Main menu
You are here
Reframing the 2052 Report through imaginative inquiry
Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present: Review of a report to the Club of Rome (Part #13)
[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]
Engagement with the Report: Given the preceding arguments, how is it appropriate to engage with the 2052 Report? Of particular relevance is the affirmation above of Akhtar Badshah (Reimagining the World: we are at the Center of Information Flow, Microsoft Corporate Citizenship, 18 April 2011):
We are no longer at the end of the information flow pipe as consumers of information rather we are at the center of information flow. We are both creators and consumers of information and actively adding to the body of knowledge.
For recipients, is the engagement only a passive one, within the conventional framework within which the 2052 Report was presented -- at the end of an "information pipeline" organized by the Club of Rome? Or is it appropriate to make of that 2052 Report whatever enables a greater capacity to engage with the future -- however it can be creatively and fruitfully imagined? How can it be "activated" as a catalyst, as previously argued (In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007)?
Reframing the Report through metaphor: One approach is that of Gareth Morgan (Images of Organization, 1986/2007) who focused on organizations as variously machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, as well as in terms of flux. The 2052 Report, and the world it foresees, could be explored through these various metaphorical lenses.
Some would readily see the report as a psychic prison -- especially with the constructional implications of "forecast".
Metaphoric templates from the Report: Another approach is to use the dimensions it highlights as metaphoric templates to re-imagine the emerging world -- also to be recognized as a global knowledge society, much characterized by dematerialisation. In this sense the tangibles, on which the 2052 Report focuses in measuring the measurable, need to be seen as implying intangibles -- of which the tangibles may only be a particular manifestation. This goes beyond the section of the report on The Nonmaterial Future to 2052 which limits its concern to: Milder push against global limits, Slower growth in productivity, Tensions from declining consumption, Prevalence of short-termism, Stronger government, Forced redistribution, Megacity environment, Internalization of the environment, Omnipresent Internet, Disappearing charms (for tourism), Better health, Armed forces fighting new threats.
Systemic isomorphism between tangibles and intangibles? The core of the report (Chapters 4, 5, and 6) focuses on the systemic relationships between a set of tangibles using adaptations of the approach developed for Limits to Growth and its updates (1992, 2004). That approach is elaborated in terms of the parameters in the left-hand column of the following table. In the spirit of the argument above, these have been tentatively "translated" (into the right-hand column) according to the tentative approach previously used more specifically with respect to the original world dynamics parameters (Terms in psychological systems corresponding to those used in the model of the world system, 1971).
| Tangibles in a global limited-to-growth economy focused on material goods and welfare (as articulated in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the 2052 Report) | Intangibles in a global knowledge-based society focused on immaterial goods and well-being (using the 2052 Report as a metaphoric template) |
| 1. Global population | 1. Total population of identities, whether attributed to physical people, groups, virtual entities, robots, pets, or cultural artefacts |
| 2. Potential workforce | 2. Entities potentially employed in work cycles, whether for their own benefit or for those of others in different space-time frameworks |
| 3. Gross labor productivity | 3. Creativity of entities in augmenting the collective wealth of society, including creativity for its own sake or for appreciation in other contexts |
| 4. Annual production (i.e., GDP) | 4. Creativity in a given cycle, including that contributing to intangible benefits (such as Gross Domestic Happiness) |
| 5. Investment | 5. Intellectual and emotional energy invested in long-term activities; commitment to "rationalized" behaviour patterns. |
| 6. Consumption | 6. Utilization of creativity of other entities (such as to engender waste, requiring recycling) |
| 7. Consumption per person | 7. Utilization of creativity per entity |
| 8. Energy use | 8. Psychosocial energy usage (such as to constitute a drain on collective resources, requiring regeneration) |
| 9. Variety of energy sources | 9. Variety of sources of psychosocial energy (and the relative dependence on each such resource) |
| 10. CO2 emissions | 10. Emissions of information (requiring absorption to avoid overheating of the global psychosocial system) |
| 11. Concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere | 11. Concentration of emissions polluting the noosphere |
| 12. Food production | 12. Production of nourishment within the global psychosocial system |
| 13. Net climate effect on food production | 13. Effect of overheating of the psychosocial system on global production of nourishment |
| 14. Unused biocapacity | 14. Unused capacity of the psychosocial system and the noosphere (allowing for preservation of the psychosocial wilderness areas) |
These 14 parameters could be mapped onto a suitable polyhedron as a means of configuring them to highlight the coherence of the system they represent. This approach follows from arguments developed separately (Towards Polyhedral Global Governance: complexifying oversimplistic strategic metaphors, 2008; Polyhedral Pattern Language: software facilitation of emergence, representation and transformation of psycho-social organization, 2008).
| Mapping of tangible factors of the 2052 Report onto faces of a cuboctahedron (Images below generated with Stella Polyhedron Navigator) |
 |
A similar approach was used with respect to the strategic dilemmas apparent on the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), as described separately (Configuring Globally and Contending Locally: shaping the global network of local bargains by decoding and mapping Earth Summit inter-sectoral issues, 1992). The issues were mapped onto an icosidodecahedral net.
Insights from the "glimpses" for a knowledge-based society: The left-hand column of the above table corresponds to the core framework of the 2052 Report -- its socio-economic centre of gravity as widely publicised. However the "glimpses" interspersed throughout the report can (in many instances) be understood as the "glimpses of humanity" which are not integrated into that systemic framework.
A similar approach to that in the table above can then be adopted with respect to a "transposition" from the more tangible societal focus, as elaborated in the report, to an intangible focus -- implying a fundamental shift in collective cognitive centre of gravity. This corresponds to an exploration of the biblical sense that: Man shall not live by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8: 2-3; Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4).
The 34 glimpses in the left-hand column are "imaginatively" transformed into corresponding glimpses of relevance to a knowledge-based society in the right-hand column -- one in which dematerialisation in the economic sense is a significant factor. For the purposes of the exercise which follows, in the light of the cybernetic methodology of Stafford Beer (as mentioned above), the number of glimpses is collapsed from 34 to 30.
| 34 Glimpses by eminent specialists as offered by the 2052 Report | 30 Glimpses imaginatively reframed (tentatively) as fundamental to dematerialisation in a knowledge-society |
|
|
As above, the 30 "glimpses" may be variously mapped onto polyhedra -- much as different projections are used to map the surface of the globe. Of relevance to the above-mentioned choice of paradigm in developing a global model, such map projections involve a process of choosing a model for the shape of the Earth. Among the many projections, an interesting bridge between the two considerations is the Dymaxion polyhedral map of R. Buckminster Fuller -- especially in the light of his exploration of the implications of the transformation between the cuboctahedron above and the icosahedron below, as separately discussed (Vector Equilibrium and its Transformation Pathways, 1980). In the first instance below, following Stafford Beer (as mentioned above), the glimpses are mapped onto an icosahedron -- one edge per glimpse. Circumferential circles can be introduced to suggest the nature of the glimpses as phases in "songlines".
| Mapping of 30 glimpses onto the 30 edges of an icosahedron | |
 |  |
In the following images, the 30 "glimpses" are mapped onto the vertices of an icosidodecahedron, one glimpse per vertex -- with selected faced rendered transparent in the two examples. In relation to the songline metaphor, the relative prominence of the glimpses so mapped allows them to be understood as "sacred sights".
| Mapping of 30 glimpses onto the 30 vertices of an icosidodecahedron | |
 |  |
***
| Perchance to Dream in anticipation of collapse of global civilizational life as it is currently known ("To be or not to be" is the well-known phrase of a soliloquy in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. | |
| To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes Calamity of so long life: | For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time, The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely, The pangs of despised Love, the Law's delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of. |
[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
For further updates on this site, subscribe here