Dear Igor and Bob,
Thanks for the scholarly piece --indeed it is a text full of interesting
suggestions and directions of thought. The basic idea of distinguishing two
dimensions in the relationship of socioeconomic systems with the
sustainability goal looks a very promising avenue of discussion. (In what
follows I am numbering the # paragraphs of the paper).
In #1) we are said that the two dimensions, the "organic" (what about
"organizational" instead? as organic is not used in its main sense
referring to living organisms, it confuses a little) and the "cognitive",
both are maintained by dissipative processes (from Nature)... but it seems
obvious that in very different way ---thus, why not putting the "cognitive"
as a relatively immaterial "info" realm, with a clear difference in
"stuff", almost reminding the hard/soft distinction? It would appear,
almost, as the "ghost in the machine", and I think it could help further
refinement of that dimension in next paragraphs.
About # 2), I would ask why increase in organization leads to higher
ascendancy and power law distributions. Not necessarily, perhaps, as taking
into account that almost all (modern) economies contain a mix of pioneer,
advanced, mature, retarded, and obsolete sectors, then their respective
dynamics and structures could contain different distribution signatures.
(In ancient countries and economies, a number of distributions would fit
power laws too, I bet, for another form to obtain power laws relates to
Karl's partitions---very intriguingly, a "partitional canon" emerges when
we allow complete partitional freedom on a natural number, with an exponent
similar to the one appearing in most biological allometries: 3/4). Thus,
growth and de-growth in incremental unitary parts would be highly
characteristic of organisms and social organizations, "per se".
Maybe some clarification in #3 -- "only" autocatalysis leading to growth
and centripetality?, no "info" domain associated? But in general I get
along these #3 and #4.
When the cognitive, immaterial, cultural dimension is decomposed further in
#5, #6, and #7, I find the ternary scheme interesting, but somehow
arbitrary. Quite many other general partitions could have been entered, or
labeled differently (playing games with my students, we were capable of
identifying on the order of 30 to 40 different collective identities we
could be ascribed as members in today societies: familiar, parental,
professional, unions, economic, religious, social, political, cultural,
vecinal, urban, regional, national, sportive, recreational, etc. etc.)
Kenneth Boulding put it very elegantly: the organizational revolution of
the 20th century. Well, one cannot reject the three levels proposed here,
but...
I find congenial # 8 and # 9 orientation, but fail to see that this goes
any further from Lynn Whyte views in the 60's: "The historical roots of our
ecological crisis", on the domineering attitude upon nature imprinted by
the Judeo Christian world view in Western countries. I would not quite
agree with that either... Historically several relatively complex
civilizations have fallen into ecological collapse and disappeared (Jared
Diamond, 2005). Also, I would not take as a very firm asset all the current
"knowledge based" technobureaucratic slogans ---knowledge, as a conceptual
espouse of information, suffers all kind of misunderstandings and abuses.
Shouldn't we try to find new thinking avenues on the centrality of
knowledge regarding this immaterial aspect?
So, I quite agree with today's response to Loet:
>Perhaps you may have an idea how to relate economic networks (as Bob and
>myself briefly addressed them), your vision of the knowledge-based
>economy, and the constraints arising from the dominant Western worldview.
>This may be an interesting direction for further discussion...
best regards
Pedro
PS. Thanks for the further comment on computers manufacturing and IT
industry (and agrobusiness) burden on the environment.
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Received on Thu Apr 28 17:29:41 2005
