The Paradox Conferences
The Paradox conferences sprang from Paolo Soleri's essay the “six paradoxes of the computer revolution.” In this essay, Soleri warns against the dangers of using modern informational, networking technologies to create what he calls the "Global Hermitage."
The Global Hermitage is a phrase Soleri uses to express a fear that he has about the misuse of computer technologies and the Internet, which will he feels will have the effect of separating ourselves themselves from each other, and the non-virtual reality world.
The realization that the community values that previously sustained our identity within the culture of the pre-modern world, have been made basically obsolescent within the modern technology driven society and its relentless need to increase productivity by any means necessary. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society. People are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community.
Paolo Soleri felt that as people became virtualized with the rise of electronic culture and commerce, it was adding to what he termed the Global Hermitage - the isolation and resulting dehumanization of people in the modern world stemming from modernization's focus on the car, suburbia, materialism and consumerism as the driving values for modern civilization.
The core tenets of Soleri's paper/essay The Six Paradoxes of the Computer Age" are summarized in the six bullet points below:
That an ephemerization technology, the Miniaturization/Complexity computer techne, generates new wealth that in turn finances a new wave of materialism courtesy of the production/consumption engine. The savior of intellection, the noosphere, is authoring the nemesis of the biosphere.
That Homo Carbonis might be engaged in self-extinction via the Homo Siliconis he is inventing, a biotechnology reaching back millions of years, made fearfully tragic by the World Wide Web.
That an optimized communication/information technology may generate a planetary hermitage engaged in a virtual reality and a technology promoting a hyper-segregated Homeo Sapiens.
That a technology of learning via information can very easily turn into a technology of data inflation, constipation of information and mindless pernicious gossip causing a sclerosis of mind.
That a democratic technology might engender a split between the haves and have nots, a split of unprecedented cruelty.
That a fundamentally democratic technology, the World Wide Web, might cause a Luddite revolt against technology and its overpowering presence, a technocracy.
The purpose of the Paradox Thesis was to express the concern that people are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community. This was issue not just for the users and consumers of this technology and software but also for the producers of it as well.
The essay was used to put together a series of proposals to the Silicon Valley alternative cyber-punk community that were pitched at the Paradox conferences which took place at Arcosanti in 1997, 1999 and 2001.
While Paolo Soleri gets credit for this essay it was put together with significant input from Ron Anastasia and Michael Gosney. Both had cultivated a relationship with Soleri and were involved in the development of virtual world that we now call the Internet and the Cyberspace Cyberpunk subculture of Silicon Valley. They worked with Soleri to develop the themese for the Paradox conferences, as a way to promote Soleri's ideas about Arcology to that silicon Valley Cyber subculture. That they were involved with worked with and had strong links to many of the leading thinkers and leaders of that movement helped make the conference series a success in terms of making Silicon Valley aware of Arcosanti.
After the relative success of first two Paradox Conferences in 97 and 99, they decided to form a in-house program at Arcosanti to build on the momentum of the conferences. Within the “urban laboratory” the purpose of the "Paradox Program laboratory” was to stimulate a development onsite at Arcosanti that moving us towards this idea of NeoMonasticism - how to look at cyberspace in a healthy way and to address some of the Paradoxes Soleri talked about in his paper, while also taking steps to harness the energy of the Silicon Valley counter-culture to build the world's first prototype Arcology at Arcosanti.
Notes and References:
Kevin Kelly - Founder of Wired - had a keen interest in this ideas discussed on this page and thus was one of another of the silicon valley cyber-culture big-fish at the time that were successfully lured to Arcosanti for Paradox (thus explaining why the articles above were published in Wired at the time): https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1sob2v/i_am_kevin_kelly_radical_technooptimist_and/