Bucky carried the concept of sustainability to higher level— that of regeneration

Dear Joo Hock,

Please feel free to forward this to all my friends on your Bucky network.

It is my conviction that Bucky carried the concept of sustainability to higher level— that of regeneration. What I mean by this is that regeneration is to sustainability as sustainability is to the business-as-usual or conventional non-sustainable development. Sustainability is the concept that development will not destroy of degrade the foundations upon which development depends; that future generations will have the same level of life-support resources as the present generation has. (Non-sustainable development does not care about future generations and their resources or life-support systems; it is all about getting what is wanted right now.) Regenerative development takes sustainability to the next level. Instead of just having the same level of resources in the future as we have now, regenerative development strives to have more resources or better life-support systems in the future than we have now. Here's an example: conventional farming systems results each year in less topsoil and biological capacity to produce than the previous year. Sustainable farming results in maintaining topsoil and biological complexity and capacity. Regenerative agriculture results in more and better quality topsoil and biological complexity each year. One way of looking at it is that "sustainability" seeks to maintain what we have for future generations, and "regeneration" seeks to increase what future generations have.

Regenerative development is at the core of the design science methodology that participants learn at the annual Design Science Labs (http://www.designsciencelab.com/). A paper describing regenerative design can be found at http://www.designsciencelab.com/resources/index.shtml

Best regards,
Medard Gabel

The best way to understand a system is to understand the system it fits into.
Medard Gabel
medard@bigpicturesmallworld.com
610.566.0156
BigPictureSmallWorld
http://www.bigpicturesmallworld.com
BigPicture Consulting
http://www.bigpictureconsulting.com

Universe as Experiences of Energy Events

Some (Joo Hock) thoughts to share

I just watched George Smoot (posted on OIA by Ludo) talked about how our Universe was designed, and he's referring to the physical Universe. Brilliant talk on TED, brilliant graphics, etc. However I'm more in tuned to Buckminster Fuller's (Bucky) perspectives of Universe, which I can connect with. He defined Universe in terms of experience. I quote him, "Universe is the aggregate of all of humanity's experience." (He has a longer version, but at the moment this suffice) I find this meaningful, to me. "Universe is comprised of complexes of energy events, and our experiences of these events. End of the day, everything boils down to our Experiences, nothing more, nothing less. Take away our experiences in life and we won't have a sense of what is Universe.

And I appreciate Bucky's definition even more, because when we see Universe from this perspective, as Experiences, then it is truly comprehensive, covering not just the Physical, but inclusive of the Metaphysical, of thoughts, ideas, feelings, the invisible, the relationship of energy events, Generalized Principles, etc.

Like it took me quite a while to come to share with you here on OIA Learning Hub - the Generalized Principle of Lag operating! Ha Ha

Perhaps you might want to pause here for a while and reflect.

And I like his (Buckminster Fuller's) Poem, "Cosmic Plurality" which I've committed to memory, and use as a "tool" to share some perspective with others when appropriate.

It goes like this:

"Environment to each must be
All there is that isn't me
Universe in turn must be
All that isn't me and me

Since I only see inside of me
What brains imagine outside of me
It seems to me you may be me
If that is so there's only we

Me and we
Two which love makes three
Universe perme-embracing
It Them You We"

Looking forward - thinking ahead

Taken from "Looking Backward" (1996) last chapter of the Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman
The world as viewed in 2096 and Five great economic trends in the XXI century

1. Soaring resource prices (superrich will be, more often than not, prime land owners or those with access to mineral)
2. The environment as property (no more free air)
3. The rebirth of the big city (urban density favoring the kind of close, face-to-face interaction that turn out to be essential... the most effective mass-transit system yet devised: the elevator)
4. The devaluation of higher education (many of the jobs that require a college degree today have been eliminated, while many of the rest can, it turns out, be done quite well by an intelligent person whether or not she has studied world literature.... academic credentials will have hardly any monetary value... Harvard has become - as it was in the nineteenth century, more of a social institution than a scholarly one - aplace for the childrne of the wealthy to refine their social graces and make friends with others of the same class.)
5. The celebrity economy (although business gurus are proclaiming the predominance of creativity and innovation over mere routine production, in fact the growing ease with which information is transmitted and reproduced makes it even harder for creators to profit from their creations.... creations must make money indirectly... by promoting sales of something else....)

Krugman is without pity for the stereotyped but too common futuristic views of the coming of an "information economy", mainly producing intangibles, and where the good jobs would go to "symbolic analysts", who "would push icons around on computer screens".

As Krugmans puts it - quoting Marvin Minsky " what people vaguely call common sense is actually more intricate than most of the technical expertise we admire." And Krugman adds:  "it takes common sense to deal  with the physical world - which is why , even at the end of the XX century, there are still no robot plumbers."

Who then wants to think with me and prepare the future of education? You know how to find me :-)