Making the Familiar Seem Strange

“And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. ‘If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.’ And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.  The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.”

The above is an extract from a 1917 paper by Victor Shklovsky entitled Art as Technique. It is quote that should help you to make some sense of my writing: that which appears in my blogs, my tweets, and my works of fiction. When I write I continually strive to make the familiar seem strange. By deliberately making my work the way it is, I hope to extend the difficulty and length of perception.

We live in a world where making the familiar seem strange is one of the most important things any artist can engage in. Habitualization is everywhere, especially in science, engineering, technology, economics, and politics, and also in art as well, and one of the most notable institutions where habitualization has taken hold, is the European Commission, where one can list many programmes and initiatives that have ceased to exist for the people caught up in them.

Shklovsky was a member of a literary school known as Russian Formalism, which took the position that it is verbal strategies that make literature literary, and that these strategies are based on the foregrounding of language itself, and the making strange of the experiences that they create. Thus it is not the author that should be the centre of attention but the verbal devices that the writer uses. What therefore matters is form and technique.

And the above is the aesthetic that underlies my work, which is why all my writing seems so strange. It is also what drives me forward, for, like all art, the quest to perfect a style never ends, and thus it happens that work evolves and develops over the years, and it was with this in mind that I started exploring and developing … something that can be described as the unity of, what most people see as opposites. More about this in due course!

And with this idea of making the familiar seem strange, I pave the way for future  blogs which – most definitely will make the familiar seem strange …

An Example of Horizon 2020 Innovation Nonsense: Citizen Engagement and Participation in Smart Cities

Later than normal owing to internet connection problems, the blog that should have appeared on Sunday …

Back in 2012 I acted as a rapporteur during the DG CONNECT’s strategy review week. Selected people (known as stakeholders) were allowed to participate in a number of meetings on specific subjects. The meeting that I worked with addressed Smart Cities (whatever that may mean). A central theme of this meeting was the importance of citizen engagement and participation. Everyone was so clear about how crucial this was for the success of Smart Cities. And in the meeting room, of the 40 or so people present, how many had any idea about what this really means and how to achieve it? I suspect that the answer was two – myself and the chairperson, an architect who is involved in mass participation.  None of the panellists in this meeting demonstrated that they had any insights into this so called crucial matter, and in fact, the chairperson, who was only there to moderate the discussion, put them all to shame for he was the only person who had anything of value to say about engagement and participation.

It is my advantage, in acting as the rapporteur, and also because I am a writer (a key capability of which is observation (as Charles Dickens well illustrated)), that I can observe what takes place in meetings. And what I observed were people paying lip service to citizen engagement and participation. What they were really interested in was gaining access to European Commission funding so that that could continue with, what I later came to describe as a technology joyride.

Prior to the meeting I mentioned to the Policy Officer with whom I was working, that, if the European Commission were really interested in citizen engagement and participation they should be looking for projects constituted along very different lines to that which is usual for an ICT research project. The response was that changing the nature of projects was unnecessary.

Anyone with deep knowledge of participation will know what I am talking and will understand the need for an approach that fits the needs of such projects, and will also  recognise in the response, the operation of taken for granted assumptions about … so many things that I will not here go into details.

Sometime prior to this strategy workshop, I was involved in a proposal that sough to respond to a call for user-driven innovation in the area that is now called Smart Cities. I proposed to the consortium that we should adopt what is sometimes called a user-centred approach that would embrace the participation of citizens who would become the drivers for the project’s work, which obviously means leaving open the details of this work – how else would it be user-driven?

This idea was greeted by the other consortium members with great enthusiasm. Then one of the technology people said: “so long as we do not have to do anything differently.” I have been hearing this for close to 30 years. New science – yes! New technology – yes! But, whatever you do, never, ever, ask a European engineer or technologist to do anything differently! It is a heresy to do so!

The bad news is that when embracing participation it is necessary to design and run projects along lines that few technologists are familiar with, and most of them would not agree with – in the end it is about their dogma, and what these stupid people find acceptable. I say stupid for this is yet another manifestation of that rather peculiar behaviour that I have highlight in my (now) often asked question: Why so smart yet so dumb?

Here I mention also the need to change the evaluation process as well, for participatory projects need to be evaluated against their own internal logic, as the evaluation of the proposal I was involved with, well demonstrated. Having embraced user-driven innovation and only defined areas of interest in a suitably broad manner, the experts condemned our proposal for not defining exactly, what would be done. Yet they were supposed to be evaluating proposals that sought user-driven innovation. More stupid people!

Recall last week’s blog and my comment about the research proposal evaluation system: an orthodox system, designed by orthodox people, to enable orthodox experts, to make orthodox comments, about what are mostly orthodox research proposals – and in those cases when proposals are not orthodox, which should imply that the orthodox experts do not understand what is before them (otherwise why would it be innovative?), to continue with their orthodoxy, and to strangle the innovation at birth.

One can add words like innovation to call texts. One can re-order the evaluation criteria and give greater importance to impacts. However, hanging a sign on a cow that says I am a horse does not alter the fact that, what you have is still a cow.

The message is clear – if you have an innovative idea, do not apply for funding from a European Commission research programme.

And to conclude, I note, that after the strategy workshop was over, I said to the policy officer:

“It will be interesting to see if this idea of citizen engagement and buy-in will, in reality, be achieved! History suggests that it will not – are we asking general infantry to do the work of special forces? If I were managing Research and Innovation in a competing region or country (like India and China) and looking for a weakness to undermine Europe's efforts in Smart Cities, this matter of user engagement and involvement would be it, and I would make sure that considerable effort was directed at addressing this topic and creating an environment where ICT centric/driven solutions would not be accepted – on the battlefield you need to exploit your enemy’s weaknesses.”

And the response I received was:

“That’s a very interesting and compelling train of thought. I would tentatively agree. In my personal opinion I am not so sure whether the idea of citizen engagement and related notions will really achieve what the buzzwords around it suggest. Further, it might even carry the kind of risks you mentioned.”

A counter argument against all the above is that through DG CONNECT’s engagement with the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) these matters will be resolved. Nonsense! I have worked in the space between Technology and the SSH for 30 years and the complexities of this are only known to those who have been brave enough to enter the space, and such people are few in number. Perhaps engagement with artists then, through ICT & ART CONNECT? More nonsense – even fewer people know anything about this. These are all recipes for telling tales of the emperor’s new clothes.

And it was during the process of working on the DG strategy workshop, that the idea of writing a book directed at assisting those in the Eastern world to exploit Europe’s strategic weaknesses took hold. I have mentioned this idea before, in my blog On the Saying of Unreasonable Things, which is a copy of a correspondence I had with Morton Løkkegaard, MEP, in connection with New Narrative for Europe. I have many case study examples to illustrate my points: Smart Cities; New Narrative for Europe; FET Proactive; Marie Curie Initial Training Networks; Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters; Factory of the Future; ICT & ART CONNECT; Responsible Research and Innovation; Future Internet Research and Innovation; and Anne Glover.

So I am back once more to the notion of the Prometheus Syndrome. It is here, around the notion that Europe is tied to an irrelevant past by invisible and unbreakable chains, that China, India, and others will engage Europe in battle and defeat it. The book I will write about this will be made open access, so all will be able to read it, but I intend to ensure that it is written in a way that few Europeans will understand or accept – which is not a difficult thing to do. This is something else I have been studying for the past 30 years as well.

Innovation Nonsense: Horizon 2020

This week’s blog is a follow-up to my comments from two weeks ago when I responded to Neelie Kroes’ farewell speech as Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda.

To begin, for those who are not aware, Horizon 2020 is a European Union research initiative extending over seven years, which constitutes a framework (a Framework Programme) of individual research programmes covering a diverse range of topics. Horizon 2020 is run by the European Commission, and its central theme is innovation – Europe does not have enough of this, so politicians, both elected and unelected (those who run Europe as though we were still living in the 1950s) have decreed that there shall be more innovation, and Horizon 2020 is a response to this. Innovation by decree! A very interesting idea!

Recently I had cause to read the briefing material that is supplied to experts who are invited to undertake evaluation of research proposals. I found something in this material, which I here reproduce (with additional words of explanation in brackets for the benefit of those not familiar with the jargon):

“Calls (for research proposals) are less prescriptive (than in previous Framework Programmes) – they do not outline the expected solution to the problem, nor the approach to be taken to solve it. Call/topic descriptions allow scope for applicants to propose innovative solutions of their own choice.”

The above of course is a very interesting insight into the minds of Brussels bureaucrats, who dared to believe that they knew what research programmes should be doing at the lowest levels. And, based upon over 30 years of experience of working in research and development, including much time over that period spent dealing with the European Commission, I wrote the following:

“Matters of preferred solutions and approaches will instead be imposed by our (European Commission) experts, with the result that all will be as before.”

Innovation in Horizon 2020? What a load of nonsense! Until we get rid of the experts, there will be very little innovation. Innovation by its nature challenges accepted solutions, which is what most experts carry in the minds, and finding enough people who are open enough to do what they find unacceptable according to their beliefs, is an impossible tasks. If we want innovation we need to fundamentally change proposal evaluation procedures. There is a way to do this, but no-one wants to.

What one can say about the European Commission’s evaluation procedure is this: it is an orthodox system, designed by orthodox people, to enable orthodox experts, to make orthodox comments, about what are mostly orthodox research proposals – and in those cases when proposals are not orthodox, which should imply that the orthodox experts do not understand what is before them (otherwise why would it be innovative?), to continue with their orthodoxy, and to strangle the innovation at birth.

What fool would bring their ideas to such a system? Apparently quite a lot of people! This is because their prime motivation for participating is – money. This is also a culture of dependency.

I also hasten to add that industry-driven research is often no better, for industrial people are often highly orthodox and do not know what they should be doing, for too many of them are out-of-touch, or protecting business models that are no longer relevant, or are behaving as though the future will be very similar to the past. If someone in industry did know what to do, why would they be bothering to tell the European Commission, and also, in effect, sharing their information with others in their industry?

I have a very good example of a case that illustrates very well, industry not knowing what it should be doing, while at the same time, telling the European Commission what it thinks the European Commission should be doing to support this nonsense. I will address this example in a blog in the next few weeks, for it well illustrates what is wrong with Europe, and the major components of the problem – industry, academia/research and the European Commission – otherwise known as Europe’s research and innovation system. It is also an example that demonstrates what I call the tyranny of the past.

Horizon 2020 is likely to turn out to be just another story of the emperor’s new clothes, a tale of interference in matters not fully understood by all the parties, and a narrative based on the world as it was in the past. This is how it was when I first became involved with European Commission programmes, this is how it is now, and thus will it always be so.

As I have said many times in my blogs, Europe has become like Prometheus. I even told Barroso this. But he is a technocratic politician who for 10 years occupied an unelected position as President of the European Commission, while at the same time speaking empty words about democratic values. What he really believes is: when people are allowed to choose they choose wrongly. A better title for the President of the European Commission would be Chairman of the Central Committee of the European Union Party, for their vision of Europe is a technocratic one relevant to the past – they are the past!

Goodbye Europe – hello China and India, and others too. It is time to abandon Europe to its well deserved fate.

Next week I will give an example of DG CONNECT’s Horizon 2020 nonsense. I have many more examples, some of which I have already included in past blogs, like for example, Anne Glover, who is probably the biggest nonsense in the European Commission’s history.

And what of the other Abrahamic Religions – Capitalism, Communism and Atheism?

In an earlier blog I stated that European science is the fourth Abrahamic religion. Capitalism is the fifth. It too is the product of the age of Enlightenment – it was born in the same stable as European science. Both share the same belief that nature and human beings are complex machines. This is very convenient if one is interested in exploiting the machine for profit, which both science and capitalism are. It helps to explain also the interest in re-engineering nature (for example through GM), and the delusion that, because they are dealing with a machine, the risks can be foreseen, and managed.

The above is the nature of the machine-centric thinking that dominates European culture, which brings me to mention the sixth Abrahamic religion – communism. It too is a product of European culture, and being so, sees people, society, and the economy as being nothing more machines that can be re-engineered to make them better, but what better is, has proved to be a rather subjective concept, which of course it is. Hence with communism one finds, as one does with European science and capitalism, the notion of the nameless, faceless masses, now called the general public, and actions based on reason, taken in the public interest, for the common good. Ann Glover, being as she is, a technocrat at heart, flourishes in such an environment, and would be equally at home in industry or in a communist state.

Mikhail Gorbachev, in the dying days of the Soviet Empire said: “The party does not lay claim to being the sole bearers of the truth.” It was a telling remark about the nature of communism and its silent narrative that it was the sole source of the truth. Western capitalism and western science also share this same belief, that they are the sole source of the truth. They are all the product of an Abrahamic age that is now drawing to a close, but, they are not going down quietly. Western capitalism and Western science already have blood on their hands, and more destruction will follow in due course, for, as their world begins to crumble, they will recede further into their delusions, and will seek to apply more fervently their dogma. This is what Anne Glover is doing now. Expect more of this in the years to come, as well as the military conflicts and suppression of human rights that accompanies the collapse of a whole civilisation.

And then there is the matter of the seventh Abrahamic religion – western atheism (not to be confused with eastern atheism). Here, in this seventh Abrahamic belief system, to you will find people who have also discovered the sole truth, which is one of the main defining features of the European (western) mind, this being a product of an Abrahamic culture. And here one can note that, there is in this world at the moment, no one more Abrahamic than the self-appointed leader of western atheists, Richard Dawkins. He is also the personification of this rather strange psychological characteristic known by the question that I often pose: why so smart yet so dumb?

Collectively, all seven of the Abrahamic thought systems are tearing the world apart, waging war among themselves, on each other, as well as on what remains of the non-Abrahamic world, and on nature. Yet their age is drawing to a close. The challenge is to how stop people caught-up in these dogmas from destroying the world, without resorting to their methods, and to enable a peaceful transition to a post-Abrahamic age.

So here we stand in a world created by seven Abrahamic thought systems, which one can say are the seven generations of the creation of the modern world, the human world, and through their madness they will destroy it all. It is time to learn that we are but one, and that the only way to achieve a better world is to walk away from the world that these misguided people are creating. It is time to unite as one, in a way that will result in all the self-created distinctions dissolving away, and to do this everyone needs to rediscover the true nature of being human, and to transform themselves into something very different.

And the strange thing is that was the reason why Abrahamic thought first appeared in the world, and its purpose, was to show how to become something very different, while at the same time demonstrating the consequences of not doing this. We have now seen what Judaism, Christianity, Islam, science, capitalism, communism, and atheism are capable of – now it is time to learn the lesson of history, and turn to that which offers us a way out of this madness.

We must set ourselves free from ideology and dogma and recognise that our real enemy is the human mind. In the battle between the mind and the soul, the mind has too often won. This cannot continue. We will either unite and conquer the mind, or live in the hell that it will create. This is the message of Abraham, and we have the means to set ourselves free, for it has always been there, waiting for us to see it and find the collective courage to take the first step.

Only most do not see this, such is the power of the human mind to blind people, so that, what is clear, becomes hidden in plain view – Encounter with a Wise Man, A Tale of Two Deserts, Enigma.

In future blogs I will explain more about the method that underlies my writing, and why I position things, like science, in contexts such as an Abrahamic thought system.

Two Europes or One Europe?

Two Europes or One Europe? This is the title of Neelie Kroes’ farewell speech as Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda. In it she says what she really thinks, which is similar to what I have being saying in my blogs since I first started blogging back in July 2013 – that Europe has become like Prometheus, being bound to the rock of the past by invisible and unbreakable chains, regenerating itself in exactly the same form that it was yesterday. I told President Barroso this when I wrote to him in October 2013. I also told Anne Glover something similar when I wrote to her as well at about her delusions. They did not listen. They are still not listening. They orientate their ears towards the wrong people, because they too are the wrong people – their feet and minds are firmly planed in the past. They are part of the problem, as is Neelie Kroes. Changing the name of the Commissioner responsible for the Digital Agenda will not change anything, for whoever takes over will also be the wrong person.

So, back to the matter of Neelie Kroes’ farewell speech and I ask: why did she not publicly say this five years ago? I ask this because, from what I learned through my involvement with the European Commission, she was evidently asking some challenging questions of those who run the European Commission’s ICT research programme – questions for which there were no satisfactory answers. There are still no satisfactory answers, even though some efforts at reform have been implemented. The problem that is that the Prometheus Syndrome is little understood, and people like Kroes have no answers, for she too is like Prometheus, as she demonstrates towards the end of the speech by her insistence on maintaining this outdated concept of a single Europe defined in the way it has been since the time of …. One can insert many words here depending upon how far one wants to go back into European history. Try a few words like, the Romans, the Sun King, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler. The means of achieving it may be different, but the goal of a unified Europe against the wishes of its peoples remains the same.

Without the consent of the people! The politicians complain about the rise of nationalism in Europe, but cannot see that their own actions create the conditions for this.

The fact is that European minds are caught up in the past, and their thinking is determined by such things as the Enlightenment, technocratic beliefs, and the delusions that bodies like the European Commission are still relevant and can gain mastery over Europe’s competitive woes and bring about a transformation.

The problem is that people like Kroes, and those who work in the European Commission, and industry leaders too, do not sufficiently understand what is happening in the world, and are inclined to say, as Kroes does herself, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong, all we need is … here you can fill in the blank yourself, depending upon the narrative that you believe provides the solution, the silver bullet, that will restore Europe’s fortunes.

There are many such narratives, some of which I have mentioned in my past blogs: New Narrative for Europe; Valley of Death; Responsible Research and Innovation; ICT & Art CONNECT, etc.

I leave you with a reminder, a lesson from history concerning Copernicus. Most people do not know much about Copernicus, and what people do know is often shrouded in myth. Copernicus is credited with the idea that the solar system (in those days referred to as the universe) is heliocentric. The dominant scientific theory (dogma) of his age was that the solar system was geocentric.

Copernicus was a priest. He worked alone. He was not the source for the idea of a heliocentric universe. This can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks. He knew that. What Copernicus did was to produce a detailed model of a heliocentric universe, using observational data from the ancient world (he did not have his own data) – the same data that Ptolemy had used in the second century AD to construct the geocentric model that was to endure for close to 1500 years. Scientists in academia, Copernicus’ contemporaries, could have done what Copernicus did, but they did not. It took someone, working outside of the established system, to overturn a dogma. But it did not happen overnight. He published his book and died, and no-one took any notice for close to 40 years. 

Kepler was the person who made the big step forward. He recognised that Copernicus’ model was also in need of change – that change came in the form of elliptical orbits which finally did away with all strange fictions that both Ptolemy and Copernicus used to make their models fit with that which can be observed.

Europeans have a long history of behaving like Prometheus! And the reason you do this is because you are like Prometheus. Say hello to Anne Glover, Chief Promethean Advisor to the President of the Europe Commission, if that is, Junker does what is expected and reappoints here. Why would we expect that Junker is going to be any different from Barroso? They are all like Prometheus and what they will say, as they preside over the decline of Europe is “evidently we are not doing with sufficient vigour, that which we are familiar with, that which we have done in the past” which is what they are already saying.

It is time to disengage from this failing system. Time for ordinary people to build a different type of civilisation, a different type of Europe, for without any doubt, Europe is heading for yet another one of those horrors that it has so much experience of creating. The European Union in its present form has the potential to create the very circumstances that its founding fathers were seeking to consign to history.

So yes indeed there are two Europes – thankfully! There is the old one that the political classes (people like Kroes, Barroso and Junker), technocrats, the European Commission, industry, Chief Scientific Advisors, and more, are part of, and there is the new Europe that is being built by ordinary people working outside the system. The challenge is to support the latter and to isolate and marginalise the former, without resorting to their methods. And to do that one needs a pen, a brush, people’s wallets, their lifestyle choices, and new politicians that are not part of the old order (whether they be nationalist or single Europeanists).