[12772] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: Nobelist I. Prigogine, "Networked Society"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Mar 15 20:03:41 1999
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 13:40:08 -0600
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
FYI France: more on the Club of Rome and "FWS, Futuroscope World
Symposium on Network Media" held at Poitiers, March 1-3 (see FYI
France issue of Feb 15, at http://www.fyifrance.com ) --
"I believe that the role of the networked society will be
judged according to its impact on the inequality between
nations" -- Ilya Prigogine (below)
Ilya Prigogine -- Comments from a Nobelist
Nobel laureates have a knack: for putting enough distance between
themselves and the incredibly detailed accomplishments which
earned them their prizes, enabling them to explain to us the
implications of their work for ourselves and for life in general.
The late Glenn Seaborg won his prize for work of such great
detail that very few humans either could or would want to
understand what he had done; yet he then devoted the rest of his
long life to patient, warm, simple explanations of why work such
as his needed to be done, delivered humbly and magnificently to
groups of schoolchildren, the elderly, high policy - makers,
impatient journalists, and anyone really who would listen.
Other Nobelists, equally accomplished, have done the same: it is
a community which is not very content to rest on its laurels,
all of its post - prize energy perhaps best illustrating the
characteristics which win such a prize in the first place.
Ilya Prigogine won his Nobel Prize -- in chemistry, in 1977 --
for work in "nonequilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the
theory of dissipative structures"...
But, as with Seaborg and other Nobelists, although the work which
won Prigogine his prize may have great significance, it is his
work done _since_ the award which reaches the greatest number of
us most directly -- particularly those of us who trip over
"thermodynamics" and "nonequilibrium" and "dissipative".
Since 1977, Prigogine's activities have been many:
"In 1989, Prigogine was awarded hereditary nobility and
personal title of Viscount by the King of Belgium. He is
a member of 30 national and professional organizations,
among which are the National Academy of Sciences and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The most recent of
Prigogine's many international activities are Special
Advisor to the European Community in Brussels, Belgium
and Honorary Member of the World Commission of Culture
and Development of UNESCO, chaired by Perez de Cuellar...
"Prigogine has received numerous national awards and
prizes, including the Golden Medal of the Swante
Arrhenius, Swedish Academy; Rumford Gold Medal, Royal
Society of London; the Descartes Medal, Paris; Commander
of the Legion of Honor, France; Imperial Order of the
Rising Sun (Gold & Silver Medals), Japan and Medaille
d'Or, France, Russian International Scientific Award. He
has received 40 honorary degrees."
see -- http://order.ph.utexas.edu/people/prigogine/
and his many publications over the years have included,
Contribution a` la thermodynamique de la matie`re dans un
champ e`lectromagnetique, par P. Mazur et I. Prigogine.
[Bruxelles, Palais des acade'mies, 1953].
Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics (New York :
J. Wiley & Sons, 1962).
Interpretations of life and mind; essays around the
problem of reduction, edited by Marjorie Grene.
Contributors: Ilya Prigogine [and others]. (New York,
Humanities Press [1971]).
Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems: From
Dissipative Structures to Order Through Fluctuations
(With G. Nicolis) (New York : J. Wiley & Sons, 1977).
Advances in chemical physics / eds. I. Prigogine and
Stuart A. Rice (New York : Wiley , c1979) (Numerous
editions -- latest is 1997.)
La nouvelle alliance : me'tamorphose de la science (with
I. Stengers) ([Paris] : Gallimard, c1979, 1986).
From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the
Physical Sciences (San Francisco : W. H. Freeman, 1980).
Physique, temps et devenir (tr. Franc,oise Sullivan)
(Paris, New York, Barcelone : Masson, 1980; 2d ed. rev. 1982).
Order out of chaos : man's new dialogue with nature (with
I. Stengers ; foreword by Alvin Toffler) (Toronto ; New
York : Bantam Books, 1984). Several editions.
Laws of nature and human conduct : specificities and
unifying themes / eds. Ilya Prigogine and Michele
Sanglier (Brussels : Task Force of Research, Information
and Study on Science, c1987).
Entre le temps et l'e'ternite (with I. Stengers) ([Paris]
: Fayard, c1988) ([Paris] : Flammarion, 1992).
Exploring complexity : an introduction / Gregoire
Nicolis, Ilya Prigogine (New York : W.H. Freeman, c1989).
Matter and the universe. (Princeton, NJ : Films for the
Humanities & Sciences, Inc., c1991). Videocassette.
A la rencontre du complexe / Gre'goire Nicolis, Ilya
Prigogine (Paris : Presses universitaires de France, 1992).
Chaos : the new science : Nobel Conference XXVI / Ilya
Prigogine ... [et al.] ; edited by John Holte (St. Peter,
Minn. : Gustavus Adolphus College, c1993).
Grenzgesprache : dreizehn Dialoge uber Wissenschaft /
herausgegeben von Adelbert Reif und Ruth Renee Reif ;
interviews mit Ilya Prigogine ... [et al.] (Stuttgart :
S. Hirzel, 1993). Series title: Edition Universitas.
"Creativity in the Sciences and the Humanities. A Study
in the Relations Between the Two Cultures," in The
Creative Process, eds. L. Gustafsson, S. Howard and L.
Nicklasson (Stockholm : Graphic Systems AB, Stockholm, 1993).
"Mind and Matter: Beyond the Cartesian Dualism," in
Origins: Brain and Self Organization, ed. Karl Pribam
(New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994).
Vremia, khaos, kvant / Il'ia Prigozhin, Izabella Stengers
; [perevod s angliiskogo] (Moskva : Izdatel'skaia gruppa
"Progress", 1994) Series title: Biblioteka zhurnala "Put'".
Les lois du chaos (Paris : Flammarion, 1994; [Paris]
: Flammarion, 1997, nouv. ed. rev.).
La fin des certitudes : temps, chaos et les lois de la
nature (with I. Stengers) (Paris : O. Jacob, 1995, 1998).
Die Gesetze des Chaos (tr. Friedrich Griese) (Frankfurt :
: Campus Verl.; Paris : Ed. de la Fondation Maison des
sciences de l'homme , 1995).
"The Converging of Western and Eastern Viewpoints on
Science and Nature," in Nature, Science and Medicine, MOA
Health Science Foundation (1995) 14-22.
"Time, Chaos and the Two Cultures," in Science and
Society, The John C. Polanyi Nobel Laureates Lectures ,
ed. M. Moskovits (House of Anansi Press, Ltd., 1995).
The end of certainty : time, chaos, and the new laws of
nature (with I. Stengers) (New York : Free Press, 1997).
So, Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate, to the "FWS, Futuroscope
World Symposium on Network Media":
"I am convinced that at present humanity is going through
a bifurcation process due to information technology.
The great French historian Braudel has written: "Events
are dust". This is only partially true. There are
"well-defined events" which have shaped human history. A
simple example is the neolithic bifurcation associated to
an increased flow of energy, coming from the discovery of
agriculture and metallurgy and leading to a complex
hierarchical society.
We can of course quote other social bifurcations related
to fossil energy : coal, oil which lead to the industrial
society.
Now we have the information technology which leads to the
networked society. What will be the effect of the present
bifurcation ? Because of the scales involved we can
expect a larger role of non linear terms therefore larger
fluctuations and increased instability.
Will the networked society lead to some form of
unification of humanity ? This is not certain.
My friend Professor Jean-Louis Deneubourg made the remark
that networked societies exist involving social insects.
We know today about 12000 ant species. Their colony
sizes are ranging from a few individuals to 20 millions
of individuals.
It is remarkable that the behavior of the small ant
society and of the large ant societies are quite
different. In a small insect society, individuals know at
any moment what they must do. They go foraging, they come
back to share their prey, they behave independently.
However, once the society becomes large, coordination
becomes the major problem. There appear complex
collective structures that spontaneously emerge from
simple autocatalytic interactions between numerous
individuals and with the environment mediated by chemical
communication.
In small insect societies, the complexity is localized at
the individual. In large ant societies, complexity is
more on the level of the interactions between the
individuals. It is certainly not a coincidence that in
the largest and most integrated societies -- that is in
the army ants and termites -- the individuals are
practically blind.
The evolution from the small ant society to large ant
society was the result of qualitative changes involving
discontinuities. Such type of discontinuities appear in
many fields of physics, chemistry and biology. They are
associated to bifurcations. Bifurcations play an
important role in our present view of nature. They lead
to multiple possibilities which are associated to
probabilities. They destroy the classical deterministic
view of nature.
We are in a world in construction, and the initiative
taken by the Club of Rome is a non - negligible factor in
this construction. The present bifurcation towards a
networked society is part of the technological
bifurcations which started at the end of the 19th century
and went through the whole 20th century. We have
therefore already a period of about one century behind us.
What effect had the technological revolution on the life
of humanity in the past ? In the 20th century, there were
and still are tragic events: wars, ethnic purification...
But war and bloodshed are not something new. They existed
always in our history.
But there is also a constructive positive part of the
technological revolution that is the decrease of
inequality. At the beginning of this century, we had the
gap between the "civilized" and the "non - civilized".
The non - civilized could be treated only slightly better
than animals. The inequality between social classes has
also decreased as well as the inequality within the family.
However we are still far from a satisfactory situation.
The gap between industrial states and developing
countries is increasing. We develop also a large gap
between people who know and people who don't know. This
issue acquires a new formulation in the Networked
Society. As Alvin Toffler puts it : "The illiterate of
the future will not be the person who cannot read. It
will be the person who does not know how to learn."
Education objectives and priorities should change towards
the ideal of continuous learning.
I believe that the role of the networked society will be
judged according to its impact on the inequality between
nations. Of course, there are advantages of the networked
society which are well-known. Think about medicine, or
business. However I believe the judgment has to be based
on more fundamental criteria.
The philosopher Whitehead stated that the Greeks
developed two aims for humanity : first, the intelligence
of nature that is a rational formulation of the laws
which rule matter or life, and on the other hand the
establishment of a democracy based on the role of values.
Will the networked society be a step in the direction of
the realization of this goal ?
From this point of view it is interesting that each
bifurcation in the past resulted in people who benefited
from it and in people who became victims. The neolithic
society led to extraordinary realizations in the field of
arts. It led to the construction of pyramids for the
pharaohs, but also to common graves for the common
people. Slavery started probably with the neolithic
civilization and continued till recently. Similarly,
industrial civilization led to the development of the
proletariat, at the same time as it led to an increase of
wealth."
--oOo--
Editor's note: "blind army ants and termites"!...
There is much to guard against, in the "Networked Society", in
spite of the undoubted advantages which it will bring.
Many of the dangers will be inherited: as Prigogine points out --
he was born in Russia in 1917, and lives now in Belgium, both
places which have endured much of the chaos of the 20th century
-- "wars, ethnic purification... war and bloodshed are not
something new". Insert relevant "those who do not remember the
past..." quotation, I suppose -- Prigogine has an historical
sense which is lacking in most information technology writing.
Inheritance, particularly genetic inheritance and social
behaviors, does not just go away. "Information technology" will
not just erase it. The "Networked Society" will not solve "wars,
ethnic purification... and bloodshed": it may make some of it
better, it may make some of it worse -- we still will have some
"blind army ants and termites", and as our human societies grow
larger and more complex and more inter - dependent, albeit
"networked", our proportions of "blind ants" just may increase.
So, these are the concerns of a Nobelist.
And it is interesting to see that his concerns are international,
as were those of most who attended FWS at Poitiers: "Inequality
between nations" is the basic worry, from Belgium and Russia and
Europe and Asia -- and Africa and Latin America.
Nobelists do not "rest on their laurels", and neither should
information technology: the hardest work comes _after_ the awards
and prizes. Just so, it is one thing to achieve a "networked
society" within the United States, but another to ensure that
such a society will be beneficial, and equal... and very much
still another to extend the benefits of this -- and not its
dangers -- to the rest of the world.
Thanks are due to Bertrand Schneider, Secretary General of the
Club of Rome and President of the "Futuroscope World Symposium",
for permission to reproduce Prigogine's remarks here.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
----- FYI France may be copied and used by anyone for
// \\ any good purpose, so long as, a) they give me
--------- credit and show my email address, and, b) it
// \\ isn't going to make them money: if it is going
to make them money, they must get my permission
in advance, and share some of the money which they get with me.
Use of material written by others requires their permission.
FYI France archives may be found at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
(search fyifrance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/
(BIBLIO-FR econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com ,
or at http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html . Suggestions,
reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison-pen letters all will be
gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us
Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
all rights reserved except as expressed above.
--hjlm--
