(00:00:00) I was initially approached to as at least as I understood it to address the interconnections of information economics and food, which I thought was a challenging assignment because I don't know that anyone has ever tried to put these three things (00:00:16) together, (00:00:18) but then I started talking with Virginia and with Tom and they say oh, yes, we want you to take a rethinking and transforming quite seriously and I said are you sure they said yes, so I'll try to do so at least for half of my presentation as a preface to then discussing information economics and food and hopefully at the end you'll see how it's all (00:00:42) intertwined (00:00:45) now as for rethinking. I don't know much about it, or I haven't thought much about it, but then I suspect that no one else does either. So of enter a few Notions to get things going first, if I was the first book that I would turn to if I were to seriously think about rethinking would be John Gardner self-renewal, which is recently come out in a new edition and I advise that and on Michaels on planning to learn and learning to plan is also in that (00:01:14) ballpark. (00:01:17) To get into rethinking. I have five observations just to throw out and get you thinking about rethinking. The first is that it's a bit like standing on your head. At least figuratively speaking and as a warm-up exercise consider, why should North America always be on top of South America? Right? Well, I recently came across a map which helps us do rethinking where South America is on top of North America that I'll pass it around and you can just as a quick warmup. the second observation is that rethinking is like reading? Now if you think that reading is dull according to our distinguished librarian of Congress Daniel J Burstyn recent whom I recently quote from the New York Times. He tells us a reading is a lot like sex. It is a private and often secret activity. It is often undertaken in bed and people are not inclined to underestimate either the extent or the effectiveness of their (00:02:25) activity. (00:02:31) The third observation also continuing in the boorstin idiom. Also, like sex rethinking can be fun. It could also be dangerous. It could be disturbing to yourself and to others. You create trouble if you're a right Buster a smartass or if your kid you're too smart for your britches. Don Michael has a section in his book about he writes of the problems of boundary spanners. Which is another way to think of someone who does rethinking. But on the other hand, we live in dangerous times. So it may be more dangerous not to (00:03:12) rethink. (00:03:16) My fourth observation is that the ideal of rethinking is like preaching for goodness and being against in? It's hard to imagine an argument for closed minds and stay alive ideas, but similar to sin they still seem to persist in great abundance. People are Pious and church on Sunday and perhaps in seminars and Monday and then they go back to their old habits during the following week. Some are we thinkers to begin with of course, but others are I don't expect any Mass conversions on your personal transformations. But if you do see the light quite suddenly we can go out to the lake and we can have a 40-gallon baptismal ceremony to make things official. Yet despite these reservations about preaching. The need to rethink makes a great (00:04:08) sermon. So I'll give them (00:04:12) and that leads to my fifth and more serious observation is that serious sustained rethinking is especially needed in Social areas because the world is changing which is an utterly on original observation. But I will also try to demonstrate that the world will probably change far more in the next 20 years. I shall try to demonstrate this in a compelling Way by getting you to think not about transforming the future but about transformations. The phrase Transformations with the emphasis on the s represents my own rethinking reassembling of elements the by 1981 address which perhaps some of you have read in the seminar notebook Dida. I assume that all of you have read it closely, (00:05:03) right? Nervous Giggles (00:05:09) in 1981. I referred to at some possible revolutions by the year 2001. I changed the name and I've also changed the juggling juggling of the ideas the biggest stuff for me and my rethinking was a decision that I made a month ago merely to consider writing a major book entitled (00:05:27) transformations. (00:05:30) So what I have to say is a rough outline of my book and I'll be very interested in your reactions. Do the basic ideas come across clearly and other major disagreements with my (00:05:40) logic (00:05:42) impart. My book is an answer to John. Nesbitt's megatrends. How many people have read Megatron's my good Lord? That's seems like about 60% Although they're all rather tentative. How many among you agree with me that the title might better be changed to Mega drivel. About 1/3 roughly of for maybe a half. Okay, the remainder of those perhaps we can re-entry a arranged afterwards. They re education seminar in which either you can convince me where my worldview is profoundly wrong, or maybe I can help to convince you. I see three basic differences between the focus on Trends such as Nesbitt has and my focus on (00:06:33) Transformations (00:06:36) first when you look at Trends what is changing now? This point of view tends to favor a probable a most probable future. If you look at Transformations ways in which the world may radically change in the next decade or so. The focuses on ways and how a probable future will not happen. So while nesbitt's Focus leads to a what I consider to be an unwarranted sense of security. I want to focus on the insecurity in the uncertainty of the situation that we face. This is not to say that looking at trans is not without some value, but it's like streets versus Avenues. It's to profoundly different approaches. The second way in which I'd ever with mr. Nesbitt is that looking at Trends and saying that such and so is happening Not Alone 10 trends that are transforming our future. Favors passivity at least the way Nesbitt presents it he does not say how to shape the future how to manage the future what must be done. He merely says it's all happening sit back and (00:07:54) enjoy. (00:07:57) On the other hand a focus on Transformations. I hope will urge us to act to control the situation. For we can shape and even transform the future to some degree, but we must know how the future is being transformed and fully estimate the immensity of the task. The third basic difference that I have with Nesbit. Is that the presentation of trans does not necessarily have to be upbeat but in nesbitt's case it certainly is it's a Norman Vincent Peale approach to what's happening in society or you might also say it's a doctor a doctor pangloss approach for those of you who have ever read Candide. Everything is good. We will not talk about the bad news because that's uncomfortable and we don't want to hear the bad news. You will give you a light a nice pleasantry. I think that this is found an important difference that we must look at both good Futures and bad Futures and try to be neutral about this questions of optimism and pessimism. If the roof is leaking eventually we're going to have to fix it. Jenny could you hand out the first chart, please. So the basic theme of our presentation. Is that one or more Transformations is probable in the next 15 to 20 years and this in turn will necessitate will demand rethinking. For which we are ill-equipped. Now I'm having a chart handed out. I'm having two copies handed out and I'd like you to fill them both out. You can keep one. I'd like to have the other back just so I can have some idea of your estimate of the ballpark of possibilities. You can see that this may or may not be helpful and I hope it doesn't unduly influence your estimate, but I stuck my neck out and made what I consider to be conservative estimates on the possibility of some major transformation happening in the next 15 20 years apart. Mm. I put my figures over in the left-hand column and if you'll put your finger in the right hand column. And then add up the sum. And I just want to get a sense of what the total score is to see our sense of the possibility of transformation. But again to you to use the metaphor of that'll help you. I'm trying to estimate the size of the ballpark and I do not want to carefully sketch the Leaves of Grass. Now there are three minimal rules in considering Transformations. I have them listed up at the top. I'll explore them somewhat. What I'm talking about is method in the most fundamental sense what we look at and how and the first one comes back to this question of optimism versus pessimism. I think it's very important to avoid the extremes of Pollyanna and Cassandra. Oh Cassandra, of course, if you're saying if you have a view of Doom and Gloom you give up hope and you can't act on the Other Extreme. However, if you have a simple-minded view of the world, if you're overly optimistic, then you let certain problems get by and suddenly the world is going to change in front of you and probably for the worse. Although there's some people such as one of our current pangloss Ian's Julian solemn Simon who claim that there's great market for Doom and Gloom and there is among some people generally psychological research shows that there is a proclivity for an optimistic perspective indeed. There's a book that summarizes an immense amount of psychological research and the book is entitled The Pollyanna principle that David Matlin and Janet's Tang. Excuse me. Janet map and David's time published by Shanklin and 1979 which shows us widespread proclivity where we will interpret things in an optimistic light where we seek positive information. We like an optimist. We like Annie when she sings The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. This is all very good. It makes us feel good, but it is not the way to manage our society to manage our companies our communities our families and our personal lives. We must beware the extremes of Pollyanna and Cassandra. The second dualism methodological dualism that I want to urge upon you has to do with realism and idealism. There's some people train from the in the social scientists who are hardcore empiricists and will not let either their imaginations soar or take an ethical stance as to what ought to be. Instead they look at the world the way it is which limits their imagination to the way the world could be. On the other hand or the other extreme you have idealists who look at only the way the world could be and ought to be and not the way the world is and believe me. There is a profound Gulf between the two another difficulty is that the idealists often try to voice their Vision off vision of the future off on people by claiming that such and so is happening. The Aquarian conspiracy is taking place Consciousness three is about to occur in the attempt to create what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, too often one's expectations will be raised quite high and nothing happens and then one becomes disillusioned. So my argument is that we must be both realistic and idealistic. We need both. We they ought to work in combination the same way that we need to be both optimistic and pessimistic and have the courage and the skills to Hope and fear. The third methodological dualism I wish to introduce has to do with opening and closing. There's a book on this to buy a Canadian sociologist Oren clap with the title opening and closing in his definition opening is scanning for information expansionism modernism and Rebellion, but this leads to a world of information overload or info dot as I like to call it. So it is necessary human response to cope with overload too close to toes off information to close your mind. And I think that we all go through periods of opening and closing. Of knowing and therefore having our mind closed of not knowing and opening our mind to receive new information. And again, I think it's necessary to have a healthy balance between these these two extremes. An interesting quote related to this. I picked up a quote attributed to Kenneth grahame. Who says that the strongest human instinct is to impart information. The second strongest is to resist it. And there's always this this dialectic going on between people wanting information at the same time being inundated with it. And especially if you're a professional, I don't think I have to remind you of your everyday condition that we live in an age of info glad that this is a pervasive problem and it is not been well examined. It's important though to acknowledge ignorance and to sometimes take the stance of ignorance in contrast to The Stance of knowing this is another form of opening and closing. When you acknowledge your ignorance, you're opening yourself to a learning experience and both individually and collectively I suspect that there is too much Behavior towards knowing acting as if we know as a way of maintaining our Prestige both as individuals and as a society, we think we are well educated as a society because everybody's gone to school and we're all running around with a bunch of degrees. We don't talk about the educational needs of our society. However, and the possibility that the gap between the needs and our actual attainments may be dangerously (00:16:50) yd. (00:16:57) It's interesting that the individuals who usually act the most knowledgeable tend to be those who know the least bartenders and cab drivers. For example always seem to be full of certitudes about the way the world is and you glad to give you the latest football stores again hard data, but they can't get into the subtleties of soft areas of knowledge as many of us many of us have to do in our in our (00:17:24) work. (00:17:28) That's concerns thinking about the future which is obviously uncertain. We just have to admit this on certainty and stop imposing unrealistic standards on futurists. And suspecting that a person who tries to forecast who tries to sketch what may happen in the future must always be right. Most futurists are wrong most of the time and a lot of commentators on seeing this will say haha. Look at those Futures. They were all wrong. They missed this and so event and which is absolutely true. Nevertheless. You have to try as best as you can and I think it's useful to keep a metaphor of a baseball player in mind. We don't ask baseball player to hit a thousand a good ball player hits 300 three hits of 10 times at bat and a bad ball player hits 200 So the difference between a good ball player and a bad ball paid Earth is only fifty percent and this may be true for a good futurist somebody who studies the future and maybe a bad future someone who just does not study doesn't think that much. But this is a bit of speculation at this point, but I just I just want to point out that it's difficult to anticipate what may happen we ought to do the best we can we have to remember that the ballpark is increasingly foggy. In other words, it's be things are becoming more uncertain. So it's even more difficult to get a hit. But what's the alternative not to be a bad at all? So to get to (00:19:13) the (00:19:17) discussion of Transformations, I have them lumped under three categories. And I want to discuss each of the each of the major categories first events Technologies and ideas think of it as a three-legged stool without those three legs. You'll fall down. Do you have to have three legs at a minimum? And there's an interplay between events technically there's both an interplay and there's an overlap can conceptually you could say that technology is an idea, you know in a material form and many of the events are technological events, but nevertheless I think it's useful to separate the three and to look the way that they that they interact Technologies often lead to events and ideas will lead create Technologies. And as well as advanced Etc. Most of the events are generally negative when I look at them War depression quickly tearing down. What took a long time to build up. most of the Technologies at least at the outset are generally positive which is why they receive attention and hope they carry the promise of betterment, especially When those with economic interest, let us know of the promise of betterment that computers will give you a better life 99 things to do with your Apple Etc. We are quick to hear the ideal. The reality of misuse non-use and goof-ups comes later. That's for ideas. We don't discuss ideas very much. And I think that the political scientists have a limited view of the world of ideas, which is usually confined to what they call the political Spectrum with the Liberals on the left and the conservatives on the right, which I call the Flat Earth view of political thinking there are many more ideas struggling to get into power and I think that this for scholarly neutrality that we at least ought to acknowledge what they are which the political scientists do not do. And everybody does have some ideas that come together in a systemic way of sorts to some degree that we might call word view a worldview or to use a word that sounds rather harsh and ideology. It's almost like a taboo to talk about ideologies as cognitive systems. But yet everybody has them the same way as each of us has a blood type. Our cognitive system or ideology may be simple or complex. Well for more sketchy and it may change somewhat but my limited understanding of how it works. It's seldom that you have a radical change where one will move completely from one set of ideas to another at these sets of ideas are filters to the world. We tend to defend our worldviews and to ignore others which are alien and threatening. (00:22:23) If they are seen at all (00:22:26) we also tend also to assess that our side is winning and that the other ideas the opposing side are falling out of favor such as the conservative say that there is a conservative Trend in the nation more people were coming over to our side and the Libertarians will say that they're more people that are learning about the glories of privatizing government and the transformation is will say the transformation is happening. Well, this is the Battle of ideas in a rather crude sense, but this is what's going on in society. And this is how Society is (00:22:57) shaped as a (00:23:00) struggle to get ideas and power and thus you'll note down and 9 and 10 and the chart. I have them grouped between those ideas in or near power the established ideas that Will be acted upon by either the Republican or the Democratic candidate in most profit probability and the ideas out of power. As a reminder to those who may be sympathetic to those ideas that an ordered for them to be effective. They will have to do something to get them in power either Ally themselves with the liberal work of conservative ideology or somehow get a candidate representing those ideas and get enough with the electric to put this person into political office. But even an office ideas alone will often have relatively little impact compared to events and Technologies. You could look at Ronald Reagan who entered office. Firmly convinced to have a transformation Reagan Revolution. He said I certainly do want to have thoroughgoing change as a result of my regime and I'm sure this is shocking to some liberals who had no idea that such ideas can never even get into Power. You know, where did they come from? Suddenly? They're in power and these radical things were being tried and washed it well as it turned out at least for this first term of of Reagan's tenure a lot of his ideas have been watered down and he's far from achieving a revolution. Although it depends on who you talk to about (00:24:29) this. (00:24:32) Well, the last comment I have about ideas in general is simply that you have to think of the holistically about the type of society. We have the type of society that we're probably going to have the Transformations that are likely the events. The Technologies and asked what ideas are fit to govern in the 21st century what set of ideas can cope with all of these turbulent conditions. Do we have any ideas at all in some combination some worldview that is adequate to the task of (00:25:07) governance. (00:25:15) Now I will go down the list for the 10 Transformations and just briefly discuss discuss each of them. (00:25:24) War (00:25:27) possibly nuclear war should be at the top of any list. That's but of course devotes about one sentence in his book to the prospect of nuclear war and only the hope I think that the internationalizing in the world economy will reduce the chance of nuclear war. That's nesbitt's response to the to the situation. The arms race apparently is not a mega trend. (00:25:54) You know (00:25:54) close your eyes babe. It'll go away. The arms race has been growing both horizontally and vertically horizontally in the sense that is stretching out to other nations and vertically in the sense that the weapons are getting bigger and bigger total World expenditures on armaments were 100 billion in 1960 183 billion in nineteen seventy five hundred billion in 1980 and 600 billion in 1983. Six Nations now have nuclear weapons to more or suspected of having them and a score of nations may join the nuclear club by the year 2000. There are now 50 thousand nuclear warheads in the world with an explosive yield of 1.6 million times the Hiroshima bomb according to Jonathan Schell and the fate of the earth a twenty Megaton bomb dropped a New York City would have 1600 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. (00:27:01) The sum (00:27:02) of all this is that a number of people are likely to get hurt. If we continue in this way. There are several scenarios. It isn't simply the scenario that comes most immediately to mind actually is the least likely scenario of the United States and the Soviet Union slinging nuclear weapons at each other the all-out nuclear Armageddon scenario. This is actually the least likely scenario to happen. More likely scenarios to think about it a more likely scenario would be a regional war that if nuclear bomb got set off in the middle. We say if either of Iran or Iraq had a nuclear bomb given the way that they get passionate about their hatreds, they could very well set one off and that in turn might involve the superpowers and blow up into a bigger War. And even more probable. Way in which one or more nuclear weapons might go off would be as a result of terrorists. Non-governmental actors and this likelihood is is increasing. And then possibly the most likely scenario is not intentional War at all but the axe Nation accidental detonation of one or more nuclear weapons because increasingly these systems are getting to be on hair-trigger alert. And if you read a book by Arthur Macy Cox called Russian Roulette, he is the metaphor of the six-chambered pistol and said that the chances before were about one in six and now they're moving to about three or four and six because of the systems that we were installing. (00:28:43) And then (00:28:45) even if we don't have nuclear weapons go off, even if we went to war using Conventional Weapons as worn by the recent article in Harper's magazine. Such a war but would very likely be far more destructive than either of the two World new world wars that we've experienced in this Century because the growing destructive power of the non-nuclear weapons. So there's a great deal to worry about in in this area and this of course would surely be a (00:29:14) transformation. (00:29:17) Although in most instances not one. That would have a positive outcome. There's one. Positive somewhat not really cynical scenario, but I was discussing with Don Michael at lunch what I call the scenario the educational bomb where one nuke one or maybe two nuclear weapons might go off and merely kill say a million people which would be sufficient to shock the world to his senses so that they'd really wants and for all try and put the nuclear Genie back in the bottle or at least get it close to the bottle and control (00:29:49) it. (00:29:51) Well the second big transformation that you have to worry about is an economic collapse. and if you talk to Economist, and usually they tend to be worried that Henry Kaufman who's a respected forecaster for Salomon Brothers is now giving about 10 to 12 percent odds, although it doesn't give a time period Ed Cornish the president of the world future Society gives about an 80 to 90% probability of an economic collapse some time this decade. I guess this whole idea of putting probabilities in these big Transformations is started at a dinner meeting. I attended a couple years ago where we had a number of people from the Reagan Administration and we had some futurists and we were sitting at a long rectangular table and at the very end of one tables John Nesbitt and at the other end of the table is Bob Theobald. And as but was babbling about my God what a time to be alive and Bob Theobald was grousing about the awful things that were happening in the world if we don't transform our thinking so I tried to pin them down is to the the likelihood of what might happen. I said, okay put a number on it. What is the likelihood of an economic Collapse by the end of this decade? Bob Theobald said 95% John says but said five percent so you can see the variability in perceptions of these risks that we face. And we don't really have any good mechanism. Ideally you'd have these Delphi exercises where you bring experts together and you try to reconcile these estimates of what might happen to the Future and at least have a narrowing of these estimates and bring people together and has some discussion but we don't have mechanisms for this. So again, we tend to hit these wild extremes or the third transformation is an energy crisis and we've already experienced two of those already. Although it's we're still vulnerable to having a third one. If anything happens to the Persian Gulf, which is still possibility is worn by Daniel yergin of Harvard University. (00:32:00) The fourth (00:32:02) transformation would be an Eco catastrophe. It's hard to imagine at least in my mind how an Eco catastrophe would be sought unusually, it would be something that would creep up Although our perception of it, maybe sudden such as we just discovered toxic wastes and became conscious of that just a few years ago. One of the most profound Eco catastrophes that people worry about is the possibility of a greenhouse effect and global warming due to the release of carbon dioxide as well as the destruction of forests, which would absorb some of the carbon dioxide and this would lead to a warming of the atmosphere which in turn would lead to a melting the polar ice caps, which would lead to a raising of the ocean and a flooding is some of the lowland cities and it's spectacular. It says has all the aspects of a Hollywood Irwin Allen movie but something like this would take place over a long period of time and presumably we'd we would be aware of the trends and take some action to reduce this and there's still an argument of what the removing this direction or not or whether the we are in a cooling cycle of a long-term cooling cycle, which is offsetting any warming cycles that are induced by human activity at least one should consider that future climate could be quite variable and the message from that is that we should have a resilient Agriculture and not put ourselves in a position of vulnerability no matter which way it goes. The fifth area that I have in Transformations is a wild card just some Wild event that we can't think of and kind of miscellaneous area. I have an idea of a big Quake either in California or possibly in the midwest does as anybody heard of the New Madrid, Missouri quake and 1811? I don't know if it if there was another Quake on that same fault. Would that come up to here? Yes, okay. Well, it would transform the Midwest at least if not the entire the entire nation and there's a fellow of Saint Louis University who suggesting that there could be a biggie in store in the next few decades. And of course they've been talking about that in California. Also some Quake of 8.0 or more in the Richter scale. Then it's possible that X that ET and his friends from outer space may actually come true one one never knows. This is a wild card and what the consequences from. This would also be a wild card. It could be good or bad or profound or utterly trivial or extraterrestrials may want to eat us. We really don't know. so it's just speculation and then you might think well, there's some other Wild event, you know, we didn't think about oil crises 10 15 years ago, but there's something else that Marian is forgotten and you might be able to raise that in the question and answer period Okay, the sixth transformation getting into the area of Technologies is telematics computers and robots and satellites etcetera. I'm going to return to that or later point. Biotechnology there fiddling around with genetic material now and the scientists are terribly excited about what they might be able to do, but nobody's quite sure what that is yet and we've been promised a Green Revolution once before so I couldn't get terribly excited about that yet, but you certainly have to keep an eye on it. And there's another branch of the bile technological Revolution is fiddling around with the human lifespan by trying to get technologies that will retard the aging process and there have been several people that have written that in the next decade or so. We will have technologies that will be able to extend the human lifespan by anywhere from 10 to 40 years. Most recent book was published by Roy Walford of UCLA Medical School who argues we can all have a hundred and twenty year lifespan. And boy if you think we have troubles with Social Security Now. The only reason I personally gave a low probability of serious impact to this particular trend is not that I don't believe it. But I think that we will begin to feel the serious impact after the year 2000 that even if they had the technology is in place, you would not feel the social impact of extended life spans for another decade or so. Energy sources and uses we haven't paid much attention to that lately because we have enough oil but when the oil supply dries up and we start thinking of energy and you never know when a new technology might come along that might transform the way we live it cheap photovoltaic cell for example, breakthrough and hydrogen energy. These are possibilities on the other hand. We may very well just have pretty much the energy pattern that we now have in the year 2000, although there is a trend towards more conserving uses. Now that's the first half of my talk. I 15 minutes to go to do run through the second half the I'm not going to get into the specifics of the three areas about information (00:37:30) economics (00:37:32) and agriculture. To me the most probable transformation will be some form of telematic society. Although we can't really tell what because we're running wild with computers robots satellites cable schemes video text cellular Mobile telephones, and there's more undoubtedly to come especially in the realm of artificial intelligence. And our grasp of what is happening and what is likely to happen is still poor and this inability in this particular area as well as in other (00:38:04) areas. (00:38:07) May very well be our Keystone problem our problem of problems. so the starting point and thinking about the Information Society and our information problems and our inability to grasp those hole. One quick starting point is to rethink of the Information Society as a developing Society. I mean this is awfully simple, but I have yet to see anyone do this. We think of our society as an advanced Society because it is advanced in industrial terms, especially relative to the so-called underdeveloped or lesser developed or developing countries. But we are no longer an industrial society. We are an Information Society and in terms of an Information Society it is useful to take a view that we too are a developing country but on another level and this would put us in a stance of acknowledging ignorance and therefore being in a position of planning to learn. The second starting point is to acknowledge some obvious characteristics of the society that is being created. Around us and you might say that they're almost too obvious to Warrant mention, but nevertheless we tend to overlook them. Now the most obvious one of course, which is well well publicized is the fact that the nature of the labor force is changing that there's more people in the so-called information sector, which is only been discovered in the last few years, but there are other characteristics which are not spoken about one of them is info Glatt or information. Overload. Which I which I mentioned further that there's this proliferation of the amount of information indeed. There is tempted quantifying this proliferation of information and recently appeared in Science magazine a few weeks ago in which it was shown at least in one rough estimate that the amount of information was increasing a much faster rate than our absorption of that information and this of course leads to more fragmentation and parochial outlooks. And fragmentation, of course is the third characteristic and this is being accelerated by the de massification of the media where broadcast television is breaking up into cable and satellite and everybody's going to have access to 200 channels instead of just the good old three major networks. Just in my area of concern alone, which is public policy and alternative Futures. I now estimate that there's been a proliferation of Policy Journal so that there's about 200 policy journals right now, which no one has come close to identify even and of course, how can you conduct a dialogue about the issues of the day when the issues of policy are fragmented over so many issues. There's so many so many media Fourth characteristic is globalization that increasingly we are indeed a global Society. Although not the global village that Marshall mcluhan told us about that. We are intertwined and this increases the level of complexity. We no longer live in a simple Community, but we live in this vast network of multiple overlapping communities from the local up to the global Scoville scale (00:41:43) and the (00:41:45) final characteristic is the possibility of an overall decline in our actual communication. This is an interesting question. Nobody seems to be addressing are we communicating any better the rough estimate I have is that probably not And then you ask the question. What will we communicate better in the future? What will the new technologies do to enhance communication? Or will they just add to the noise and the amount of information overload that we have and make our problems perhaps (00:42:14) worse. (00:42:19) A third thing that we have to do to rethink The Information Society is to think of the intellectual infrastructure the same way that we think of the physical infrastructure. Now the concept of the infrastructure has come into the public View and just the last couple years and everybody acknowledges that the infrastructure is in Dreadful shape the physical infrastructure referring to our roads and our bridges and our sewer systems and our water systems are all falling down four years of neglect and they just aren't up to the demands of our of our society. But nobody ever talks about the intellectual infrastructure our guidance capability of our society. You think of the intellectual infrastructure is a cluster of Institutions, not merely higher education, but also the print media and the man and the electronic media and our research institutes and how they all interact together as a system. And you ask is this system doing its (00:43:17) job? (00:43:21) Well, I don't think so. From what I could see if you had this complex society with the great amount of information in it that is hurtling along it at an impressive rate. And that has all these possible Transformations For Better or Worse. A relevant intellectual infrastructure would have five characteristics. I think that you would have widespread discourse you'd have a lot of interaction discussing these problems you'd have many Itasca seminars. You have literally better for Battlefield 4 debate. (00:43:58) Secondly there (00:43:59) be tongues to think broadly there be comprehensive state of reality reports state of the world nation state and locality state of various problem areas. So we could get on top of of each problem area the state of the Criminal Justice System the state of the agricultural system the state of state of energy. We have very few of those in the few that we have are privately produced. We would think in the long term. We would have long-term social planning, which is not does not necessarily mean control. For those of you who are oriented to libertarian Persuasions where we'd have many forecast and proposals and impact assessments and we would articulate our goals and right many scenarios and I argued that although we do have this activity. We don't have enough of (00:44:45) it. (00:44:47) We'd have a great deal of public sharing of this information at several levels of complexity. We would also have cognitive polling instead of pulling for opinions only we would also ask people what they know before they express their opinions. So we could know what the well-informed the differences between well informed opinion and ill-informed (00:45:08) opinion. (00:45:11) And then finally, we would have a global sharing of information. We would have a world brain which is an ideal articulated by HG wells in 1938, but we can't seem to re-establish this ideal and to move towards it because all nations in the world today faced an interrelated set of problems many of which are quite similar in many of the problems are Beyond National borders now having to especially the environmental problems such as acid rain, but we really do not have a capacity to think globally and to share our information across borders. Let alone two shared across linguistic barriers. The reality is chaos. (00:45:53) There are three (00:45:55) characteristics of this reality which help us to Grapple grapple with it fragmentation triviality and hubris. It's characterizes our present intellectual infrastructure. Fragmentation is a bureaucratize ation of knowledge. Alvin Toffler calls a blip culture. As a lack of genuine debate or structures to promote it. There's massive Gulfs between academic disciplines between Academia and non-academic academics which explains the celebration of Mega drivel because nobody seems to care. There is fragmentation between ideologies between Nature's Nations and cultures. And the interdisciplinary attempts at bridging this fragmentation too often just become another (00:46:43) fragment. (00:46:45) There's widespread triviality. There's no sense of priorities. There's an idea of academic freedom. But have you ever heard of an idea of academic responsibility? Finally, there's hubris the arrogance of knowledge ability in an ignorant Society to take one example that you may know is public broadcasting system, which we must all thank for bringing Lake Wobegon to the nation and the world Maybe. Also has a program All Things Considered. Which is an amiable title and I don't know that they ought to do otherwise, but it's adjust all things considered when a more accurate empirical titling would be a few things touched on lightly. But this is the problem. We're constantly making believe that were in touch with things because we plug in here to this medium or that Medium to Newsweek or commentary or we read the New York Times which has all the News That's fit to print and the magazines in turn will assure you that this is where all the good ideas are and we cover all the news and all you have to do is read us and your information needs will be satisfied and I doubt that this is enough, but I think we're lulled into thinking that this is so and not getting upset about the immense amount of information that at that is that is out there that might be useful to our understanding of the world now to illustrate the problem of the intellectual infrastructure consider Equinox. Let's move from information to economics. Lester thurow recently wrote a book in March and may this this year he published it with random house called Dangerous currents the state of economics and by gosh, he has some some marvelous comments both on on fragmentation triviality and hubris. And fragmentation, he comments just referring to the state of Economics. But I think this is illustrates the condition of the whole he comments about the complete intellectual drift disarray that there are no shared ideas about what is going on. Why and what could be done about our ailing (00:48:59) economies triviality (00:49:03) throughout writes that the economics of the textbooks and the graduate schools is moving toward narrower and narrower interpretations with mathematical sophistication intensifying as understanding of the real world diminishes. And if you want to really reinforce that Viewpoint just go to any library and look at any Journal of Economics or even of business (00:49:23) administration. Thirdly Under The Heading of hubris. (00:49:28) They're all rights, many of the assertions confidently made by economists are only assertions. They occupy the high technical ground with a boldness and confidence that is not justified. This Behavior recommend reflects an academic need for theoretical consistency in rigor more than any desire to measure the realities of the world. We live in and thorough concludes that the transition from one mode of thought to another IE rethinking is difficult since it involves a banding abandoning a beautiful sailing ship. The raft that must be built will not match the Elegance of the ship but it does have one undeniable virtue. It floats finally some words on (00:50:12) agriculture (00:50:15) to fundamental considerations. We have an abundance of food, especially in the US but also potentially worldwide I disagree with Herman Kahn that the world can support 30 billion with present technology because I think that's too optimistic. But I also question Wester Browns view, which I think is too pessimistic that the world could only support six billion people. I think that the reality is somewhere somewhere in between. Yet at the same time that we have an abundance the the second fundamental consideration is that people are hungry and malnourished worldwide. It's about roughly perhaps a half a billion people or one in ten could well be more but even in the United States hunger appears to be an increasing problem. Well just some quick observations on on Hunger to tie this in with the other two broad areas hunger is a failure the economic system. It's also a failure of communication. If I knew the hungry at least personally, I'd be glad to give them food out of my garden. I have a bushel of tomatoes just sitting on picked in my garden. I'll be glad to give away my zucchini. That's what anybody but man of course cannot live on zucchini alone. But at least there is a lack of communication there. I don't know who the hungry are. My neighbors may be starving or malnourished, but I don't know because of the breakdown in community ties and intermediary institutions. (00:51:59) Basically, there are three (00:52:01) options to alleviate hunger three broad options and it's good to consider them together a better distribution of food, or you might say this includes better Communications a food handouts through public and private efforts. Although there's a question of who should do what national state or local governments public or private? The second option is economic reform to empower the poor with money. But which path to pursue we have 50 different paths to economic reform. (00:52:34) And then the third basic (00:52:36) option is self help empower the poor with means of production and the Lesser developed countries, it's Land Reform, but even here you could have plots for home gardens. You could have a home studying program, which nobody is adjusted yet and ideally If we were thinking holistically one would consider all three basic approaches, but I don't think that we do that that we tend only to focus on one or the other because of our fragmentation. Okay. Well in some these are the problems of learning how to manage a complex and changing Society much rethinking must be going on must go on and considering our problems in our possibilities indeed much more than we imagined. We must rethink the effort of rethinking for starters consider the concept of Itasca times 1,000. With all due respect to the organizers of the Itasca seminar. We must put it in context and acknowledge that it is only a very small step on a long journey. I feel I must note the profound irony that important issues are dealt with in a single relatively leisurely week or trivial matters are pursued in great detail in the universities and courses of study that last several years. We need learning sabbaticals. for all who could rejuvenate society and the universities Universities have yet to seriously address this question of adults learning needs. However, because they still tend to be youth-oriented and their structure and (00:54:14) procedures some other actions to (00:54:17) stimulate rethinking think that we are an ignorant Society rather than that. We are well educated Society. We need new institutions new reward systems new ethical standards further study of the intellectual infrastructure, of course. Especially a study of higher education by some independent group. Perhaps politicians by question the Appropriations for higher education and the purposes that are higher education is is pursuing rather than just giving them money. I'll be it a little bit less to distribute at will. And there can be bottom spread under bottom up action that you can do something if you understand the problem. If you agree with me that it is a problem. You can find something to do to overcome the problems of the intellectual infrastructure. Thus you have heard my sermon on rethinking the try dearly will transform all of you into serious lifelong. We thinkers and supporters of free thinkers. If you do not already have these Noble attributes we can do the necessary rethinking both individually and collectively we must do so if we are to have a hand in transforming the future toward Humane and desirable ends rather than having the future transformed utterly out of one's control and quite possibly into an undesirable future for all of us if we have one at all. Thank you.