Vision 2010

March 2002

Transcending Resistance: Transformation

Assumption: The reader is dissatisfied with the way the world/this country is being run and is disillusioned by our current political and economic system and would like to explore alternatives that are more sustainable and satisfying.

-scale revolution will do to establish a new way of doing things.

The Good Future

Where the path leads once we try a new way of doing things seems impossible to tell from here. In my heart I feel that the good future can and must include peace on earth and in space as well as the chance for every human on the planet to realise their full potential. Important would be that we continually evolve and adjust our way of doing things, integrating new knowledge and wisdom as necessary. The way to get from a civilisation that is grid locked in conflict and an unbearable status quo to a flourishing, evolving civilisation could be, on a purely political/economical plane, through gradual transformation of the old way into the new.

Introducing Dao (now Peer)

Aran: “Two years ago I started working on an implementation of a peer-to-peer open source system, and after a year and four re-writes I realised that all the powerful concepts I wanted to include in it (P2P, Open-Source, Document-Evolution, Fractal-Compression, Associative--burner and started thinking about the whole thing again from a more philosophical perspective.

Now another year later, a new implementation is in progress built on the Taoist (Tao) principles. When IT is made to work in accordance with Taoism it presents us with a single “e-

All applications (groups) are accessing, defining and managing various resources (eg. Information, objects, money, credit, space, processing time etc etc) ie. Everything we need or want to do can be expressed in terms of objects and their relationships.

Objects are passive (acted upon by relationships)

Relationships are active, acting upon Objects

Dao.doc - March 2002

A New Consensus

Being able to co-ordinate themselves much more effectively because they are now sharing information and resources directly, not mediated through markets and middlemen, people will be able to drop out of the structure of consumer society at their own pace, creating new support structures and empowering themselves to direct all their energy into building the good future.

New decision-making tools can make the dream of a direct, consensus-based electronic democracy a reality. Citizens can bypass governments with such tools, interacting with each other directly to resolve problems.

Kieran’s polling software can help people share and develop opinions, make political and economic decisions and share information effectively. It provides the basis for a truly democratic forum where everyone is empowered to craft polls and help form the debate or contribute a new perspective.

Graduated Transition

The beauty of the above-

Maximising Utilisation

Maximising utilisation will be an important outcome of the transformation. Currently we are not using the goods we own efficiently. Collectively, we are a lot poorer than we should be, because the capitalist system is always striving to maximise profits and is therefore geared toward massive duplication of ownership, i.e. most people own a lawnmower while utilising it only, say 1% of the time. Using resources more efficiently, e.g. through car-pooling, can occur through resource management and sharing, something that the Dao software will facilitate.

Stress-free zones (now Sanctuary)

The economic pressures of our time often stifle creative efforts necessary to transform the way we do things. Many people with sound and sincere ideas that go against the grain are forced to play by the market rules (i. e. pay rent), which they do not accept and which often entail a “creeping buy- To set free these creative resources we can create zones that will enable people to pursue their interests and often positive but anti-corporate-profit concepts that would empower people directly. One such thing might be some new, cheap, ecologically balanced way to generate large amounts of electricity. That would be an example of…

Freedom Technology

In these stress--operate, like the Dao software, could be termed freedom technology. Of course the design process in the network will be open and intellectual property will be shared, speeding up the pace of development and eventually giving the Transformation Network a technological edge over the old system as well as being, in some respects, two or more orders of magnitude more efficient.

Transparency and Accountability

New currency system

A new currency system could emerge from the network of cooperating people as a locally dynamic medium of exchange but lacking certain negative properties that money currently has, i.e. interest and debt.

Autonomous Settlement (now Sanctuary)

A lot of the above described concepts and ideas would be easier to implement for the people wishing to pioneer them if a loose network of co-operating intentional communities could be established. Those of us who are ready can start discussing how this could happen and begin a process with which communities can easily be established.

There are other reasons for wanting community that are to do with lifestyle. Having a whole bunch of friends around, backed up by an (eventually massive) support network will help us regain a sense of belonging and being grounded. Those of us worried by the toll on our (mental) health by noise, stress and pollution in the cities can look forward to living in a clean environment in healthy houses. Another important aspect is the promise of living close to work because it would easily be possible to set up something with people who are working on what we are interested in.

A sense of independence and empowerment would arise from being able to take part in decision--states, millions of humans cooperating directly, leaving the frustrations and inefficiencies of the old way behind.