Talent Wants to be Free

This week my blog is a book review. The book in question is Talent Wants to be Free by Orly Lobel, an American Academic lawyer based in one of California’s universities – it matters not which one.

I came to read this book because my daughter mentioned it to me. Apparently her boss enthuses about it, and being myself interested in this thing called the knowledge economy, I borrowed her copy and read it. What follows is my opinion.

I would suggest that my daughter’s boss find better books to read, for Talent Wants to be Free is repetitive and banal in the extreme!

The setting for the book is what is called the knowledge era company, where the implication is that information, knowledge and innovation are central to competition among enterprises. This though is the definition of any company in the free market, and is the basis upon which the industrial revolution was founded – innovation in technology in a business setting, which required information and knowledge, on a scale not before seen, leading to economic growth and the spreading of material prosperity through the stimulation of demand. So here we are in the 1750s with companies doing what the author (and many more) regard as something that characterises businesses in the 21^st century. And the twist is that the author (unknowingly) demonstrates the importance of information and knowledge in this long past era, in the final chapter. I will tell you more of what constitutes a knowledge era company in the future. For the moment I will focus on the review.

Talent Wants to be Free is essentially a book about legal matters, in particular non-compete clauses in employee contracts that prevent them from working for competing companies after leaving employment with their current employer. Also covered are non-disclosure clauses, the protection of trade secrets, and the control mentality of firms seeking to enforce these agreements to prevent the leakage of proprietary information and knowledge.

Found within the text are many anecdotal accounts of what American companies have done, or not done, how different States enforce or do not enforce these contracts, scattered among which are bits of information from research projects, the author’s and other peoples, combined with a liberal use of quotes from Nobel laureates, which all point to the message that control and restriction are bad for all – for employees, for companies, and for the economy both local and national. And all this is presented, I suppose, to demonstrate what is stated in the book’s sub-title which is – Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding. But there was no need to write such a book to make this point. It is self-evidently clear that any company, any region, that seeks to restrict the free flow of information and knowledge will atrophy (the former Soviet Union being the classic example of this). This understanding comes from systems theory, and the second law of thermodynamics expresses the concept in formal terms – in a closed system, which is one that is isolated, in other words no inputs or outputs cross the system boundary, increasing disorder will result. Prevent the free flow of ideas, and soon you will have problems!

That American companies are highly litigious is well known. It is not however clearly stated how many of them actually engage in the legal battles described in this book, so we are left wondering if, what is reported is just a collection of rather extreme cases which are unrepresentative of the majority. But being European quite frankly I do not care! Evidently this is a book for Americans, and no effort has been made to make it appeal to a wider audience, which perhaps reflects the parochial attitude often found in the United States.

The book is not entirely about legal matters and the author also wanders into the area of organisational and industrial psychology, particularly the matter of employee motivation, where she tells the reader what many will already know, that financial remuneration is not the sole motivator. Wow! She then demonstrates that reward systems need to be designed to create the employee behaviour that is sought. Again wow!

She also mentions the work and motivations of Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor but her knowledge of these are inaccurate. The author states that Taylor provided the academic backing to Ford’s reforms (of production). This is not true.

Taylor pre-dated Ford by decades. Taylor’s work on the development of so-called Scientific Management took place during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. I say so-called Scientific Management for the work is not scientific at all. Mostly it is just precepts dressed up as being scientific. There is a joke among engineers that goes like this: electrical engineers have Ohm’s law, mechanical engineers have Hooke’s law, but production engineers have the precepts of Frederick Taylor.

Many years ago I explored the work of Taylor in great depth, along with that of Henry Ford. Taylor’s work was not that of an academic (he worked in the steel industry in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), so it is no academic work, nor can it be described as scientific. While he made technical contributions in certain areas, the most notable of which is the Taylor equation, which relates to metal cutting on lathes, his efforts to present his ideas about how to manage factories were nothing more that a disingenuous attempt to package as scientific, what were just his opinions and obsessions. Judging by his behaviour, it would seem also that he was suffering from psychological problems. Today we would not praise him, but most probably advise him to seek professional help.

Taylor was obsessed with control and efficiency, having discovered as a young metal worker apprentice, that workers deliberately work inefficiently to avoid managers setting the pace of work (this was known as soldiering). So later in life he set about implementing a system of management that would put an end to this, taking control over work (the thinking and planning) away from shopfloor workers, and placing it in the hands of managers. This is central control and what he was doing is known as vertical division of labour. And Taylor was not alone, for there were many others developing related ideas, such as time and motion studies, which were all part of a movement in the late 19^th century to develop the means for managers, often acting on behalf of absent owners (investors) to formalise the running and operation of businesses. And this interest in control was nothing new, for it can be traced back to the early days of the industrial revolution, when managers were faced with the challenge of organising and controlling people who had, very much before then, been used to working in a more autonomous way, in what today we would call a subsistence economy. One can also see this interest in control in the writings of Adam Smith.

Henry Ford on the other hand, undertook his work on the development of mass production lines many years after Taylor, and Ford was focused on what is called horizontal division of labour, which again was not new, for it had been applied since the early days of the industrial revolution, when factory owners recognised that it was a way of de-skilling work, thus allowing them to employ less skilled people at lower cost, and also giving them more power over employees.

What Ford did was to take horizontal division of labour to an extreme by creating jobs in an assembly line, that required little skill (hence the quote from Ford which goes along the lines – the person who puts the wheel on does not put on the nuts, and the person who puts on the nuts does not tighten them …). This massive simplification of work also allowed him to introduce automation, and of course this was all done in the context of what was normal in those days – a very hierarchical organisation, where also horizontal division of labour was also applied across all the functions that need to be undertaken in a business, thus leading to the silos that have been and still are the curse of many enterprises.

Ford in doing what he did, was focused on eliminating costs and speeding up production so that he could mass produce. Interestingly though, Ford eventually discovered that his production line was not a place where people wanted to spend their whole working lives, and that their was a limit to how long a person could stand this mind-numbing work where they constantly had to undertaking machine like actions. His 20 dollar day was in part, a recognition that to keep people working on the production line he needed to pay above the odds.

Apart from the above defects in the book, as I have already intimated, what one encounters in the book, is page after page of the same issues discussed repeatedly, all of which could have been briefly summarised and placed in an appendix! It is not until one reaches the final chapter than one encounters something interesting, for at page 218 suddenly there is the beginning of an introduction to the notion of companies cooperating and sharing information, but then the book ends, so no sharing here on the behalf of the author! Perhaps she thinks that this is enough to bring clients to her door? Perhaps it is, if one does not know about such things, but the book does not demonstrate that the author knows anything either, only that she knows how to write a boring book deeply rooted in the notion that you tell as little as possible – keep the trade secrets to yourself and only reveal them to those willing to pay (perhaps?).

In the blind man’s world the one eyed man is king! Better though to speak to someone with two good eyes, and a third eye, the mind, with knowledge of what is new and what is not. And there is little that is new in this book! So my recommendation is to read another one, for in the end what it seems to be, is nothing more than a marketing pitch on the part of an academic lawyer, who also does consulting work. It is the author’s way of saying look how much I know.

Being a European, and having worked for nearly 30 years in research projects involving collaborations among competing companies, I have come to know something about how to manage and protect Intellectual Property in such circumstances, as well as the value to be found in such cooperation and how to achieve that value. I also know that many companies do not know very well, exactly what is a trade secret, and that often what they think are trade secrets are not at all. This is the problem with secrets, they are not shared so what is in fact thought of as a secret may in fact be common knowledge, but no-one ever discovers this because they are too busy protecting their non-secrets.

Companies often also do not fully understand what is unique to them, what is known more widely, and that the best approach to protecting any uniqueness that comes from owning Intellectual Property (in what ever form that may come), is to develop more of it, and that this also involves sharing with others and also giving some of it away! And all this I discovered in the early 1990s, and so did many others.

When Civilisations Collapse …

History shows that when civilisations begin to collapse, to disintegrate, and to come to their natural end, people in these civilisations retreat into the past, into that which is familiar and reassuring. But this does not stop the collapse. Most likely it hastens the end, for what such civilisations usually need is a radical transformation, a process of revolutionary renewal, a rebirth, where what exists, is overturned and new ideas flow into the body of society, bringing new life. This does not mean violence, for most often what is needed are changes within the mind, changes of thought, which can come in the form of something like the renaissance.

In the aftermath of the European Parliament elections is looks as though many Europeans are beginning to seek refuge in the comfortingly familiar, and are opting for far-right parties – a mixture of neo-fascists, racists, xenophobes, and nationalists. A retreat into the past!

But this is not the only retreat into the past that is becoming evident. In the United Kingdom we have a government that is retreating into familiar industrial era economic policies which involve growing the industrial era sector of the economy, through capital and resource intensive projects: the high speed rail link HS2; Fracking; and Nuclear Power, are three examples of this. They are also pushing the development of what seem to be new industries, but which in reality are not: biotech. The technology may be new, but the mindset of these companies is routed in industrial era thinking.

There is also a retreat into science, which has become over the past decades highly discredited. Science apparently, is going to save us, so we need more of it which is bad news given the increasingly unethical nature of modern science, not the mention the highly deluded nature of scientists.

So retreat into the past seems to be everywhere. The prospects therefore of a renaissance, which is what the New Narrative for Europe declaration calls for, is largely being ignore as those with power stampede towards that which is safe and reassuring – the past. And from this great woes will flow in due course.

This rush to reinvent the past highlights the failure of existing institutions and illustrates well why ordinary people now need to act to peacefully bring about radical changes. One way they can do this is to create a renaissance from the bottom up, and this is where artists and writers, who are generally more connected with ordinary people and local communities, can show the way, as I do in effect through my writings (this blog, my books, my tweets, my web site). This is the way towards rebuilding civilisation, and it is most necessary as it seems that the early signs of a collapse of our existing civilisation are starting to appear, which will in due course lead governments to engage in authoritarian actions as they struggle to retain control. And it is from these governments that will come forth the violence and restrictions of civil liberties that accompany collapse. Only they will not call it such, for they have different names for it: maintaining order; the rule of law; state of emergency; anti-terrorism; national security. The joys of the Nation State!

New Narrative for Europe – A Very European Outcome!

In my blog last week I asked the question whether the New Narrative for Europe initiative did deliver a new narrative. The answer is no!

The declaration, produced by a group of artists and intellectuals, did what most Europeans do, produce that which is European in character, which essentially involves saying what a fine bunch of people we are, but what a pity that a few spoil things! The few of course are those nasty people - racists, fascists, communists and others – who did all those bad things that we are constantly reminded about in television documentaries and often also in films. The problem with Europeans however is that this aspect of Europe has many dimensions and has been with us for thousands of years. And it is still there now, manifesting itself in new guises that we, the current generation of European, do not recognise, but which future generations will, and for which they will also condemn us, just as surely as we now condemn our predecessors.

I do agree with the declaration that there is a need to respond to the populist movements founded on nationalism. This represents a re-emergence of one of these nasty elements that will lead to trouble in the future, but I do not agree that the answer to this is to present the EU as the only alternative, thus doing what Europeans are good at, either/or thinking. What I was looking for from the so called New Narrative was an understanding that, what we call modernity, that what emerged from the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, while increasing our material wellbeing, has failed. With that failure also comes an understanding that the Nation State and its institutions, as well as Supra States, namely the EU and its institutions, are all failing, and that Nationalism and Europeanism, are not the way forward, have nothing new to offer, and that the time has come to be rid of both, to transition to a different and more democratic way of organising ourselves. The future one can say lies not in a system dominated by representational democracy, but one founded on participatory democracy, where the power of the representational is constrained and limited by the participatory, and both are framed within the context of that which transcends political dogma and national interest, things which are, for example, captured in documents such as the American Declaration of Independence, Constitutions, Bills of Rights. “We hold these truths to be self evident …”

Thus while I agree with the call for a new Renaissance, it needs to be one based on overturning what we have now, and building a new type of civilisation. Artists have a major role to play here, but not by producing what that emerged from the New Narrative initiative. This was an opportunity to tell the politicians that their world is finished.

We need to reinvent Europe, and this starts by acknowledging that there is something about Europeans that is not very pleasant, and we should be aiming not just at a transformation of Europe, but of the European mindset, with all its strange values and beliefs, some of which I mentioned in my blog last week.

I suspect that this is not going to happen from the top down, and that existing institutions are not going to accept that they are failing and no longer relevant. Building a new Europe, a new world, means empowering ordinary people to peacefully build a different type of civilisation, where those in power, no longer have the power to do the things that brand Europe as the most destructive culture that has ever existed. And, as I say in my book, A Tale of Two Deserts, no-one has to be hurt, no one has to die, to achieve a better world. All people have to do is be decent, and start behaving differently, changing their lives, their lifestyles, and turning their back on what Europe and the Nation State currently offers, thus making, by default, a different type of Europe. And this does mean disengaging from existing institutions, while also at the same time remaining engaged, especially to ensure that the more extreme aspects of European culture, those nasty people, do not fill the vacuum that will be created by this disengagement. So a great irony is, that to build a new Europe, we need also to keep working in the old system, thus ensuring that we create a peaceful transition. This latter word, transition, is an important one, and is where we should be focussing out efforts – transitioning to a new system, the details of which we need to begin working out as we go, which is not a very European thing to do, to acknowledge that there is no clear truth around which we can build a better world.

It is for the people of Europe, ordinary citizens, to create a New Narrative for Europe, and about how to do this I will say more in due, course, for it is bound to the idea of sustainability, and making this concept more than just empty words, which again leads me to say that it is all about behavioural change.

On the Saying of Unreasonable Things

In my blog last week I wrote about the possible disintegration of the European Union. Continuing on this theme, I want this week to return to something that I first blogged about in July 2013: The New Narrative for Europe initiative.

In November 2013 I spent a day in the European Parliament in connection with another initiative called ICT-ART CONNECT (about which I will say more in the future), which has a relevance to New Narratives. During the day I met and talked with a number of MEPs. One of them, Morton Løkkegaard, I subsequently had further correspondence with. What follows is what I wrote to him under the theme of Reflections on New Narratives for Europe …

Charles Handy, a leading business thinker from the 1980s and 1990s, wrote in his book Beyond Certainty, that when discontinuities occur as a consequence of structural changes in the business environment, the past becomes no guide to the future. These discontinuities can render assumptions and practices invalid and inappropriate. This then makes extrapolating into the future based on the past, an exercise of little value. When discontinuities are present, the success stories of yesterday can have little relevance to the problems of tomorrow. In fact, according to Handy “these success stories might even be damaging since the world, at every level, has to be reinvented to some extent.”  In another book, The Age of Unreason, Handy strongly argued that in times of structural change one should not be taking note of what is reasonable, but should be listening to those who seem to be saying unreasonable things.

We are living through times of massive structural change – in society, in business, in technology, in peoples’ behaviour – so here are some unreasonable things:

The trouble with Europe is that it is European.

Recall now the story of Prometheus; that figure from Ancient Greek mythology, a Titan, who ended up bound to a rock by unbreakable chains and condemned to have his liver ripped out by an eagle. Only Prometheus was immortal and every night he regenerated in exactly the same form that he was the day before and he then had to endure the whole agonising process again, and so it went on, until one day, Hercules broke those chains, and set Prometheus free.

Imagine that you are living in 1750. The scene is an English country village and two men stand upon the village green engaged in conversation. These are wealthy land owing gentlemen, interested in the national economy. One asks the other, “Tell me Charles, what should the government be doing to grow the economy?” Charles replies, “encourage the growth of agricultural production so that we can sell more in our new colonies. They should also further develop the slave trade.” Neither of them can see the storm that is gathering on the horizon, one that will wipe away their cosy world and render their values and beliefs irrelevant. We now have a name for this storm and we call it the industrial revolution, but these two, and many like them, were not even able to conceptualise such a thing. For these two people, their future was their past – they had become like Prometheus, bound to rock by chains that they were unable to perceive.

Now move forward in time, to the year 2014. The scene is a British engineering institution located in the centre of London and two men stand in a grand Victorian building engaged in conversation. These are industrial era engineers interested in the national economy. One asks the other, “Tell me Charles, what should the government be doing to grow the economy?” Charles replies, “enable the construction of more nuclear power stations, go ahead with fracking, fund the building of a high speed rail network and other capital intensive and resource intensive projects.” Neither of them can see the storm that is gathering on the horizon, one that will wipe away their cosy world and render their values and beliefs irrelevant. We have as yet no name for this revolution, but these two, and many like them, are not even able to conceptualise such a thing. For these two people, their future will be their past – they too have become like Prometheus, being bound to rock by chains that they are unable to perceive.

Europe also has become like Prometheus – its institutions, its businesses, its research and development programmes, its educational programmes … these are all tied to the rock of the past by invisible and seemingly unbreakable chains that result in Europe being as it was yesterday, only with slightly more advanced science and technology.

ICT-ART CONNECT and New Narratives for Europe could become ways of making the chains visible, breaking them, and setting Europe free, or they could just become Europe reinventing itself in exactly the same form as it is now.

What are these invisible chains? The answer is that they are the elements of what is called a paradigm. These are the values, beliefs, taken for granted assumptions, ways of behaving, acting and responding, problem solving approaches, etc. that are shared in common and not seen by those who adhere to the paradigm as being in any way problematic, because most times these elements are not even visible to people and they also work. And it is these invisible things that will lead people to conclude that, what is here written, is nonsense and the work of a crazy guy with a pen. They of course might be right! Or not!

Why is the matter of paradigm so important? The answer is because, in times of great structural changes that are rendering that which exists irrelevant and no longer fit for purpose, people need to realise that, making small adjustments, is not an option. But this is exactly what human minds want to do – to make incremental improvements rather than to reinvent. And when incremental changes do not work, they make up stories to account for failure, and this is what is happening now.

European manufacturing has been in decline for decades, but it is, they believe, not their fault, but that of unfair competitors in places like China, and thus they keep on doing what they have always done, and call it the Factory of the Future, even though it just looks like the Factory of the Past. Europe has a poor track record of bringing its research results to market, so there is talk of Valleys of Death, rather than facing up to the fact that linear sequential thinking (another taken for granted) is often no longer appropriate. And many people in Europe are against Genetically Modified (GM) crops, but scientists do not see this as a signal that what they do and how they do it is no longer acceptable. Instead they have a story that says that, if only people knew how good GM really is, and if only GM had been communicated better, then the public would have embraced GM unreservedly. And the thinking behind new Narratives for Europe could easily become just another story with an explanation to account for people turning away from existing institutions and processes, rather than facing up to the reality that these are not fully fit for purpose and are becoming increasingly meaningless to people.

People will hold on to their values, beliefs and taken for granted assumptions, some times to the point of being prepared to perish amidst the ruins of their dreams, rather than to admit that, what they hold most dear is no longer relevant. Thus it happens, as failure becomes all the more apparent, people will begin to retreat even further into their delusions. And we have a metaphor for this and that metaphor is the tale of the emperors’ new clothes.

So, one key point is this: a paradigm is a double edged sword, because it is both helpful and unhelpful, depending on the circumstances. It is helpful when circumstances correspond to that which has previously been encountered and successfully resolved based on that which people know. It is most unhelpful when circumstances are completely different and past solutions are no longer appropriate. Moreover, the paradigm will prevent people from recognising that this is so. What it then takes is for a little boy to tell the crowd that the emperor is wearing no clothes, and unlike in children’s stories, in the real world, he will not be thanked and he will be ignored and ridiculed, and consequently, few people will be willing to say such things.

The European emperor is increasingly seen wearing no clothes.

And what of the European beliefs that form the invisible chains? They come in many forms: the one truth; only one answer; the optimal solution; technology solves everything; the one best way; you can have either A or B but not A and B …

In a world that is European, where everyone else thinks like this, then these beliefs are at least shared in common on a global scale, but the world is not European and increasingly cultures with opposite thinking are becoming dominant in the world. The hope that Europe will prosper in this non European world, using their traditional European beliefs, is just plain nonsense. And if I were to be asked how India, China, Brazil and others could destroy the economies of Europe, I would advise them to encourage Europe to keep doing things the way that it does them now, based on these outdated and irrelevant European beliefs, and then to do themselves, something completely different and hard for Europeans to copy, and in doing so, render their economies unsuitable to that which Europe produces and has to offer. I have been thinking of writing a book along these very lines.

Now a short lesson from history relating to one particular European belief: the either/or mindset. European manufacturing (and also US manufacturing – in many respects the same as European manufacturing) always thought that it was impossible to have high quality at low cost. They always considered that one could have low quality at low cost, or high quality at high cost. The Japanese found a way of having high quality and low costs. Likewise with what is called product variety and product customisation. Western (European) minds always considered that one could have standard products at low cost (mass production) or variety and customisation at high costs. The Japanese found a way of having high variety and customisation at low costs. The benefits of not being bound by the limitations of European thinking helped Japan to significantly undermine western manufacturing. The process will continue as long as European thinking prevails, only this time it will be the Chinese that will finish what the Japanese started.

In the late 1980s, Stan Davis, in his book Future Perfect, addressed this matter and coined the term mass customisation which is an oxymoron – two words appearing together which have contradictory associations. The west is good at this sort of intellectual analysis and conceptualising, but very poor at developing and implementing such ideas. Interestingly also, mass customisation does not require any technology, for it is something born of the mind, organisation and ways of working. And this touches upon another European belief, that technology is the solution to everything – evidently it is not! But saying this in the presence of Europeans leads them to conclude that one is opposed to technology. Why are such people simultaneously so smart yet so dumb? The answer is because they are Europeans caught up in strange and increasingly irrelevant beliefs that they do not even recognise as such – one is either for technology or against it!

To be noted however, is that many people, at a personal level do not operate on an either/or basis – they are simultaneously an individual and a member of a family group, simultaneously an individual and part of a local community. Yet Europe has done a remarkably good job over the past decades of destroying families and local communities, leaving us with a legacy of individualism and perhaps also an inability to think in an inclusive way, just when we need it most.

For some reason, once beyond the local community level, inclusive thinking begins to breakdown, and one then encounters competing loyalties, and either/or thinking. Perhaps New Narratives for Europe needs to begin asking questions about why this is so, and also to consider whether it is national and European institutions and politicians themselves that are partly responsible for this. We are back to Prometheus once again!

Let me also mention that there are many either/or assumptions to be found in Europe. These are all old narratives: science or religion; Christianity or Islam; capitalism or socialism, the secular or the spiritual; left or right; organic farming or industrialised agriculture; and so forth. Europeans are indeed a strange people to have so many of these conflicts of the mind, for this is what they are. Recall that Ghandi said, “all religions are true”, and he was not just trying to placate a population with diverse religious beliefs, but was acknowledging that this is part of Indian culture to know that there is no one single truth, which is another of those European beliefs, most notably found in Abrahamic religions, but also in European science that seeks a full, objective true account of nature.

Some words now about the matter of people turning away from national and European institutions. Recently I talked with someone from DG Research who is involved with Responsible Research and Innovation. I was told by this official that efforts to involve the Transition Network movement in discussions about Responsible Research and Innovation, had failed. I suggested that this is because this movement is working outside the “system”, because people within the Network know that the system, with its institutions (e.g. the European Commission) has failed, and that now, ordinary people have no option left but to take personal responsibility for their world and rebuild it in a sustainable form, for they know that governments are not going to do this. The official thought this observation to be a valid one.

Look at what the Transition Network says: “the solution needs to match the size of the problem.” Compare that with what the establishment is saying – lots of talk about sustainable development, and renewable energy, etc., but nothing really that is fundamentally different. I believe that people are beginning to understand that we do need to reinvent our economies, our societies, and our life styles, and that what we have now can not be incrementally adjusted to make it sustainable.

There is, in the book that I edited that goes by the title European Visions for the Knowledge Age, a paper called Towards Democracy without Politics? It is very insightful and is available open access for reading on line (without charge) at the following web address: http://www.cheshirehenbury.com/visionbook/readonline.html

So what of New Narratives for Europe? What precedes is presented as scene setting, in case no-one else has yet (dared) to raise such thoughts. One common element in the above, is failure of processes that are no longer fit for purpose, and the need to reinvent these, which people will not do, for they cannot see that they need reinventing, so will at best seek incremental changes. This might be, perhaps, something for people to reflect upon when they sit among the ruins of Europe and hanker after the good old days when Europe was able to make the world conform to European beliefs. Or we could end up in a better place, reflecting on how we reinvented Europe in a new form and reaped the rewards from doing so. It is a tough choice, which leads me to mention what to do to take matters forward.

Understand more about this.

Also understand that there are no answers – Europe is going to have to work these out. But there are places where one can start to look, so to speak, for the elements that will help with the building of a new path.

One of these places is the notion of the network organisation. Young people today understand well the idea of networks. Older people may well use them, but still carry in their minds older models, like hierarchies, and also older narratives, like centralisation vs. decentralisation. The internet is an interesting example: no-one owns it, no-one controls it (although governments and big corporations are trying to) yet it works, because those involved cooperate with each other to ensure interoperability. Open movements are also an interesting place to look: the idea of sharing what you have with others, because in doing so you get something back and can also, sometimes, do a good deed. This approach represents a timeless value that in its essence is an expression of the understanding that we need each other and things are better when we work together. The concept of organisational DNA could also be important: the whole is in the parts and the embedding of the whole in minds, in organisations, in networks, and so forth.

I have no answers, only insights derived from my professional grounding in research, business, science, engineering and technology, and my vocational side, which is based in writing, with all the observational, creative and literary capabilities that go with it. This note, one can consider, is a perspective conceived from the coexistence of two different cultures in one mind, where I identify with both, not just with one or the other, and I can see how both (within me) have become different because of each other. Maybe this is what Europe needs to do; to become different because it is both individual sovereign states and a union of sovereign states at the same time. As far as I know, there is no historical precedent for this, which has perhaps left the implications unaddressed, lying in a limbo, with people feeling that they have to make a choice – choose one or the other, but not both.

I could say more, but five pages is enough for now. And this is what you should be getting when you talk to artists and writers – I hope! Usually though, thoughts about how to progress matters are less evident, which is another European flaw founded in yet another European belief – separation of thinking and doing.

And did New Narrative for Europe deliver a new narrative? This I will explore in my next blog.

Is the European Union in the Early Stages of Disintegration?

With the elections for the European Parliament taking place in the coming week, this is a good time to consider matters European.

All across Europe there is a growth in support for what are called populist nationalistic parties. Here in the UK we have a few of these, with UKIP being the most notorious. I use this word deliberately, for (as in the past) with nationalism comes xenophobia and racism, and in the case of UKIP a lot of other unsavoury aspects like sexism, and probably many other things that they try to keep hidden. What they cannot hide however is their lunacy. UKIP, as is the case with other nationalist parties across Europe, have leaders and representatives that are plain barmy, making mainstream politicians – the ones we love to lampoon – appear quite reasonable and sensible!

I do not want to see such barmy people elected into the European Parliament, but you might think that in Brussels, in the European Institutions, there would be an understanding of the reasons why citizens in the Member States are supporting lunatics. Even though I am involved with European Institutions, I have yet to encounter anyone with an understanding of why this backlash against the EU is happening. Instead what I see is a polarisation, with those in favour of the EU retreating into what I can only describe as dogma. Sound familiar? It should, because this is what Europeans do, because they have an either/or mindset. One is either with the nationalists, or with the Europeans. How peculiar!

Yes indeed, Europeans are a most strange people, which I think most cultures that have come into contact with Europe over the past centuries have come to realise, usually at great cost, for when Europeans are not engaging in internal conflicts and killing one another in great numbers, they are doing it elsewhere, usually in the name of the legitimate pursuit of profit. Yes, a very peculiar lot they are.

These days the internal killings are less frequent, but still happen – recall the break-up of Yugoslavia, and more recently the Russians in Ukraine (yes they too are Europeans). The focus now for Europeans and their off-shoots elsewhere (mainly I mean the US and Australia, and others who have foolishly adopted the European way), is on new ways of destroying in their legitimate pursuit of profit. At the moment they are destroying nature and this will in time lead to the more familiar killings that litter European history. It is of course the case that others are doing the same, for Europeans have taught them well, exporting their destructive mind-set to other cultures who probably feel that they have no choice but to behave like Europeans, lest they loose out in the race to be the next superpower, the next bully on the block, to be part of the materially affluence world, that is with regard to the most important issues, bankrupt – morally and spiritually.

I am myself supportive of the European experiment, but not in the form that it is now, for without doubt this is out of date and increasingly irrelevant, but so is nationalism, so I say a plague on both your houses, for you are but the same thing in different guises. I am in the business of moving beyond this sterile and irrelevant discussion and the building of worlds that matter, ones that ordinary people want. And about this over the coming weeks I will say a little more, for this matter too is relevant to sustainability, and yet again it raises the issue of behavioural change.

So my message to both the nationalist and the Europeans is change, for your day is over. Now is the time to build a different type of society, a new civilisation – one that renders nationalist versus European supra-state discussions, obsolete. And as for the question of whether the EU is in the early stages of disintegration. The answer is probably yes, but so is the nation state!

Two Cultures Alive and Well!

Being grounded in two very different cultures – science, engineering and technology on the one side, and literature, art and the social sciences on the other – has given me a perspective on the world quite different to that of most other people. I can also see that there are other valid ways of thinking and doing, and also that different perspectives, ideas, mind-sets, values, beliefs, etc. can be combined into a new type of professional person, someone, for example, who combines both science and art, but is strictly neither scientist or artist as we now know them, but someone who has transcended these to become … ? I (and others I work with) have as yet no name for this trans-discipline, but through the work I undertake with others, collectively we will be able to better define what this new transcending discipline is and its working methods and tools, and in doing so, find a name for such people.

And thinking about this matter reminds me of C P Snow and his Two Cultures hypothesis.

C P Snow was by vocation a writer, producing over his lifetime a number of works of fiction. But he was also by education, training and employment a physicist who undertook a considerable amount of work for the British Government. Being grounded in two very different worlds, and being given the unenviable task during the Second World War of interviewing science and engineering undergraduates to determine how best they could be deployed in support of the war effort, Snow became aware of the existence of what he called Two Cultures, and eventually gave a lecture on this subject and wrote a book addressing this matter.

Many decades on, the question remains whether the problems associated with Two Cultures still exist, how this concept has evolved, and also what new issues arise in the modern world as a consequence. Being in a similar position to Snow, moving and working in two very different worlds, which interestingly are increasingly coming into contact with each other (about which I will have more to say in future blogs), I realise that the two cultures are still alive, but perhaps not fully in the way the Snow experienced.

The main difference today is that the sciences, engineering and technology are over valued, not under valued, so the table has turned, and that leads also to a bad circumstance. I know, perhaps more than Snow, or more than Snow was willing to admit, that scientists, engineers and technologists are far removed from being the logical, rational, objective, and evidence-based people that they say and think they are. On the contrary, they are deeply grounded in selective use of evidence, disregarding that which does not fit with their theories or their interests, and they are highly subjective and irrational. That they think themselves logical etc. is a measure of their self-delusion, which it now appears, is an inherent characteristic of humans. But in engaging in their delusions, they miss the connection with the arts and literature, and maintain the notion of two cultures, for it is without doubt the case that artists and writers are also highly subjective and irrational. And it is here, in these observations that one finds the grounding for the trans-disciplinarity that interests me, and the making of a new discipline.

Being by vocation a writer, a person with artistic inclinations, and being also involved (by accident) via my education, training and work, in the world of science, engineering and technology, as well as business, I have become very familiar with Two Cultures, and I have begun to explore, in my works of fiction, some of the implications for humanity, especially given the social, economic and environmental challenges of the early 21st century. And it is these great challenges that we now face, that motivates me to use my first-hand observations of scientists, engineers and technologists, to not only write about their damaging beliefs and behaviours, but to work on the development of a new type of professional, one grounded in both cultures. This is a task most important to achieving sustainability, for as I have said in previous blogs, behavioural change is the key to creating a sustainable future.

My new novel Moments in Time (a novel about time and that which is timeless and that which is not) is an example of how the creative literary process can be used to undertake enquiry and research, which can eventually lead to new ideas and technologies that would not otherwise come about. And I suppose here you are thinking that I am referring to the research that a writer might undertake when writing such a book as Moments in Time. And if this is what you are thinking then you are wrong, for I did very little research when writing this book, yet as a result of writing it I have come to a much deeper and more interesting understanding of time, which, I believe, is far more important that any scientific research could ever produce, and I will one day explain more about this statement. I cannot say more at this moment for I am in the process of preparing a short exegesis with the aim of then seeing what new technological concepts do emerge as a result of the knowledge and understandings developed through the process of creation.

Agriculture – An Example that Illustrates the Need to Break Free From the Past

The strategic drivers affecting the future development of agriculture can be summarised as follows: increasing world population; growing demand for calories and protein in developing countries; limited or decreasing resources (arable land, water, energy); sustainability, particularly reducing energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions and reversing loss of habits and the decline in biodiversity (including the decline in soil biodiversity); increasing food quality awareness in developed nations; protection and preservation of water resources; and dealing with problems of soil compaction, erosion, loss of soil organic matter, salinisation, and desertification.

Many of the problems listed above are the result of the application of reductionist scientific methods and industrial engineering thinking. It is quite surprising therefore, possibly an act of insanity, that, just as people are waking up to the damaging consequences of industrial scale intensive farming, and all the scientific and technological paraphernalia that has to go with it to keep those very large agricultural technology businesses happy, people are talking about applying more of the science, engineering and technology that is so evidently part of the problem.

It has been said, by people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, and in a most condescending way, that it would take two planets to feed the world using organic farming methods. But what they will not tell you is how many planets worth of oil and natural gas it will take to feed the world if humanity listens to this nonsense, and does not develop a completely different way of growing its food.

I have been examining and investigating these matters since 2007, observing and analysing the conventional thinking and research that is being disingenuously presented as innovation, but which is if fact holding back the development of a new and sustainable system of agriculture. And this is yet another way in which human behaviour needs to change, for it is important to understand that when it comes to matters of agricultural policy, it is not at all based on reason, facts and evidence, but on values, beliefs, and the selective use of information that leads to the results that people are looking for. And it is nothing but a delusion, and a very dangerous one, that this is not so.

This is the nature of science, engineering and technology development, and we need to make this reality more widely known, so that we can not only change science, engineering and technology, but also policymaking. And the nature and consequences of these delusions are explored in my novel Moments in Time, which has just been published, and will be available on Amazon web sites in the coming days. Here in this most unusual of novels, you will encounter the uncomfortable statement that science, engineering and technology, as we currently know them, are a bag of bones and entrails dressed up with a little good meat. Once more I am back to the story of Prometheus, which is recounted in the prologue of Moments in Time, for the whole book, using a technique called caricature, seeks to highlight the bag of bones issue by dealing with the dangerous delusions of an engineer, and the consequences of his (yes a male figure, because these are gender related values) rather peculiar and very European perspectives.