Re: Some Thoughts From Can America Survive
Thomas Lunde wrote: The Internet gives the tradional and eccentric, the conventional and the doomsayer a forum for discussion. Is this not futurework? As each of us read - and agree or not with each posting, are we not retraining ourselves for some valuable but yet unseen futurework? I believe we are. I made a similar point in a previous post: Others who are retired find a useful outlet for pent-up energies and frustrations by exploiting the internet. In that process valuable skills are being acquired, but who thinks of that? Suddenly one may awaken and realize: Hey, I'm a webmaster! There are probably numerous instances of hobbies, volunteering, etc. being turned into full-time or part-time jobs. This sort of thing also occurs during a full-time occupation and can result in the founding of a new business. This process may also be related to invention - the sudden insight that emerges from the juxtaposition of often unrelated ideas and leads to a new product or social innovation. -- http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
Some Thoughts From Can America Survive
Unless a solution is found to the problem of disposing of nuclear waste, continued use of fission is causing an environmental disaster of large proportions. In fact, because the cost of eliminating the radioactive waste (or storing it for thousands of years) is not known, it is not known whether nuclear fission has an energy yield of greater than one. It may well be the case that the current generation is imposing on future generations an energy cost (for storage of radioactive waste from nuclear fission) that far exceeds the amount of energy that we are obtaining from nuclear fission. Mankind¹s current generation has clearly discounted the cost to future generations to essentially zero, or it would not use nuclear fission until a method was found for eliminating the radioactive waste. Of course, this would not be the first time that a human generation has totally disregarded the welfare of future generations. The present generation of human beings is in the process of depleting all of the world¹s natural gas and oil, and much of its coal. These fuels are obviously of high value and are irreplaceable once they are gone they are gone forever. The present generation does not care a whit about the fact that it is denying them to all future generations, forever. The same is true of species that it exterminates. They are gone forever. The current generation of human beings is in the process of making the planet totally uninhabitable for all future generations. The industrialized human species economic man is morally bankrupt. It is ravaging the planet, consuming all of its wealth as rapidly as it can, all in the interest of making a fast buck, regardless of the consequences to other species or even later generations of its own. It is a cancer on the planet, devouring its bounty and beauty, destroying an exquisite balance of nature that has lasted for eons, and leaving in its wake a ravaged planet infected with radioactive and toxic waste, polluted lakes, rivers, and seas, decimated forests, extinguished species, and a poisoned atmosphere. Thomas: My, my, he does wax eloquent - but is he right? It's a change of perspective isn't it. If your focus is on cheap energy then his are the ravings of an idiot who wants to curtail a vital civic need, ie cheap energy. If your focus is economic and cheap energy is needed for industrial growth, then his is a dangerous voice. But - what if his perspective is the correct assessment? Then cheap energy and industrial growth become ills equal to genocide or germ warfare. What if the correct viewpoint is sustainability rather than growth. Then, we are following Hitler, following policies that will exterminate the human race, rather than just the Jewish race. On FutureWork, our topic is work - which we, along with the rest of society assume is essential for survival. But what if work is the path to no survival? Are we then not philosophers arguing over how many needles can fit on the head of a pin, without asking what the purpose of the argument is? When we examine work, which surprisingly enough we do, in my opinion, in the most eclectic of fashions, all sorts of presuppositions, myths, assumptions, verities, facts and truths come to light before our collective minds and various experiences and learnings. The Internet gives the tradional and eccentric, the conventional and the doomsayer a forum for discussion. Is this not futurework? As each of us read - and agree or not with each posting, are we not retraining ourselves for some valuable but yet unseen futurework? I believe we are. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde ?
Re: Some Thoughts From Can America Survive
Thank you Thomas for thoughtfully restating some of the questions that I have tried to ask during my three years on this list. Attention to the quality and durability of human societies demands that jobs/work not be bound by traditional economic definitions. Steve (excerpt) Thomas Lunde: But - what if his perspective is the correct assessment? Then cheap energy and industrial growth become ills equal to genocide or germ warfare. What if the correct viewpoint is sustainability rather than growth. Then, we are following Hitler, following policies that will exterminate the human race, rather than just the Jewish race. On FutureWork, our topic is work - which we, along with the rest of society assume is essential for survival. But what if work is the path to no survival? Are we then not philosophers arguing over how many needles can fit on the head of a pin, without asking what the purpose of the argument is? When we examine work, which surprisingly enough we do, in my opinion, in the most eclectic of fashions, all sorts of presuppositions, myths, assumptions, verities, facts and truths come to light before our collective minds and various experiences and learnings. The Internet gives the tradional and eccentric, the conventional and the doomsayer a forum for discussion. Is this not futurework? As each of us read - and agree or not with each posting, are we not retraining ourselves for some valuable but yet unseen futurework? I believe we are.
Re: Some thoughts on one of the threads
(Thomas:) It was the last sentence that resonated within me. I have long felt that we deny ourselves one of our birthrights - indolence and unemployment. I enjoy immensely - doing little or nothing and I enjoy immensely - the pleasure of following my impulses. Work and employment destroy those natural human attributes and make them into leisure activities that can only be indulged in after worshipping at the alter of employment. Biologically, I think we are not workers, but livers of life. I for one, welcome a future of leisure and indolence. ... I wonder what you mean by doing nothing. Reading, arguing on the internet (education and educating) used to be classified as work, even if some people enjoyed it. Some people get paid for doing physical or mental exercise. Spending time with your loved ones is part of looking after their physical/mental well-being - that is defined as work rhese days. I suppose sitting in front of the telly without any communication to other humans or snoozing under the sun in the garden or just sleeping all the time counts as doing nothing, but I haven't yet met people who could do these exclusively. Eva
Re: Some thoughts on one of the threads
Brian McAndrews wrote: As I've mentioned before on this list, all of Ivan Illich's books (eg. Deschooling Society, Medical Nemesis, Shadow Work, Tools for Conviviality, ..) would enlighten our discussions. Pertinent to this thread I'd suggest Illich's 'The Right to Useful Unemployment and its Professional Enemies'. Quite. Read most of 'em. A couple of relevant URLs are: The Abolition of Work http://wickedmoon.com/abolish.txt Idle Theory http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.davis/idle/evolution/human/index.html On the other hand, there's a Biblical view: Some thoughts on idleness: http://www.ronan.net/~montexn/idleness.html Bob -- ___ http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
Re: Some Thoughts
Dear Heiner: Sorry for not including the original post of yours from which I got the URL to Peter's web page at www.metaself.org/. So here is your orginal post and the URL's should anyone else want to read them. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde YOU REALLY HAVE AN INTERSTING LIST THERE: "Culture and Future! I would like to make you aware of http://www.metaself.org/ maybe you start with: A Metaphor Model of the Self http://www.metaself.org/model/ Social Relationships and Virtues http://www.metaself.org/model/2realm.html this are the basics I fully subscribe to and can recommend after reading night and day. It is the basic building block also to my work and I would have loved to haveit 8 years ago. WE CAN BRIDGE NOW THE CANYON and GO BEYOND WORDS AND LANGUAGES! Heiner - SHARING FUTURES http://newciv.org/cob/members/benking/ WHAT IS NEW !?: ON CREATIVITY UNDERSTANDING http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/landscape.htm http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/visual/visualization.htm http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/isss98/house-of-eyes.htm ** Wisdom, imagination and virtue is lost when messages double, information halves, knowledge quarters,... ** -Original Message- From: Heiner Benking [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Thomas Lunde [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: September 6, 1998 11:04 AM Subject: Re: Some Thoughts which Peter do you refer to and which message from him, I feel I am in poyaesthetic multi-sensorial work and so I would love to follow up. Heiner Thomas Lunde wrote: Dear Peter: Your website was refered to me by Heiner Benking on a posting to FutureWork. I don't know if you are familiar with the work done by Bandler and Grinder and others with a discipline called NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). If not, you might find some interesting ideas regarding people who view the world from different perspectives. A small number of classes have emerged such as tactile, feeling, visual, auditory and how in language, each class identifies itself with the predicates and metaphors it uses to describe reality. Don't have time to go into examples, but a web search on NLP will turn up a ton of resources. Good work, good observations, in my opinion you can contribute to work that has already progressed quite a way in this direction. If you have a mailing list for future observations, I would be interested in being included, perception is one of my strong interests. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde -- SHARING FUTURES http://newciv.org/cob/members/benking/ times, spaces, voices, views, values,.. in SHARED PERSPECTIVE Voice: +49 731 501 -910 FAX -929 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Heiner BENKING, PoBox 2060,D- 89010 Ulm,GERMANY WHAT IS NEW !?:ON DIALOGUE http://ciiiweb.ijs.si/dialogues/page1.htm http://www.uia.org/dialogue/webdial.htm http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/dialogue-culture.htm http://www3.informatik.uni-erlangen.de:1200/Staff/graham/benking/voicetxt.h tml WHAT IS NEW !?: ON CREATIVITY UNDERSTANDING http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/landscape.htm http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/visual/visualization.htm http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/isss98/house-of-eyes.htm ** Wisdom, imagination and virtue is lost when messages double, information halves, knowledge quarters,... **
Some Thoughts on The Future of the UN/UNDP
This was originally sent as a contribution to a UNDP sponsored list discussing its post 2000 future. M -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 10:19:36 -0300 (ADT) From: Michael Gurstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Some Thoughts on The Future So far, I think, the discussion on this (the UNDP-Future) list has been directed to the first two of the questions posed in the welcome message i.e.: "* what UNDP has done and is doing well, including concrete examples of good practices * where improvements can be made, including concrete examples of efforts that failed to achieve their goals" I would like briefly to address the second two issue areas that our hosts presented to us: "* the future of development cooperation, and what UNDP's role and orientation should be as we enter the new millennium * what concrete steps can UNDP take to effectively use new electronic information and communications technologies to support sustainable development". Briefly, to introduce myself, I have been an occasional consultant to the UNDP, I'm a former Management Adviser with the UN Secretariat, and currently I'm an academic working on how to use ICT to support local economic development. Most of the contributors to the discussion have I think, taken a "business as usual" approach to the UNDP (and by implication the UN)'s future--post 2000. But (IMHO) there are a rather significant number of circumstances, which (in no particular order) suggest that business as usual may not be the most likely scenario: Continuing and seemingly unstoppable declines in ODA budgets and overall compassion/donor fatigue The on-going impasse of the UN's financial crisis and the sapping of operational capacity and morale that is the result The spreading of the Asian financial crisis Globalization and the exacerbation of inter (and intra) national divisions of wealth The fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent discrediting (abandonment) of non-market approaches to economic development The transforming tidal wave of ICT and the "serpent in the apple"--the Y2K "bug". It is impossible to predict the impact of each of these and their interactions with each other on the UN/UNDP. However, it is evident that they present a turbulent and unstable context for the future of multi-lateralism and particularly its Aid/ODA dimension and collectively create a "crisis" for the UN/UNDP's future. Based on these, some things can be anticipated which the UNDP should be thinking about (it almost certainly is) and which it is worthwhile for us (the ODA/UNDP's interested/knowledge/sympathetic lay support community) to begin commenting on in this and other forums: There is likely to (and should) be some significant institutional re-alignments in the UN's family of aid/development-oriented agencies--UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, IFAD, and even possibly the International Financial Institutions (World Bank, Asian Development Bank etc.). A new "theory/practice" of development will have to be developed which responds to and assimilates the market and the private sector. Information technology will have to become part of what the UN/UNDP "is" and not simply something that a few parts of the organization "do" New modalities of managing and supporting national and intra-national development will need to be developed which assimilate and respond to the opportunities of the technologies, the overall decline in available resources, and the new global market frameworks and stakeholders. In the areas of my particular interests--the application of ICT to both the management and the substance of economic development there are truly dramatic opportunities for responding to the emerging environment as for example: The introduction of virtual and distance management infrastructures which would allow for both a significant decentralization of decision making authority to the field and related reductions in overhead/operational costs combined with improvements in the quality and the quantity of program activities. Assimilating and formulating the "lessons learned" from the recent practise of development, the exponentially increasing volume of technical information of interest to development practitioners and particularly those working at the grass roots, and combining these with the very low cost ICT based information management and delivery systems and more traditional methods of Distance Education and Extension to create "smart extension workers", "smart campesinos", "smart rural communities" and so on. The development of approaches to localizing control over development activities through techniques of on-line participation, information distribution, transparent management practise and so on. The use of the technologies to
