Dear Organlearners,
Bruce Jones <brucej@nwths.com> writes:
>With the explosion of the ability to post, transmit, and
>communicate effectively any and all ideas whether factually
>based or the ranting of a deviant mind, the ability to choose
>and to use becomes ever more important.
(snip)
>The last dark age was, to some extent, a time when the
>amount of information available to the masses was too
>overpowering.
(snip)
>We are at the same cross roads again. This "dark age" will only
>last a short while because we are recognizing the signs and
>symptoms earlier and are being pro-active in finding solutions.
>But until we develop the system you are talking about we are
>going to have the chaos of At and a slight halting of forward
>progress, a kind of stuttering of the time line. We are at one
>of At's bifurcation's.
Greetings Bruce,
You have made a very important connection between the information
explosion with which the Middle Age ended and the Modern Age began
through the Renaissance. Although this happened half a millenium ago,
we can learn much from it. The Renaissance was one of the most
profound bifurcations in the history of humankind.
If I have to single out the one most important factor leading to the
Renaissance, it is directly related to the information explosion in
those times. It is the inventing of the Printing Press by Johannes
Guthenberg. In a moment (relative to the long history of humankind)
printed material like pamphlets and books became abundant. Ordinary
folks became aware on an unprecedented scale of earlier civilisations
and their cultures. Many languages disappeared while some became
lingua francas overnight. Greater Europe and ALL ITS ORGANISATIONS
were flung into turmoil. Even the Chuch was not spared because the
Bible (book of books) was opened up to the non-clergy. A totally new
outlook on the universe began to emerge. The Modern Age gave its first
steps.
Relatively few people realise that we have reached the end of the
Modern Age. Ordinary folks are again experiencing an information
explosion like the one leading to the Renaissance. Whereas the former
one was made possible by the Printing Press, the present one is being
made possible by Internet. The ordinate bifurcation which will affect
all of humankind has already begun. Will it lead to a destructive
immergence or a constructive emergence?
The book Revelations in the Bible tells about an ordinate bifurcation
which will end the present dispensation. Unlike previous bifurcations
affecting the whole of humankind, the apocalyptic one will lead to an
unprecedented immergence. Is the present bifurcation that ghastly
apocalyptic one? I do not think so. There are too many things not yet
in existence or not in place or absent for that final bifurcation to
happen. For example, we still have freedom of expression and we have
not yet come into need for horses again.
Each of us will have to make a choice, either for an emergence or for
an immergence. The whole of our future behaviour will depend on this
choice. In the next couple of decades the world will change as never
before. The change will be an emergence for humankind. But for many
individuals and even mighty multinational corporations, the change
will be an immergence depending on the choice which they will make.
Consider for example the Hansa Leaque at the end of the Middle Age
which operated in the northern countries of Europe. It was one of the
most powerful economic forces in the world. Yet, with the coming of
the Renaissance it ceased to exist.
No one of us, individually or collectively, can choose an emergence and
still resist the necessary and sufficient conditions for an emergence.
What are these conditions? I believe that the necessary conditions are
what I call the dynamics (content) of creativity while the sufficient
conditions concerns the mechanics (form) of creativity. It is what I have
been trying to tell you about the past couple of years, involving
frightening concepts like entropy production and the seven essentialities.
Others try to articulate the emergence differently. Some even insist that
we merely have to ride it because we will never be able to understand it.
My advice is to study all possible articulations and then follow your gut
feeling.
What will be the characterestics of the New Age which we are about to
enter? It is very difficult to say. Why? We are not even sure what the
main characterestics of the five centuries of Modern Age are! If I
have to single out one characterestic, it is the development of
technology -- tools or machines to help us to do our jobs better or
even to do our jobs for us.
It does not mean that humans did not make tools before the Modern Age.
The creating of tools is about as ancient as the creating of language,
going back almost ten millenia.
It also does not mean that technology will cease to be essential in
the New Age. We rather have to realise that the main characterestics
of the New Age will differ as much from the Modern Age as those form
the Modern Age differed from the Middle Age. I have often stressed in
our dialogues that the most profound way in which any emergence
differs from its history is that it is asymmetrical and transitive.
Thus, although the development of technology was the leading force in
the Modern Age, it will not be so in the New Age. Is it not a shocking
statement since everybody now wants to ride the bandwagon called
technology? No. For example, when everybody tells anybody to buy in on
the stock market, it is time to sell all your shares and begin with a
new investment, waiting for the stock market to crash and recouperate.
So what will characterise the New Age -- what will be its leading
force? I am very tempted to try and answer this question, but I am
more interested in reading your answers. But I will give you one clue
having to do with time in widest sense. Study the history of humankind
since times immemorial. Observe how your prefered candidate developed
though this entire history, empowering humans at large. If it had made
sudden jump in importance, it will not so do again. (For example, Homo
erectus which acted by instincts emerged to Homo sapiens acting by
thoughts so that rationality became the leading force. The Bible tells
us that rationality will remain with us in the new dispentation, but a
new leading force will emerge, namely love.) Rather try to make
provision for a rapid complexification of your candidate in the New
Age. Then consider other possible candidates and do the same. The
answer will come to you.
The correct anticipation of the future -- times which will surely
come -- is one of the important tasks of learning individuals and
learning organisations alike. No one of us can escape the arrow of
time. This a lesson which many people in South Africa are now learning
because of the complexity of the emergence from the old apartheid era.
In many respects we are actually experiencing immergences because the
change was forced upon South Africans by the rest of the world rather
than them promoting a spontaneous change. Hundreds of thousands of my
own people have immigrated the past four years to escape these
immergences, believing that it will not occur in the country of their
destination. Despite these horrible immergences, I wish you could have
had the South African experience in your own country. This experience
is necessary for your tacit, formal and sapient knowledge to develop.
Text books cannot provide for such experiences. The better you
understand this bifurcation which is involving all of humankind, the
better you will be able to follow the arrow of time.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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