• Classical system theory, basically maths.
• Computerization and simulation using models.
• Compartment theory: “the system consists in subunits with certain boundary conditions between which transport process takes place”.
• Set theory, which studies general formal properties of systems.
• Graph theory concerned with topological space.
• Net theory, a generalisation of sequences (http://en.allexperts.com/e/n/ne/net_(mathematics).htm).
• Cybernetics: “A theory of control systems based on communication (transfer of information) between system and environment and within the system, and control (feedback) of the system’s function in regard to environment.”
• Information theory “is based on the concept of information, defined by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy of thermodynamics”.
• Theory of automata (i.e. abstract machine – Turing machine 1936).
• Game theory which studies systems animated by rational players.
• Decision theory: maths about choices over alternatives.
• Queuing theory: optimization of arrangements under conditions of crowding.

• that stand up the experience of reality
• that everybody sees
• that resist being pushed
• that are not affected by how you think about them
• …

Read in “Thought as a System” by David Bohm – 1992.

Thanks to the team of the Philosophy Now magazine for having kindly accepted to publish my paper and for their extremely professional proofreading!

What is the role of corporations and consumer research in this relationship? Consumer research is culturally agnostic, it doesn’t defend anything else than the interests of its commissioners, that is their  financial return on investment, most often achieved by pleasing their customers. It is these customers who are arbitrating on cultural symbols and practices, not corporations that are merely playing with cultural meanings at their own risk. The book Ethnography for marketers (a guide to consumer immersion, by Hy Mariampolski) defines the techniques now widely applied in corporations to better understand their customers. Better the customers are understood, better the services they get, better are also the intangible benefits they get from brands and marketing campaigns (such as being able to identify with a brand, use it as a symbol of belonging to a group). But as I explained in a recent lecture about the heterotopia of Walt Disney World, the risk is that cultural assets valuable in the mediation of our reality, but less attractive for brands, could slowly fade away in the profit of less effective meaning systems, more in tune with consumerism and manufactured consumer lifestyles. By observing customers instead of people, customer researches are influencing our perception of existence. It is a little like quantum theory, you cannot observe something in culture without influencing it. The issue is not commerce and its consumer persona, but the lack of other narrative forces. Or maybe even worst, it is the incapacity to recognize the significance of other systems of meaning simultaneously at play in our lives.

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Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming, NewScientist

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Our daily bread documentary.

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming!

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Is this post about art, innovation, governance or philosophy? I let you decide…

The Paris freedom fest will take a libertarian view at themes such as “Business cycle theories: capitalism versus interventionism” [Olga Peniaz], “The ethics and economics of tax heavens” [Guillaume Vuillemey], “Towards a New Theory of the State; what comes after welfare” [James Panton]. The Philo and Management 2009 – 2010 seminars seem more neutral and will investigate “What will be the management of the post-capitalistic society?” through questions such as “Competition: only motor for efficiency and wealth?”, “Is democracy in a business environment possible?” (speakers including Pierre Gurdjian, Pierre Dardot and Isabelle Ferreras).

Having spoken to the two organisers, I have no doubt about their genuine approach and their commitment to achieve something new. Is it a broader movement? Is it time for some serious reflection?

Entretien avec Pierre Dardot et Christian Laval 1 (video in French):

The exhibition ‘Dreams of Progress’ held in July at the Westminster Reference Library is looking at our past ideals. I’m curating the exhibition and I am reading a lot of books related to the subject of Progress. We don’t fully realize today how the idea of a European Union was one of the most important ideal of the 20^th century. People suffered of centuries of wars in Europe, tried so many times to stop what seemed an inexorable repetition of bloody confrontations. Not long after the First and the Second World wars, what has probably been the lowest point of history, came the most ambitious project, the only one that could cure Europe for good, the European Union. We take now for granted peace in Europe. It appears so fundamental and natural. The project of the European Union has not been built by romantic people bored in their bourgeois living rooms. It has been made by necessity. The real ideal behind the euro is not to make international corporations richer, it is that commerce between nations prevent them from going to war. Democracy and freedom is not so much about individualistic rhetoric, but is an effective way to prevent a country’s elite to declare war without a real necessity for its population. The point is that all of this is working! After centuries of blood, we have now found a way to prevent war. It has not been easy to force nations to cooperate, especially the nations, or should I say the past Empires, of Europe. So, after generations of people painfully building this great project, what is our vision?

In his book “The Divided West”, Jürgen Habermas defines the following identity founding characteristics of Europe:

• Commitment to peace as a result of the historical experience of loss
• Social privatization of faith: The only way for Europe to escape war is the strict separation between nations and religions. For those who don’t understand why, look at the history.
• The priority of the state to the market: free market is perceived more as a mean for social wealth than as an end by itself. States embody the more important concepts of citizenship, justice and freedom.
• The primacy of social solidarity over “merit”, inherited from labour movement and Christian social thought.
• Sensitivity for violations of personal and bodily integrity (e.g. rejection of death penalty)
• Reflexive distance toward nationalism, resulting from the growing distance from imperial domination and colonialism
• Awareness of the paradoxes of progress. Europe has a rich history of traditions. ‘Progress’ resulted in the extinction of many traditions, some being more beneficial than what they have been replaced with. There is thus this awareness among Europeans that technological progress doesn’t always mean better living.

As it is explained in this article from Le Monde (in French), the young French generation is naturally European. I assume it is also the case for all young generations in Europe. It’s culture is European, it constantly travels across Europe and makes connections way beyond the borders of nations. The  identity characteristics listed above are I think shared by most European citizens. I believe in them. But what I saw this weekend is a lazy, spoiled, old and selfish continent. What is your opinion?

In his book “Vinyl Leaves, Walt Disney World and America”, Stephen M. Fjellman analyses Disney World and how it incarnates a postmodern society based on consumerism. Here is a summary of his thoughts.

In the introduction, Mr. Fjellman makes a reference to the book “Brave New World” from Aldous Huxley. The book describes an utopian dictatorship of happiness. “A good way to make sure that people police themselves is to get them to believe essentially the same stories about what the world is and why the way it is is good, true and beautiful. The world needs to be described, and it needs to be justified by arguments about nature, philosophical principle, history, or the gods. People will find their place in such a world. They will learn what hopes they might reasonably hold for themselves.” The argument of Mr. Fjellman is that it is exactly what our society is trying to achieve, not necessary consciously, but as a matter of fact. His description of Disney World might seem harsh, but it doesn’t contain any anger – the author seems actually to be a fan of Disney World – it is just a realistic description from an anthropologist point of view, not trying to point out guilty corporations, but just stating the facts and how society works.

A Disney shop

Disney is a major corporation that has a vested interest in promoting a consumerist society. Disney World is not merely a collection of fantasies for children, it is actively advocating the utopia of happy consumerism.  “Our lives can only be well lived (or live at all) through the purchase of commodities. As the commodity form becomes a central part of culture, so culture becomes available for use in the interest of commodification, as a legitimation for the entire system. We must be taught that it is good, reasonable, just, and natural that the means necessary for life are available only through the market”.  In this context, here is how Disney world is defined: “Walt Disney World produces, packages and sells experiences and memories as commodities.” Visitors know that when going in Disney World, they get into a place where all their activities are controlled and conditioned (e.g. queues, soundtracks all over the parks, visual magnets like the Cinderella castle) . They know that their experiences and souvenirs will be manufactured and probably not so different from the ones of another visitor. But they still buy the package because they know they will get a very enjoyable experience.

Queues in the Epcot Test Track ride sponsored by GM

Stephen M. Fjellman notices the following:

• Rides are often experiences during which the visitors are inactive. The only way for visitors to do something, take part in the magic, is at the exit, when they land to the souvenir shops. What is purchased then is not only the souvenir, but the only mean for the visitor to take an active part in the magical experience.
• The sentence “If we can dream it, we can do it” from the EPCOT Future world is ambiguous. Who is the ‘we’? Mr. Fjellman argues that the first ‘we’ means us, but that the second one most probably means ‘corporations’. EPCOT is promoting the pursue of new technologies for human good (if not, goods), but even if we dream it, most of us will not build the new technologies, only the corporations having the ability to do so will. So, the message is actually to trust corporations and their technologies.
• Often at Disney World, rides about the future are actually about the past future: the future as it was imagined few decades ago (e.g. space mountain, Spaceship earth). This paradox is tolerated by the otherwise perfectionism of the Disney imagineers because it achieves one objective: provide reasonable credibility to the statement that corporate technology is good for humanity.  Real future technologies are too controversial, old ones are better suited.
• Animatronics are part of the Disney World experience since its creation. Why are they so important to Disney? The idea to imitate humans with robots could be seen as frightening. But again, the goal of Disney is to promote industrial consumerism. Many of its rides are sponsored by corporations such as GM, Exxon and Kraft. All are heavily involved in high technology. So, the human face of animatronics and their harmless appearance makes technology friendly and acceptable to consumers.
• The Disney movies and the Disney rides often alternate scaring or frightening scenes with cute and happy ones. Bruno Bettelheim made the point that this technique used in fairytales is useful for the kids education, it is a “symbolic presentation of difficult and dangerous psychosocial contradictions”. But the goal of Disney is not to educate kids, it is to make money.  Scaring children to then make them happier is a good way to sell more cinema tickets and merchandising .

Vinyl leaves from Animal Kingdom

How come these kind of messages are not consciously detected by visitors? According to the book, it is thanks to cognitive overload and decontextualization.

• Someone is constantly overloaded by stimuli in Disney World, “it is with the overriding of visitors’ capacities for making discriminations that Disney metathemes may take effect.”
• Disney World is a patchwork of enchanted medieval castles, colonial history, future technologies, Moroccan markets, zoos, characters from Disney cartoons, American presidents, rides sponsored by car manufacturers, Mt Everest, astronomy, dinosaurs and so on. It is the world summarized. But the trick is that if you remove an element from its context, it loses a lot of its meaning. “By pulling meanings out of their contexts and repackaging them in bounded informational packets, decontextualization makes it difficult for people to maintain a coherent understanding about how things work.” It is then easier to tell the Disney history: “Idealized United States as heaven, history is decoration. Colonialism was fun, the colonized cute (but a little stupid). How nice if they could all be like us – with kids, a dog, and GE appliances – in a world whose only problems are avoiding Captain Hook, the witch’s apple.”
• “The Disney strategy is to juxtapose the real and the fantastic (real birds mixed with fake sounds of birds), surrounding us with the mix until it becomes difficult to tell which is which.  A kind of euphoric disorientation is supposed to set in as we progressively accept the Disney definition of things. We are asked to submit to a wilful suspension of disbelieve in the ostensible interest of a complete entertainment experience.”

I personally love Disney world. I agree with the analysis of Mr. Fjellman, but after all, this is not so shocking for someone already leaving in such a consumerist society. What is much more worrying is the trend to build everything like Disney World: hotels, cities, even museums. The risk is to forget that Disney World is only one vision of an utopian society of happiness, a corporate one. Life is so much more than that.

Do you think this article is fair to Disney World? Would you like to defend the park against some of the claims made here? Or do you think the reality is even darker?

The Tour Eiffel from the World's Fair of 1900

I’ve read recently the excellent book from Jay Winter “Dreams of Peace and Freedom – Utopian Moments in the 20^th Century“. It is part of my curatorial homework for the exhibition “Living the Dream of Modernity” that I’m preparing to launch very soon. Here is a summary.

Mr. Winter understands utopia as a discourse in two contradictory parts. An utopia is an ideal in complete discontinuity with the reality. But the ideal can only be expressed with what is known. Thus, the utopia necessary tells about the historical context of its authors. “Utopia is a fantasy about the limits of the possible, a staging of what we take for granted, what is left unsaid about our current social conventions and political cultures. Those who expose these silences, often playfully, begin to disturb the contradictions in the way we live.” [Louis Marin, Utopiques]

The book focuses on the loosely defined ‘minor utopias’, the utopias that have not been the cause of major wars and cruelty, e.g. 20^th century totalitarian regimes.

Jay Winter identifies  the following utopias:

-          Visions of Peace in 1900. Throughout the world, many groups declared their commitment to the idea that war could be eradicated. 3 examples:

o   Albert Kahn created the “Archives of the Planet”, films and photographs from many parts of the world, to help people “see that their interests should be directed towards the benefit of humanity as a whole. For this they need more than abstract knowledge, but contact with the world. This contact will show the variety of experience and contradict simple formula about the world”

o   The world’s fair of 1900 in Paris, based on the idea that war would be unnecessary in a world based on international commerce.

o   Jean Jaurès and socialist pacifism took the opposite direction, peace was impossible under a system defending property and privilege. A system of states resting on class inequalities would necessary clash.

All those visions were unlikely to materialize, “because the men and women who framed them could not evade who they were: European citizens of an imperial system controlling the globe, a system about to detonate the most devastating war in history”.

-          Perpetual Peace in 1919. After the first World War, long-lasting peace was still the primordial goal. The conviction was that self-determination would put this time a definitive end to war. Self-determination is the capability for “people to determine their political future in their own territory. Take away the imperial element in international affairs, and armed conflict would simply be unnecessary”. It was in the agenda of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 but was still the prerogative of the imperial countries. You cannot be imperial and democratic at the same time.

-          The illuminations of 1937. The hope of the Paris world’s fair of 1937 was that science and technology would make humanity progress cooperatively. Democratizing light and electricity was the perfect symbolic: a materialization of the 18^th century enlightenment. Meanwhile, science was playing a central role in the military preparation of the second World War.  The fair was in fact a desperate invocation, signs of its fate are greatly detailed in the book.

-          The work of René Cassin on the Declaration of Human Rights, in the middle of the second World War, seems like a paradox. “But utopias have the tendency to appear at the worst times, when they are the least likely to be realized”. The declaration was motivated by the believe that peace could be secured only if it was based on a set of international commitments on human rights. States respecting the rights of their citizen would not be willing to go to war so easily.

-          Liberation of the 1968. Jay Winter describes a shift in this period during which the ideal of individual freedom takes over the one of collective independence (e.g. states, trade unions). He describes the liberation theology school funded by Gustavo Gutiérrez as well as the student revolts in Paris and Berlin. Came from those movements the notion of ‘autogestion’, people can solve their problems without national governments (e.g. life in small communities, humanitarian organizations such as Medecins sans frontieres). A chapter is also dedicated to the Prague Spring and the theatre of Vaclav Havel.

-          Global citizenship in 1992. “Global citizens are emerging out of an array of transnational social forces animated by environmental concerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and a vision of human community based on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an end to poverty, oppression, humiliation, and collective violence.” [Richard Falk] Even though the importance of this movement is undeniable, most of international institutions are still the result of cooperation between nations, far from being bypassed.

The book was very useful to read. It helps having a minimum of historical context on utopias and to understand how come such obvious things such as international corporations, Human rights, the European Union and Greenpeace exist.

Jay Winter manages to stay very detailed and neutral when describing the utopias and why they were biased, while still being an advocate of them. All the utopias described above played an important role in history and how we perceive the world today. They are the result of individuals still being able to envision a world beyond the injustices and atrocities of their times. Without them, no progress would have been possible.

• Find Out What People Want By Taking It Away From Them: Is the customer the master or the slave?
• Tracking one’s sex life.: A very taboo subject. How do people manage their sex calendars? Can it be online as all the rest? Probably…
• Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019: the digital world interwoven with reality, and more human. But what if the opposite happens? If reality gets interwoven with digital world, and less human?
• Our life will finally look like the 70′s sci-fi movies!

Some online reflections:

• http://laurentledoux.blogactiv.eu/2009/02/16/should-we-hope-for-obama-to-be-a-machiavellian-leader/, a good article to understand what Machiavellian and smart leadership mean, part of a series on leadership.
• http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=435413, explanation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of Bad Faith. Something that really makes you think about how you live your life.
• Nice way to visualize how the credit crisis happened:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.