Table of contents of this page 1. Introduction

1. Introduction    

Utopias are an essential element in social transformation processes and in themselves bear historic character.   Utopian consciousness facing up to this insight is by no means doomed to displace the "dream of what ought to be" with the "acceptance of the as-is state", simply because the limited character of utopias was been too often exposed in history. A "scientific" or "pragmatic" point of view rejecting utopias as "works of do-gooders" (a point of view that sets standards mereley by looking at the current state of things) is a way of thinking that is as limited and ideologic as an ahistoric reading of utopia.   In the concept of utopia that we propose here, science merges with art: The examination of the current state (science) simply provides the designer (artist) with an increased awareness of what has become possible. In the light of these possibities the scandal that we have not yet developed further can be felt twice as much.       2 The utopian vision that I want to show to you in this lecture draws all its building blocks from the todays reality. Maybe it is good to remember that also todays reality would have occured to us as an utopia only 20 years ago. Allready we live in a reality enriched with many new, marvellous elements which, with its inventions and technological wealth, means of communication and knowledge, surpasses previous historical eras by a mile. Yet it's a dystopian reality which at the same time has become our prision, to such an extent that we do not know where to escape to. Just a historical second ago this reality appeared to bright and shining to many. It itself appeared to be the utopia, which more than any other has the capacity to captures peoples minds and hearts. In 1998 the American Francis Fukuyama spoke about the "end of history". This meant the obsoleteness of utopias in a society which had implemented democracy and market economy, accomplished seeminglgly ultimate historical goals. In the worst tradition of quasi - Marxist thinking democracy and market economy were consideresd to be the utopia par excellence, the best societal state to be possibly attained, which by itself would act dissolving to all other historically significant counterdrafts. Meanwhile we know better. We are experiencing the unleashing of a veritable tsunami of unforseen destructive forces, whose end we can not even yet anticipate. Meeting at an event like this we have the chance to scrutinize these destructive forces. Putting "utopias" as not-yet-reached-images of better societal structures to their right again, we want also to safguard essential historic achievements and developments - while becoming sensitive again to new shapes, figures and constellations of our social life that might even be more apt to retain the hard cultivating work of generations that is gambled away by the currently dominating forces. Saying this I remind us all and underline that those utopias need to be backed by interests, subjects and movements of historical significance. [/   2]   3 What I want to suggest you tonight, even if it's only sketchy, is an "utopia" which goes well beyond our current "utopia" - democracy and market economy. But that utopia keeps a central motive and a central strength of this last successful utopia so far. We cannot fall back behind the desire of people to design their livese autonomously - without patronizing, propaganda and lies - and following their own lifeplan and idea. But here comes the statement that there are better means to achieve that than cities, single family homes and cars, better means than money, private property and markets, even better means than state, democratic politics and law. So here is even more: namely the assertion that elements of this "utopia of a human self-development in free cooperation" already exist!. They partly exist as components of old cultures rediscovered or updated again. They exist partly as technical and social innovations which were produced by the global market economy (in which they represent structurally new and increasingly self-supporting elements at the same time). Metaphorically speaking we have to deal with "germinitive shapes" of something new which should be able to develop within the niches of the old society. Almost just like some new traits of the old feudal system in the upper part of Italy and Flanders became the capitalism in which we live today. [/   3]   4 Therefore it is actually incorrect to speak of "utopia" in a sence of a completely different world, which is only existing at the drawing table of a visionary. Perhaps one should speak about a "syntopia" better what I would like to represent for you. It's the coming together of several constituents which are already absolutely exist, but they are falling into place in a new and unconventional way. They connect themselves in pretended extremes and at the same time they cancel each other out in a new manner, which are needing that one of each other just in this oppositeness and in this electric field, to really become constituents of an inviting human accommodation able to take a load. However, the word "syntopia" also has the before mentioned meaning to avoid the fault of all utopias, reducing man in their unbelievable variety on a prototype or a project. Only an utopia has earned this name, which can offer us the unbelievable arch of storyline of human life plans, orientations and valuations, which became aware to us of this historical epoch, in their multiplicity and dissimilarity. It can offer this coloured fullness a home and manifestation without precipitating the human living into deep conflicts and unterminable contradictions. Only such a utopia still has earned this name nowadays. [/   4]   5 2. Creative destruction of the market economy: What to leave behind us? The Canadian philosopher on media Marshall McLuhan coined the term "global village". When used in its plural form it expresses something completely different as originally conceived by the originator's singular use of the term. Much less known than the term itself is McLuhan's theory of history laid out in "Understanding Media". By its four-fold [tetravalent] dialectics it possibly allows for a richer understanding of our world than the three-fold [trivalent] ideology of progress historically used by materialism. For McLuhan, just like the dialectians of history, the case for historic change emanates in that a historic era with its characteristics changes the world for so long that what had once been a revolutionary principle emerges into a turnover to something new. Lying transversely to this process of growth and alteration are the dialectics of update and crowding out (econ. term; alternative: suppression). With each new historic advancement on the one hand consistently many established qualities fall into oblivion while on the other hand just as many things appear on the agenda which had previously been suppressed in former eras. This "tetrad" is used by McLuhan as an archetype for constructing his theory of media, which from time and again playfully lapses into his "Theory of Everything". [/   5]   6 The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 which established the modern territorial states and souvereignty, may formally have constituted the beginning of the current historic era, which might now draw to a close. The beginning of this era, some 200 years earlier (?? ago ??), were marked by revolutionary innovations in war technology, the invention of gunpowder and the establishment of standing armies [please check sense regarding preceeding sentence!]. At the same time the great utopians wrote their visions. The arms race in war technology lead to the large state-run entities, to a standing army and to increased demand for more elaborate finances. Moreover it lead to a battle for the wealth of nations and the geographic division of the world. The introduction of capitalism was a revolution from above. Tributes in kind and property were superseeded by monetary taxation. People were forced to earn money to pay taxes to their state. Cities and large industries are the consequences of this process, in which the world as a whole was increasingly transformed into a market. Whereas production had predominantly been handcrafted and decentralized, production and consumption been nearby and people organized in large family networks and variegated local communities, they were then integrated into systems of mass-production. Standardization, specialization, synchronization and hierarchy were accompaintments. The large movements of modernity rivalled inside this system; and seeming opponents such as fascism and actually existing socialism were latecomers, with national exertions aspiring to correct the results of competition between states (systems?).[/   6]   7 I tell you all of this to show you how short the story of our epoch actually is. In the course the epoch has changed the world thoroughly, more than half of the world population lives in towns and city areas. This is only 2% of the available land area. The competition between the producers, which they can pass only by extension of her markets, gets keener and keener. It's a precarious merry-go-round, which turns always faster, and leads on one side to more and more capital-intensive centres and on the other side to enormous problems for the "peripheries". Because the requirements for industry locations which shall serve global markets get higher and higher. To be able to produce competitively and economically, not only a local "knowledge base" is for the constant innovation of production required but also a complicated interplay of all sorts of economic services which of course must be available "just in time" from the workers up to the suppliers. As a consequence of this "globalisation" it begins an increasing demographic and economic imbalance. The existing metropolises and mega-centres always put more economic activities on, their economic power grows constantly. Admittedly they are exhausted to a great deal by the increasing requirements on their competitiveness. Veritable loser regions whose economic power relatively or absolutely sinks stand on the other side. [/   7]   8 There it seems to be an absolut barrier in our economic system, which produces a growing descent between poor and rich people, defy an enormous increase of the wealth production. It robs the people of their acquisition sources and suspends the function mechanism of the market in the end itself. The sinking of the indicator for a lasting economic welfare ISEW in all industrial countries since the end of the eighties was proved empirically. It is less known that Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964), the father and most important representative of cybernetics, foresaw these mechanism already soon after the end of the 2nd World War. When Henry Ford realized the possibilities of electricity with the assembly line and the systematic compression of the production process, he lead it into the second industrial revolution at that time. This was the real prelude of the modern mass occupation. Although it also was interrupted by the world economic crisis. Nobody seriously worried that by all the rationalization the human labour could be replaced from the production. There permanently were divisions of the production arising anyway. Wiener, however, already wrote in 1947 that the continuation of the industrial revolution would proceed in completely different directions. [/   8]   9 The automatic factory and the assembly line without a human operation are to put a just as large measure into her construction of effort, removed by us far only in such a way as our will is missing, such as in the development of radar technology. (Cybernetics, p.59) Wiener saw not at all only a positive perspective, rather a devaluation "of the human brain" with serious consequences on the situation of the population in this revolution which was advanced by electronics and information sciences. Furthermore he warned to apply the same economic standards: It cannot be good to assess these new balances of power the money in the ideas of the market which they earn. This revolution completed imagines the average human being has nothing to sell with mediocre or even lower knowledge, what the money would be worth for somebody. Naturally the answer which is founded on human values is that we must have a society and not the values of buying and selling. (ibidem, p.59 et sqq.) But it lasted full 30 years until Mr. Wiener's forecast as a "third industrial revolution" become reality and perhaps still longer until they understood it also in its consequences and had to experience it painfully. [/   9]   10 The competition for the price reduction of the products and the intensification of the production process has made use of the micro electronic revolution and, at the same time, created a global entire factory with the help of modern communication technologies in which gigantic business management aggregates vie with each other. Whether certain production components shall be produced in the Allgäu, in Algeria, in South Carolina or in Seoul as is generally known is not based on the fact if these are needed in the region in question, whether it makes sense ecologically, and therefore whole landscapes covering with concrete slopes and splashing tons of crude oil, that they transport ten thousands of kilometres to their place of destination, for this, but it is just a question of the operational profitability calculation. (Norbert Trenkle) At all, under the conditions of the goods money system the potentials of the new technologies get not just deployed to equalize the supraregional material interweavings, but rather around the form of the global outsourcing and the amortization of subsequent costs, to drive the centralization of the planetarian work machine forward further. That's how the urban mega-centres which are infrastructurally and socially hopelessly far overloaded, sprawl along, while an increasingly bigger part of the world is demoted to the bare hinterland. These residents are decoupled increasingly of consumption and of social state performances and will get merely to feel the negative results of the making all money universal in form of ecological disasters, hunger and war. Because the sphere of the material production as a business means is, however, devalued increasingly by all these developments in the productive resource with permanent reduction and growing mass-market of the products this capital, dissatisfied with his utilization conditions, discovers the sphere of knowledge and the culture as sphere of investments. Freely available knowledge turns into "intellectual property". The market economy gets feudal to be able to survive, "outsourcing" leaves the production to others increasingly to live on information pensions. The knowledge of sound engineers about sounds, solid angles and volumes disappears in a programme which devalues the acoustic experience of generations. Architects need no more room imagination if they can enter their outlines in a three-dimensional video. With diagnostic expert systems the doctor becomes to a button pusher. Knowledge which was bound to experience and therefore to persons becomes capital now. The specialities move into digital boxes, specialists lose market power like workers before them. Because the software which absorbs their experience, is now the "intellectual property" of the digitizer and these who buy the program..... (Matthias Greffrath) [/   10]   11 The liberty of the earning money and the capital growth intends to become an absolute barrier of the human creativity and further development. This happens just because she starts in the growth compulsion to destroy her most essential productive resources - the liberty of science and the culture, the free exchange of the ideas. This is the time and requirement, where utopias must flourish again, where the mind and the human imagination are starting to disengage themselves from the bonds of old forms of collectivization. But these utopias flourish completely more newly on the sediment, conditions produced by this production way. 3. Elements of the new: what can we work with? It is the globalized economy developed above which paradoxically also gives us more and more means into the hand to form an autonomous and self-organized habitat. In principle, the information society and her technology based on microelectronics is open both in the direction of extreme job sharing and in the direction of reintegration of work processes. It can create a factory steered by robot hands, deserted production streets with an enormous material input of resources and energies and an output of products and waste. However it can also integrate work processes, which are until now separated, and so creates the possibility of decentralized housework of the "whole house", of the traditional societies in a new form. [/   11]   12 Marshall McLuhan has described these possibilities even as "a step result of electrical media". After this centralizing industrialization which has subjected man the "machine rhythm" of quick working times and activities specialized, the terror of the large towns and this one to large institutions the decentralizing automation follows. While the industrialization and its factories were not caring completely, so McLuhan, whether the "big work machine" ejected cornflakes or Cadillacs, the micro electronic production process increasingly returns exactly there where the product is needed, to the world of life, to the client. Driven by the medium of the electricity for the automated production process this is information and energy in one and it gets important again where and how it takes place. Machines are not fixed, what they produce, they react to their environment. The automation is more of organically nature and a flexible by information done process. Processes take place simultaneously, there are no more linearity but circulations instead. The engines shrink, they adapt to the user and their environment, however, they permanently are connected with each other and with the user in a network of information exchange. This network unites the most different contents as universal tool and shifts the material production to the peripherals definitely. If the "world" is digitized and designed model-likely once, it can be edited and sent out by most different authors to materialize someplace, at the printer, at the plotter, at the "fabber". An enormous acceleration enters, from room comrades we turn into contemporaries and positive and negative effects spread with light velocity with that, however. [/   12]   13 McLuhan whose topicality obviously is not exhausted yet for a long time used a peculiar concept in the field of description of long-term results of the "first global renaissance" we just go through. He spoke about the "great implosion" unlike the colonialist expansions of the last renaissance which were about the "great explosions". The true utopian content of the accumulated potential of new human possibilities for development lies not in exceeding expansionistly limits, space and deep sea but in form designing into the insides, into our habitat. This habitat is more than ever resulting in our conscious perception of possibilities, our ability to relate the things to each other, to put them together. This perception, however, can be combined now with the availability of global channels to knowledge, services, information and tools, these are imposed on by all sides of already redundant suppliers, they organize battles of enormous dimensions around a getting smaller and smaller cake of solvency. Could it be, that we will and want increasingly design habitats instead of participating in these historically obsolete, senseless expensive location battles being able to not with the urgent aim of not needing the economy in every everyday situation any more to put under stress of her any more? An astonishing number of elements and constituents for such an autonomous design is ready. Before we dive into our utopia, I would like to name some of these existing and at the same time thoroughly new elements: [/   13]   14 • The products of the social production in the age of microelectronics give us enormous reified abilities which we can realize autonomously. Alvin Toffler has represented this in his book of the third wave, his example of an epochal break was the pregnancy test for women. Instead of having to go to a specialist, now a woman is capable of finding out herself whether she is pregnant very early. The world is full of examples how this break changes the weekday and enlarges the abilities of man with centralization and specialization. Who would have regarded 100 years ago that it is possible that I can make all orchestras of the world performe with a record player at home myself? And who did it regard 70 years ago, that this is possible with a radio? Who would have thought 15 years ago that I can question on digital sound archives about the network? And who thought 5 years ago, that I can carry these archives in a cigarette packet around with me and replace them permanently? The products of the industry became machines them, flexibly reacting to the desires of the user whom they potentially enable to behave producing, social intelligence in his everyday life, to convert this in his life and to form his world with that. Toffler calls this the "Prosument" who according to tendency replaces the consumer who is passive and dependent on a strange job performance. Microwaves, programmable sewing machines, automatic heating and cooling, autonomous lawn-mowers - we are surrounded by technology which is able to form its environment autonomously - provided that we have understood the directions or can integrate us into a network with people, who are able to help us. We come shortly to a greater extent with this. [/   14]   15 • The changes do manifest themselves not only in this immediate domestic area. In even much stronger extent the industrial life world changes in the towns. The people who were one vacuumed by the gluttonous hunger and labour need of the large industry of the villages at that time profit from the proximity, comfort and speed of the urban agglomeration. The process of urbanization goes on apparently unbroken. However, it still will show that this process has turned itself over already long ago under the surface. The metropolises and agglomerations have no more centre. They maybe still have a historical centric district in which administration and tourists set out. The town gets decentralised into itself. Instead of the business and work quarters they got shopping centres and suburbane office silos, a network of traffic and telematics has produced a polycentric urbanity. Fundamentally more counts the proximity of entrance points to this network as the geographical closeness to the town centre. This network, this logistics brings itself considerably into line with the towns. A shopping centre can therefore still be assigned to a certain place from inside or outside so straight away in Singapore, Chicago or Munich. And its just the same with entertainment centers and cinema palaces. The truth is that we already have a global metropolis distributed over the planet. This truth will be of fundamental importance for the utopia of the global villages. [/   15]   16 • The increasing size of the towns has entailed that the access to natural resources is nothing natural anymore. An ecological consciousness has stopped off also in the towns. Recycling technologies and technologies for reconditioning have been developed. Circulation economy requires technological efforts, to bridge "missing links". However, these efforts are very worthwhile. They show constantly the possibility of doing more with some and that there is no need to exhaust the available resources. However, this ecological technology enlarges not only the possibilities for the towns. New techniques of the extraction of energy made of biomass and solar electricity create new conditions for the life in rural areas. Due to these changed technical conditions our perception also changes. The energy won on the spot like biomass, wind or sun, which is environmentally favourable and avoiding waste is available in a gigantic extent if we do not waste this energy for the transport. The sun delivers energy on the scale of 50% of the worldwide stock of fossil fuels every day. So enormous biomass grows again. Our appreciation that nature processes are enormously complex circulation processes grows at the same time. Permakultur and biological farming achieve a wider spectrum at material sales. These bring in more various raw materials and elements in the local use than every conventional form of agriculture. The country and its new potential wealth starts to lure. Not in the contrast but in harmony with the increased technical possibilities! [/   16]   17 • The participation at the wealth of human information and culture what was the heaviest privilege of the town once also is revolutionized by the digital networks. The new form of existence for information is tied to no more material strap. Copies contain the total information quality of the original and are changeable anyway. Every copy can therefore become an original everywhere again. Not only the university can be located in every village also the laboratory, the workshop, the studio. Studying humanly has become a source of innovation. McLuhan has foreseen this prophetically. The people suddenly become nomadic information collectors and they became so nomadically as never before, so informed like never before, freely of impeding specialization like never, but they were also included in the whole society process like never before, because we have enlarged our central nervous system globally with electricity and now we must put every human experience in order appropriately. However, a sensible classification presupposes the reference to an integrating habitat in turn. [/   17]   18 • Exactly this habitat can admittedly get the processing in a way never known to the object now. The information won in light velocity must be checked and modified and adapted mostly in a much slower process on its sensible references to the whole habitat, though. Information is encoded by micro logic control instructions to be executed appropriately in the medium and can immediately be manifested materially when being with a suitable machinery. This already applies to every computer printer. But a simple cutting-machine, bread-making machine, power loom etc. also can incorporate this complex interaction with material and form. It admittedly requires an increased knowledge of the user and programmer. This can only be obtained through an intensified communication. The country starts to attract again still more, because it delivers the material substratum of many work processes which would not make sense in the density of the town. [/   18]   19 • A third quality of digital information is: it can be tele-communicated, it is a more teleologically object for working of a theoretically unlimited number of individuals and groups. They are immediately socializing the work at their work and aims (self-development) and at the same time it thereby can be able to differ from social norms. The model of gnu/Linux has insistently shown that ten thousands of developers can work on the very same universal tool worldwide. So the global metropolis is available at every place where satisfactory access to information networks is created. • • Information is also multi-media. It is said a digital medium lifts the restrictions of every description form according to tendency in view of a complex reality. The form of explanation of events can change between word, picture, sound, simulation and film. This is an enormous relief of studying just in view of the increased knowledge held tight above. [/   19]   20 The outlines of an utopia alone are visible in these technical innovations which, however, agree on only a fraction of the constituents of "Syntopia". The syntopic vision of the global villages is the vision of a new cooperation of town and country, of centre and periphery, set up on overall telecommunications, technologies which are of an intensive knowledge and ecologically acceptable local resource management. Concretely it is all about the comprehensive design of new habitats, which reconciles urban achievements with rural quality of life. They are engaged in economic events only there where it makes sense and where it restores a high degree of collective self-sufficiency at profoundly simultaneous information networking and technical scientific cooperation. This life-form of a "global subsistence" finds its expression in subsidiary networks growing steadily and in a dominance of civilian society and its institutions. It causes an unthinkable difference of ways of life, nevertheless typical sample and standards, even today. [/   20]   21 On this foundation I'd like to dare an utopia, and I am pleased about anyone, who adds to this design an element. Actually it is not "my utopia" but it's more the ecclectic result of a collection of several pieces of imagination, which I regard as essential elements of a syntopic reality. So let us take a look at such a "global village" precisely, and make a visit in the future. 4. A visit in the global village 4.1. The bird's eye view and the "Piazza Telematica" We begin with our approach from the bird's eye view, from the perspective of architecture and landscape. Therefore I brought along some pictures from the future.[/   21]   22 The originator of the first big bird's eye view is Joseph Smyth. He has drawn a before and an afterwards, based on the most drastic case of the change to today's status Quo. It is about a satellite picture of the car city of Los Angeles from the year 1990 and one of the autonomic city region of Los Angeles from the year 2050. From the satellite perspective it stands out that the degree of the sealing of floor spaces is in Smyths vision turned over again. Like him the car parks, main roads, shopping centres which characterize the base of the American car city dominatingly up to the sky, are drastically gone back: The overall greyish brown colour of the city is forced back in favour of a meadow green and the detectability of the courses of a river, which has returned to his natural form. So this likes orange County might have looked from the sky also in the 19th century. The human settlement area seems less to spread across a broad area but it forms compressions. It seems to form a principle, not to extend the room of a settlement further than someone can cope by foot within a few minutes. Between the settlements, on their edges and also through them are green corridors. [/   22]   23 If we look more nearly, we look at such a settlement core. In this classic outline of Richard Rogers and his partners for the bit town in Majorca we see three related global villages, these are located at an axis of the public traffic. The three urban villages already yield almost a little town, and yet each of them is a compact unity, a diversified habitat, with a mixture of urban, suburban and rural elements. The functions and social activities change gradually into each other. A public, live, active and diversified mix in the centre goes around to a suburban residential area and in the end loses itself into quiet garden and parkland, agricultural and natural zones. Obviously a global village is a full biotope, which locally unites the three essential spheres of our life (urban, suburban, rural) on the smallest room. [/   23]   24 Let's go to the centre of the bit town. A Piazza with a pond is surrounded by multistorey buildings with cafs, studios, reverberations, conference halls and offices. A condensed urban room in which many people stay like in the centre of a Mediterranean small town or a Greek village. Architectural measures provide here an evenly mild air conditioning and a great variability, but without feeling reminded of the sterility of a shopping centre. This Piazza is more likely a big stage on which permanently changing plays also can be performed. If we look more closely, then we see that this room of the presence and the communication is nevertheless different in a small detail of the tranquillity of an Italian or Greek town or village square: the presence is mixed with telepresence, where two or three or many local residents are assembled, and not too seldom there is a guest or a connection to meetings about virtual presence either. The village is connected of many kinds of ways with the global metropolis. In the circle around all the buildings are carrying different names and having different functions which express themselves also in their name, like: house of tools, house of knowledge, house of health, house of beauty. There exists also a city hall but it is called house of advice. [/   24]   25 Obviously global and local interactions are connected in various forms: The residents of the bit town come together physically because there is always something new to learn and to experience. There is no trace of the boredom of a day in a typical village: Today is a special run in the house of knowledge because of a "glass bead play". The multi-media disputations of leading researchers and experts who publicly deliver the controversies of their theories facing a worldwide audience of several millions running over according to strict rules are called that way in approval to a book of Hermann Hesse. Whole parties, groups, staff work for these games at which it is not at all as harmoniously as in Hesses "Kastalien". The maxim is: All we know generates always new questions. The various possibilities of presentation and illustration, which had been developed in the age of marketing, now serve for the understanding and follow-up of the high-complex and difficult theories. The "glass bead play" is like a chess world championship, where amateurs and semi-professionals are playing equally enthusiastically. Scientific leagues are worrying for months about the practice for that complicated subject. It does not concern necessarily to expect explanation and solutions from the participation, but it concerns the feeling to be involved in a work of collective intelligence. It already occurred that a decisive consideration, a critical question or an objection from a far village affected the process of such a play. The basic rule of that game is that no statement is completely wrong, if it develops from pure intention. But we will often meet this basic rule again, because we can not really look at the game, which today regards the regularities of prime numbers, in its depth. [/   25]   26 It is just an example of the functionality and the attitude of life in the global village. Right next door, in the house of health, a mother has substantially more trivial concerns. Her child broke several knuckles, as a result of a fall, and now both are participating in a teleconference between the village physician and a specialist for bone healing, who resides in a far away village. In former times there had been made no fuss with such cases, wrong finger positions with 90 or 30 degrees after the cast had been the dogma of the boss of the particular university hospital, just the lex artis. Thereby occurred enough malpractices which were covered. Today everyone knows that no case is exactly like an other and it is just the genericized standard which hurts and kills. The specialist is not anymore only responsible for heavy mistakes and botches, he now is tele-present to avoid mistakes and their consequences in time. In the house of tools takes place a conference at the moment, where some persons, which are dealing with agriculture, renewable primary products or changing material, are participating. Later we will get them to know and also the many other groups, which help themselves simultanously of the Piazza Telematica. [/   26]   27 But we wouldn't forget, that we are here on the first exploratory and we shouldnt stay here. So we walk a few tens meters on the green way onto the outkirts, to Suburbia. To our surprise, we see, that the life here noway extinct complete. There are shops and workshops in the small side streets. In the upper floors, which get increasingly lower, there are living spaces, balconies, roof gardens. It's, as if the full village planned like an hill, to allow so much as possible clear view on the arrounding landscape and secure and compress at the same time the life in the center. Slow-going also some subsurfaces get on the surface and we see, that the village really have cars - little, electric driven transport cars, which are bans in the center in the subsurface tubes, and now, in the area, to meet in unique open streets. The houses are so dispose, that the have as well an arear exit to this streets as also an obverse-entry to the green footpath, on which invintingly string together the shops, workshops and the official parts of the houses. The village is in many respects really something like the miniature edition of a city! The wagons are just so big, that one person can easy sit there, and they disposes like controlling by ghost hand and electric signages. Their bigness is standardised, they also get ship into the big official railroad network for the interurban transport and get autonomous again on the last mile. [/   27]   28 But also here, we stay not longer, althaugh we certainly remark, that the GlobalVillage is noway an "immobile association", that the river of people and materials by the telematics and the rising possibilities of the electronical access noway got to the ebbing. He has only get an absolute new form, which affect compared to our autocars like a stage coach. If we go further into the aerated, rural district, which surrounds our bit-town like a halo. At this point architecture begins to mix with agriculture. Greenhouses and hydroponics are appearing - living engines which are transforming sunlight, the earth and water into hundreds of substances and composting the trash to native soil again. Biomass converters produce energy, electricity and natural manure. Intensively managed permanent agriculture forms a transition to loosening parks with their swimming ponds and playgrounds. Around the village forests start to alternate with fields and together they represent a green lung. Bike and footpaths uniting with service ways lead to lonesome homesteads. These are still hiding from village life like an anchoritism, without being completely excluded from it. There is also the home of animals which obviously are not held in masses and also not to utilize them. Communication with animals seems there very important, so that they get an own habitat next to men - close, but definitely well-defined. The further we leave the village, all the more the land developed and cultivated by mankind changes into a nature which is gentle and bringing wilderness to mind. There we find hiking trails but also zones which are avoided by people. The silence of a spiritual place at the most distant, most hidden places almost makes us forget that a piece of the global metropolis is only few kilometres from here. [/   28]   29 4.2. Backpedalling We sit down at such a calm and quiet place and review what we have just seen on our first tour in the future. Actually nothing here has really surprised us, we've seen no flying saucers and no anti-gravitation, no teleporter and no telekinesis, no mutants and no humanoid robots. And jet the collection of known elements was astonishing in its density and variety. We have seen agrarian elements at one place, we have seen small production plants, we have seen a service and knowledge zone and all of that in an astonishing spatial compression. So "global villages" are one kind of settlement and way of life which are resulted in a synthesis of a historically, dominantly way of human existence. The clear distinction of the two areas of life in a town or country has dissolved itself primarily. The city became from a spacial well-defined area a network of intensively communicating intersections. Urbanity means the participation in dense communication events which are arranged about these junctions. Obviously these road junctions could also arise and get a function where no town was existing, in the traditional meaning. "Global villages" in the narrower meaning are those settlement forms on which the intersections of the infinite town are dwelling on a lasting symbiosis with the life possibilities of the rural rooms. They seem to have in common that the residents of such a village could again integrate the complete spectrum of the human relation to nature into their everyday life, just due to the advanced technical development. High tech re-updates low tech. [/   29]   30 But it is also converse: the low tech is actualising high tech. We will hear about examples where the growing of a global village emanates from an agricultural cooperative society, which someday decided to "plant" a town. Together with an urban developer and a bank they made contracts, laid down roles and founded a division of labour. They took townsfolk in the country - not temporarily like tourists, but as new citizen and a wellcome amendment to their community: exactly as many as the community would be able to stand. With this cooperation and division of labour the cooperative society established a basis for a new habitat. It arose an energy farmer, a hippotherapy farmer, a wellness farmer, a trade farmer, an oil- and herbs farmer and a variety of agricultural jobs and duties, which could only be realised by an jointly overall concept. But why are the townspeople moved to the global village? Why did they leave their accommodativeness and comfort of the town, their uproar and luxury? These questions are accompanying ourself, while we wander slowly back to the village and we decide to look now more precisely at the people of this future society. [/   30]   31 4.3. At the Shoemaker At the entry of the village there is standing an inviting shoemaker workshop. We are surprised. Is not the handcraft extinct in our time, all but the craftwork? Have factories and cheap mass production taken over the direction? Is this a backslide in to the middle ages? We step in as a visiter from the past and the man behind the work bench respond to our pretended joke. He starts with an historic excursion. At first he calls us for the bad argument about the middle ages: in the middle ages was the producer, e.g. the shoemaker with his process of manufacture and his consumer on closely place, in the village or in the medieval city closely connected. The raw material, the leather which was virtually picked up in front of the main door, the routes of transport were to small and the means of transport (oxencart, horse-drawn vehicles etc.) easy and both environmental and energy without "side effects". It was produced with Low tech, ideal demand-oriented and "tailored". The advertising of products was almost unnecessary. It wasnt produced for-profit but demand-oriented and the quality through the near interaction between client and shoemaker conversationally secured and almost "perforce" topped. The shoemaker knew, where the shoe pinches by his customers. In your time was published the "Blackbook" capitalism from Robert Kurz. There you could have read, that the people in the middle ages were in many respects better fed, better provide and more relaxed like in the ensuing modern times. [/   31]   32 Until the mass production had saved them the moderate wealth. Before, they rank must be banish from the country, with terror, restrictions and recruitment. But when the emporium really started to run, in the 19th century, it went from alone. The factories get more productive and create enorm consumer goods. The people in the cities get richer, the countrified regions become noticeably poor. Also the villagers began secret to cover in the cities and the ethical economy of the villages broke. My grandfather was also a shoemaker, I have studied the history of the family. He kept up long, but the risk get bigger and the profit get less. He wanted a clearly breakup from his work- and freetime. He wanted to be free from the tempers of the clients and their order-risk. So he get industrial worker. He knew already on the beginning of the month, what he would take home in his pay packet on the end of the month. He could make depts with good conscience, could be able to afford somethin (travel, luxury foodstuffs, clothes, amusement,...), which gave him self-assurance and which single him out from the mass. He also didnt want any longer to knuckle down his village. He wanted to consume without social committals quasi anonymous. [/   33]   34 "And was is happend with it? He lost his job, at firstly, because the shoes from China were cheaper to produce and secondly, because the machines didnt want more qualification. He battled contrary at the same time to the Chinese and the machines." Yes, we know this story, but we ask us, how is this today? "Yeah," he smirk. "Im actually neither a rich freelance craftman nor an employee. Im a member from the village-companionship and I represent together the shoemakers-guild here in Bitstadt. I also make the shoes not complete on my own. You could say: I make the industrially semifinished product for the end-use. To tailor, to form, to connect: there are a lot of machines for it in the workshop. You cant see it,because they are in the stalls here, which protect the noise and the temperature. My workbench is well the computer, but I absolutely use also the hand, when it goes to the last grinding. My function is at least the same thought like handicraft. Im actually the intermediary between industry and client. I think you got it in the sport outfitters at your time." [/   34]   35 "As a member of the village-companionship I have sure a certain limited clime-guard. And also a certain assure minimum purchase. Every inhabitant from Bitstadt, which is no member of a co-operative, must pay in the year so much for hire. And there are also a grass-roots capacities inside like alternatively a free pair shoes. You know it also from your time, it invented by the tourism, it calls "all inclusive offer". The co-operative save me an assured minimum income and the rest is my pigeon"... "Oh well", he continues after an certain absence. "Maybe two things wont be know. The shoemaker guild, it is a world-wide alliance, at your time were only the linux-programmer. Meanwhile had got it around, that it is better, we do our qualification together and change our designs free, instead we buy all dearly from the companys, which save their spiritual ownership. The little one had thereby won incredible of quality! Even our tools are Open Source, the floor plans get always better and revised, and the companies, which produce the machines, they have no authorisations on the floor plans. The second one, which you maybe dont know is, that I prefer eighty percent of my raw materials at face, from the five arrounding villages. We have really a brave materialbroker here in this area." [/   35]   36 "A material broker - what's that?" "Ah yes, you couldn't know that. There weren't any at your time. Material broker is really a new profession. That is sort of purchaser and waste disposer in one person. But that's not only for us shoemaker, it's also for many others in the village like the energy farmers, the ground and water farmers, the decorators, the agro-foresters, the alimentary economic cooperative,... His main duty is to recognize and control the connections between inputs and outputs, between waste and raw materials. He is in the centre of information where he pulls the strings of economy and life of the village. His position is valued as a most responsible and connected to long-standing studies and traineeships. But he also has to learn often again something more. With other material brokers he is on permanent search for models to manage real circulation economies. These material flow models are combined and after various criteria organized in a repository, this is in turn at all global villages' disposal in form of an open source library. With that this library is very narrowly related to Kevin Kelly's "idea bank of nature". [/   37]   38 After he got just an shrug as answer, he indicated the slogan at the wall. "You don't know Kevin Kelly? He has written at your time but he seems to be more relevant at our time as his." We read: "The more someone tries to concentrate on constructing mechanical things, all the more he asks the nature for advice and help. Therefore the nature is much more then a gene bank, which contains any undiscovered plant treatments for future diseases. And naturally it is. But the nature is also a "memetic bank", an idea bank. Viable post-industrial paradigms are hidden in each anthill in the jungle. The creature with billions of feet consisting of beetles and herbs and the close indigenous cultures, which learned of this life, are worth to protect because they contain still many hidden insights and postmodern metaphors. Who destroys a pasture or a rain forest does not only destroy genes, above all he demolishes a treasure of future metaphors, insights and models for a neo-organic civilization. [/   38]   39 "A beautyful slogan", the man is saying. "We live and act after this. There is a proverb at our global village: "Who does start to work alone and with difficulty should speak with the trees before. Who wants to invent something should have a walk in the woods." Nature is equipped with many little helpers and teachers who have solved practically every technological problem. Long time before there were men she has invented flying or diving, she moves mountains, cures, repairs and restores. She has excellent communication systems and systems for navigation and orientation. Nature modifies and improves matter from sunlight. By billions of years, she has ensured the durability of structures just as permanent innovations. Their degrees of effectiveness are immense and the material consumption is astonishingly low. Actually nothing is consumed in natural systems but shifted, redistributed and recombined in cyclical processes or open circulations. And we follow this principle with our technology. For a while we have a hemp peasant in the village. The material broker has collected hemp utilization and fibre extraction to the topic before. Afterwards he was told of a new computer-controlled machine which can produce all sorts of fabrics, textiles and fibres from hemp one. By different additions it had got possible to obtain even leathern material qualities and processing possibilities for such hemp fabrics. The material broker has got a delivery of the manufacturer with samples and he has presented them to me. But also the set designers have received plates and drapery roles with the new fabrics, which seemed to be suitable for floor and wall design as well as for insulation and surface design. No-one can take a decision alone. Each of us has one active competence but many passive competences. And only if they can be brought together the quality is equal. So that's how it works with us in bit town with the production and with ecology." [/   39]   40 4.4. House of knowledge We leave the friendly shoemaker, but not without one last question. We admit that we are just arrived in this time and we don't have a clue in what a economic system we're living in. It is said that in his story many things has been jumbled, like market economy, suppliers, cooperative society, guilds, open source, the advertising of a hemp peasant of an almost planned economy, that we would not know at all. "Ah yes, he says, they come from the epoch of the central market economy. Let yourself get a little bit confused. But the answer would be quite easy. We solve every problem with the to him most corresponding form and without having a pre-common dogma. We learn at school that there was a word for it already at your time - subsidiarity". [/   40]   41 We say good-bye to the shoemaker and head to the centre. Here we should get more answers to our questions. At the "house of knowledge" it's standing in small, golden letters, "We are finding the answers to your questions - together". Today's round in the glass pearl play is over. We have the undivided attention of the ... ah, sorry, we are not from here. How is your occupational title? The lady at the counter smiles, "I'm a regional information coach. How can I help you?" We ask the question shrewd by our first meeting, "we provide a work about how a visitor from the year 2003, from the marketing age, is experiencing today's reality. How would you describe your job to such a visitor at the house of knowledge?" Instead of a historical excursion we hear a surprisingly simple answer, "I am here to help visitors to find the best answers of the world to their questions". Now we want to know more however. We experienced that the idea of the global villages took their origin with tele-houses, an institution, which should facilitate living and working in the rural area. But these tele-houses have failed, because they would have concentrated only on technology. [/   41]   42 First when one started to extend the traditional libraries in innovation and media centres for a sustainable development and to deal with the comprehensive improvement in the life and the cooperation in the villages and improvement in the individual life situation, a turn is stood up. The global village was there in the consciousness before it could be made come true in reality. It existed as a chance - not in the meaning of a master plan but a generally plausible need for the design of a room, which makes as well the familiarity and straightforwardness as a versatile unfolding of experiences, peculiarity, meeting possible. But the fact stood contrary to the euphoria of the discovery of the unlimited possibilities of the local news. The different local protagonists still exist in different systems of values and they often did not dispose about the requested options of action to be able to realize also their local potential. [/   42]   43 Seriously appreciating that the we do not know enough to carry out the taken possibilities was the reason that the conventional education institutions were put radically in question. It was recognized that models, which are out for konviviality in a habitat to be formed together from the start, are of higher complexity than those which happen to prevail in systems steered bureaucratically and in the contents respected the centrally specified, official legally contents and arrangement methods. So it was asked by a new type of educational institution, in which centre is the ability to convey less information in the prefabricated form of a teaching curriculum. But it is more to combine these qualifications about the omnipresent net anyway generally accessible and also into the single person in all sorts of forms available and to show them new possibilities of collaboration. It was in demand for deconstruction and combinatorics in place of teaching curriculums. [/   43]   44 This educational establishment and this process of education faced a great challenge, because the members of these educational processes did not come from uniform cultural backgrounds. Mostly they are gone by a story of functional specializations and command structures, too. They were native people, settled country people, returned and recently settled city dwellers, workers and intellectuals. They all spoke different languages although they identified themselves with the objectives, the respective highlights and the values of the global village. And mostly it wasn't possible to head directly for the target of self organisation and gain of knowledge for the handling of complex circulation processes. Rather it required at first emotional opening and the training of passive competence. Here we have to hook into because we have already heared that word at the shoe maker. Passive competence is the ability to revert to competences and knowledge of others for problem solving, without to overstrain them. And it's the ability to understand their aims and to choose the exact methode for cooperation. So did we understand that accurately? [/   44]   45 "Yes, but that is said and defined more easily than done. We have to handle this with caution and to let the people find each other, like a good host who intends that his guests are entertaining themselves well at the party. This is part of our job. We arrange education and encounter. We are successful if people start talking with each other, without a big interference of ourselves. But we accompany these conversations which lead to an exchange of knowledge, values and activity. Then there arises always a question which could not be answered locally or seems not possible to answer. We then organize the journey into the net and interpret the language of the media. This has the enjoyable side effect, that people which are inconsistent with one another and are never getting anywhere in the house of advice, can learn together and find fixes here with us." We understand. With the new models of teamwork in the global village increases the necessity for new jobs. Occupational images which have as its content not only several functions in an division-of-work-organism but also in an larger amount the adjustment and coordination. These jobs are intrinsically tied to learning and innovation. [/   45]   46 4.5. The alliance of the global villages We are still in the house of knowledge. We already know a couple of things about the global village, its ecological concept, its jobsystem, the production and we know about the high position of education. But what's about the old or destitute people, the invalids and the children? Are we landed in a suburbian paradise for managers, or in a kind of holiday village? Or do we really have an answer which can give something to those who fall through the cracks in our society? What's up with the people which are poor of information? They were increasingly getting really the paupers. So we decide to pursue this question. There is no sign of poverty in the global village. Maybe we are in a rich country. So we are asking how poverty and wealth emerges in the measure of the world. The answer moves us in the bird's eye view again. The "info-coach-woman" shows us a world map in different colours. She explains to us that there is a worldwide alliance of global villages and she demonstrates at the world map the variedly high percentages of member municipalities. She said, "after the system of the structures of commandership and supervision is broken down, the alliance of global villages has taken the succession of the United Nations." Nations basically were territorial alliances, which tried to increase their wealth at the expense of others. "It was like a constantly accelerating merry-go-round. At the end there were just some winning nations left and the rest of them were heading into their insolvency. The name of the true ruler of the world was Dollar or Euro, the credit money of the victorious nations. But the reign was bought dearly. Whenever one competitor won, were the others faced with ruin. Whole states became a bankrupt, which once were flourishing communities. The commencement made Argentinia, and then there followed many others. [/   46]   47 So the danger of war and terror grew. Whole world regions became economically useless and fruitless by pauperization. And enormous amounts of the nevertheless still existing wealth for aircraft carriers and strike forces were wasted. Who wanted to strike the others from the field, had to proceed more inconsiderately against the long-term requirements of production. At that time there were the funky proverb that the quick would eat the slow, without understanding the tragical truth of this sentence. Instead of punishing the quick, these even were recompenced and admired for their cannibalism!! A vicious circle which found its end only by the political mobilization of the villages. At that time some few communities from all five continents founded the alliance, with the goal of constantly extending the basis of technical co-operation. Global villages benefit reciprocally from their existence because every village expands the basis of knowledge and development for the collective technical cooperation. And they don't take something away from one another because they founded their development on the circulation of local ressources. That's how the first peace villages arose. They gave the world an example which found more and more imitators. Today there already are more than 30 percent of the world population in the alliance. Naturally there is still a lot of work waiting for us but without us would nothing go on in this world any longer." Her voice sounded proud. "We got down to business with the slogan of 'Lasting Development'." [/   47]   48 That also meant that we fixed in our terms of cooperation not only environmental standards, but also social minimum standards. We give only the full entrance to technical cooperation to those who take part in our program. Because on the other hand in many cases we transferred the roles, which the welfare state was not able anymore to play. Here you will find minimum retirees or handicapped persons which got a dignified life back by us. Ghettos, each form of institutionalizing and acknowledgment of poverty must be avoided in any circumstances. They only bring out the mentality of hopelesness and cynicism, in which humans can't return their environment nothing more and also don't want to. You can believe me, that here I also have to deal with this mentality often enough..." [/   48]   49 "But this effort is worthwhile for us. In a hard fight for the inheritance of the welfare state we have acquired country and resources by negotiations, contracts and agreement. It is a bottomless cynicism to send an unemployed on a labour market which does not need him. It is something completely different to give him a piece of land and tools to the collective self-sufficiency! The first sapper who recognized this way was called Fritjof Bergman. He has invented the collective self-sufficiency as a solution for the crisis with his concept of the "new work" on the other side of market and industry. Not the effort and drudgery of a work front but self-development organized by the state with use of automation and technology. We have seen that the society profits enormously from it. We have made from the stranded company "Subsistenz" a permanently growing element of the planetary society which displaces the old social structure gradually and hopefully peaceful. And we work for it also actively. We provide international help and technical assistance, especially in those areas which were given up by the economy. We have a credo. Every village in Africa is a possible spring of new information, new creativity and unexpected solutions for problems which can concern all of us. And it is an outpost of the human responsibility for the beauty and integrity of this planet."[/   49]   50 At the word outpost we lock in place. Does it mean, that the global villages did want all cities and metropolises to abolish, or still want to do that? The coach woman laughs. "This would be just the same as if they had abolished the farming in the industrialized society. We need the towns very well, only not so many of this and primarily not so big ones. All our villages are part of a big city. But we would never have come there where we are today if not some large towns recognized the train of time and followed the alliance of the global villages. Do you know how we call these towns? We call them "mother towns" affectionately! If the urban consumers were in the centre of attention before, these towns permanently had themselves mirrored in their own dream world, then the work is for and with the global villages become the dominating economy factor for them today. I don't say there are only mother towns. There are also actual world metropolises which have kept immediately global meaning. But these are few exceptions, the rest has had to recognize the signs of time. The population of the towns has gone down a little but many people still live here. Because of the new orientation of the town towards the supply for a far bigger catchment area, the town has become even to the laboratory itself. New technologies and solutions for the improvement in habitats are tried out first of all here where universities, production centres, documentation centres and great distribution networks accumulate. A new, decentralised, fractal town has created Cableliner and solar mobile, an automated transport without jam and stress, the rise of "urban villages" narrowly next-door to much from the grey house oceans with a restored proximity of work and place of residence. [/   50]   51 There is no more city center in the old sense. There is only a historical district for visitors and there are neighbourhoods and accomodation with approximately the same possibilities. The city became a network of villages in itself, first caotic, but then it was consciously promoted by after living, spare time facilities, jobs, also the culture places moved to the outskirts of the town. The manufacturing plants are not any longer steaming and noisy industries, because the material employment sank drastically. Rather intelligent tools are manufactured instead of mass-produced goods. The production of many articles of the daily need moved into the global villages. The city however remained a center of intellectual production. Their knowledge base, their specialists and their problem solution abilities are more in demand than ever. In the city still the knowledge is at home, more universal and more comprehensively than ever. The old urban districts looked for their own topics, they became theme-villages. A district of culture attracts with a museums quarter. A district of knowledge accommodates a campus with all special disciplines of the arts. A fairground constantly brings the most diverse current developments together from all areas of social production. Some of the urban villages as outskirts of a town used, are committed completely to the mother city topic. But there are also the quarters of pleasure and sophisticated luxury. In a certain respect it does also well to us once in our lifetime to submerge in the anonymity of the city and to try all human possibilities. [/   51]   52 We regard it as absolutely desirable that young humans experience a variety of possibilities, contacts, experiences and entertainment. But they should also get the chance to move in an anonymous environment, to invent themselves again, to prove themselves, to have their own borders to plumb, without being exposed to social and moral control. And nevertheless this cannot be the goal of their life, but it is the basis for a conscious decision. Because one is not born into a global village, it is choosen! Every village is different. We are no country idiots who are fatefully connected to a clod. But we rather choose a society with its values because they correspond with our values. Therefore the city, this terrible ant-hill, is a quite useful phase of transit. But all the things you can see here, the house of beauty with its access to culture and figures, the house of tools, the house of health,... They all would not be conceivable likewise without a city. The large universities, museums, hospitals - they all became network knots. If here with us in the global village a patient swallows a small camera dragee for the observation of stomach and intestine, then its data are analyzed in the urban diagnostic center by specialists. Afterwards they are sent back with exact recommendations to the village therapy net of physician and spa-farmers. There is a big satellite labor at the agricultural university, which analyses continuously the informations about the degree of ripeness of fields, pest infestation, a.s.o. and provide those to agricultural areas and the global villages. [/   52]   53 At this point we lock in place once again. What is this like with the power distribution? Does the mother town not have to take over the leadership inevitably with her immense know-how and her high tech lead and her demographic superiority? Are the economic interests not at all there at home, which have destroyed the balances between the people by a subtle monopolization? She nods, 'this is indeed a real danger. Many a technology which were offered to the global villages, as the alliance was in her starting times and still did not run factories of its own, in reality a Trojan Horse was so. It was made to cause around dependence. But the global village can on the one hand choose between several mother towns. The relation between the global village and the mother town in addition and on the other hand is not a one-way street. A constant exchange of information takes place between partners who need each other and are in the dialog. Village and town have gone to win-win situations onto the way of the search. There are no "city dwellers" and "villagers" in this meaning either, people spend a part of their life in the town and a part in the village. They know the situation of the others and know of the specific needs and care for social contacts with each other. The modern communication technologies create a virtual community, in which it gives no ruling and no ruled people. What can be succeeded in the agreement of the ones involved is only possible. [/   53]   54 The global villages are a product of the wave which has already blossomed into Non Governmental organisations before, or the free software. Communication technologies have not only the possibilities of control multiplied but also the possibilities of the liberty and the cooperation. With that development the fight intensified between the two paradigms. Great software houses wanted to use the power, which they got by the intellectual property to knowledge and culture, for the accumulation of the greatest wealth and control potential of the history. They could influence election campaigns and politicians and media with their money, succeed with laws to the protection of patents and intellectual property and nevertheless a just as powerful countermovement of the free cooperation formed up, for which it is no matter of power for the first time in history. In contrary to all earlier revolutionaries they did not want to occupy command heights but they demanded a free self-development of everyone in the spirit of cooperation and interplay." [/   55]   56 So or something like that a librarian of the twenty-first century could represent the history and the development of the global villages. We still could discover many new facets on our journey through our syntopic village. We could look at how this spirit of interplay works in a small area, like the global villages have assured themselves again of not only the cultural inheritance of the Middle Ages but also the old trunk cultures and their council meetings. We could have a look at the variety of the manifestations and life models which represents their cultural wealth. Now we could look at how the community of the villages, the urban regions, the bio-regional, national and continental networks lead to new and surprising forms of complexity. We could look at exotic plants in the city which are in this coloured planetary garden. We could pursue the journey through life of a man in this confusing variety. We could go for the search of deficiencies and shady sides of this planetary net. And finally we could go for the question how the whole story goes on. Because there is no "end of the story", but more the chance that the old story fizzles out and gives birth to something new. However, if that what we have seen until now appears to be a real possibility and a solid system, then we also could return into today's reality and start at many places at the same time to make this story a little bit truer. (Vienna, 19.1.2003) [/   ]