One of the most mysterious (nefarious?) organizations in the world today is the CIA — not the CIA. Over at Ecological Economics Dave Iverson wrote an fascinating post called Blogs and Wikis: Learning from the CIA which reproduces most of Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community by D. Calvin Andrus who “serves in the CIA’s Directorate of Support.” Andrus writes:
Robert Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet protocol and founder of 3Com, asserted that the value of a communication system grows as approximately the square of the number of nodes of the system. This assertion has become known as Metcalfe’s Law. A single telephone or a single fax machine has no communication value. Two phones have a little value. Two thousand phones have some value. Two hundred million interconnected phones are a system that has incredible communication value.
This made me think of a thread that started a few days ago at Growth Is Madness! (GIM) after John Feeney posted Learning from Lester Brown. John writes:
Incessant growth of an economy out of sync with the environment has imposed severe stresses on the ecosystem. Brown discusses how ongoing environmental degradation might soon affect the economy as falling water tables (and rising temperatures) constrain food production worldwide. This is a nice introduction to this water issue which Brown describes as “the most underestimated resource issue in the world today.”
In the comments at GIM part of the discussion initiated by Magne was about how and when a “tipping point” might come about in terms of general understanding of the problems of population growth, increasing consumption, and sustainability.
Magne writes,
The call for immediate changes [in response to growth and environmental degradation], especially in terms of our energy production and energy use, is definitely becoming louder and louder. – The problem is, however: this new call is popularly written on blogs. To me, it’s more like realizing that there’s a growing number of people who are indulged in the “writing, writing on the wall.”
As rare as it may be, the CIA’s paper Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community linked above provides some hope for those of who share Magne’s concern. Each blog, each news article, each scientific report moves us up Metcalfe’s curve toward the point labeled “Critical Mass Crossover.” At that point, governments and the corporations that choose them (with apologies for my cynicism) will have to acknowledge honestly that growth must be managed responsibly because so much of the general population will be aware of the danger inherent in not doing so.
While a few bloggers “writing on the wall” don’t accomplish much, thousands of them along with thousands of journalists can amplify what the thousands of scientists are telling us.
In 1999 David P. Reed wrote That Sneaky Exponential: Beyond Metcalfe’s Law to the Power of Community Building in which he presents what has become known as Reed’s Law:
Reed notes that the telephone analogy (on the order of N squared) used by Metcalfe does not support what he calls Group Forming Networks (on the order of 2 to the N).
In networks like the Internet, Group Forming Networks (GFNs) are an important additional kind of network capability. A GFN has functionality that directly enables and supports affiliations (such as interest groups, clubs, meetings, communities) among subsets of its customers. Group tools and technologies (also called community tools) such as user-defined mailing lists, chat rooms, discussion groups, buddy lists, team rooms, trading rooms, user groups, market makers, and auction hosts, all have a common theme — they allow small or large groups of network users to coalesce and to organize their communications around a common interest, issue, or goal. Sadly, the traditional telephone and broadcast/cable network frameworks provide no support for groups.
In short, the value of a group of nodes on a network — or a group of people writing blogs, news articles, and science reports on a topic like sustainability — will increase quickly with the number of nodes but more quickly with the addition of groupware, the sorts of things we come to expect on the Internet. What this means for people like Magne is there is good reason for optimism if those of us interesting in sustainability learn to use the groupware tools currently available and cobble together some new ones.
ScienceBlogs.com is one such model. Created a little more than a year ago by Seed Media Group, it now hosts 60 blogs which together have nearly 30,000 posts and 290,000 comments. The common thread is what you would expect: all the blogs there have something to do with science. And while I believe most of the bloggers are scientists that’s not a requirement.
We believe in providing our bloggers with the freedom to exercise their own editorial and creative instincts. We do not edit their work and we do not tell them what to write about. We have selected our … bloggers based on their originality, insight, talent, and dedication and how we think they would contribute to the discussion at ScienceBlogs. Our role, as we see it, is to create and continue to improve this forum for discussion, and to ensure that the rich dialogue that takes place at ScienceBlogs resonates outside the blogosphere.
For readers/commentators ScienceBlogs offers wide variety, a common format, and a level of organization on top of the individual blogs (channels, searching across all the blogs,…). For the science bloggers (sciblings) it provides hosting, maintenance, and a tiny amount of income; the bloggers can concentrate on writing.
Maybe we are approaching a point where a similar organization might create SustainableEarthBlogs.com (or pick a shorter, punchier name). In the meantime, bloggers that would fit in that organization might target getting picked up by ScienceBlogs and pump up its Planet Earth channel.
[Note: Metcalfe's and Reed's Laws have their detractors and supporters. There's a fair amount of discussion about them — here for example.]
Quote: “One of the most mysterious (nefarious?) organizations in the world today is the CIA — not the CIA.”
Ha ha.
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=4410
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Helsinki: October 2004: “Limits to Ignorance: The Challenge of Informed Humanity”
“The wealth, volume of information produced has grown enormously over the past few decades. Formerly isolated information today is ever more connected. This globally networked information is ever more easy accessible to a growing number of people world-wide. Standards of education, mobility and cosmopolitanism of the middle class in industrial societies, as well as emerging developing countries, have grown enormously in the past few decades. The volume of information and the range of media have also increased considerably, making information readily accessible to an increasing number of people. Yet in Yet and despite of higher standards of education and almost unlimited access to information, the world is still beset by the well known challenges, such as grave environmental risks, a growing gap between the rich and poor, and conflicts between different cultures. The course of humanity has not changed, even though an increasing number of people have all the informational resources needed for responding to the situation. The crucial question for the future of humanity is whether we learn to understand the challenge of sustainable development implicit in this issue in time. What are the thingsis (sic) needed for changing ignorance and the lack of vision into global responsibility and awareness? How can we motivate the middle-classes and other responsible actors to make the commitment to achieve global change?
So, in summarising, what we want to bring up into public discussion is The Annual Conference of The Club of Rome will focus on this the contradictory development (sic, sic): On the one hand we recognise an increasing flow of information that may potentially provide us with more knowledge about the world around us. On the other hand we also identify a growing information overload causing confusion and disorientation and an increasing tendency on misuse of information and information channels, obscuring the premises of the public and private decision-making and increasing to public ignorance.”
El Hassan Bin Talal (President of The Club of Rome)
Markku Wilenius (Chairman: Finnish Association for The Club of Rome)
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This brilliant (but highly disturbing) question, which was cast upon this world by The Club of Rome in 2004, remains unresolved. Today, it can seem to me like the most difficult part of the equation is the part which involves the mainstream media, which in part (let’s admit it) serves to protect the political / economic / social / cultural establishment of each and every sovereign country in which it is at work. I mean: think about it: “the misuse of information and information channel.” Hah! To which purpose? Oh, that’s definitely hard to tell.
A disturbing fact is: this question raised by The Club of Rome has not, to my knowledge, been referred to openly by any media group in this world. Just you google it, and you’ll easily find that I’m probably right. The next question will be: “Why? How come?”
The “thingsis” this elitist group of scientists and heads of state were searching for, back in 2004, is, I believe, what we are about to find (or “found”) these days, here in cyberspace (“the internet” or “the blogosphere”). I can only hope that the freedom of opinion and expression that has evolved here, over the past few years, is one that can be protected for the future. I don’t know whether or not it will be wise of me to hope that the mainstream media will one-day follow suit, and allow concerned citizens to be concerned with topics that might offend the established political-economic elites of our societies, also in print.
Another challenge which remains, is this: for how long are the poor, underprivileged masses of the developing world going to have to wait before they get the opportunity to take an active part in the on-going communication revolution of our times?
It’s a necessity, I believe. We can talk about “the democratization of knowledge” perhaps? And call it a possible way out of the ignorance mess that we’re currently faced with?
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“I know what I want, but I just don’t know how I’m a-gonna get it.”
~ Jimi Hendrix
Magne, as I’m coming to know you through these blog conversatioins, I realize more and more that you have several admirable qualities including persistence, awareness, knowledge, and humor. That’s quite invigorating.
In the quote you provide above, Bin Talal says we have two opposing forces at work:
1. “an increasing flow of information that may potentially provide us with more knowledge about the world around us” which, if I may add, is enhanced by Reed’s Law.
2. “a growing information overload causing confusion and disorientation and an increasing tendency on misuse of information and information channels, obscuring the premises of the public and private decision-making and increasing … public ignorance.” Sadly, Reed’s Law applies to the bad guys as well as the good ones.
One might characterize this as grassroots and science on the one hand versus corporate power on the other. This is a big topic, so let me for now merely reply to a few of your points:
I couldn’t agree more about the mainstream media, at least in the way I experience it in the USA — especially in the changes I’ve seen in the last few years. I used to admire CNN, the 24 hour cable news network Ted Turner created in 1980. It really had an impact, not just here but around the world. However Turner sold it in 1996 and now it is just a shell of what it used to be like TV news in general and the print media in part. TV news is now treated as entertainment and expected to produce similar high profit margins — so Anna Nicole Smith’s death gets a week of 24 hour coverage on the four American “all news” channels.
Exactly. I put “club of rome” into Goolge New’s search box and the first hit was Meet ignored scientists who doubt threat of warming which highlights only the global warming skeptics and says, “much of the media went for the Club of Rome report and hyped the hysteria.” The author is Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.
The flip side is the MSM is no longer the only source of information for many of us.
The only response I have to this is: a very long time. Sad but true. By definition the “poor, underprivileged masses of the developing world” are of no consequence, other than as a source of touching human interest stories, to the “developed” world which measures worth by productive capacity. We have the capability to change that but not yet the will.
Still, more and more people are stepping out of the thrall of corporate news and conservative spin. More alternative, reliable sources of information are available and coming on-line every day. More opportunities to contribute to rational, productive discussion are out there. And at the end of the day there is one fact that even the most cynical, self-serving, rapacious, far-right conservative or libertarian can not escape: reality always wins. As oil, water, and food become more expensive the world’s movers and shakers will have to respond if only because they need healthy consumers to buy their products.
Hello again. That’s a very good reply. Thank you.
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http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=5493
Here’s a thread from the discussion forum that I spend most of my internet time on. The original post (which I think you’ll find interesting, as it is indeed written by a thirteen-year-old), had me started on The Club of Rome’s Limits to Ignorance challenge.
I wonder: what do these younger folks think?
Hmmm. Take note: the discussion taking place in the above link is all based on a rather primitivistic premise, a perspective that I may still be able to ponder about (philosophically, spiritually, dreamingly), but in reality never quite believe in.
Okay?
I read the link and one of the links I found there as well. Not having much contact with kids, I too wonder what the prevailing thoughts of young people are today. Some, like the poster at that link, seem to be well aware of worldwide problems — if not quite able yet to put them into any sort of context or useful framework. Most, I suspose are more entranced by the latest fashions in music and clothing.
One think about young people is, when given half a chance, they see right through adult spin. Most kids also have a sense about sharing what they have with others. I dream about a future civilized society where we don’t acculturate that out of them.
Really good discussion. Magne, the quote from the Club of Rome does a good job of laying out the problem. We’ve had a good discussion in recent days about whether there’s reason for optimism that raising awareness will spark the needed action. That quote, though, makes a very good point – that despite the ever-increasing availability of information, people really aren’t jumping to implement the fundamental changes we need. And, yes, good point that the increase of information is accompanied by an increasing misuse of that information.
So just off the top of my head (brainstorming), do we need something like a whole sector of information outlets devoted to exposing the growing propaganda? Or maybe we sort of have that already. As Trinifar points out, alternative sources are growing in number too. Do we need something else? I mean, what will help this growing information availability to turn the corner and really promote serious change? It seems that first Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Laws tell us there is a necessary threhold. But then is something else needed to overcome the the growing influence of the bad guys?
(BTW, Trinifar’s comment about CNN really hit home. Just yesterday I happened to look at CNN.com and was amazed that nearly all their headlines sounded like stories out the the National Enquirer [A US "newspaper" which is really just silly made up stories about celebrities and space aliens and such])
In terms of the “grave environmental risks” noted by the Club of Rome in 2004, there can hardly be any doubt that the popular awareness of the danger at hand has become more widespread since 2004. – Which must be good news, in a sense.
As it is, today, I’m becoming ever more worried about the tendency to deliberately ignore the threats to the environment. As people – also in the form of political organisations, financial institutions and business corporations – acknowledge the facts of global warming and climate change, and are ready to admit that this unfortunate development is manmade – but still continue to embark on environmentally destructive practices, business as usual, as if nothing is up.
We’re not in a lack of knowledge. We simply choose to ignore all the negative knowledge that we have.
How convenient.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1755765,00.html
Quote: “The biggest boom could be oil and gas. The US Geological Survey surprised some experts when it declared that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves lay under the Arctic Ocean. As the ice retreats, oil companies are scrambling to open a new frontier.”
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I’m constantly hearing of new oil and gas opportunities in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Which spells out as extremely good news in terms of national and corporate economy.
While the best question should be something along this line: “How are we going to escape from the fossil fuels trap that we’re currently stuck inside?”
Should this be such a stupid question?
John, in the spirit of brainstorming, I’d like to see the enviromental/ecological community come together in a more coordinated, up-to-date way — similar to what dKos has done for the left and what ScienceBlogs.com is doing for general science. MediaMatters is a great media watchdog for political issues; a parallel “EarthMatters” or “LifeMatters” would be great to see.
It is already happening to a degree (all the big env/eco orgs have websites and some communities), but as yet there is no cohesive movement with a large body of resources and political/media clout — witness the Green Party in the USA (most people think it is just a bunch of crazy ex-hippies).
I really like what Eora Borealis http://eora.wordpress.com/ is doing — posting summaries of current news reports related to env/eco issues and providing a link to the full articles. It’s a focused service. One can imagine how that could be magnified by the efforts of more people and within a larger, higher-traffic site offering a variety different services.
Magne: “I’m becoming ever more worried about the tendency to deliberately ignore the threats to the environment.”
Too true. I can thing of two reasons for this off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many more.
#1 Desensatization. So many reports of threats with such great frequency cause people to ignore them, especially when they do not see and feel any immediate impact.
#2 A sense of helplessness. What can I do as one individual just trying get by?
My answer to both of these has to do with framing and interpreting — and of course organizing. If each report of a threat is put into a larger meaningful framework in which it can be seen as part of a larger pattern, then the larger framework itself becomes more important. Obviously this happens now, but I find myself going to books like the one I’m reading currently, The Diversity of Life by E. O. Wilson, to understand the framework, or more technical work like academic papers which are admittedly not accessible (in both the sense of obtaining them and understanding) to most people.
This why I’m eager to see some of the things mentioned in my comment just above begin to appear. I want a Web 2.0 portal — not to just raw data about the world and env/eco issues but — to the communities that work with these issues and care about them, to the sub-communities focused on specific issues, to the science writers who can make information accessible and relevant, to activists who can apply pressure for local and national change, to media watchdogs who can flag when a politician or corporation or organization is twisting the facts, etc. I want a PayPal button I can press when something gets my dander up and I want to put my money behind a good idea.
I’ll stop there. My list of wants is enormous.
Okay, here’s an interesting case of “enormous want”.
When politicians are saying that future technology is going to solve all our problems relating to global warming, climate change and all other forms of environmental risk. They talk as if it is only a question of time before any technology that is possible to dream about will actually be developed. But hey, what if? I mean: Think about it. What if this future technology never shows up? How can these people know for certain that all of their sci-fi dreams will actually come true?
Never mind.
Magne, the other problem with the idea that technology will solve it all is similar to something I tried to say regarding the Betsy Hartmann article on my blog. Technology (just as with addressing certain human rights issues, but not others) will help but, in itself, is not going to stabilize population. (or for that matter, isn’t going to address out endless-growth based economic system) So while a series of huge technological advances might help stretch the earth’s carrying capacity, we are still left with limits to growth in a finite world. And then there’s your “what if.”
Trinifar, you raise some great ideas concerning organizing the environmental community. I tend not to be much of an organizer (hence my use of a one man operation — a blog), but I think you’re right on the need for things of that sort. I like your idea of something similar to scienceblogs.com with an environmental emphasis, allowing for some political, economic, and other related issues all under the same umbrella.
Hey, on the other hand, it seems to me you and I have more or less the only two blogs with a real emphasis on population. Maybe they could be the seeds of a populationblogs.com portal. We’ll recruit Magne to create one, and find some others too. Magne? Hmmm….
Hmmmm.
I don’t have internet connection to my apartment. – For the moment I am doing just fine without a blog of my own. I’ve got the environment site’s discussion forum: the “place” where I’ve ruined all my mother’s hopes of seeing her son ever making it here in his own country.
… Why? As I’m waaaaaaay too critical of the plutocratic oligarchy which is ruling this country, and have no intention of hiding that fact from the English-speaking international audience of this world. If you know what I mean? 
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/
I do not love Norway: a critical mistake.
John, it does take the right skill-set/personality-type to be an organizer. I can support someone in that effort — and would like to — but I know my limitations all too well (some of them anyway).
I like your idea of a populationblogs.com portal as a way to get started. Perhaps in a few months we could revisit that, keeping an eye out for other relevant blogs. I need to get more content developed and learn something about my writing abilities/habits before more actively pursuing next steps.
Magne, regarding your comment #12: I think what you describe has been what’s happened for that last several decades if not longer. So we do know what happens when speculation about technological solutions does not come true; we are left in the lurch. Not only do we not have the hoped for solution, we pay the opportunity cost of not having pursued other possible solutions in the meantime.