A Look at Venus Evolution - A Plan for Aranta

 

 

A view of the future

Introduction

The Venus Project / Thorium Network has done something interesting. They have released a design for a city called "Venus Evolution - A Plan for Aranta" (VE) by Simon Michaux (actually released in 2024 but I have only just come across it). Jacque Fresco (JF) had a city idea and had built models of such a city but there was never much in the way of an actual design or plan for how it would work. So this is quite an interesting step and hopefully it will lead to something being realised. I thought I would have a look at the document and compare it to the plans we have in EOS. I’ll start off with a look at how the city is actually governed.

Governance

The City, or each city in the long run, is self governing. So the structure is a network with each city as a node in the network. The City itself is governed through a type of consensus, with public engagement and a leadership. When there is a “gap” detected between the direction the leaders have decided and the current reality, a change is proposed and consensus is sort after:

“Public engagement of all members of society in assessing that change is the most effective system that can adapt to change in the most efficient way possible.”

The leaders are not specifically defined but the document does mention that staff will be given a mandate to develop such things as “suitable systems of high-density energy generation” or “new methodology to sustainably grow food” or “full value chain from commodities to manufacture to application”. This suggests that leaders emerge based on tasks and those tasks are based on needs / “gaps” (although I feel it is not really clear).

There is also a Council of Elders, which are experienced community members who serve for five years and help to resolve disputes.

This has a lot of similarities but some differences to the Design. In Design the system is also distributed but instead of networking it is holonic in structure. However, the idea of forming groups to work on tasks in VE fits in with the holonic structure and that follows much the same ideas presented in the Design. The idea of gaps also fits in with holonic structures. Although not stated in the Design, “gaps” are similar to the idea of “tensions” in Holocracy by Brian J. Robertson and, therefore, would fit in with a holonic structure. So, although cities would form networks, the internal structure of a city would fit with EOS’ Design.

Expert Teams

In the Design, society is divided into a technical side and a people side. The technical side is managed by teams of experts who have the authority to make decisions within their domain. Thus, in the Design, power is distributed in a holonic structure. We find something similar in VE with the staff having a mandate, although it is not stated if these “staff” are actually experts in the area they have a mandate in but I imagine hat would be the case.

There is an innovation hub in VE that generates new products. These products are then tested by the people. This suggests to me that new ideas are generated even if there isn’t a demand. In the Design, there is research and development and new ideas explored but new ideas are implemented according to demand from the people. So, people drive what is produced rather than producing then getting the people to decide if it works or not or they will have it or not.

Production

In keeping with the holonic design, communities have production capabilities so they can produce what they need in terms of food and power as well as managing waste. Communities can then work together to form larger holons to produce items that are needed by all the communities but are not economical (in energy or material terms) for just one holon to produce.

There is something similar in VE. VE has “manufacturing hubs”, which are a bit like the communities with production capability in the Design. There is then a material tracking system used through out the system so the system can adapt based on feedback from the tracking system. The Design has a system of expert management. Those expert management teams would monitor production and adjust as needed. The exact technique used is not really developed in the Design as it is up to the experts to decide how to control production rather than enforcing one method such as in VE.

The People

VE doesn’t seem to explicitly make a distinction between the people side and the technological side of a society as in the Design. However, there does appear to be some division in VE. For example, there is a social contract where individuals have a responsibility for their own actions and a respect for others. There is no hierarchical leadership but the council of elders helps to resolve conflicts. VE encourages openness, collaboration, and critical thinking as well as “growing communities”.

On the people side, the Design has a system of direct democracy for the people to decide on new laws etc. The exact form of the government of the people side is up to the people in each community. They could, for example, have elected leaders or a system where anyone can propose a new law and the community decides on if it is enacted. VE starts with a private company owning the City but sees the City evolving with the community of people living in the city. In the end, the people decide how the city is run through a process of collaboration. So, the system in VE would fit in with the design.

VE has a social contract but the Design only has the basic set of Human Rights with is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with the exception of “nation” as there are no nations within the Design). VE’s social contract could be seen as part of the people side. From the Design’s perspective, each community on the people side can have whatever social contract it wishes so long as it doesn’t violate the basic set of Human Rights thus VE’s social contract would fit in with the Design.

Resource Management

Resources such as food, water, transport and power are allocated to people within the City as needed. So there is no money used within the City, in keeping with the moneyless ideas of JF. The resources are managed in a circular fashion, outputs of one process feeds into the inputs of another.

"A cluster of industrial process plants in one site is proposed, where the output products of one plant are the input feedstocks to another plant. All industrial plants would operate in a symbiotic fashion, similar to how an organic farm would operate."

Materials are tracked (using blockchain) and AI is used to optimise the system. So, there is no hierarchical decision making. It is the data in the system that determines the decisions made (I assume that is done to optimise a goal). That means the system is computerised and, I suppose, could run without human involvement beyond receivers of goods and innovators of new products. The use of goods is monitored for helping in the control of the resource allocation.

In the Design, we have teams of experts who manage the resources. Of coarse, that means using AI and the need for monitoring material flows etc. Monitoring and control of materials and production in the Design is done using a system of energy accounting. People allocate energy to production, so the system in the Design is demand driven not centrally planned. The teams of experts that run the system act as problem solvers, supervisors, designers, and managers of the system so the system is not completely under computer control. There is some overlap with VE in that respect as the central innovation hub does fill some of the functions the teams of experts have in the Design.

One difference between the Design and VE it that in the Design, automation and AI is used to reduce and minimise work so people have, as we say “more time to be human”. But work seems to be important in VE. For example, if people want money to interact with the outside world, they have to work and get paid.

Outside the City

There will be a transition time between now and a fully moneyless society planet around. As such, each city or community would need to interact with the money world. In VE a person would have to work to get currency to be able to interact with the outside world. In the Design, that would not be the case as the Design aims to minimise work. In VE, there would be The Prometheus Institute (the innovation hub), which would generate ideas that are sold to produce income. In the Design, we aim to have a number of companies to provide income into the system. These companies would be dispensed with as the system grows. This does mean that people are needed to work in those companies but the money they use for dealing with the outside world isn’t dependent on the work they do.

Science

VE talks of taking a scientific approach to solving problems. However, VE also talks about the corruption of science due to the involvement of money. As one who has worked in research I can understand that problem. When you see research grants tieds to “how many companies would be set up” and “how many people will be employed as a result of the research”, then you realise the “research” is really product development. The corruption then leaves people not being able to trust the science. Is this what the science really says or is it what the money interests want? Breaking away from money would solve that problem but then VE adds in its own corruption;

“We will assemble a large number of unorthodox ideas into one place and support their development with appropriate resources.”

“ The objective is to assemble into one place as many existing unorthodox ideas that are related to the fundamental nature of what energy is and test them …”

VE comes over to me as a bit fixated on anything “unorthodox”, without really specifying what “unorthodox” is. Are we talking “crystal energy” and other such woo?

In the Design, it is the experts that make the decisions. In the case of research, that means the research scientist decide what is researched. That may mean researching something that is “unorthodox”, but that is not imposed from the start.

This idea of deciding before does conflict a bit with what VE says in other places. In the same paragraph in the Prometheus Institute section where it talks about “unorthodox” ideas is the part about staff having a mandate, which suggest the staff can decide what to research.

In Conclusion

There are similarities and overlaps between VE and the Design. Both are distributed and decentralised, for example, but VE isn’t quite holonic but it could fit into a holonic model.

There are, however, a few differences. The Design aims to reduce work but VE doesn’t appear to do that. However, I’m mainly concerned about the decision regarding “unorthodox” ideas as I feel that is forcing a solution on the system. It may well be the case that those ideas will be investigated and implemented but that should be up to the scientist to decide and not forced on the City from the start.

… When do we want it

 

… When do we want it

Building a Better Tomorrow

Introduction

This is the third in a series of three articles about building a future society. The first outlined our choices. The second article was about the type of society that I envision. And this last article is about how we could get there.

There are basically two main approaches to building a better future. We can either plan for the future and so we are ready for when the current system collapses or we can be pro-active and start building today.

Foundation

In the Foundation series, Asimov wrote about a post collapsed galactic civilisation. Before the collapse a mathematician by the name of Hari Seldon was able to predict the collapse using a method he called psychohistory. He also predicted that the coming dark age could be shortened if two foundation were established to preserve knowledge.

Today we face, I would argue, a situation of potential collapse as our current socioeconomic system is fundamentally unsustainable. But even so, there are forces at work that will try and preserve this current socioeconomic system. As a result, any attempt to move to an alternative substantial system will be thwarted, so the argument goes. Thus, all we can do today is set up “foundations” to preserve knowledge, prepare for a collapse, and then wait to the system collapses.

The “foundation” approach is basically the approach taken by Technocracy Inc. and The Venus Project (TVP). The idea goes, at least, back to Thorstein Veblen in his book “Engineers and the Price System”. In his book, Veblen proposed a Soviet of Technicians to take over the means of production in the US, but not by force, as he says :

“… and what will of necessity be the manner of organization which alone can hope to take over the industrial system, following the eventual abdication or dispossession of the Vested Interests and their absentee owners. And, by way of parenthesis, it is always the self-made though reluctant abdication of the Vested Interests and their absentee owners, rather than their forcible dispossession, that is to be looked for as a reasonably probable event in the calculable future. It should, in effect, cause no surprise to find that they will, in a sense, eliminate themselves, by letting go quite involuntarily after the industrial situation gets quite beyond their control.”

Jacques Fresco follows the same idea as he said :

“The transition to a resource-based economy will not happen through violence or revolution. It will happen when the old system collapses under its own weight, and those who are prepared can offer a viable alternative.”

He also pointed out the need for being prepared for the collapse on other occasions :

“The future is not something we wait for—it’s something we design. The question is: Will we be ready when the old system fails?”

and

“The only way to create real change is to make the old system irrelevant. Build the new world in the shell of the old, and when the collapse comes, people will naturally gravitate toward what works.”

“The Venus Project is not about predicting collapse—it’s about preparing for it. When the old system fails, we must be ready with a viable alternative.”

and then he also warned :

“The people who control the world today—bankers, politicians, corporate leaders—do not want change. They profit from scarcity, war, and debt. A resource-based economy would eliminate their power, so they will fight it with everything they have.”

The idea of collapse first and the need to be ready for it can also be seen in some of Technocracy Inc. publications such as :

“We are not waiting for the system to collapse—we are preparing the blueprints for what comes next. When the old system fails, those with a viable alternative will lead the way.”

“The first step is education. People must understand that another system is possible—one that is not based on money, politics, or scarcity.”

The problem I have with this approach is what kind of world will be left after a collapse and would that world be a good bases to build a future sustainable, moneyless, world from? I doubt it. Even if we were to prepare, a collapsed society will be a desperate place and we could see the rise of more irrational ideologies instead.

Evolution

Jacques Fresco makes an interesting point :

“We are not trying to overthrow the system—we are trying to make it irrelevant. The Venus Project is about building a new world in the shell of the old. When the old system collapses, we will be ready with an alternative.”

There is a tendency, I think, to dislike revolution among groups that propose a technocratic like socioeconomic system. You can see that in Technocracy Inc. as well :

“We don’t need revolution—we need engineering. The solution is not to overthrow the system, but to make it obsolete by designing a better one.”

I would also go down the “no revolution” route. I would also agree, we need to actually build an alternative and demonstrate that it can and actually does work. We also need to test the ideas out. The ideas for a better society, whether from me, from Technocracy Inc, or from TVP have never been tested. It would be seriously unwise to overthrow a government and install such an untested alternative. That could lead to an even worse disaster than trying to preserve our current unsustainable system.

The “MillennialProject” is a book written by Marshall T. Savage. It is not really about building an alternative, sustainable, moneyless, socioeconomic system. However, it does argue that our current system is unsustainable and the solution lies off world in colonising the galaxy. To achieve that, Savage proposes a number of steps. The early ones, like forming a Foundation and then sea colonies, relies on working within our current system and then moving in to space. A sort of evolution and it is this idea of evolving to a desired state that I would propose for moving towards a better socioeconomic system.

Basically the idea is similar to TVP and Technocracy Inc. educate, build, and prepare but instead of just waiting for a collapse start linking together, forming networks and gradually move society to an alternative without having to go through the pain of collapse. An example of this is EOS in Sweden. In the Design, they propose a process called stepping stones, where they work within the current system but towards a better system. For example, they have a project centred around a biodome and an urban garden where they are building a sustainable solution and testing it out. They are also forming a network with other EOS groups.

 

Umeå biodome

The argument against this approach goes back to the idea that those with a vested interest in the current system will stop any move to an alternative. As Jacques Fresco says about TVP :

“Any movement that threatens the status quo will be infiltrated, discredited, or destroyed. Look at what happened to the Occupy Movement—it was crushed because it challenged the financial elite. The Venus Project is a bigger threat, so they will ignore it, ridicule it, or try to co-opt it.”

And that maybe true and what will happen but I still think we should try to evolve society to a sustainable solution regardless. We still need to build something and test it out even if we are waiting for a collapse. We are still educating and preparing so even if the evolution fails we fall back to the waiting for collapse idea anyway. But if we try to evolve society to a sustainable socioeconomic system it might just work, especially if we can point to something and show that a moneyless system does actually work.

One more quote from Technocracy Inc. :

"The future will be built by those who prepare for it. The question is: Will you be part of the solution?".

The Beginning ...

 

We have the potential to build something better ...

Introduction

 

President Trump

 

On the 5^th November 2024, the US electorate decided to vote Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. He is the first convicted felon to be elected president (imagine! If only Nixon had known!). He has been convicted in a US court of falsifying business records and of liable but did not serve a prison sentence. Instead, he ended up pardoning himself. He also pardoned several people involved in insurrection. Trump has also been accused of rape and is the first president to be impeached twice. He can be seen as anti-American and anti-West and pro-Russian [rus]. Since elected, he has used his presidential powers to make a number of controversial decisions such as ending DEI programmes, reevaluating foreign aid, and closing government databases. He has been supportive of Christian Nationalists [cn] (not that Christian Nationalists are Christian [cn2] nor are they nationalists as Christianity in the US is more like the worship of money [cm] and the Christian Nationalist don’t exactly support the US constitution). His pro-Russian position makes war more likly [war] as he proposes defeat for the West, NATO, and Ukraine in his "peace plan" for Ukraine. And he has the support of the majority of the American people [sup] to do all this.

Along with Trump comes a set of controversial figures. For example, Elon Must has connections with far right movements and performed a Nazi salute at a Trump rally. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, is considered a threat to national security [DNI]. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for Defense, supports far right ideologies and has been accused of sexual assault as well as being accused of using funds from a non-profit for himself [ph].

And there is more but I think that is enough to get the point; to many, Trump and his associates are not the best people for the US nor the West and they have come at the worst time for the US and the West.

The End if Nigh

“… it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time;” - Winston Churchill.

To some people, to have had such a set of controversial figures elected to rule the US is understood as a failure of democracy [failed]. But has democracy failed? Democracy is the rule of the people. But the US doesn’t have a true democracy. Like many democratic countries, the people don’t rule but representatives of the people rule. And those representatives are elected every few years or so with the one that gets the most votes taking office. There is nothing in the definition of either democracy or representative democracy that says that the government so elected would be competent, moral, ethical, or even work for the best interests of the country. One could argue that when it comes to how society works, many politicians in democratic countries have little clue about things. So, I would argue that democracy has not failed in America. This is just part of how it works. If we actually want a competent government then we need people in charge that have expert domain knowledge of how the system works. And that would be a type of technocracy.

Another argument I have seen is that Trump represents the beginning of the end of the US [end] or even the West. Is it? People tend to be here and now thinkers. We tend to think what is happening now as being all important. In some ways it is but it is also part of a bigger picture and we need to see that too. I would say it is too early to tell if we are seeing the beginning of the end. Empires do fall but they can also stumble and get back up again.

On the other hand, it could be argued that Trump is not the problem but only the symptom of a deep rooted problem that has plagued the US for a long time. Only 79% of US citizens are literate [lit] with over half of Americans having a reading age worse than a 12 year old (the poor level of education in the US is evident to those of us who have interacted with many Americans on the Internet). Poverty [pov] is about 14% but social security is paid out to 27.8 million Americans to keep them out of poverty. The US also has many social problems [prob]. With internal problems such as those, one could be forgiven for thinking America is on the way out. But we will have to wait and see if this is really the end of America (personally, I'm expecting a mixed bag. Some good stuff and some bad stuff including damage done to the US and the West).

The Future is Bright

An easy life is not our friend.

It is not just the US where we find problems. We have problems the world around. Global warming (we all remember the fires in California?), resource problems, poverty, to name but a few. But could all this actually work to our advantage?

Jacque Fresco used to argue that the current system has to collapse before we can build something better but maybe we don’t have to go that far. When things are easy and we are comfortable, we tend not to want to act. Even when we see the danger before us. Global warming, for example, we have known about for over 100 years but so far haven't acted (one could argue that Trump’s government is even acting in the opposite direction to what is needed). But Trump’s government and the effects of global warming, just to name a couple of problems, are starting to make things a bit uncomfortable. That could be good. We have a potential here to move in a better direction as people might seek out alternatives to the current system. And EOS offers such a system [EOS]. The more people and the more resources we have the greater our potential becomes to build a sustainable, moneyless, "Star Trek" world. At the very least, we could start building a Foundation for the future to act as seeds for a brighter future. So, if we are seeing the end of the US and the collapse of the West, we could also, potentially, be seeing the start of a brighter future. Trump could be the catalyst that we need. The potential is there but we need to make it happen. We need to act. Will we? If we don't, we will only have ourselves to blame.

"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." - Those Who Remain by G. Michael Hopf,

 

References

[DNI] https://democrats.org/news/tulsi-gabbard-is-a-threat-to-americas-national-security/

[ph] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/pete-hegseth-5-controversial-facts-about-the-new-us-secretary-of-defense/articleshow/117542597.cms?from=mdr

[sup] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/09/trumps-approval-rating-at-53-in-new-poll-but-americans-are-less-sure-about-elon-musk/

[rus] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/12/trump-russia-putin-fbi

[cn] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/trumps-executive-order-anti-christian-bias

[cm] https://medium.com/backyard-theology/christianitys-love-of-money-ed6cd56a5e97

[cn2] https://www.johnwhitsett.com/blog/authentic-christianity-versus-christian-nationalism 

[war] https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2014086/donald-trump-making-world-war

[failed] https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-america-failed-democracy/

[end] https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/10/trump-act-ii-spells-the-end-of-the-american-empire/

[lit] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

[pov] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-283.html

[EOS] https://eosprojects.com/

[prob] https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/examples-of-social-issues-in-the-us/

More Time To be Human

I made a video about the futuer ...

Second Life Sci-Fi Convention 5

I did a talk on Saturday on the Venus Project called "The Venus Project and Beyond". The talk cover the Venus Project (TVP) and then looked at how we can transition from today's money based socioeconomic system to a future moneyless system. I talked about the Venus Project architecture that covered the city design, going out into space and cities in the sea as well as looking at the transport systems and the idea of a computer controlled civilisation. The architecture part of TVP probably comes over as the main part of TVP as it makes such a visual impression. However, I think the Resource Based Economy forms the real core of TVP and I talked about that as well. I also include in that part the idea of intelligent management of resources.

For the second part of the talk I went over EOS's idea for a transition called Stepping Stones. The ideas involves phasing from today's socioeconomic system to tomorrows moneyless system through building a network of communities, step by step, rather than just jumping into a moneyless system. Stepping stones would also give us an opportunity to experiment and test out much of the ideas. I then presented what we have done so far, especially regarding the bio-dome project in Umeå and building the technate.

I had a small audience at the talk but they took a strong interest in the subject and we had a good talk afterwards on some of the technical details of TVP.

You can find out more about TVP here. TVP and EOS has a lot of overlaps with our ideas but we also have some differences. You can find out more about EOS's design for a future moneyless socioeconomic system here. Read more about Stepping Stones here. The bio-dome project has a blog here. And the technate has a homepage here.

Me at SLSFC 5. Other speakers included  
Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica) 
Garrett Wang (Star Trek: Voyager) 
Gabriel Koerner (Trekkies) 
Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek: The Next Generation) 
"Rod" Roddenberry (Trek Nation).

Me at the start of the talk. Behind my av you can see a RL
picture of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows with the RL me.

The first few people started to arrive.

Me talking to the audience.

Most of the audience

Me with a friend of mine; Khannea Suntzu.

Thanks to the people at SLSFC5 and those who invited me.

Seeing Like a State - EOS and TVP

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.

Zeitgeist III - Moving Forward

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.

The Venus Project to come to Sweden

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.

Visit to London

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

Off to England!

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.

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