Descubrir tendencias, otros modos de ver el mundo y propuestas alternativas es todo un arte que se puede practicar navegando por la red. Si tu red es RSScéntrica las oportunidades y posibilidades son infinitas. En este post comento tres sitios / proyectos / propuestas que pueden resultar interesantes a “gente rara” como él que escribe y que deberían interesar a políticos, científicos e intelectuales ortodoxos. Puede que alguna de las ideas que emergen en estos sitios ayuden a cambiar el mundo. Además, dos de estos sitios son proyectos genuinamente europeos, lo cual les da un valor especial en un continente demasiado viejo para reconocer sus problemas y demasiado lento para alcanzar el “sueño americano”.
El futurista holandés Marcel Bullinga, el personaje tras Future Check, pertenece a ese tipo de gurús / futuristas / especuladores / tecno-intelectuales más comunes al otro lado del Atlántico pero raros en Europa. Se dedica a pensar sobre el papel de la tecnología y la innovación en el futuro de las sociedades. Esta es su declaración de intenciones / propuesta promocional:
Bullinga's fascination for the use of new technology since 1993 resulted in a thorough knowledge of technology for innovation and the human scale. "We are moving towards an intelligent and transparant world. Embedded intelligence can improve the competitiveness of a company or a country, and at the same time enlarge the influence of customer and citizen. "Futurecheck is about user and life cycle, about Techno Trends and Socio Trends; the necessary mixture of human culture, organization and technology." With a playfull look and a lot of practical examples, Bullinga analyses the technical developments and links these to social renewal. He observes how Techno Trends and Socio Trends link up with each other. In this process not technology but the human factor and strategy come first: what is the goal the government or the company wants to achieve? What are the consumer needs and can they be combined with societal needs?
Es necesaria gente así, que provoque a gobiernos y ciudadanos con buenas (y locas) ideas presentadas de un modo poco académico. Incluso aunque se equivoque en buena parte de sus predicciones. Publica una newsletter y un blog. Como peculiaridad europea, entre sus clientes aparecen numerosas instituciones públicas y, en menor medida, empresas. Posiblemente cualquier personaje de este tipo en EEUU trabajaría fundamentalmente para el sector privado.
En Worldchanging publican el artículo de Marcel Bullinga Europe in 2020 (el artículo apareció originalmente en FutureCheck). ¿Cómo será el 2020 en el viejo continente?. Afronta el futuro inmediato bajo la oportunidad / amenza de la globalización dibujando dos escenarios alternativos (una edad dorada de nómadas creativos y tecnologías sostenibles o una edad oscura de congestión, escasez energética y miedo a la inmigración).
We will witness an acceleration in change and an overall sense of insecurity. Due to globalisation, 2020 is flat, with less trade, knowledge and entry barriers. 2020 is filled with nomadic people in a constant flow of short and semi-permanent stays all over the world, creating a constant brain and workplace circulation. Due to digitalization, 2020 is virtual with intelligent houses, cars and streets. Basically, it is one giant video camera. We will gain and lose privacy. 2020 is transparent and, as a result, hyper competitive. Every one knows your achievements and your failures, and only highest quality will survive. Government and law enforcement will turn digital and invisible: less bureaucratic, more powerful. In this world it is difficult to lie or to hide. The mix of bits, atoms and genes will cause a production and services revolution, such as: printing products at a distance; personal selfservice dashboards for customers & citizens; and low cost, high quality virtual mobility tools. These inventions will have the same effect around 2020 as telephone, TV, and automobile had in the 20th century...
All of this may lead us into a new Golden Century -- which we will need to tackle the enormous energy and congestion problems of 2020. In some ways, 2020 resembles the Middle Ages. Back then the city provided safety, stimulated trade, and made children grow up very fast. The world will be crowded with old people with a lesser drive for innovation. It will make traditional social security unaffordable, but it will also create a wealthy grey market: Silver Century.
2020 is about customer power, self control and self service. It is about personalized services around global commodity products, about making technology invisible. It is about simplicity of choice, about identity and lifestyle -- the only real cliff hangers in the fast world of 2020. Such a world needs flat & flexible organisations, and creative people with a drive for success.
The trend of globalisation, no matter how powerful it is, can be reversed. The following emerging counter trends might do the job. Unmanageable congestion problems. Global energy wars. A failure to stop low talent immigrants, thus creating major safety and social security problems. A failure to attract top talent immigrants, thus creating a fallback in research and innovation.
Ubuweb es meta-poesía construida con pdf, mp3,avi y Java para una cultura más libre (About). Dicho de otro modo, es un repositorio de cultura que ya no se puede encontrar ni pagando, y que desafía a la cultura oficial haciendo gala de no necesitar financiación y de no administrar burocracia. Lo he descubierto gracias al impagable Juan Pedro Quiñonero que lo explica mucho mejor:
Literatura, poesía, arte, cine experimental. Historia de las vanguardias artísticas. Una película norteamericana sobre Borges. Emisiones de radio de Glenn Gould. Documentos no siempre soportables de los “accionistas” vieneses. Cosas de y sobre Erik Satie y Samuel Beckett. De otro modo: todo tipo de locuras ajenas a los super e hyper del mal gusto …
Ubu es una idea muy simple de una serie de partners norteamericanos dedicados al “media hosting, media archiving, audio streaming, mirroring and programing” (WFMU, PennSound, The Center For Literary Computing de la West Virginia University y Artmob) que han decido mantener un sitio donde se hacen accesibles textos, películas, música y otros materiales dífíciles de encontrar, aplicando siempre que es necesario una visión “heterodoxa” y pragmática de los problemas de copyright (ante la duda se decantan del lado del usuario y del, potencial, nuevo creador):
UbuWeb posts much of its content without permission; we rip out-of-print LPs into sound files; we scan as many old books as we can get our hands on; we post essays as fast as we can OCR them. UbuWeb is an unlimited resource with unlimited space to fill. It is in this way that the site has grown to encompass hundreds of artists, hundreds of gigabytes of sound files, books, texts and videos.
Sounds like a marginal situation? Hardly. We've won many prestigious internet awards and are acknowledged web-wide as the definitive source for Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry. UbuWeb is on the syllabus of countless schools; we've gotten queries from Ph.D. candidates seeking information to third-graders researching a paper on concrete poetry. UbuWeb embodies an unstable community, neither vertical nor horizontal but rather a Deleuzian nomadic model: a 4-dimensional space simultaneously expanding and contracting in every direction, growing "rhizomatically" with ever-increasing unpredictability and uncanniness.
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UbuWeb has no need for money, funding or backers. Our web space is provided by an alliance of interests sympathetic to our vision. Donors with an excess of bandwidth contribute to our cause. All labour and editorial work is voluntary; no money changes hands. Totally independent from institutional support, UbuWeb is free from academic bureaucracy and its attendant infighting, which often results in compromised solutions; we have no one to please but ourselves.
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Can I use something posted on UbuWeb on my site, in a paper, in a project, etc.?
Sure. We post many things without permission; we also post many with things with permission. We therefore give you permission to take what you like even though in many cases, we have no received permission to post it. We went ahead and did it anyway. You should too.What is your policy concerning posting copyrighted material?
If it's out of print, we feel it's fair game. Or if something is in print, yet absurdly priced or insanely hard to procure, we'll take a chance on it. But if it's in print and available to all, we won't touch it. The last thing we'd want to do is to take the meager amount of money out of the pockets of those releasing generally poorly-selling materials of the avant-garde. UbuWeb functions as a distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web. Our scanning, say, an historical concrete poem in no way detracts from the physical value of that object in the real world; in fact, it probably enhances it. Either way, we don't care: Ebay is full of wonderful physical artifacts, most of them worth a lot of money.Should something return to print, we will remove it from our site immediately. Also, should an artist find their material posted on UbuWeb without permission and wants it removed, please let us know. However, most of the time, we find artists are thrilled to find their work cared for and displayed in a sympathetic context. As always, we welcome more work from existing artists on site.
Let's face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there would be no UbuWeb.
Por último, gracias a Bruce Sterling, llego a la Community Research & Development Information Service: Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), un sitio del 6º Programa Marco de la Unión Europea donde se presentan una serie de proyectos que exploran de un modo arriesgado las tecnologías del futuro (y en buena medida las sociedades del futuro). Se está preparando ahora la convocatoria para el 7º Programa, en la que incluyen la posibilidad de que cualquiera aporte nuevas ideas (que se agreguen a los programas ya en marcha). Algunas de estas nuevas propuestas son especialmente sugerentes como: Social Banks of Knowledge y Understanding the Merits of Models.
Parece que entra la burocracia de la UE pueden existir ideas y trabajo de interés, y que Europa ha decidido gastar una pequeña parte de su enorme, y malgastado, presupuesto en algo realmente de vanguardia. Lástima que sea tan difícil de localizar. El propio Bruce Sterling ironiza sobre la”transparencia y accesibilidad” de la información europea: “I've been in Europe for six months now. I wonder why it took me that long to find these guys.” Más irónico que sea gracias a un blog de un futurista americano donde empiezo a ser consciente de la posible importancia del programa FET.
En cualquier caso, y permitidme la ironía, sigo viendo algo oscuro en este programa. No entiendo como alguien tan innovador y creativo como para desarrollar programas de este tipo puede someterse a la burocracia europea y salir con vida para empezar el proyecto.
