Two-D projection: Exemplifying the nature of cognitive flatland

Mind Map of Global Civilizational Collapse (Part #2)

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

This is a map of global civilizational collapse ! Indicative configuration of factors undermining fruitful action

The above image follows from previous experiments in offering a single image, notably as presented in:

• Mapping the Global Underground: articulating Insightful Population Constraint Consideration (IPCC) (2010)
• Recognizing the Psychosocial Boundaries of Remedial Action: constraints on ensuring a safe operating space for humanity (2009)

Missing from the image are dependency relationships between the points to show how one condition aggravates another. However inclusion of such relationships is a simple educational exercise in which many would be happy to indulge -- especially to reflect their biases. A more complex variant of this exercise resulted in the massive online databases of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (commentary). These take better account of the variety of perspectives but raise the question of how to cluster such a variety of contrary perspectives in a single map -- of which the above is but an indicative example (and necessarily provocative). Also missing from the above image is any attempt to cluster related points within it in order to offer further insight.

Some more complex possibilities have been explored with respect to that Encyclopedia initiative:

• Experimental SVG Representations of Entity Interrelationships (2007)
• Preliminary NetMap Studies of Databases on Questions, World Problems, Global Strategies, and Values (2006)
• Simulating a Global Brain using networks of international organizations, world problems, strategies, and values (2001)

Will the projected "Living Earth Simulator", of the FuturIcT EU research initiative -- a 10 year 1 billion EUR program "to explore social life on earth and everything it relates to" -- offer more comprehensible maps of relevance to governance than those of the Limits to Growth project in 1972 (Social Supercomputing Is Now, Science News Online, 26 May 2010)? If not, will the simulation be able to show why not -- in the light of issues discussed separately (Considering All the Strategic Options: whilst ignoring alternatives and disclaiming cognitive protectionism? 2009)?

Will that simulation be able "explain" the deprecation of the relevance of that initiative to governance, as reviewed by Graham Turner (A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality, 2007)? Will it be able to take account of the sociopathological issues raised from a cybernetic perspective by Maurice Yolles, et al. (Toward a formal theory of socioculture: a yin-yang information-based theory of social change. Kybernetes, 2008)? What are the implications of despair for global governance (Implication of Personal Despair in Planetary Despair, 2010)?

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]