Recognition of Rubik's Cube as a relevant strategic development metaphor

Interplay of Sustainable Development Goals through Rubik Cube Variations (Part #2)

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

The metaphor offered by Rubik's Cube was used by Heiner Benking to develop a 7x7 "Rubik's Cube of Ecology" in 1990 (as part of the Global Change touring exhibition) as a means of explaining the nature of integration and of developing a framework for co-ordination and harmonisation across various fields, areas, regions, disciplines and domains (Visual Access Strategies for Multi-Dimensional Objects and Issues, WFSF/FAW, 1993; The Hyperlink ECO-CUBE: a central piece of a knowledge panorama for clearinghouse organisation and (environmental) education, 1994). It was designed to offer a new world view, using a hyperlinked Eco-Cube, for better understanding and communication about multi-disciplines like ecology.

Views of the Eco-Cube (as developed by Heiner Benking)

As discussed separately (Pointers to possibilities: Ekistics, Dymaxion World and Eco-Cube, 2010). the Eco-Cube is reminiscent of the Ekistics Grid developed by Constantinos Doxiadis as a framework for organizing information relevant to ekistics as the science of human settlements.  This has been used to further develop ekistic concepts, and also in the application to practical problems. Such a grid display any component within two dimensions at a point of intersection of abscissa and ordinate The abscissa of ekistic units remained constant in all uses of the ekistic grid, and the most usual ordinate consisted of the five ekistic elements: Nature, Anthropos (Man), Society, Shells (dwellings or buildings), and Networks, with a sixth line denoting their Synthesis.

Extensive use of Rubik's Cube as a metaphor has recently been made with regard to strategies relating to sustainable development -- but with little effort to construct such a cube as a guide to what it might enable:

• climate change: In a description of the UN Climate Change Conference, Mike Hulme argues: The world arrived at Copenhagen with a Rubik's cube climate-change puzzle containing just too many dimensions to be solved (Moving Beyond Climate Change, Environment: science and policy for sustainable development, May-June 2010). See also: Gregory Briner, Mitigation: Solving the Rubik's cube of climate change, OECD Observer, November 2015; Steve Waters, Contingency Plan and the Rubik's Cube of climate change, The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, 20 November 2009.
  
  
• water cooperation and security: Anders Jägerskog et al. (Transboundary Water Cooperation: a Rubik's Cube, 2013) and V. Stucki, et al. (Water and security in Central Asia: solving a Rubik's Cube, 2013)
  
  
• health: A presentation to a Global Health Practitioners Conference (theme: Achieving Health for All by Multidimensional Approaches) by Ester Indriani and Lee Po Cha (Multi-dimensional Programming: the Rubik's Cube challenge to community health, Portland, 2016) argues that so many models and frameworks have been tried, but concludes that these are "too flat" to capture the dynamics, relationships, and movement. Arguing for a Rubik-style cube, the question is how has it been solved/built, what was missed, and how does it looks to you: what are the facets of your cube?
  
  
• women and children: The "SDGs Rubik's Cube" featured as a metaphor in a UN High-level Political Forum on the theme Every Woman Every Child (New York, July 2016) with respect to the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health and related Sustainable Development Goals. The panelist, Margaret Batty, subsequently argued the relevance in some detail (The Rubik's Cube of the UN Global Goals, The Huffington Post, 29 August 2016).
  
  
• sustainable food security: As proposed in a course promoted as Learn how to solve the 'Rubik's cube' of systems thinking and how it's applied to improve the environmental sustainability of food production systems (Sustainable Food Security: the value of systems thinking, Wageningen University)
  
  
• poverty alleviation: As described in an interview, new models put together poverty, environment, and culture using the metaphor of a Rubik's cube to illustrate all the different options (Steven J. Lade, et al. (Resilience offers escape from trapped thinking on poverty alleviation, Science Advances, 3, 2017)
  
  
• communication systems: At a conference on broadband communication in Europe, in the country from which Rubik's Cube originated, cube offered during the conference as a gift to every participant was seen as a great image applicable for broadband development in Europe. As noted in that respect: Europe has all the items to be successful in Broadband development for the future, but the key is how to associate and foster in the right way all the different elements in order to avoid to get a unassembled patchwork. An inadequate management of potential options and solutions has the serious risk to make Europe loose the Broadband train for the future. (Broadband for all: the right Rubik's cube to achieve, Telefonica, 11 March 2011)
  
  
• sustainable economy: As noted by Adam Stones: ... the systems that guide our lives - whether that's a city, a society or sector - are like the coloured squares on a Rubik's cube. Try and fix one of them that is out of place alone and you will never solve the problem; in fact you will cause unintended disruption elsewhere. You have to look at the whole puzzle. Even the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can only become effective if we apply systems thinking (Is this the year the world wakes up to the Circular Economy? Metabolic Quarterly)
  
  
• environmental sustainability: For J. B. Ruhl: Working on sustainable development will be difficult, tricky, and frustrating. Like the Rubik's cube, when it looks like one side of sustainable development is coming together, we may find the other sides are no further along or even more out of order. Unlike the Rubik's cube, however, there is no end point for sustainable development -- we don't "solve" it. At best, we develop policy approaches that keep the cube in play (Law for Sustainable Development: Work Continues on the Rubik's Cube, Tulsa Law Review, 44, 2013, 1).
  
  
• land degradation: Multiple demands, multiple perspectives, one fixed land base. It's like holding a Rubik's Cube. A jumble of multiple demands and perspectives on land. Right at a time when foreign investment in land is booming. When food security is a recur ring concern. When land can provide around 40% of near-term climate change mitigation. We have to work on the whole Rubik's Cube. There's no point getting one face of the cube nicely aligned with the same colour if in the process you mess up all the other faces. And it's going to get more difficult in the decades ahead. We can no longer think only at the national scale. In a globalised and shrunken world, global land use must add up to less than one planet. (The Rubik's Cube of Land cited in Zero Net Land Degradation: a sustainable development goal to Rio+20, UNCCD Secretariat Recommendations for Policymakers, May 2012)
  
  
• sustainable business: James Crowley and Cristina Alzaga (Connecting Business and Development: the "Rubik's Cube" of cross sector collaboration, Crowley Institute, 2009)
  
  
• tax reform: With the aid of a surprising animation, Neil Irwin argues: What makes trying to solve a Rubik's Cube so exasperating is that every rotation you make to align the colors on one side messes up something on one of the other sides. Nothing moves in isolation; everything affects everything else, and rarely for the better. (Can Trump and Congress Solve the Rubik's Cube of Tax Reform? The New York Times, 11 April 2017)
  
  
• inequality and power: As summarized by its originators: One of the unique characteristics of the power cube approach is the interactivity of its various dimensions, where configurations of power are shaped by the interplay of the forms, levels and spaces of power. As argued previously: '[W]ith this more complex approach, the three dimensions of power elaborated by Lukes may be seen as three forms of power along a single dimension or continuum. By thinking of the levels of power and the spaces of power also as dimensions, or continua, each of which interacts with the other, we can visually understand power as a sort of Rubik's cube'... which we have called the power cube. (John Gaventa and Bruno Martorano, Inequality, Power and Participation: revisiting the links, IDS Bulletin, 47, 2016, 5)
  
  
• urban quality of life: (Alexander G. Keul, et al, Urban Quality of Life: a Rubik Cube of objective and subjective descriptors, Momentum Quarterly, 6, 2017)
  
  
• human psychology: A critique of the fragmentation of psychology as a discipline argues that: Carving up psychology at its joints results in a Rubik's Cube of 27 subfields (Axel Cleeremans, The Grand Challenge for Psychology: Integrate and Fire! Frontiers in Psychology, 2010). The metaphor has been used with respect to the social scinces in general (Herman van der Merwe, Social sciences: the Rubik's Cube of humanity, Northwest University News, 29 March 2017).
  
  
• terrorism: Citing an earlier study using the image of Rubik's Cube, Diane Perlman notes: If we focus on solving one facet of the problem, trying to get one side of the cube all red, for example, we actually set back the solution of the problem as a whole. Our intense approach to counterterrorism is like working on one facet of the Rubik's Cube (The Psychology of Terrorism: a public understanding, 2002, p. 36). And, in a similar vein, Richard North Patterson (North Korea is Trump's nuclear Rubik's Cube, The Boston Globe, 21 March 2017)
  
  
• innovation: The Manifesto for Creativity and Innovation in Europe is considered one of the key outcomes of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 (Rubik's cube and EU Politics: the Manifesto for Creativity and Innovation in Europe, Europa, 12 February 2010). Emblematic of that creativity, a cube was presented to the president of the European Commission by its inventor Ernö Rubik who had been named an Ambassador of the Year.

The potential of Rubik's Cube in relation to SDGs has been recognized by a UN-sponsored initiative in Tblisi (UN unveils art installation to take SDGs public, United Nations in Georgia, 24 October 2016). This featured a large-scale Rubik's Cube with icons of the SDGs affixed to its surfaces. Through this project, launched on UN Day, the UN Office in Georgia aimed to raise public awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals. The press release argued that: Like the Rubik's Cube, the Sustainable Development Goals are universal, indivisible and linked to each other. The image below was circulated by the network of UN Information Centres.

UN Art Installation in Tblisi, Georgia

Reproduced from UNIC@Work, October 2016 - Special UN Day Bulletin

The question is whether reference to Rubik's Cube can be taken beyond rhetorical metaphor, even evident in the most prestigious contexts (Ron Ashkenas, Solving the Rubik's Cube of Organizational Structure, Harvard Business Review, 15 March 2011). For example, an award-winning experiment has been undertaken to demonstrate the use of Rubik's Cube as an augmented reality (AR) game platform in support of the UN Millennium Development Goals, as described by the authors:

To explore Rubik's cube as an AR game platform, we designed and implemented two games.... a puzzle game, which is organized in levels. The game was designed to advance the United Nations Millennium Development Goals... with the premise of aiding in the development of poor countries. In the game, virtual villages are augmented on the cube faces. These villages develop according to the resources they receive which are controlled by the arrangement of the cube. The goal is to reach equilibrium of resources across all villages. To achieve this, the player shu?es virtual assets between the villages (Oriel Bergig, et al., Out of the Cube: augmented Rubik's Cube, International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2011)

As noted by Don Saari in a lecture at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA):

The danger of reductionism... is that it can turn out completely incorrect solutions -- without any indication that they are incorrect. He said, "The whole may be completely different than the sum of its parts". Take a Rubik's cube as an example: Saari said "If you try to solve it by first doing the red side, then the green, then the blue, you will end up with a mess. What happens on one side is influenced by what's happening on all the other sides". In the same way, the world's great systems of energy, water, climate all influence each other. (Charting connections: the next challenge for systems analysis, Nexus, 4 September 2014)

The difficulty with this assessment is that charting systemic connections does not render them comprehensible or meaningful in the sense required for empowering action in relation to sustainable development goals. The point is well made by the well-charted connections in relation to climate change -- and the indifference to which their recognition gives rise. Can this recognition be taken further through deeper understanding of the fascination with pattern recognition -- evident to a degree in the case of Rubik's Cube, but so questionable in the case of global promotion of sustainability goals.

The possibility of Rethinking Rubik's Cube: a mnemonic device for ways of knowing and engagement? has previously been discussed within the context of Existential Embodiment of Externalities: radical cognitive engagement with environmental categories and disciplines (2009).

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