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GUIDED EVOLUTION OF E-CULTURE
Americans have no clear account of the commercial aircraft attack 11 Sept, struggling over the official explanation, intriguing alternatives, and trying to grasp the war on terrorism, but "Who is the enemy?" The evolution of e-culture shows the realities, where we are going, and the next great political movement.
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<h3>October 24, 2001 (as amended)</h3>
<h2>Guided evolution of e-culture: pursuit of "total world
domination"</h2>
<h3>By Vigdor Schreibman</h3>
<h4>It is difficult these days to tell the difference between
fiction and reality, especially over claims of the enemy seeking
"total world domination." In an account of the commercial
aircraft, as cruise missiles, attack against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon on 11 September, written by Donn de Grand
Pré, The enemy is inside
the gates, the auther observes:</h4>
<blockquote>
<h5>The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly
executed military operation against the United States, requiring
the utmost professional military skill in command, communications
and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected
aircraft to be used as guided missiles, and in the coordinated
delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.</h5>
</blockquote>
<h4>Looking at a graphic illustration of the <a href=
"http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gflightpath2/flash.htm">
Final flight paths published by USAToday, it is plausible to
suspect, as Donn de Grand Pré suggests, that only an
insider group that has great power and control could have carried
out that coordinated attack. Beyond the obvious marks of mutual
animosity the "trail of evidence" connecting this attack with <a
href=
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/bombings/">
Osama bin Laden, the immediate target of public vengence, is
a broad network of prior terrorist conduct and a wise respect for
the ability of that adversary, together with admittedly tenuous
conjecture or gilt by association, certainly not what is needed
for judgment in a court, according to <i>FRONTLINE</i> news
sources who have been covering the story for some time. Of more
intriguing interest is the suggested insider explanation -
arising from the evident need for utmost skills, command and
control - offered by Donn de Grand Pré, to grab the
awesome prize: "destruction of all national sovereignty and
establishment of a global government" but the fundamental
questions still persists: "Who is the enemy?" and "What Would
Drive Them to Such Acts of Desperation?"</h4>
<h4>Even more fundamental than those questions is the matter of where
one should begin the investigation of the
war on terrorism. MIT Professor Noam Chomsky addressed that topic in
remarks at MIT given before a live audience of thousands, October 18, in which
he brings into question the legitimacy and credibility of the United States as a
terrorist state; for example, right now in the U.S. terror waged against the
Afghanistan civilian population; earlier in the U.S. war against Nicaragua, which
was condemned by the International Court of Justice, the World Court.
<h4>The story that I want to address here, in light of those primary observations
is that of multinational globalization, not a blue sky story but one with the
looks, feeling, and smell right on the dirty grounds on which it is played,
raises similar concerns of an emerging evolution toward "Total World Domination"!
I first picked up the story of multinational globalization in my News Column
February 24, 1997, entitled, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-04.txt">GII:
Global Power Grab, which discussed the trillion dollar deal for the takeover
of the global information infrastructure for telecommunications. In the
following News Column March 10, 1997, entitled, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-05.txt">Evolution in a
Technological Civilization, I wrote, "The next evolutionary stage that is
likely to come about projected from present trends, is world corporate governance
emerging, perhaps, within the span of a single decade or earlier."</h4>
<h4>Of course, the game of globalization can be played both by
capitalists and by "the People," and after the US Congress
delivered a <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Special_Reports/Fins-SR5-06.txt">knockout
defeating a new legislative "fast track" for globalization, my
next critical News Column on this topic was written in November
24, 1997, when I proposed, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-12.txt">Building
a "Sustainable Fast Track". The idea was to reorient the
"fast track" legislative process sought by capitalist advocates
of globalization, into a "fast track" sustaining goals for "the
People." I reasoned "A Sustainable Fast Track could advance
economic prosperity, social equity, and ecological integrity, as
interdependent, mutually reinforcing goals." Just as finance
capital could organize global systems to serve the few, "the
People" could organize global systems to serve "the will of the
whole"!</h4>
<h4>That suggestion was made two years before the <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/Fins-SD-17.txt">
Protest of the Century over globalization really broke into
world consciousness at the <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC7-09.html">World
Trade Organization (WTO), Third Ministerial Meeting, at
Seattle, Washington, November 29 to December 3, 1999. At that
event the first Independent Media Center (IMC) was organized. Now
there are many <a href=
"http://la.indymedia.org/index.php3">IMCs around which tens
of millions of citizens throughout the world have been organized
in opposition to capitalism and globalization. The line taken by
"the People" was precisely what I anticipated in my "Sustainable
Fast Track" column; indeed, President Clinton surprised everyone
when he released news at Seattle99 of his package of <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/">NEW DREAMS
AND PROMISES, including the following items: >/h4>
<ul>
<h5><li>White House Executive Order, Environmental Review of Trade
Agreements (Nov 1999)</li></h5>
<h5><li>White House Fact Sheet on Trade and Ensuring a Healthy
Environment (Nov 1999), and</li></h5>
<h5><li>White House Fact Sheet on Policy Declaration on Environment
and Trade (Nov 1999)</li></h5>
</ul></h4>
<h4>This surprise package promised to rewrite the global trade
regulations and sustainable development policies of the American
government, accompanied by this declaration: "Economic growth
must be pursued in the broader context of sustainable
development, which integrates economic, social, and environmental
policies."<h4>
<h4>President Clinton's revolutionary proposal was not serious,
as I wrote in a News Column November 24, 1999, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Special_Reports/Fins-SR7-05a.txt">The
Missing Core of Clinton's Proposed Revolution; nevertheless,
the idea of a public trade and environment policy that would
serve the goals of "the People" was gaining ground in the public
sector. Before the end of the 20th-century, <a href=
"http://www.paris21.org/betterworld/">A Better World For All,
was proposed by Kofi A. Annan Secretary-General of the United
Nations in a Report by the United Nations, OECD, World Bank, and
IMF, setting goals to reduce global poverty (and implicitly
admitting that globalization did not bring prosperity to any but
the wealthy nations). This was followed by <a href=
"http://www.unglobalcompact.org/">The Global Compact, an
agreement under sponsorship of the United Nations upon 9
principles between big business, labor, and civil society to
unite the power of markets with the authority of universal
ideals. These plans evidence clear recognition by dominant
governmental forces in the world of the need to move public
policy beyond the <i>laissez faire</i> capitalist ideology toward
a post-capitalist, responsible civilization.</h4>
<h4>Meanwhile, within the paramount realities of the elite business
organizations, a massive expansion was getting under way to
further develop their "collaborative" powers <i>via</i> Internet,
as documented in a large body of research data produced by
Harvard Professor of Business Administration, Rosabeth Moss
Kanter, for her book <i>Evolve!</i> (2001). The primary source of
data used for the global e-culture survey was drawn from the
January 2000 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland. That research project and the text of the book as
well as the conduct of the business organizations described
there, largely disregard the goals of social equity and
ecological integrity in all but amusing pretence. For example,
the World Economic Forum <a href=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/IMAGES/OFFICIAL-G8-STATEMENT.pdf">Task Force
on the Global Digital Divide Initiative, seeking specifically
to put a progressive face on the topic in its recommendations to
the G-8 Kyushu- Okinawa Summit 2000, offered this statement of
principle <i>inter alia</i> : "The digital empowerment of civil
society is a key foundation of development in the information
age." Nevertheless, no mention is made of the WEF Task Force
principle on digital empowerment of civil society in the text of
<i>Evolve!</i>, which otherwise highlights "the truth" that the
buildup of the e-culture has been generated in "superficial"
forms, offering the fast and cryptic over the deep and intimate,
as the dominant mode of communications in the e-culture.</h4>
<h4>A similar scenario of the current situation pertaining to
America's educated elite was also documented by David Brooks in
his social comedy, <i>BOBOS* in Paradise : The New Upper Class
and How They Got There</i> (2000). "BOBOS" means "Bourgeois
Bohemians," and as Brooks explains, infra at pp. 61-70, radical
changes in the behavior of the most educated American class have
emerged by integration of the life styles of the Bourgeois and
Bohemian, the historical roots of which began in the early
18th-century with the first glimmerings of the industrial age.
BOBOS recognize a movement in thought away from <i>laissez
faire</i> capitalism, but as Brooks reveals, these changes in
life styles of wealthy Americans, are hilarious pretensions of
sensitivity without serious commitment to civil and ecological
responsibility.</h4>
<h4>"Total World Domination" appears as a dramatic theme over and
over again in the text of <i>Evolve!</i> adding only style but
not substance to the story. There is no grand plot there, just a
bit of melodrama for a youthful audience of computer hackers.
Recommendations offered to the G-8 Summit by the World Economic
Forum Task Force were framed to avoid recognition of the severe
Global Digital Divide problems in favor of highlighting the
opportunities offered by global trade liberalization principles
of the World Trade Organization telecommunications regime. What
seems altogether foreign to the e-culture described in
<i>Evolve!</i> or the life styles of the educated elite described
in <i>BOBOS</i> are the kind of widely publicized public policy
principles and plans announced by the United Nations and other
global leaders: <i>A Better World For All</i>, and <i>The Global
Compact</i>. Those two sets of institutions involving private
business conduct and public policy determninations, are now
moving in mutually exclusive directions. The public position will
almost certainly expire without strong civil support.</h4>
<h4>The capstone of the private business strategy has paralyzed
the real potential effectiveness of the Internet, which is
unnecessarily trapped in superficiality and resulting Babel,
instead of serving as an effective instrument in the pursuit of
social equity, ecological integrity, and economic prosperity as
mutually reinforcing goals. While the e-culture has the
propensity to develop an ethic of cooperation to maximize the
economic utility of the global information infrastructure, these
developments are without a sound social foundation raising the
possibilities for unanticipated suprises yet to come. The same
e-culture largely disregards "The digital empowerment of civil
society," which was ironically identified by the World Economic
Forum, as the "key foundation of development in the information
age." Civil society cannot be empowered by an infrastructure that
is limited by an inherent superficiality, precluding the pursuit
of meaning and wisdom and the social, ecological, and economic
goals that are derived from the larger values of a sustainable
civilization.</h4>
<h4>Professor Kanter places her class pointer right on the problem
with this statement about the e-culture while drawing a
peculiarly wicked conclusion:</h4>
<blockquote>
<h5><i>E-culture is superficial--in good ways</i>. Communications
is the core of e-culture. Internet time requires fast, cryptic,
communications among strangers who cannot take the time to
interpret subtleties or build a deep relationship based on
intimate knowledge.</h5>
</blockquote>
<h4>Of course, some communications will always be of the
superficial kind in a business and social environment with many
purely ministerial functions but this can be interpreted as a
"good" norm of guidance for the e-culture only for those who
would benefit from a community structure without the capacity for
deep social bonds and highly vulnerable to exploitation. Who
wants that? Broad limitation of communications to superficiality
is obviously not a "good" derived from any inherent need or
desire of mass users of Internet communications.</h4>
<h4>Corporate guidance of the e-culture by preclusive limitations of
the possibilities of Internet technology have trapped mass users
in the ethic of superficiality imposed by the new medium. The
outcome is a disaster thriving on chaos instead of advancing the
possibilities of democratic coherence. An e-culture that is
limited to superficiality cannot survive the complexities that it
promotes, without having the capacity to rise above the limited
concerns of strangers, to contemplate the needs of communities
that give life to the medium and to facilitate users in their
essential interpretation of subtleties or to build deep
relationships based on intimate knowledge of the situations they
must face together. Indeed, virtual communications can work as a
marvel of illusion that offers powerful attractions between men
and women, between producers and consumers, between rich and poor
classes, but deprived of the capacity to examine deeper, more
complex relationships these extraordinary attractions can pose
severe dangers to everyone impacted by such unnatural conditions.</h4>
<h4>Moreover, the trap of unnnecessary superficiality has been
locked in place by design and business management practitioners
who possess the critical knowledge and experience for advancement
of "meaningful dialogue." They have failed and continue to refuse
to provide the necessary leadership support for enhancement of
Internet communications, as my paper on <a href=
"http://cyberspacecapital.org/DIALOGUE/Civilizations%20of%20opportunism.htm">
Civilizations of opportunism clearly reveals.</h4>
<h4>Subsequent to the publication of that paper the <a href=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/DIALOGUE/DialogueGame.pdf">Dialogue Game
of AN Christakis, with a set of new simplified instructions, was
designated as a "public domain" property by Dr Christakis, at my
request, in an email message sent to me dated October 14. This
was a welcome gesture but in order for "the People" to pursue
meaning and wisdom with the "Dialogue Game" or, more importantly,
to facilitate "meaningful dialogue" about the global
problématique they must be able to secure the competent
use of systems methodologies <i>via</i> Internet where the broad
mass of "the People" may obtain affordable access. But no
significant ongoing leadership support for enhancement of
Internet communications beyond the superficial mode identified by
Professor Kanter has yet been offered that I am aware of.
Examples of systems methodologies in electronic mode are rare,
and attempts by this writer to expand upon those rare examples
have been rejected by the insult of silence. This situation is
not the result of any insurmountable difficulty in adapting
available systems methodologies to electronic format, as my paper
on <a href="C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/CC-012.html">cyberspace
capital suggests. On the contrary, this conduct is a means of
limiting access to advanced techniques that can facilitate
"meaningful dialogue," thereby, exacerbating the "digital divide"
and strengthening the ability of elite institutions to guide the
e-culture by a brutal philosophy of greed, as the story of
<i>Evolve!</i>! further suggests.</h4>
<h4>Harvard University Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter wisely
includes this observation in the final chapter of
<i>Evolve!</i>:</h4>
<h5><blockquote><i>Our next step in human evolution is not to become
cyborgs attached to our machines. It is to become more fully
human, attached to each other, with our machines on our toolbelts
for use when we need them. The challenge is social evolution: to
develop shared consciousness of the human
community.</i></blockquote></h5>
<h4>Nevertheless, Professor Kanter admits that her massive
research project on corporate development of the global e-culture
failed to collect the necessary knowledge to engage in "social
evolution: to develop shared consciousness of the human
community." Kanter claims "We don't know enought"! Others may ask
"Why not?" The channels of corporate information were wide open
to her research team at Harvard Business School but the set of
survey questions produced by Professor Kanter, who is described
on the jacket of her book as "THE WORLD RENOWN EXPERT ON CHANGE"
simply did not probe for any response to these critical issues.
None of the key issues included in her final appraisal appeared
in any of the six sections of the survey questionnaire! Indeed,
by declaring "E-culture is superficial-- in good ways" without
any exploration of available alternatives, Kanter wickedly
promotes the mode of superficial relationships over the deep and
complex e-culture relationships, which are at the very core of
the challenge of social evolution.</h4>
<h4>One must draw the conclusion that the real challenges of the
e-culture that are essential to a better future are obviously not
the driving ideas that concern either big business or the elite
educational institutions that inspire and guide their conduct. We
have seen it all before. In an analogous situation this same
pattern of critical ommissions and distortions guided another
elite panel of experts at Harvard University, John F. Kennedy
School of Government when they facilitated a set of political
planning sessions for corporate lobbying of Congress to promote
the <i>Telecommunications Act of 1996</i>. That group of elite
educators produced a public policy that affects the widest
possible scope of economic activity, guided by an <a href=
"http://www.senate.gov/~mccain/hilloped.htm">Orwellian logic,
as bluntly described by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in an Op-ed
piece published by "The Hill" Newspaper (October 20, 1999).</h4>
<h4>The practical lesson of large scale systems changes reported
by the world's leading scholar on integrative systems, Dr. John
N. Warfield, is that citizens must expect the most "despicable
outcomes" from their "expert" leadership institutions.</h4>
<h4>The next great political movement must be to secure the "digital
empowerment of civil society" and to deepen the civil society's
organizational efforts in complex, disciplined, and democratic
forms. Citizens are the only true "experts" of what is happening
on the ground in global civilizations. The way to build upon
street protest in a movement toward real democratic
transformation is with the use of systems methodologies, which
can help overcome the debilitating limitations of human
incapacities in group decision making concerning complex issues,
as my paper on <a href=
"http://cyberspacecapital.org/CC-011.html">cyberspace capital
explains. Design science and systems methodologies have worked a
real revolution during the past few decades in the process of
face-to-face dialogue. Real-world applications of this technology
in a large variety of designs in many diverse fields,
particularly during the past 15-years, have confirmed the
reliability of this revolutionary process. This includes the
following examples <i>inter alia</i>:</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<h5>National Association of Mental Health, <a href=
"http://www.nmha.org/conf/summit_proceedings.cfm">Mental Health
Internet Leadership Summit (Feb 2001) (Discussion paper,
Summit Proceedings, Clarification of Principles).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Jeffrey, <i>Disarmament and Demobilization</i>, (Interactive
Management Workshop hosted by the European Commission, Monrovia,
Liberia 1996) (design of a plan of disarmament and demobilization
by the "Warlords and Warriors" engaged in a civil war in
Liberia).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Center for Interactive Management, George Mason University,
<i>Report on the Issues Identification and Structuring Session of
the Alliance for Nursing Organizations</i> (1986) (Interactive
Management seminar to identify significant issues in Nursing in
Virginia in the next 5 years, organize these issues for
appropriate action, and develop preliminary strategies for the
Alliance in addressing these issues).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Christakis, <i>The National Forum on Nonindustrial Private
Forest Lands</i>, 2 SYSTEMS RESEARCH 189 (1985) (Interactive
Management forum sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture
1984, examining national issues, options, and responsibilities
faced by representative national assembly of stakeholders).</h5>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>By adapting the use of such methodologies to the Internet,
and by using community computers as a portal to even broader
community dialogue as demonstrated, for example, in the
successful <a href=
"http://www.me.utexas.edu/~koen/ETH/eth.html">Electronic Town
Hall <i>via</i> Internet Relay Chat, people all over the
world can obtain access on affordable terms to collaborate with
each other in realizing the goals of democratic sustainability.
Power will not be ceded by the elite without a great struggle but
those who are likely to be robbed of their minds and their lives
by the elite unless they are allowed to participate fairly in the
structures of decisions that affect their lives must have an
adequate forum for development of a democratic counterculture.
When "the People" take the power to engage in meaningful dialogue
with each other and with the elite their authenticity will be
authenticated and their genuine unity and true individuality
strengthened to realize the ideals of democracy.</h4>
<h4>The political stakes in opening the e-culture to "meaningful
dialogue" could not be greater, but the great complexity of the
politics should not be confused with the specific functions of
group decision making, which must be adapted to the electronic
format. It is my impression after more than 25 years of concern
for these issues that the complexity in achieving this latter
goal is rather of the elemetary kind and not terribly complex at
all. This may come as something of a surprise to those who
suggest that a great team of extraordinary genius is needed to
produce the required computer programs. I say, it's just not that
way.</h4>
<h4>There are several basic functions of the key systems
methodologies involved in support of group decision making such
as, for example, the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) [Delbecq, Van
de Ven, Gustafson, <i>Group Techniques For Program Planning: A
Guide to Nominal Group and Delphi Processes</i> (1975)]. These
functions are comprehensively described and illustrated at the
linked site for <a href=
"http://www.radix.net/~ash2jam/TQM/nominal.htm">NGT. One can
also see how the process flows in the below illustration.<br>
<br>
<img alt="NGT_fin.gif (40K)" src=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/IMAGES/NGT_fin.gif" height="587" width=
"758"></h4>
<h4>The basic set of functions involved in using NGT includes the
following :</h4>
<ul>
<h4><li>formulating and transmitting a concise trigger question to a
participant group of from 10 to 100 participants;</li></h4>
<h4><li>receiving, organizing, and displaying sets of participant
ideas about an issue or problem;</li></h4>
<h4><li>receiving, organizing, and displaying group clarifications of
participant responses so that an agreed upon, integrated
description of the issue or problem can be found; and</li></h4>
<h4><li>tallying participant ranking and voting of preferences in the
structure of relations between the collected sets of ideas</li></h4>
</ul>
<h4>The computer program should be developed under the "Open
Source" licensing process for free computer software [e.g., <a
href="http://www.opensource.org/">OS, or <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/">GNU]. This will assure wide
availability of the software on affordable terms. Any well
experienced computer professional or information sciences
department of a competent school should be able to handle this
computer design problem, in my opinion.</h4>
<h4>Funding for this purpose may be obtained from the National
Science Foundation (NSF), under the <a href=
"http://www.cise.nsf.gov/">Directorate for Computer and
Information Science and Engineering, mandated by this goal:
"To contribute to universal, transparent and affordable
participation in an information-based society." CC will be
pleased to administer a grant application and coordinate work on
the project for any competent professional or group that is
seriously interested in collaborating with CC in this very
important public service initiative.</h4>
<hr size="4">
<center>
<h4><font face="Helvetica, Arial" color=
"white">CYBERSPACE CAPITAL AND DEMOCRATIC SUSTAINABILITY<br>
<i>VIA</i> INTERNET</font></h4>
<hr size="2">
<center>
<h4><font face="Helvetica, Arial" color="white">Federal
Information News Syndicate (FINS),<br>
Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,<br>
18 - 9th Street NE #206, On Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
20002-6042. Copyright 2001 FINS.<br>
Integrated Phone/Fax/Voice Mail: (202) 547-8715;<br>
Email: fins2000 [at] mindspring.com<br>
Browse Fins Information Age Library at URL:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/<br>
Republication authorized for nonprofit use only, provided message
is kept intact.</font></h4>
</center>
<hr size="2">
</center>
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<title>CC REPORT:</title>
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<h3>October 24, 2001 (as amended)</h3>
<h2>Guided evolution of e-culture: pursuit of "total world
domination"</h2>
<h3>By Vigdor Schreibman</h3>
<h4>It is difficult these days to tell the difference between
fiction and reality, especially over claims of the enemy seeking
"total world domination." In an account of the commercial
aircraft, as cruise missiles, attack against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon on 11 September, written by Donn de Grand
Pré, The enemy is inside
the gates, the auther observes:</h4>
<blockquote>
<h5>The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly
executed military operation against the United States, requiring
the utmost professional military skill in command, communications
and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected
aircraft to be used as guided missiles, and in the coordinated
delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.</h5>
</blockquote>
<h4>Looking at a graphic illustration of the <a href=
"http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gflightpath2/flash.htm">
Final flight paths published by USAToday, it is plausible to
suspect, as Donn de Grand Pré suggests, that only an
insider group that has great power and control could have carried
out that coordinated attack. Beyond the obvious marks of mutual
animosity the "trail of evidence" connecting this attack with <a
href=
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/bombings/">
Osama bin Laden, the immediate target of public vengence, is
a broad network of prior terrorist conduct and a wise respect for
the ability of that adversary, together with admittedly tenuous
conjecture or gilt by association, certainly not what is needed
for judgment in a court, according to <i>FRONTLINE</i> news
sources who have been covering the story for some time. Of more
intriguing interest is the suggested insider explanation -
arising from the evident need for utmost skills, command and
control - offered by Donn de Grand Pré, to grab the
awesome prize: "destruction of all national sovereignty and
establishment of a global government" but the fundamental
questions still persists: "Who is the enemy?" and "What Would
Drive Them to Such Acts of Desperation?"</h4>
<h4>Even more fundamental than those questions is the matter of where
one should begin the investigation of the
war on terrorism. MIT Professor Noam Chomsky addressed that topic in
remarks at MIT given before a live audience of thousands, October 18, in which
he brings into question the legitimacy and credibility of the United States as a
terrorist state; for example, right now in the U.S. terror waged against the
Afghanistan civilian population; earlier in the U.S. war against Nicaragua, which
was condemned by the International Court of Justice, the World Court.
<h4>The story that I want to address here, in light of those primary observations
is that of multinational globalization, not a blue sky story but one with the
looks, feeling, and smell right on the dirty grounds on which it is played,
raises similar concerns of an emerging evolution toward "Total World Domination"!
I first picked up the story of multinational globalization in my News Column
February 24, 1997, entitled, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-04.txt">GII:
Global Power Grab, which discussed the trillion dollar deal for the takeover
of the global information infrastructure for telecommunications. In the
following News Column March 10, 1997, entitled, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-05.txt">Evolution in a
Technological Civilization, I wrote, "The next evolutionary stage that is
likely to come about projected from present trends, is world corporate governance
emerging, perhaps, within the span of a single decade or earlier."</h4>
<h4>Of course, the game of globalization can be played both by
capitalists and by "the People," and after the US Congress
delivered a <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Special_Reports/Fins-SR5-06.txt">knockout
defeating a new legislative "fast track" for globalization, my
next critical News Column on this topic was written in November
24, 1997, when I proposed, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC5-12.txt">Building
a "Sustainable Fast Track". The idea was to reorient the
"fast track" legislative process sought by capitalist advocates
of globalization, into a "fast track" sustaining goals for "the
People." I reasoned "A Sustainable Fast Track could advance
economic prosperity, social equity, and ecological integrity, as
interdependent, mutually reinforcing goals." Just as finance
capital could organize global systems to serve the few, "the
People" could organize global systems to serve "the will of the
whole"!</h4>
<h4>That suggestion was made two years before the <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/Fins-SD-17.txt">
Protest of the Century over globalization really broke into
world consciousness at the <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC7-09.html">World
Trade Organization (WTO), Third Ministerial Meeting, at
Seattle, Washington, November 29 to December 3, 1999. At that
event the first Independent Media Center (IMC) was organized. Now
there are many <a href=
"http://la.indymedia.org/index.php3">IMCs around which tens
of millions of citizens throughout the world have been organized
in opposition to capitalism and globalization. The line taken by
"the People" was precisely what I anticipated in my "Sustainable
Fast Track" column; indeed, President Clinton surprised everyone
when he released news at Seattle99 of his package of <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/">NEW DREAMS
AND PROMISES, including the following items: >/h4>
<ul>
<h5><li>White House Executive Order, Environmental Review of Trade
Agreements (Nov 1999)</li></h5>
<h5><li>White House Fact Sheet on Trade and Ensuring a Healthy
Environment (Nov 1999), and</li></h5>
<h5><li>White House Fact Sheet on Policy Declaration on Environment
and Trade (Nov 1999)</li></h5>
</ul></h4>
<h4>This surprise package promised to rewrite the global trade
regulations and sustainable development policies of the American
government, accompanied by this declaration: "Economic growth
must be pursued in the broader context of sustainable
development, which integrates economic, social, and environmental
policies."<h4>
<h4>President Clinton's revolutionary proposal was not serious,
as I wrote in a News Column November 24, 1999, <a href=
"http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Special_Reports/Fins-SR7-05a.txt">The
Missing Core of Clinton's Proposed Revolution; nevertheless,
the idea of a public trade and environment policy that would
serve the goals of "the People" was gaining ground in the public
sector. Before the end of the 20th-century, <a href=
"http://www.paris21.org/betterworld/">A Better World For All,
was proposed by Kofi A. Annan Secretary-General of the United
Nations in a Report by the United Nations, OECD, World Bank, and
IMF, setting goals to reduce global poverty (and implicitly
admitting that globalization did not bring prosperity to any but
the wealthy nations). This was followed by <a href=
"http://www.unglobalcompact.org/">The Global Compact, an
agreement under sponsorship of the United Nations upon 9
principles between big business, labor, and civil society to
unite the power of markets with the authority of universal
ideals. These plans evidence clear recognition by dominant
governmental forces in the world of the need to move public
policy beyond the <i>laissez faire</i> capitalist ideology toward
a post-capitalist, responsible civilization.</h4>
<h4>Meanwhile, within the paramount realities of the elite business
organizations, a massive expansion was getting under way to
further develop their "collaborative" powers <i>via</i> Internet,
as documented in a large body of research data produced by
Harvard Professor of Business Administration, Rosabeth Moss
Kanter, for her book <i>Evolve!</i> (2001). The primary source of
data used for the global e-culture survey was drawn from the
January 2000 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland. That research project and the text of the book as
well as the conduct of the business organizations described
there, largely disregard the goals of social equity and
ecological integrity in all but amusing pretence. For example,
the World Economic Forum <a href=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/IMAGES/OFFICIAL-G8-STATEMENT.pdf">Task Force
on the Global Digital Divide Initiative, seeking specifically
to put a progressive face on the topic in its recommendations to
the G-8 Kyushu- Okinawa Summit 2000, offered this statement of
principle <i>inter alia</i> : "The digital empowerment of civil
society is a key foundation of development in the information
age." Nevertheless, no mention is made of the WEF Task Force
principle on digital empowerment of civil society in the text of
<i>Evolve!</i>, which otherwise highlights "the truth" that the
buildup of the e-culture has been generated in "superficial"
forms, offering the fast and cryptic over the deep and intimate,
as the dominant mode of communications in the e-culture.</h4>
<h4>A similar scenario of the current situation pertaining to
America's educated elite was also documented by David Brooks in
his social comedy, <i>BOBOS* in Paradise : The New Upper Class
and How They Got There</i> (2000). "BOBOS" means "Bourgeois
Bohemians," and as Brooks explains, infra at pp. 61-70, radical
changes in the behavior of the most educated American class have
emerged by integration of the life styles of the Bourgeois and
Bohemian, the historical roots of which began in the early
18th-century with the first glimmerings of the industrial age.
BOBOS recognize a movement in thought away from <i>laissez
faire</i> capitalism, but as Brooks reveals, these changes in
life styles of wealthy Americans, are hilarious pretensions of
sensitivity without serious commitment to civil and ecological
responsibility.</h4>
<h4>"Total World Domination" appears as a dramatic theme over and
over again in the text of <i>Evolve!</i> adding only style but
not substance to the story. There is no grand plot there, just a
bit of melodrama for a youthful audience of computer hackers.
Recommendations offered to the G-8 Summit by the World Economic
Forum Task Force were framed to avoid recognition of the severe
Global Digital Divide problems in favor of highlighting the
opportunities offered by global trade liberalization principles
of the World Trade Organization telecommunications regime. What
seems altogether foreign to the e-culture described in
<i>Evolve!</i> or the life styles of the educated elite described
in <i>BOBOS</i> are the kind of widely publicized public policy
principles and plans announced by the United Nations and other
global leaders: <i>A Better World For All</i>, and <i>The Global
Compact</i>. Those two sets of institutions involving private
business conduct and public policy determninations, are now
moving in mutually exclusive directions. The public position will
almost certainly expire without strong civil support.</h4>
<h4>The capstone of the private business strategy has paralyzed
the real potential effectiveness of the Internet, which is
unnecessarily trapped in superficiality and resulting Babel,
instead of serving as an effective instrument in the pursuit of
social equity, ecological integrity, and economic prosperity as
mutually reinforcing goals. While the e-culture has the
propensity to develop an ethic of cooperation to maximize the
economic utility of the global information infrastructure, these
developments are without a sound social foundation raising the
possibilities for unanticipated suprises yet to come. The same
e-culture largely disregards "The digital empowerment of civil
society," which was ironically identified by the World Economic
Forum, as the "key foundation of development in the information
age." Civil society cannot be empowered by an infrastructure that
is limited by an inherent superficiality, precluding the pursuit
of meaning and wisdom and the social, ecological, and economic
goals that are derived from the larger values of a sustainable
civilization.</h4>
<h4>Professor Kanter places her class pointer right on the problem
with this statement about the e-culture while drawing a
peculiarly wicked conclusion:</h4>
<blockquote>
<h5><i>E-culture is superficial--in good ways</i>. Communications
is the core of e-culture. Internet time requires fast, cryptic,
communications among strangers who cannot take the time to
interpret subtleties or build a deep relationship based on
intimate knowledge.</h5>
</blockquote>
<h4>Of course, some communications will always be of the
superficial kind in a business and social environment with many
purely ministerial functions but this can be interpreted as a
"good" norm of guidance for the e-culture only for those who
would benefit from a community structure without the capacity for
deep social bonds and highly vulnerable to exploitation. Who
wants that? Broad limitation of communications to superficiality
is obviously not a "good" derived from any inherent need or
desire of mass users of Internet communications.</h4>
<h4>Corporate guidance of the e-culture by preclusive limitations of
the possibilities of Internet technology have trapped mass users
in the ethic of superficiality imposed by the new medium. The
outcome is a disaster thriving on chaos instead of advancing the
possibilities of democratic coherence. An e-culture that is
limited to superficiality cannot survive the complexities that it
promotes, without having the capacity to rise above the limited
concerns of strangers, to contemplate the needs of communities
that give life to the medium and to facilitate users in their
essential interpretation of subtleties or to build deep
relationships based on intimate knowledge of the situations they
must face together. Indeed, virtual communications can work as a
marvel of illusion that offers powerful attractions between men
and women, between producers and consumers, between rich and poor
classes, but deprived of the capacity to examine deeper, more
complex relationships these extraordinary attractions can pose
severe dangers to everyone impacted by such unnatural conditions.</h4>
<h4>Moreover, the trap of unnnecessary superficiality has been
locked in place by design and business management practitioners
who possess the critical knowledge and experience for advancement
of "meaningful dialogue." They have failed and continue to refuse
to provide the necessary leadership support for enhancement of
Internet communications, as my paper on <a href=
"http://cyberspacecapital.org/DIALOGUE/Civilizations%20of%20opportunism.htm">
Civilizations of opportunism clearly reveals.</h4>
<h4>Subsequent to the publication of that paper the <a href=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/DIALOGUE/DialogueGame.pdf">Dialogue Game
of AN Christakis, with a set of new simplified instructions, was
designated as a "public domain" property by Dr Christakis, at my
request, in an email message sent to me dated October 14. This
was a welcome gesture but in order for "the People" to pursue
meaning and wisdom with the "Dialogue Game" or, more importantly,
to facilitate "meaningful dialogue" about the global
problématique they must be able to secure the competent
use of systems methodologies <i>via</i> Internet where the broad
mass of "the People" may obtain affordable access. But no
significant ongoing leadership support for enhancement of
Internet communications beyond the superficial mode identified by
Professor Kanter has yet been offered that I am aware of.
Examples of systems methodologies in electronic mode are rare,
and attempts by this writer to expand upon those rare examples
have been rejected by the insult of silence. This situation is
not the result of any insurmountable difficulty in adapting
available systems methodologies to electronic format, as my paper
on <a href="C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/CC-012.html">cyberspace
capital suggests. On the contrary, this conduct is a means of
limiting access to advanced techniques that can facilitate
"meaningful dialogue," thereby, exacerbating the "digital divide"
and strengthening the ability of elite institutions to guide the
e-culture by a brutal philosophy of greed, as the story of
<i>Evolve!</i>! further suggests.</h4>
<h4>Harvard University Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter wisely
includes this observation in the final chapter of
<i>Evolve!</i>:</h4>
<h5><blockquote><i>Our next step in human evolution is not to become
cyborgs attached to our machines. It is to become more fully
human, attached to each other, with our machines on our toolbelts
for use when we need them. The challenge is social evolution: to
develop shared consciousness of the human
community.</i></blockquote></h5>
<h4>Nevertheless, Professor Kanter admits that her massive
research project on corporate development of the global e-culture
failed to collect the necessary knowledge to engage in "social
evolution: to develop shared consciousness of the human
community." Kanter claims "We don't know enought"! Others may ask
"Why not?" The channels of corporate information were wide open
to her research team at Harvard Business School but the set of
survey questions produced by Professor Kanter, who is described
on the jacket of her book as "THE WORLD RENOWN EXPERT ON CHANGE"
simply did not probe for any response to these critical issues.
None of the key issues included in her final appraisal appeared
in any of the six sections of the survey questionnaire! Indeed,
by declaring "E-culture is superficial-- in good ways" without
any exploration of available alternatives, Kanter wickedly
promotes the mode of superficial relationships over the deep and
complex e-culture relationships, which are at the very core of
the challenge of social evolution.</h4>
<h4>One must draw the conclusion that the real challenges of the
e-culture that are essential to a better future are obviously not
the driving ideas that concern either big business or the elite
educational institutions that inspire and guide their conduct. We
have seen it all before. In an analogous situation this same
pattern of critical ommissions and distortions guided another
elite panel of experts at Harvard University, John F. Kennedy
School of Government when they facilitated a set of political
planning sessions for corporate lobbying of Congress to promote
the <i>Telecommunications Act of 1996</i>. That group of elite
educators produced a public policy that affects the widest
possible scope of economic activity, guided by an <a href=
"http://www.senate.gov/~mccain/hilloped.htm">Orwellian logic,
as bluntly described by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in an Op-ed
piece published by "The Hill" Newspaper (October 20, 1999).</h4>
<h4>The practical lesson of large scale systems changes reported
by the world's leading scholar on integrative systems, Dr. John
N. Warfield, is that citizens must expect the most "despicable
outcomes" from their "expert" leadership institutions.</h4>
<h4>The next great political movement must be to secure the "digital
empowerment of civil society" and to deepen the civil society's
organizational efforts in complex, disciplined, and democratic
forms. Citizens are the only true "experts" of what is happening
on the ground in global civilizations. The way to build upon
street protest in a movement toward real democratic
transformation is with the use of systems methodologies, which
can help overcome the debilitating limitations of human
incapacities in group decision making concerning complex issues,
as my paper on <a href=
"http://cyberspacecapital.org/CC-011.html">cyberspace capital
explains. Design science and systems methodologies have worked a
real revolution during the past few decades in the process of
face-to-face dialogue. Real-world applications of this technology
in a large variety of designs in many diverse fields,
particularly during the past 15-years, have confirmed the
reliability of this revolutionary process. This includes the
following examples <i>inter alia</i>:</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<h5>National Association of Mental Health, <a href=
"http://www.nmha.org/conf/summit_proceedings.cfm">Mental Health
Internet Leadership Summit (Feb 2001) (Discussion paper,
Summit Proceedings, Clarification of Principles).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Jeffrey, <i>Disarmament and Demobilization</i>, (Interactive
Management Workshop hosted by the European Commission, Monrovia,
Liberia 1996) (design of a plan of disarmament and demobilization
by the "Warlords and Warriors" engaged in a civil war in
Liberia).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Center for Interactive Management, George Mason University,
<i>Report on the Issues Identification and Structuring Session of
the Alliance for Nursing Organizations</i> (1986) (Interactive
Management seminar to identify significant issues in Nursing in
Virginia in the next 5 years, organize these issues for
appropriate action, and develop preliminary strategies for the
Alliance in addressing these issues).</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Christakis, <i>The National Forum on Nonindustrial Private
Forest Lands</i>, 2 SYSTEMS RESEARCH 189 (1985) (Interactive
Management forum sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture
1984, examining national issues, options, and responsibilities
faced by representative national assembly of stakeholders).</h5>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>By adapting the use of such methodologies to the Internet,
and by using community computers as a portal to even broader
community dialogue as demonstrated, for example, in the
successful <a href=
"http://www.me.utexas.edu/~koen/ETH/eth.html">Electronic Town
Hall <i>via</i> Internet Relay Chat, people all over the
world can obtain access on affordable terms to collaborate with
each other in realizing the goals of democratic sustainability.
Power will not be ceded by the elite without a great struggle but
those who are likely to be robbed of their minds and their lives
by the elite unless they are allowed to participate fairly in the
structures of decisions that affect their lives must have an
adequate forum for development of a democratic counterculture.
When "the People" take the power to engage in meaningful dialogue
with each other and with the elite their authenticity will be
authenticated and their genuine unity and true individuality
strengthened to realize the ideals of democracy.</h4>
<h4>The political stakes in opening the e-culture to "meaningful
dialogue" could not be greater, but the great complexity of the
politics should not be confused with the specific functions of
group decision making, which must be adapted to the electronic
format. It is my impression after more than 25 years of concern
for these issues that the complexity in achieving this latter
goal is rather of the elemetary kind and not terribly complex at
all. This may come as something of a surprise to those who
suggest that a great team of extraordinary genius is needed to
produce the required computer programs. I say, it's just not that
way.</h4>
<h4>There are several basic functions of the key systems
methodologies involved in support of group decision making such
as, for example, the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) [Delbecq, Van
de Ven, Gustafson, <i>Group Techniques For Program Planning: A
Guide to Nominal Group and Delphi Processes</i> (1975)]. These
functions are comprehensively described and illustrated at the
linked site for <a href=
"http://www.radix.net/~ash2jam/TQM/nominal.htm">NGT. One can
also see how the process flows in the below illustration.<br>
<br>
<img alt="NGT_fin.gif (40K)" src=
"C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/IMAGES/NGT_fin.gif" height="587" width=
"758"></h4>
<h4>The basic set of functions involved in using NGT includes the
following :</h4>
<ul>
<h4><li>formulating and transmitting a concise trigger question to a
participant group of from 10 to 100 participants;</li></h4>
<h4><li>receiving, organizing, and displaying sets of participant
ideas about an issue or problem;</li></h4>
<h4><li>receiving, organizing, and displaying group clarifications of
participant responses so that an agreed upon, integrated
description of the issue or problem can be found; and</li></h4>
<h4><li>tallying participant ranking and voting of preferences in the
structure of relations between the collected sets of ideas</li></h4>
</ul>
<h4>The computer program should be developed under the "Open
Source" licensing process for free computer software [e.g., <a
href="http://www.opensource.org/">OS, or <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/">GNU]. This will assure wide
availability of the software on affordable terms. Any well
experienced computer professional or information sciences
department of a competent school should be able to handle this
computer design problem, in my opinion.</h4>
<h4>Funding for this purpose may be obtained from the National
Science Foundation (NSF), under the <a href=
"http://www.cise.nsf.gov/">Directorate for Computer and
Information Science and Engineering, mandated by this goal:
"To contribute to universal, transparent and affordable
participation in an information-based society." CC will be
pleased to administer a grant application and coordinate work on
the project for any competent professional or group that is
seriously interested in collaborating with CC in this very
important public service initiative.</h4>
<hr size="4">
<center>
<h4><font face="Helvetica, Arial" color=
"white">CYBERSPACE CAPITAL AND DEMOCRATIC SUSTAINABILITY<br>
<i>VIA</i> INTERNET</font></h4>
<hr size="2">
<center>
<h4><font face="Helvetica, Arial" color="white">Federal
Information News Syndicate (FINS),<br>
Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,<br>
18 - 9th Street NE #206, On Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
20002-6042. Copyright 2001 FINS.<br>
Integrated Phone/Fax/Voice Mail: (202) 547-8715;<br>
Email: fins2000 [at] mindspring.com<br>
Browse Fins Information Age Library at URL:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/<br>
Republication authorized for nonprofit use only, provided message
is kept intact.</font></h4>
</center>
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</center>
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