Cities of the Future

New video

I have done a quite a bit over the last few months, even if I haven't written here much! I of the things I did involved making a video for the bio-dome project. And you can see it here:

Surface tension (it's the music)

Authoritative and Authoritarian; what's the difference?

I have heard comments against the proposal we have for a sustainable socioeconomic system that it has an authoritarian characteristic. To me, that suggests that people either don’t understand our proposal or they don’t understand what the word “authoritarian” means or perhaps they have some other agenda? Either way, I thought I would go through this again and highlight our system as compared to an authoritarian system.

The socioeconomic system that we propose falls within the classification of authoritative but not authoritarian. Both systems rely on authorities and both systems have rules, so, to some degree I can understand why people might get confused, especially if they just take a quick look. So, how do the two systems differ?

In an authoritarian system you do what the authority tells you to do because they have the authority. You can’t question the authority. Authoritarian governments tend to have a centralised characteristic and uses force to enforce the decisions of the authority. Examples of authoritarian governments include Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Iran.

In an authoritative system the authorities have their position because they have knowledge or expertise in a given area. In a complex system, no one person will have knowledge or expertise on every aspect of society but some people will know a lot about a certain part of society. This leads to a distributed system of government made up of multiple authorities (in direct contrast to an authoritarian form of government). So, people do what a given authority says not as a result of force or through fear but as a result of mutual respect; they acknowledge that that authority knows more about the subject than they do and the best course of action means following the authorities instructions.

In an authoritative system you can also question the authority and the authority listens to the people. If people can object in a rational way with supporting evidence the author could even change its advice. Also, due to the distributed nature of an authoritative system, you also have multiple authorities to go to; if you disagree (and in an authoritative system you can disagree and even disobey the authority but in doing so you follow the less optimal path) with any one of them, ask another.

Authoritative systems also have a characteristic of openness. They don’t just say “do this” but they also say why and support their decision with evidence. Other authorities can review the authority in an open peer to peer review process.  So, the system also has a self-checking nature.

Today we have no really good examples of an authoritative form of government but you can get some idea of how such a system could work and how it differs from an authoritarian system if you look at authoritative parenting. 

http://psychology.about.com/od/childcare/f/authoritative-parenting.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles#Authoritative_parenting

http://www.parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style.html

Bio-Dome meeting

I finally got to a bio-dome meeting. The Umeå bio-dome project aims to build a 10m diameter geodesic dome for growing crops in an aquaponics system. In addition to actually building a dome I'm also interested in this project as it could lay the foundations for an experimental sustainable community. community.

During the meeting we had a presentation from Alex on the project and we discussed funding and some of the technical issues for the dome.

Alex gets ready for to give the presentation

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.

in the goldfish bowl!

I had an odd experience on Thursday last. I got an invite to give a talk in the Glass House in Umeå. The "glass house" refers to a not very large oblong glass building in the town centre. The building has enough room for a few people but the "audience" sits outside the building. So, when I gave my talk it felt a bit like standing in a goldfish bowl where people looked in on me talking. I did a talk called "Imagine people, places and communities: a vision for the future" (the same talk I gave at the imagine festival) in conjunction with the Umeå bio-dome group that EOS has helped to fund. We had a few interesting people inside the glass house to talk to afterwards, including one guy for the occupy movement.

The mini geodesic dome

A little poster for my talk

The aquaponics system

Citizen Cards

Citizen Cards are ready to go. If you would like one email board@technate.eu with passport size photo, your full name and area of expertise. The plastic card version will cosy 11.75 USD + p&p. The print your own paper version is free.

The card will also include a QR code that will link up to the new energy accounting site when it comes on line.

You can get a card even if you are not a member of EOS.

When I have a few I will order the cards.

(For an explanation see: The Design, page 147)

Example :