A formative experience for me was the several year tour of duty at Arcosanti. This was an opportunity to participate in a unique experiment that sees itself as an alternative to the American dream centered around materialism, suburban sprawl and conspicious consumerism. While there I met many interesting people and events. One such event was the 3rd conference in the ongoing Paraodox conference series. It that took place in september of 2001.

The Paradox conferences sprang from Paolo Soleri's thesis: The Six Paradoxes of the Computer Revolution. Ron Anastasia and Michael Gosney-both involved in the west coast cybernetic culture, worked with Paolo to develop the conferences, as a way to promote Soleri's ideas about Arcology to the dot.com crowd. Soleri in his Paradox diabribes warns of the potential dilemmas of ICT to create what he calls the "Global Hermitage."


Michael has developed a "evolutionary Arcology approach" that is focused on three main components: a continuation of the Paradox series of conferences, the development of the Green Community Network and finally the creation of a prototype Arcology themed project in the Bay Area named Califia that is still in the concept state of development. The unifying umbrella for this "evolution of Solerian thought" is the Green Century Institute which will ultimately serve as not only a think tank but an "action tank" to mobilize and organize what Paul Ray refers to as cultural creatives. An ongoing monthly series the Green Century Salon is an attempt to build community in the Bay Area around the themes of sustainability creativity and critical thinking.

Ron has continued to research alternative communities such as Auroville which is located in south India and Damanhur in northern Italy. In constrast to Arcosanti both are spiritual communities and have also been able to develop significantly larger populations. Ron recently did a presentation of his experiences at a Green Century Salon that I attended a few months back. He did not sugarcoat his experiences as he mentioned the pros and cons of each place. He did seem to think that Auroville was the most advanced in terms of offering a real sustainable model for humanity.

According to Michael Gosney the themes of the conferences are:

* Paradox Project - neomonastic internship program at Arcosanti - starts in 1998
* Cross-disciplinary Philosophical Discourse vs. the Corporate Cyber-elite
* Cyberspace/Cityspace
* Morphogenetic origins of digital media
* Carbon and Silicon - evolutionary symbiosis?
* Electronic Media (the basic plumbing), Cyberspace (the design of the human metamind), and the Noosphere (the emergent "cosmic" holon)
* Hypermedia-enabled Education

Proposition:

Understanding our relationship to the planetary organism - on magnetic, ecological, biological/ chemical, and noetic levels - would seem to be essential for the fully conscious and conscientious development of a human/Gaian "metamind." The intelligent design of the cyberspace interface/ network would ideally incorporate the proven systems and techniques of the natural world, such as:

* miniaturization for increased complexity/richness
* distributed processing
* fractal memory
* fuzzy logic
* pattern recognition
* holonomic networks
* redundancy, redundancy, redundancy

The full realization of the elegant underpinnings of the metamind might not be best left solely in the hands of the existing cyber-elite - the digerati (the powerhouses of the industry and culture) and the cybernauts (the hands-on builders and early inhabitants of cyberspace). A broader vision, more encompassing dialogue and cross-disciplinary cooperation for this great evolutionary work is needed.

Libby Hubbard (aka Doctress Neutopia) spent over a year working on the Paradox Program at Arcosanti. Her work has been important in developing a critical perspective of Arcosanti and Arcology which I believe is necessary for the continued evolution of Arcology into an viable alternative to existing development models. Neutopia helped to craft the writing below which is an except of a larger document that we submitted to Communities Magazine in relation to their featured topic which during that issue was education (Daniel Greenberg of Sirius Community was the guest editor). Although our submission was not accepted it was a good exercise in exploring some of the Paradoxes of not only technology and modern civilization but Arcosanti and Arcology.

The Global Hermitage is a phrase Soleri uses to express a concern about the misuse of computer technologies and the Internet. Soleri feels that as people become more attached to virtual life they are separating from real life. There is a compelling rationale for making community values and locally based culture obsolete. The lifestyles that revolve around locally based cultures tend to discourage conspicious consumption and materialism while disregarding the relentless need to increase productivity by any means necessary. The desire of many within the counterculture and the voluntary simplicity movement to move beyond conventional mainstream assumptions about success and progress and simplify their lives is very tied together with the desire towards localization and increased local autonomy as an alternative to the current corporatist model of economic social and political centralization. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society.

The function of Paradox is not just to express the concern that people are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community but to actually start discussing the possibility of balancing technology with indigenous culture.

While suburbanization is presently thriving and has been a major driver in the upward propulsion of the markets over the last 20 or so years such development is rapidly reaching its apex. The public though is still oblivious to the fact that existing development practices are socially or environmentally sustainable and that radical and fundamental change is necessary. An alternative has to emerge, since the world cannot sustain the present development paradigm as espoused by the American corporate establishment.

The existing suburban regions of urban America are going to have to be redesigned and redeveloped because quite simply they are not suitable or even for that matter constructed for long-term human habitation.

Those who are able to develop the vision as well as the know-how to do construct more sustainable human habitats, rapidly and efficiently redesign these environmentally destructive and socially dysfunctional systems, will be in high demand in the coming years. As demand for more socially and environmentally responsible planning design and construction increases those emerging businesses will allow a significant amount of wealth to be shifted from existing businesses that live off of dysfunctional psycho-social interactions in the conventional economy to more effective and socially and ecologically conscious investments in the alternative community. Encouraging the creation of densely populated human habitats, where consumerism and the auto are discouraged, and where creativity, spirituality, political participation and intellectual discourse is central to reversing social, economic and environmental trends that undermine the integrity of human and natural systems.

The purpose of Paradox is to create a balance between real life and virtual reality. As post-modern civilization becomes increasingly complex, we need to discover new models to manage this complexity, keeping human beings relevant and creative within this emerging global network.

The key to understanding this concept of the Global Hermitage is the realization that the community values that previously sustained our identity within the culture of the pre-modern world, have been made obsolete. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong or long term commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society. It is important for us as educators and teachers of a more sustainable and holistic world view, to develop community based ways of overcoming the social dysfunction that materializes from the present hyper-consumerist system. Larry Kaplowitz for the Lost Valley Educational Center writes, "The biggest lesson we've learned over the last few years is that sustainable community must have at its foundation sustainable relationships--relationships that give us more than they take from us; that are a continual source of energy; and which support us in becoming fully ourselves ("Living Naka-ima at Lost Valley" Communities Magazine Fall 99 P.22)."

Technology although necessary to modernization and further human development, is creating structures of complexity that are distancing people from each other, while at the same time, it creates the illusion that we are closer together. We have in the process of modernization, built an architecture where we exist in isolation of each other, so it is hardly surprising that we live increasingly fragmented lives. The reality that we are inter-connected and interdependent flows from the essence of existence, however, embedded within the dysfunctional political geography of our rapidly globalizing commercial culture, is the need to increase the distance within the human to human and human to planet relationships. Not only do we need to think in terms of local community, but we have evolved into needing a planetary consciousness which goes beyond the inhuman, technologically driven society with its relentless need to increase productivity and weapons by any means necessary. Cyberspace can potentially enable us to more clearly envision and articulate the dismal architecture of the present system, while also seeking to visualize and implement the lean alternative, a grand architecture (Arcosanti is just one idea among many alternatives to the present system) that is encapsulated within the ecological/sustainable economics.