SYNERGY-NET on http://www.wiredbrain.net/ RE: Continuous Change: The Global economic ecology Life is change. SO... think about it ! How can you and the community that supports your life giving systems rapidly adapt to the new world order ? We suggest ancient Sufi models of change, an old technique to create new visions. This is a real paradigm shift and requires new methods of thinking. Visit the site.. again it's in constant change. The universe is expanding and evolving as it runs down. Life is a extremely dynamic and unstable form of anti-entropy, using energy to create complex ecologies, which requires constant activity to maintain themselves, grow and reproduce. As in the Red Queen from Alice in wonderland, all life forms have to run fast just to stay in place. Life is part of complex systems of communities, we do not go it alone, but our welfare depends on our community. Ecological open systems have counter-intuitive reaction including random interactions, fluctuations, expansions and extinctions which effect every member of every community ( species ). SO...What is important to us, is perspective, the time and spacial context. How does it effect me and mine ? Global events and millions of people or years have little meaning. So.. we are dealing in dog years. What took 5 - 7 years now happens in 1 year, what took a year happens in weeks. How fast is fast ? I think about the Internet and where we were last year. SO .. What difference does it make to the evolution of life on the planet earth ? Think about it ! How fast is fast, how many changes are required before the essence has changed, how much is appearance, how much is really different ? SO..what does it mean to be into the "information age"? The major areas of interest are office applications, how do global business change, as the Internet improves the efficiency of a hundred million enterprises around the world. The Internet effects how business produce and distribute goods and services. We are all part of an expanding global economy. SO..central to every ecological system is how the members and communities earn a living. Earning a living over time is more complex that eat or be eaten, but involves how each element contributes to a life support system, including the soil, water and air. We are all part of the Gaia, a vast open living network of physical biology. The Internet effects that basic life support system. As there always are, there will be more losers than winners in the short run. Current Global economic understanding reflects a rather primitive and simplistic Darwinian machine-like balance of nature model. Economics is a dynamic form of the "life force", the energy and creativity which empowers communities ( and individual members of those communities ) to thrive and grow, while others do not. Energy is a form of drive and hope. Hope for ourselves, our families and our community. An oriental family that works 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, expresses the same passion that drives professions at a 70 hour week, the hope that supports ISO's, and new real estate developments are reflections of hope. The new global thinking requires enterprise and creativity within a ecological community based model ( as pointed out by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930's, Elise and Kenneth Boulding and Peter Drucher more recently ). A rising tide does not raise all ships, some sink. So..we need the constant improvements in community infra- structure, cables, pipes, schools, peace, taxes, regulation, conflict resolution, courts, cops and libraries to be able to survive in the global economy. Many institutions and places are doing a much better job at keeping up than others. The struggle between Netscape and Microsoft is a case in point. The public school system, colleges and universities are others, but keeping up effects every travel service, accountant, wholesale and retail business, telecommunications, entertainment, everyone. If I replace all most everything in my P.C. about every 2 - 3 years, on a regular basis it is not what it was, and has only a few remains of days past. I guess it's the mother board that defines it's essence, but the appearance is it's video card and monitor. POINTCAST (www.pointcast.com) has regular updates it manages on it own. The Olympics have appeared, along with 23 new nation states since 1992 and dozens of new sports. Political Geography is in constant flux. The appearance of Netscape Mosaic, first with Win-Sock, then with windows 95 has changed most of the Internet surprising fast. Last year I was struggling with a local provider and it clearly was a difficult hobby not the consumer product it is today. Talk about Java was just on the horizon. a year ago there were somewhere about 30,000 URL's (now 300,000 ), with 20 million people on the globe with some form of web access ( more than half using on-line services Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy ). Now world wide web access is about 60 million, ( 15% of the world wide 400 million pc's ) with 30 million in the USA. The on-line services are flat or declining. An increasing percentage of usage is in office applications, just as I said they would be last year; AND it will almost double again by the end of next year, to 100 million or 20% of 500 million PC's, with maybe 10 million WEBTV's. Europe, Japan, Korea, Latin America are growing much faster than in the states. More than three billion dollars a month is being invested in new sites, technology, hardware, and services. More than 500,000 people are working in the business growing at 20,000 a month. SO WHAT ? What difference does it make to the evolution of life on the planet earth ? I think the Internet will make a big difference not only in education, entertainment and news, but within the life support systems of the basic economic ecology. Just as the telephone, airplane, automobile, had major social effects so does the Internet, maybe more so because of speed. SO.. think about it ! How can you and the community that supports your life giving systems rapidly adapt to the new world order ? We suggest ancient Sufi models of change, an old technique to create new visions. This is a real paradigm shift and requires new methods of thinking. Visit the site.. again it's in constant change. Copies of the SYNERGY JOURNAL sent by request: pflaump@cfl.rr.com SYNERGY-NET on http://www.wiredbrain.net/ Peter E. Pflaum Ph.D. , Headmaster GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE 225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169-2176 (904) 428-9609 pflaump@cfl.rr.com http://www.wiredbrain.net/