Demand Side Learning

System awareness

November 14th, 2008

The cultural challenges facing our democratic society in this new year of 2009 are profound. They require a global systemic view that reveals the heart, the inner mechanisms, of system causation. Root cause analysis shines a light on these inner mechanisms.

Even when root cause analysis is done well, the execution of a proposed solution is where the greatest challenge is found. This has been my experience.

For example, we may know what to do but not be able to do it. We may feel that the cause of our challenges are the tension between supply and demand. We may see that the tension arises from the collective composed of all individuals. We may even acknowledge that the sum of all human originated causes aggregates onto the substrate from which history unfolds. But so what? What can be done?

In social systems a global view often accompanies a distributed awareness of the system. This awareness is produced through the collective causes associated with individuals, and may be compared with the set of causes that shape a swarm of birds in flight. The conclusion we make is that almost all, if not all, of the current challenges are directly related to the collective consequences of our individual awareness of the larger systems that we are part of.

It is thus an enhancement of mechanisms that brings the capability we seek.

In summary: Good solutions arise when distributed awareness is empowered with system mechanisms expressing democratic principles. The execution of these solutions depends on these mechanisms being viable.

From the Other Point of View

Mechanisms are not sufficient. There must be both democratic mechanisms and widely dispersed knowledge of systems. Stated in practical terms, solutions are comprehended only when the nature of non-locality and locality are commonly understood by all members of our society. With this "knowledge of systems requirement" comes an understanding of why social systems evolve to have the natures they do, given environments and given the aggregated expression of free will in the context of a very real past.

The demand side, if it is to counter balance the power of a well organized elite group of wealthy individuals, must be able to take individual responsibility and to assume control at any time. This is the challenge of 2009. The proposals we make take a long term view that starts with educational infrastructure and communication infrastructure.

Our Proposal

In two recent major works, The Resilience Project White Paper *<*> , and The National Bridge Program *<*>, a specific discussion is communicated. In the Bridge Program, we state and then restate a national commission's assertion that the system that communicates from one generation to the next, the nature of mathematics, is a completely broken system.

Why is a liberal education about the nature of mathematics vital to the health of the nation? The answer lis in the degree of deception that is allowed in cases where our sense of what is rational may not be examined. We do not mean that mathematics is perfect, complete and absolutely consistant, but rather that mathematics gives the citizen a necessary sense of what the rational is.

The impacts on education are as profound as the cultural challenges facing our democratic society in this transformational year, 2009. The creation of communication infrastructure that handles multi-coherence is a part of the set of mechanisms now required to assist our nation in renewing democratic values. The creation of communication infrastructure that handles multi-coherence will assist our nation in renewing democratic values.

In the Resilience Project we state and then restate a study by Harvard University that concludes a similar assertion regarding the nature of Information Technology consulting for the government. We extend the assertion to include the inhibiting influence that supply side control of wealth has on necessary innovations that are now ready to transform the Internet and the nature of human communication. We make proposals that an Internet Infrastructure specification based on demand side theory is completed and ready to implement. This specification is developed in an iconic language having an intervening stratum from which transaction memory and global processes are integrated and evolved in real time.

Using the mechanism we propose, we will assist in the diversification of control over information environments. This will mean the development of a demand side to control what types of products are in market places. This empowering of the demand side changes everything. Take for instance the automobile industry and the need to build decentralization technologies for energy production. The past Powers That Be have resisted this decentralization all the while ignoring the damage caused by carbon based automobiles.

Nash economic theory was important because it recognized the relationship between the "good of the system" and the enlightened regulation of the financial markets. This regulation is not something that should be, or can be, imposed by an small group of wealthy people. This is not consistent with democratic values.

We, the People, do not turn over control to those elected once elected. We hold the potential to control continuously and through the propagation of laws. Regulation is thus "non-localized" and this non-local control must be expressed as a visible hand of the government, modifiable instantly by the collective force of the People, not by corporations but by We the People.