A formative experience for me was the several year "tour of duty" as a "ArcoNaut" at Arcosanti from 2000 - 2003. This was an opportunity to participate in a unique experiment that sees itself as an alternative to the American dream centered around materialism, suburban sprawl and conspicuous consumerism. The backdrop to living and working at Arcosanti and being immersed in Soleri's big idea about Urban Sustainability called Arcology, was the relatively sudden emergence of "sustainability" into the lexicon of the mainsteam society with terms like: ecological design, green business, natural capitalism, biomimickry, cultural creatives, green architecture etc. And of course, Paolo Soleri was also at the time preparing to modify his already formidable lexicon of complex words and concepts to address sustainable from his counterpoint of the seeing much of the sustainability as putting forward "a better kind of wrongness" and therefore seeking to correct this with his idea of real sustainability, the Lean Alternative.
Participating and co-creating in this fascinating mix of new terms, concepts and ideas at Arcosanti during the dawn of the mainstream's embrace of sustainability I met many interesting people and participated in a series of events and workshops. The apex of this for me was my chance to be at Arcosanti during Paradox III, as the 3rd and final installment in the Paraodox Conference series. The events were sponsored and co-produced by Michael Gosney's Green Century Institute.The 3rd conference took place in September of 2001, just after the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Ron Anastasia and Michael Gosney first met with Soleri in the late 90s. Both were involved in the virtual world of the Internet and when they discovered his work they were inspired by the potential of actually building what he was talking about on a more massive scale - Arcology - than was the reality at Arcosanti. They worked with Paolo Soleri to develop a set of thematics and a core concept for a series of conferences titled The Paradox Conferences. One goal was to integrate Soleri’s ideas about Arcology into cyberspace and cyberculture. This was expressed in Soleri's Paradox Thesis Paper: The Six Paradoxes of the Computer Revolution where he warns of the potential dilemmas of ICT to create what he calls the "Global Hermitage," while also noting the importance and potential of technology in our lives and the inevitability that its influence on our lives will continue to grow as we continue to move into the 21st century.
The Paradox Pitch to Silicon Valley's Counterculture
One goal of the conferences was to promote Soleri's ideas about Arcology to the dot.com crowd as a way to raise funds to build the project on a more ambitious scale and more inline with the plans for the project that he has long proposed.
My understanding of the "Paradox pitch" was that there was a fundraising angle to this conference and although some criticized it I found it to be a very valid approach and strategy - that if this was pitched in the right way to the Silicon Valley community that a few of these brilliant and uber-innovative Cyber-folk with some change in their pockets might be able to help move the project forward on a more ambitious level.
The purpose of Paradox is to create a balance between real life and virtual reality. As post-modern civilization becomes increasingly complex, we need to discover new models to manage this complexity, keeping human beings relevant and creative within this emerging global network. Arcosanti as an "Urban Laboratory" sought to encourage people to imagine Arcosanti as a skunkworks for innovative people and ideas revolving around the development of Arcosanti as a prototype for the world first Arcology - a compact and sustainable urban city model. This Urban Laboratory concept was repackaged within Paradox in an attempt to create an experimental Neo-monastic culture of dedicated ArcoNauts. Religious connotations aside the idea of Neo-Monasticism at Arosanti was about developing the cyber-culture that could better balance the relentless effort of cyberculture in building cyberspace with directing some of that energy on making Arcosanti the world's first prototype Arcology.
Paradox I & II
While I did not attend the two previous conferences I recall that from my research that the major themes of the first two conferences (Paradox I & II) included more of a focus on complex CyberGeek theories about the direction that technology and the Internet is taking humanity. The function of Paradox was not just to express the concern that people are using technology to isolate themselves but to also look at solutions.
Paolo Soleri (the founder of Arcosanti) defines himself through his criticisms of modern excesses such as sprawl and consumerism. The Paradox Project and companion conferences were themselves paradoxical because, they were founded on concepts that attract young people who function well in cyberspace and are moderately successful, but was based on the teachings and philosophies of Paolo Soleri who was at time 84 years old and never used a computer before. Therefore, it was of little surprise that some inter-generational sparks flew in the first two Paradox Conferences. Wired magazine did a series of reports on the first two paradoxes that discussed some of those sparks.
Paradox III (2001): Sustainability Virtuality and Community
The previous conferences focused more on in the rise of the internet and it consideration in relation to Arcology theory and possible scenarios for developing Arcosanti using the innovative resources of Silicon Valley/cyberculture. Paradox III focused on what Gosney and Anastasia identified as convergence points or nodes of convergence, the three focus themes at the conference revolved around community, virtuality and sustainability.
Central to the paradox thesis is that technology although necessary to modernization, is creating structures of complexity distancing people from each other, while at the same it creates the illusion that we are closer together through Facebook and other social networking devices. We have in the process of history built an architecture where we exist in isolation of each other, and so we live fragmented lives. The biospheric truth is that we are interconnected and interdependent. However, in the dysfunctional political geography of our rapidly globalizing culture, distance under the dominant hegemonic socioeconomic system only leads to exploitation. Yet it is ironic that cyberspace—one manifestation of technology—enables us to envision a grander social architecture in people in open source micro economies are living. A lifelong commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the modern, mainstream society.
Central to the problem is that genuine notions of community have limited tangible value to people and systems who are trained to define success in purely short term economic terms. The resulting superficial measures of success stimulate shortsighted decisions that devalue and undervalue holistic knowledge systems, creating major social evolutionary or in fact devolutionary events that pulls us further away from more altruistically stated social goals and values.Educators of a more sustainable and holistic worldview must confront this moral and ethical failure by working to develop more compelling community based ways of overcoming the social dysfunction that materializes from the present hyper-consumerist system.
Notable Paradox III Speakers:
Bruce Damer - Entertainer, entrepreneur, silicon valley personality, avatar, NASA contractor and founder of the DigiBarn a collection of old antique computers
Joe Firmage - Internet entrepreneur, founder, ManyOne.com
James Fournier - Founder, Planetwork, woodgas/gasification pioneer and theorist advocate of a theory of change that relates to this idea that we are a key point in human history where a Point of Inflection is enabling a massive shift in how we live and think that will rapidly move us towards a sustainable economy and society.
Jon Jerde - urban designer, founder The Jerde Partnership International
Paul Ray - Demographer and author of "The Cultural Creatives" which explains his resrearching exploring a new demographic class of people who he terms transformational and integrationalist.
Marilyn Ferguson - Like Barbara Marx-Hubbard a great visionary of new age spiritual thinking considering a more univeralist concept of creation who wrote The Acquarian Conspiracy
Stephanie Smith - Architect who promoted a new marketing approach to architecture that considers this idea of spa-like, healing environments.
Janine Beynus - Ecological Design pioneer who coined the word bio-mimickry describe new processes for making products inspired and in harmony with natural systems.
Paradox III Conference Highlights:
Life@Arcosanti - There was a problem in the design of the conference which left the Arcosanti community without a real voice. Our presentations and a panel discussion about life at Arcosanti was ill-timed so that most of the people missed a chance to learn about Arcosanti from the perspective of people living at Arcosanti. To this day serious community development has been the neglected stepchild of the Arcosanti family.
Reinventing Community & The Need for Authenticity - Then ASU urban design and planning professor Nan Ellin spoke about the need to design cities with people's authentic needs in mind. The problem with commercial culture and impact on the aesthetic of our lives is that it is not about people's needs for a quality life in community, its about maximizing profit at the corporate HQ far away from the urban reality of our everyday lives.
Culture Creatives: Understanding Who We are as a Movement - The person who coined the term Cultural Creatives was at Paradox III. Paul Ray explained what defines the movement and what brings us together and what pulls us apart as so-called Cultural Creatives. He also noted that while this was the fastest growing demographic, in the USA the media was slow to acknowledge this new group and its world views - for obvious reasons.
Biomimicry - Janine Benyus and her discussion about what she has termed Biomimickry explained the implications of her work which centered around nature inspired design of industrial and consumer products. This includes how to rethink, not just industrial design and engineering of products, but how they are made. This she said was necessary for them to be truly sustainable in deepest and most authentic sense of the word.
Creating Spa-Like Environments - Part of the subtle theme put forward by Jerde Partners Inc was this idea of reinventing the plan for completing Arcosanti as the world's first prototype Arcology. With this we considered Jerde's Protege Stephanie Smith and her ideas for remaking the spa so that it can be considered as architectural healing EdenSpace for humanity inspired by places like Cosanti which help us to feel in tune with nature as we engage in the engage in the kind of activities that you might have in a spa. The idea also is to question whether we should have to go on vacation to a healing spa resort, when we can design our everyday spaces to enable these kinds of things.
Cyberspace and Urban Design - One of the things associated with Virtual Reality was a vision and dream of being able to create alternative realities from which to plan out things that were not feasible to design or develop in the Real World. Second Life has been considered as one such venue for modeling future cities and projects. However the idea of doing something similar for Arcosanti via Paradox Project's Virtual Arcosanti Model never took off. Paradox co-founder Gosney though continues to look into the future and see that the potential of technology enables us to develop powerful visualization tools that were originally conceived by visionaries like Bucky Fuller. See his Aug 2012 video presentation from TEDxMission
About the Organizers
Michael Gosney has continued to be inspired by "evolutionary Arcology approach" and the development of various conference events and initiatives including the Califia Summit in 2006 which discussed the idea of building Arcology themed project in the Bay Area named Califia. Currently his focus is on Techne Verde: A clearinghouse and alliance of experts specializing in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) applications that serve the global sustainability movement, Techné Verde combines advanced technical, design and "sustainable culture" resources with vital relationships in the technology, media and sustainability fields.
Ron Anastasia recently passed away. He also continued to research alternative communities after Paradox looking at places such as Auroville which is located in south India and Damanhur in northern Italy. In contrast to Arcosanti, both are spiritual communities and have also been able to develop significantly larger populations. I recall Ron's presentation of his experiences at a Green Century Salon that I attended when I first moved to the Bay Area around 2004. He did not sugarcoat his experiences as he mentioned the pros and cons of each place. He did seem to think that Auroville was the most advanced in terms of offering a real sustainable model for humanity.
While Libby Hubbard (aka Doctress Neutopia) was not directly involved in organizing for the 2001 event she spent over a year working on the Paradox Program at Arcosanti.
Conclusion
People are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community—build interconnected and synergistically sustainable economic, social and political relationships—and within that goal, also aspire to develop a deeper more intrinsically based sense of existence. The event was based on the realization of a increasing need to integrate the interdisciplinary aspects of sustainable design, into a cohesive integrated plan for the development of alternative economic systems that more appropriately and authentically deliver human needs in the modern world.
What I learned from Paradox inspired me to think deeper about what Community, Virtuality and Sustainability meant to me:
Creating a New Avant Garde is Not Easy (Create an Innovation SubCulture focused on integration of knowledge and its application focused on holistic problem solving) - Finding dialectic balance and union (between virtuality/real life; the ego/collective; have/have-not; political left/right and spiritual/material; etc) between the many competing forces that are fracturing society into many broken parts goes against the momentum of a declining civilization.
At the Micro-Level: Community + Sustainability Centers for Innovation as the Focus Point - The challenge is the same then as it is now: how to create small, human scale alternatives to the prevailing dehumanizing, over-corporatized, mass scale, capitalist social system. The concept of these alternative developments--intentional communities and ecovillages seems to be evolving towards an Integrationalist approach, one that seeks to find balance in life by more thoughtfully designing human systems with the human in mind.
At the Macro-Level: a Growing Sense of the Need for a Revolutionary Mid-course Correction - Paradox speaker Jim Fournier first introduced me to the idea of the Point of Inflection - in not only the design and building process, but the entire mindset of humanity. It was expressing a need for convergence, a coming together of people who have an extended awareness of how we as humans are modifying and extracting resources from the environment beyond any measure of sustainability.
The Need for for Authentic Relationships - An authentic approach to community development is about relationships and not things or objects. This reminds me of the quote I kept from Larry Kaplowitz in relation to his work at the Lost Valley Educational Center: “The biggest lesson we’ve learned over the last few years is that sustainable community must have at its foundation sustainable relationships—relationships that give us more than they take from us; that are a continual source of energy; and which support us in becoming fully ourselves."
Considering more Co-Creative models for Collaboration - While listening and studying the Jerde Partners Inc organizational culture I remember learning a new word Co-creative. The challenge of making Co-creativity work was theme of several Paradox III presenters and is expressing in understanding that there are two main models of communicating and making decisions.The Dominator Verses Partnership dichotomy discussed by Riane Eisler, in the book titled The Chalice and the Blade. Ralph Abraham, a mathematician also talks about a divergence between two competing cultural values in Chaos, Gaia, Eros.
References and Notes:
Nice way of simplifying Soleri's complex language and meaning: http://www.eoslife.eu/forum/environment/10877-paolo-soleri-getting-it-wrong
Blog post about my Paraodox III experience: http://edenspaceblog.blogspot.com/2004/07/formative-experience-for-me-was.html
Green Century Institute Paradox Page: http://www.greencentury.institute/paradox.htm
Wired Magazine article about Paradox II titled "The Arcology of Cyberspace":Judy Bryan 09.24.99 http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/09/21920
Michael Gosney gave a TEDx presentation titled "Designing the Control Panel for Spaceship Earth": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfPggRXo3gs
The Peer2Peer Foundation has a great wiki page about Co-Creative/Co-Creation/Co-Creativity: http://p2pfoundation.net/Co-Creation