponics becomes interesting from a sustainability perspective because it allows us to grow food where we would not have the ability other wise. We could grow food in the cities, thus cutting down on transportation, and grow food vertically, thus cutting down on the need for extra land, without having soil and its associated problems (such as disease). Most hydroponics utilises pumps to circular the nutrient solution. I have the purpose of investigating a low energy solution for hydroponics which involves using a reservoir that I fill up at weekly intervals. The liquid then slowly leaks into a box containing a growing medium and plants.

In addition, I have also started exploring geodesic domes again. I have the intention to exam how the angles work through building a small wooden dome. I also have an appointment with a micro biologists this coming Wednesday to talk about oil algae and the Umeå group has a showing of Zeitgeist II this evning.

Proto-technate update

2009-03-11T03:07:00.000-07:00

The proto-technate forms an experimental platform for technocracy and a stepping stone towards a future hi-tech sustainable moneyless society. As we plan to implement it so far involves the construction of a network of communities and a set of interface companies we, in Umeå, have started working on building up the interface companies.

The aim to embed the proto-technate within the current socioeconomic system but to operate internally with an alternative socioeconomic system based on energy credits. The interface companies have the purpose of interacting with the out side omoney world.

Our first attempt to form an company takes the form of a translation company. We have some degree of experitise in that area here in Umeå. At the moment I am working on the business plan and making some progress. If all goes well I hope to have a draft copy ready for next week.

ui

Energy Credit Sim

2009-03-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

I have done some more work on the energy credit sim. I have now implemented all the classes so its just a case of linking it all together and getting to work. When I have done that I will make the code public and we can all have a look at it. We want to look at what does it do and what do we want to get from it.

The idea behind the energy credit sim has to do with simulating a resourced based economy that uses energy accounting as a means of resource allocation. Although the idea was proposed many decades ago not one has done any serious work in investigating whether or not this system will work. So, though simulation we hope to show that the system can work and also to see what kinds of problems might occur in such a system.

Energy accounting forms our proposal for replacing money. We (NET) argues that any sustainable socioeconomic system can not use money as money leads to system that doesn't balance with nature. We only have to look at the profit and greed in our current system to see the destruction that results in our world. Allocating resources based on what we physically have forms part of a way for us to balance our needs with the ecosystem. We would no longer have the profit motive nor the ability to "get rich", thus we could build products to last, reduce demand and reduce our impact on the world.