Reference document
The main objective of PARADISO activities is to explore how might or should our societies evolve in the next decades (a probable paradigm shift) and to derive from this analysis how can Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and the Future Internet in particular, contribute to making this future better.
The main findings, based on various inputs including those from any interested stakeholders contributing through the PARADISO social networks, and their participation in project events are detailed in successive versions of the “PARADISO reference document”. This document includes recommendations to the European Commission on research topics to be addressed in future EU-funded programmes and suggests in particular to “explore the Internet at its limits”.
A draft version of these recommendations have been presented at the conference organized by PARADISO at the European Commission in Brussels on September 7-9, 2011 on the theme “Internet and societies: new innovation paths” (see the press release prepared on this occasion). During the wrap-up session of Sept. 8, Mr Zoran Stancic, Deputy Director General of the European Commission’s DG Information Society and Media, congratulated the PARADISO expert panel and all PARADISO stakeholders for the quality of these recommendations.
The last version of the PARADISO reference document, dated September 2011, can be downloaded here.
We express our warmest thanks to all those having contributed to the successive versions of this document.
Thanks for the paper Roger, Roland, Fabrizio, Jacques,
You certainly have given a reader an awful lot to think about and address. Let me just say that I address all these kind of forward-looking “paradigm change” papers from one simple logic. We are watching the change from a media where National aggregation and broadcast is the paradigm, to one where the world’s media is revolving around global disciplinary (multi-language) groups. E.g. Paradiso’s expert group.
The problem we all have is coming to terms with how we support them, how we include interested parties in their inquiries, and how we use an inquiry’s outcomes as an input for its successors.
The problem we appear to have is this separation of three professional (media) mindsets. I call them cheese makers, mousetrap builders and mousetrap locators. Mousetrap builders are the National network managers. In Europe, the publicly-funded ones buzz around terena’s secretariat and National Broadcast stations. The cheese makers are project and institutional secretariats, who have a habit of addressing similar social networks separately = on a national/regional perspective. E.g. This discussion will affect/be affected by initiatives like Sigma’s EuroAfrica, EuroAsia projects as well as NEM and http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/collectiveawareness/index_en.htm . The third mindset include people like curators, whose interests are usually all I and no C (as in ICT). They address the media problem from the archivist’s perspective = after it’s been produced. E.g. http://www.Educopia.org/events/ANADP
There are 3 main elements of the new media model.
1.&2. A Single Sign On (to a range of publicly-funded “Common” services). E.g. http://www.aaf.edu.au/technical/common-services/ aaf is an Australian initiative. The euro-centric equivilant is http://refeds.org/ Sigma’s secretariat will recognize these common services (collaboration suites) as ones like “Linked in” or any space where a Log In is required (like this form). They can be any combination of applications & will include “real time communications” services like the ec-funded http://www.globalplaza.org/spaces
refed and the aaf design their federated log on for their “particular” (R&D) communities. But each country will have their idea of how to provide an “SSO” to all citizens, so that they can access and a range of commonly shared services. (as the basis of e-government). Most of these common services are already provided free (and/or Openly sourced). The problem, in order to take a first step is having National secretariats agree upon a combination of them which will become a standard. N.B. One size will not fit all.
3. The last great need is for a directory which is shared by social networks. Whether one looks at this need as an aggregator = a National librarian, or a disseminator = a National broadcaster, the quest is an identical one. Just as library is made useful by a classification scheme which enables a librarian to point to a shelf, where the outputs of similar authors are aggregated, so does a TV guide point to the streams of similar producers.
The primary difference, which could be proved if this discussion document was provided on a wiki and made accessible via a common sign on (to this form and other “services”), is that content production is now a sociable (global) activity, where are an archive is produced in situ. It is no longer something which is produced in one place (url) and then transferred to another for safekeeping.
That’s the problem with paradigm changes, especially in media. Because we stick to the old rules we can’t see the new ones. Hasta Luego.
Dear Roger,
Very interesting report, my compliments, a lot of perspectives for exploration are indicated.
What took my attention in the report: “Wouldn’t it be paradoxical to develop a « Future Internet » without thoroughly exploring what the future of our societies should be?”
May I suggest a next topic.-Which education, adults and children, is needed to save/create the awareness/identity of Europe.-
- Europe is unique in her origin with the importance of human rights, based on, freedom (in mind), equality (law) and brotherhood (social).
- In general the developments of science and technology go faster and tameless than people the consequences and effects in the society can oversee.
The space between the society and the internet is filled with the behavior, wishes, dreams and aggression of people.
The EU Commission could have concern for the future of the democratical thinking and behavior of her citizens.
(Not to develop a kind of protection or regulation, that’s killing for the freedom of knowledge, but just education of her citizens, the rules and borders, how to act in a democracy with a lot of choices.)
Kind regards of Anne Marijke
To the attention of Roger Torrenti
Thank you for your email of june 7.
I am a ( honorary ) member of the Club of Rome. Ian Johnson ,Francesco Stipo and others of the Club are involved in my last initiative, CADMUS, a publication promoted with the World Academy of Art and Science ( South East European Division ). See : http://www.cadmusjournal.org or. http://www.newwelfare.org
On the last site you find also the European Papers on the New Welfare ( in english and in italian : 16 issues ) which I have launched in 2005, as The Risk Institute ( in fact an informal group of interested people ). In my official working life, from 1959 to 2001 – among other things I have been Managing Director of the Techno-economic research division at the Battelle Institute in Geneva, and , from 1973 to 2001 I have developed the Geneva Associaition (www.genevaassociation.org ) which is today the major strategic economic reserach center on risk in insurance worldwide ( supported personally by 90 CEOs of the major insurance companies world wide -
China included ).
I wonder how far the issues described in the European Papers – which are totally indipendent -, concerning the present and future welfare issues ( longer life cycle the world over, employment, social security, financial and fiscal issues etc) could represent an important developoment for PARADISO : there are many paths to be followed and both the welfare and the “new econoics” paradigmes are exploding…….
I am curious to read your reactions…..
With my bet wishes
Orio Giarini
The Paradiso Reference document is very rich in information and concepts, and it offers a variety of elements of foresight studies. Given its limited format, it must address as swiftly as possible the global issues and some fundamental alternatives which societies, in Europe and in the rest of the World may encounter.
I will here focus my comments on two fundamental aspects of the PARADISO project: PARADIgms and SOcietal issues.
Paradigms
The flagship initiative of Europe 2020, ‘A Digital Agenda for Europe’, quoted several times by the Document, strikes me as having chosen to emphasize the “digital” paradigm, rather than, for instance, the “information” or the “knowledge” paradigms. I think that this is quite revealing of a certain technological bias, which deserves to be more thoroughly analysed and put into perspective.
Particularly, it is worth studying if this bias could be improperly translated into assumptions regarding the kind of society the ICTs are supposed to contribute to.
In other words, the “pillars” of the Digital Agenda may seem to give too much credit for technology-driven solutions and investments in order to solve what remain fundamentally societal, economic and political issues, which have many other dimensions than technological ones.
For instance, the Digital Agenda sounds credible when it underlines the importance of developing “fast and ultra-fast Internet access”, “trust and security” or “interoperability and standards”.
But it is worthwhile to proceed with the analysis several steps further.
-Ultra-fast access comes with a significant cost. At the expense of which other investments these ultra-fast networks will be built? Will they facilitate competition, and better access to diversified contents and resources? This is not self-evident. Building “information highways” may favour the establishment of oligopolies, not only in terms of networks but also in terms of content offerings. Concentration of networks in huge pipes seems to be quite opposite to the spirit of the “initial” Internet. Capacity and speed are of course OK, if it is not at the expense of growing diversification of uses and of available contents.
-No one can object to “trust and security”. But does that mean that cyber-surveillance will then increase by several orders of magnitude? Will every single ICT tool be tracked in permanence, will our “Digital IDs” be constantly monitored over each transaction or navigation on the Net, will every Internet “Objects” be able to reveal to centralised “Command and Control Cyber Centres” their types of uses, the identities of the users, their location – all this in the name of “increased security” and “war on cyber-crime”?
We cannot just ask for more “trust and security”, as necessary as it may, without asking what societal and political costs this supposed “cyber-trust” will inflict on the social fabric.
-No one can reasonably object to the importance of interoperability and standards. But will these standards be “open” or will they be “proprietary”? Will they favour new levels of innovation or will they tend to limit access to certain aspects of software engineering? Will they encourage decentralized network structures and diversification of operators and players, or on the contrary will they accelerate the concentration of oligopolies through “increasing returns”? In other words, interoperability issues and standards are not an end in themselves: they must be analysed according to the type of economy and society they explicitly or implicitly encourage. Some standards may have unintended and possibly negative effects, resulting from chaotic interferences from the so-called “market forces”.
It is not possible to deepen these questions in this short paper, but we may underline for the moment that the “digital” paradigm, is not sufficient, as such. It leaves many important questions in the background or in the shadow. That may be an advantage, in terms of reaching a political consensus, but for a program like PARADISO which proudly positions itself on “paradigms”, as its acronym boasts, I think it is of utmost importance to deepen the views and reactions associated with its own founding paradigm.
This is not to say that alternate paradigms like the “Information paradigm” or the “Knowledge paradigm” may be easier to use, or more rewarding in the long run. But at least, they should be viewed as entirely different opportunities to pose deep foresight issues associated with different societal scenarios.
Moreover, the “digital” paradigm refers in fact to a certain technological “convergence”, started in the 70’s of the last century, between formerly separated technological continents (telecommunication, television, entertainment industry, information processing industry,…). It seems utterly important not to ignore the new “convergence” at work, nicknamed the “BANG convergence” (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, Genes) introducing within the next two or three decades the convergence of ICTs with nanotechnologies, genetic engineering and neuro-technologies. Again, if we want to be in the foresight business, we have to look for the emerging signals of the next “paradigm shift(s)”. The “digital paradigm” is now 40 years old. I think it is already fairly well understood. But what we have to expect in the relatively near future may be a shock of a bigger magnitude.
This is what PARADISO must try to capture. The Digital Agenda is in the job of adapting and reformulating with ad hoc add-ons a fundamental paradigm shift which was announced for decades by documents and reports such as the “Rapport sur l’informatisation de la société” (S. Nora, A. Minc) published in 1977. But we need to formulate, or at least to recognize and name the basis of the new paradigm shift(s), which is (are) already at work, even though not yet recognized in the current radars.
As a final comment on “paradigm issues”, I propose to establish a parallel between different levels of reality captured by the Digital, the Information, or the Knowledge paradigms and respectively, by whole fields like Computer science, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, or Philosophy. Surely, these sciences are somewhat complementary, if we try to capture the complexity of reality. But some sciences are more useful than others, in getting more profoundly in the gist of the matter.
To take another metaphor, in the great “knowledge food chain”, where are the predators, the small fish and the plankton?
Societal Issues
In order to explore a sufficiently wide spectrum of meaningful paradigms, anthropology, history, philosophy should be put to contribution. In particular, since we have to address the central concepts of “information” or “knowledge” in this foresight exercise, it may be interesting to recall briefly how other civilisations viewed them.
An anthropological analysis of “knowledge” among different cultures may also be of great help, in showing differentiation of the concept of knowledge and the ways it may have been translated into, in terms of societal structures.
For instance, more than 3000 years ago, the Veda society was already, literally, a “knowledge” society, since the word ‘veda’ means “knowledge” in Sanskrit. But this “knowledge” was mainly appropriated by a small cast of very educated priests.
In the numerous regions of the world where shamanism flourished for very long periods of time, the “shaman” was literally designated as “the one who knows”. What did he know exactly? He had some answers on the structure of the mind, and the purpose of life.
In Europe, various forms of “Gnosticism” (from the Greek gnosis, “knowledge”) dominated centuries of philosophical or religious developments, from Pythagoras, Heraclites to Plato, but also with thinkers such as Marcion, Basilides, or Valentin, during the early centuries of Christianity, the decadence and fall of Roman Empire, and even with the re-emergence of forms of neo-Gnosticism (C.G. Jung, S. Weil) during the last two centuries of Modern Era.
It seems that “knowledge” constitutes a fundamental trait of Humankind, and has always been at the centre of the development of any given civilization. Of course, different types of “knowledge” were considered important at different moments of history.
But this is precisely the point. What “knowledge” should be considered really relevant in our times? Do we have organized the society in such a way that universal access to this particularly relevant knowledge has been guaranteed to all?
Moreover, in any given civilization, different economies, sociologies, philosophies of knowledge raise typical issues and problems. What are the structural gaps or dividing issues in the “knowledge societies” of today, or tomorrow?
Here is a brief overview of problems that will not just be solved by the usual legislative process, more or less organised around “special interests” and lobbies.
How does the tension between common good and private interest translate in terms of knowledge in a given society?
How do the metaphors of “communism”, “socialism” or “capitalism” translate in the context of knowledge? In other terms, do certain types of knowledge typically flourish in a capitalist or a liberal environment, and at the expenses of what other types of knowledge?
Is “intellectual property” a fixed or evolving concept, and how did it contribute at different moments of history, or in different regimes, to the general advancement of science and of knowledge?
Privacy vs. transparency: has the value of information privacy a real or a symbolic price? What is the social cost of information transparency?
Freedom of expression and free access to information vs. Censorship and Information “Command and Control”.
In the name of information security, some structural changes in the uses of ICTs may profoundly affect values such as “freedom of expression” or “right to access to public information”. The problems are technological, societal and political. Any progress in the comprehension of the interaction between the “digital”, the “information” and the “knowledge” levels must also be translated in societal and political terms, for a better enlightening of the public debate.
Intensity of cyber war operations recently raised by several degrees. Intrusions, degradations or destructions of sensitive facilities were operated by various groups, including specially trained teams backed up by powerful states. The Stuxnet virus is quite revealing of the next level of threat that could affect whole nations, with the cutting off of the electricity grid, or even entire portions of the global information system.
The real danger of a “hot” or even a “cold” cyber war has to be recognized, not just in terms of military defence or preparedness to an all-out offensive. It should be studied also for a global understanding of the very fabric of the “information society” and of its structural weaknesses. A systemic answer to these weaknesses must be found, and this should be conceptualized at the global level, for instance by the G20 nations.
As a credible alternative to the concept of cyber war, developed to gain eminence or supremacy on key global “commons”, it is strategic for Europe to develop public policies at the international level in favour of “Collective Intelligence”, info-cooperation, or “coopetition”. Europe has everything to lose in an all-out cyber war, and everything to gain in initiating new steps in “Cyber Peace” and global governance of the world knowledge society.
In terms of global governance, what new roles ICTs could play in enforcing global taxation schemes, such as the “Tobin tax”, or in the fight against money laundering, and organised crime?
In what measure ICT and knowledge can help repair the global financial system? Put an end to fiscal paradises? Deal with global warming and “climate neutral” energy and transportation? Avert new wars? Guarantee fair elections? Reduce poverty? Put an end to human rights abuses?
There is no doubt that they can play some role, but is this role purely instrumental or actually decisive? Or is “decision” of another nature, political rather than cognitive, for instance?
Another aspect of the role of ICT and knowledge in our societies is their potential to change our fundamental relation to reality.
Virtual and augmented worlds do now represent a reality of their own, where modelling, simulation, or even virtual communities, tend to create a kind of a “second world”, not really aiming at replacing the “first world”, the world of real reality, but aiming at augmenting it with new functions, and new potentials. Geospatial tagging, location-based technologies (GPS, RFID, Internet of things), augmented realities, ubiquitous computing, lifelong record of users and objects (Lifelogging) are only but a few areas that contribute to create alternate realities that can complement or sometimes substitute the old reality.
One could argue that the accumulation, densification and systemization of such tools do contribute to the emergence of a new “fusion reality”, characterized by an increased convergence and a “blurring” of different realities, simulations and “augmented worlds”, producing a new culture of “everyware”.
The Internet, as we know it today, is a paradigm, which means that its virtues and shortcomings are inherent in the technical paradigm of store-and-forward itself. A secure Internet, for instance, (as desirable as it may be) would no longer be the Internet we know. Architecturally it is based on the network paradigm, which is not one of plenty but one of very few basic architectures of organisation of things. It is therefore difficult to imagine it in shades of grey. So, the Internet will be round with its blessings and curses until someone comes up with a novel paradigm which, however, will not be the Internet any longer. The solution space space itself may be continuous, the solutions, however, are always discrete. Like there was nothing like a smooth transition from connection to packet oriented networks, there will be no smooth transition to the next paradigm, whatever it’s going to look like.
The paradigms ‘city’ and ‘Internet’ have much in common. Somehow they work – albeit at the high energetic cost of permanent adaptation, reconfiguration and maintenance. Also cities have not become self-organising, secure and moral places, but have remained heaven for some and hell for others. Crime, pollution and solitarisation are the price for rich employment, supply and cultural offer. The city (and the Internet) is as good or bad as the society itself…
My comment to PARADISO REFERENCE DOCUMENT
Despite of fact, that your approach is exelent, I think, that your vision is primarily focused more on a building simple digital infrastructure than on support of people, i. e. on integration digital technology into our life activities (a tailored approach to individuals is missing).
! Technology must adapt to individuals, not contrary – a digital approach must be well balanced with needs of people
! Technology must be integrated into R&D activities, educational activities, personal – human activities in our every day life
! If we argue that there is, exists, the knowledge-based economy, thus, in the future ICT (Internet) should enables more enhanced knowledge processing tailored to the individual needs, it does not matter if professional or personal (to a user as a human being)
Thus, the “Future Internet ” should take into account, that digital technology must also works as our partner, as our “external chip”, as a personal software (”mindware”) to support our mental activites within the automation of individual’s daily activities.
However, for example, in the EU ICT policy is so called Technology Enhanced Learning issue. In other words, in real praxis of EU – FP7, the Technology Enhanced Learning is only technology driven, i. e. internet technologies are prevailed, such as LMS, CMS, LCMS, and other so called WEB2.0 technologies. However, these are mostly suitable only for managing files, documents, etc., within certain digital infrastucture (this is an analogy to companies’ networks – how was worked the Intranet in larger enterprises in order to connect company’s computers). This policy is focused more on the creating simple digital infrasturucture than on the real support of teaching and learning in clasrooms with computer or on-line (self-study, informal learning, active learning, blended learning). Moreover, each university has its own academic information system, thus we produce another system for systems, network for networks. This is also the case of Facebook and other similar so called “social networks”.
Hovewer, these technologies or the technology – driven approach are not concerned to teacher or students, because they do not enable working with unstructured information or unstructured knowledge; constructing and producing new knowledge; supporting unstructured educational /learning /teaching activities/ R&D/personal activities.
But, in real life teacher, students, citizens, individuals do not need primarily to build the digital structures. These users wait that Technology = Future Internet will primarily solve how to automate their profesional or personal activities (human activities), thus, how to integrated digital technology into their activities. Thus, they do not enable the automation of basic learning and personal activities within teaching.
Thus, it seems to me, that the “Human factor” in your visions is missing. Therefore, I recommend to add the issues above mentioned: tailored integration technology into individuals’ activities, knowledge processing tailored to individuals needs (e.g. batch knowledge processing for automation of individuals activities), or a vision of that digital technology (Internet) should works as our technological partner for supporting our mental activities. Moreover, what about the building personal social memory as a complement to global social memory (Internet), solving the multipurpose working with knowledge without any interfaces (any computer user should not realise if he surfes on Internet or his computer, USB, DVD, etc.)? So, relations Knowledge – Knowledge Economy – Future Internet should be more clearly in details, especially in relation to knowledge processing in the future.
Note: I think, the success of the Google is just due to the personalised approach to the needs of individual users (the user is not forced to adapt technology how it is common by the prevailing gital – driven approach).