This website
is still under construction.
Virtually unprecedented research resources are being
committed to the construction of an experimental nuclear
fusion reactor (ITER) by an intergovernmental coalition of countries as
a key step in the resolution of the foreseeable energy challenges of the
planet. The Cognitive Fusion Reactor (ITER-8) initiative:
- is complementary
to this project and quite distinct, although it is designed to benefit
symbiotically from the creative challenges and breakthroughs in research
on controlled nuclear fusion.
- is focused on the challenge of engendering
psycho-cultural energy, notably as a response to the increasing popular
apathy with regard to major social projects.
- is seen as
vital to sustaining the creativity, excitement, collective purpose and
fun without which unlimited supplies of conventional energy are effectively
meaningless to any higher quality of life.
- is a coherent
act of will, creativity and imagination designed to serve as an attractor
for those who can engage in its processes and disciplines or benefit
therefrom.
- has sympathies with the innovative culture of the
best of western research and design environments (as exemplified by Silcon
Valley and the Media Lab).
This initiative is consistent with the need to explore
subtler and more
dynamic approaches to organization, beyond the unfocused "vision" of "networking" or "knowledge
management".
The issues are articulated in Consciously
Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive
systems, and third order organizations. The initiative is complementary
to three others --
each accessible via the logo above -- mutually counter-balancing echoes
of a central process in the moment and beyond time. Together these form
an emerging, overarching union of interweaving processes: a potential "pattern
that connects". The challenge to comprehension is discussed elsewhere
(Dynamic
Reframing of "Union": implications for the coherence of knowledge,
social organization and personal identity).
These issues are further clarified in a table interrelating the four initiatives
(In Quest
of "Meta-Union"?). The nature of
any union of significance is therefore not predefined by any form of understanding
but is progressively and continually (re)discovered in time. Indeed,
since "yoga" signifies "union" (in Sanskrit), the corollary
may be that the challenge of any "union" of significance implies
some form of "yoga".
Frequently asked questions about this initiative are addressed in a FAQ.
The web address of this site (www.un-iter8.org)
also offers a caution against overly hasty assumptions -- as discussed separately. |
