Conscious Space
Project: Polytopia

Meet Gangaji, who speaks about silence and space and writes in Hidden Treasure:

Naturally we have been thrilled to realize that we can choose to live a different story, one we feel more in alignment with. There is yet another choice. We have the capacity to take a moment and release all stories. We can experience what it means to be nobody, uncovered even by our primary identity.

Underneath all the stories, we can experience that deep core of ourselves that is historyless, genderless, and parentless. Naked. That presence is unencumbered by relationships and has no past and no future. In the core of our beingness we are free of definitions. Unencumbered by our definitions we experience ourselves as conscious intelligence aware of itself as open, endless space. This instant of being storyless is an instant of freedom. For even if our story is filled with light and beauty, to the degree that we define ourselves through that story, we are less free.

After such a moment, stories are never the same. They can be present, as they most likely will be, but they no longer have the inherent power to define our reality.

Enjoy the invitation to become conscious of what is always here, while Gangaji teaches us nothing, in 8 minutes video of Satsang, (Sanskrit सत्सङ्ग sat = true, sanga = company), a call to the collective space of refuge, this heart of space.

Thu, Jan 3, 2013  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, introduction, polytopia, inspired, video, learning, thrivability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Gielis Shapes
Project: The Total Library

In 1997 the superformula was discovered, which solved the problem of the limited symmetry of superellipses and supercircles. Supershapes like pentagons and starfish, triangles and rose sepals, flowers and leaves, can now be described by a single equation, based on the generalization of Lamé's supercircles and superellipses.

The key step from Lamé’s supercircles was to convert the equations to polar coordinates and to add a single parameter for symmetry. It was extended into three dimensions as well.

This discovery was published in the book “Inventing the Circle” (2001, 2003) and as Invited Special Paper in the American Journal of Botany in April 2003. Worldwide awareness was created by websites such as Nature Science update, Science News Online, and Wolfram’s Mathematica website.

Supershapes were introduced later in the field of geometry under the general name of Gielis' curves, surfaces & -transformations, also in higher dimensions.

Quoted from GIELIS' CURVES & SURFACES


Bram Stolk, author of the Superformula Shape Miner for iOS writes:

Superformula was created to have fun with mathematics. Anybody can explore the colorful universe of shapes described by a powerful formula.

The Superformula, or Gielis-formula was first proposed by Johan Gielis. The formula can be used to define a wide range of shapes, including shapes that occur in nature.

When describing shapes in three dimensions, two instances of the formula are applied, each with 6 parameters. This results in a 12 dimensional parameter space in which a multiverse of interesting shapes reside.

The Superformula app is developed as a tool to mine this 12 dimensional parameter space. By swiping your finger, the space is explored, two parameters at a time. The strength of this application comes from the lightning fast calculations used to determine the shapes. The app uses an OpenGL-ES2 vertex shader to compute the shapes on the graphics hardware of the device. This means zero wait, and instant visualization of the Gielis-shape.

User Interface of the Superformula app


More

EXPLORATIONS OF GIELIS CURVES & SURFACES by Genicap

Using the Super Formula for building Super-Antennas by Blue Economy

Sun, Jul 22, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: science, technology, thrivability, visionary, sustainability, research, economy
Sent to project: The Total Library

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Ecotopia
Project: Polytopia

Epistle to the Ecotopians
By Ernest Callenbach

[This document was found on the computer of Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach (1929-2012) after his death.]

To all brothers and sisters who hold the dream in their hearts of a future world in which humans and all other beings live in harmony and mutual support — a world of sustainability, stability, and confidence. A world something like the one I described, so long ago, in Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging.


As I survey my life, which is coming near its end, I want to set down a few thoughts that might be useful to those coming after. It will soon be time for me to give back to Gaia the nutrients that I have used during a long, busy, and happy life. I am not bitter or resentful at the approaching end; I have been one of the extraordinarily lucky ones. So it behooves me here to gather together some thoughts and attitudes that may prove useful in the dark times we are facing: a century or more of exceedingly difficult times.

How will those who survive manage it? What can we teach our friends, our children, our communities? Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?

I contemplate these questions in the full consciousness of my own mortality. Being offered an actual number of likely months to live, even though the estimate is uncertain, mightily focuses the mind. On personal things, of course, on loved ones and even loved things, but also on the Big Picture.

But let us begin with last things first, for a change. The analysis will come later, for those who wish it.

More, much more...

Wed, May 9, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: sustainability, learning, future, thrivability, Polytopia, self-organization
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Needed: More Wave Riders
Project: Polytopia

Wave Riders have been with us always, usually unnoticed, or if noticed then treated as a curious exception to the rule. And indeed it often seemed that they were playing by very different rules. There was doubtless a time when we could afford to smile sympathetically at the behavior of the Wave Riders in our midst. When good things happened (the difficult was handled with dispatch, and the impossible achieved with a little more time), we could scratch our heads and wonder at the fabulous run of luck which the Wave Rider obviously enjoyed. It would never occur to us that there might actually be a method in their madness. In fact such thoughts could not occur to us if only because virtually all of our training and experience told us otherwise. Wave Riders were clearly the exception, and we all knew the proper way to do business, what ever that business might be. The critical point was to seize and maintain control in the manner of the Great Man Leader. Only then could good and useful things happen. Or so many of us thought.

More, in the words of Harrison Owen:

The times have changed. The anomalous behavior of the Wave Rider holds a critical clue to new ways of surviving, and indeed thriving, in our chaotic world, enabling all of us to achieve levels of excellence and high performance previously unknown.

The search for high performance has typically been a major concern of businesses and other organizations in their quest for efficiency and effectiveness. However, the stakes have risen dramatically. Achieving optimum levels of human performance is no longer just an issue of organizational effectiveness, but now a matter of global survival. The list of threatening possibilities is virtually without end: Global Warming, Nuclear Disaster, Pandemics of various sorts, to name a few. Any one of these, taken by itself, would constitute a real problem, but everything is coming together in a dizzying maelstrom of complex interaction. Even just thinking about all of this is sufficient to produce the maximum headache. The good news is that for the past several millennia, human beings have successfully negotiated the terrain. Not always perfectly, and perhaps less than elegantly, but so far we have made it. There are, however, more than a few disturbing signs that our good luck may be about to change, signs which appear as organizational dysfunction, and individual fatigue and disorientation.

The simple fact of the matter is that our institutions, major and minor, are stretched to the breaking point. Even with the best efforts in the world, the stuff accumulating in the Global Inbox is getting out of hand. The impact on our individual lives is equally obvious and severe. Stress, breakdown, alienation, exhaustion – we know them all. Rather like the mad Queen in Alice and Wonderland, we are discovering that the faster we go, the "behinder" we get.

Doubtless the end is not yet, and for sure we have a few more tricks up our sleeves. However, the time may well have come when the consideration of alternatives would be useful. Typically, we have attempted to deal with our multiple dilemmas by trying harder and harder to do more and more of what we have always done. If our organizations lack purpose and power, it is obviously time to reorganize – and reorganize again. And when events show every indication of spinning into oblivion, we redouble our efforts to assert, or regain, control – layering controllers upon controllers upon controls. I propose that it is not that we are doing something wrong, but rather that we are doing the wrong thing. Or put somewhat differently: Going the way we are going we are not likely to reach our destination. It is time for a change of course.

The argument of the book is that we must now recognize that we, our organizations, as indeed the entire cosmos – are all self organizing systems. Not just a little bit, not just in some special part, but from beginning to end, top to bottom. It is all self-organization. The implications of this recognition, should it prove to be valid, are two fold (at least). First, a large part of what we currently devote a good deal of time and energy to – organizing things – is wasted effort, for our systems, left to their own devices, will take care of that business pretty much all by themselves. Secondly, our efforts at organization and control are not only of questionable value, but also destructive. By imposing our view of organization on a self-organizing system we essentially throw a spanner in the works, thereby reducing organizational function, and our own levels of performance.

Stated in more positive terms, were we to recognize, and fully appreciate, the power of self-organization we could be relieved of an enormous task, freeing time and energy for the many other pressing issues of our day. Even better, we might learn how to leverage the power of self-organization for our benefit, thereby achieving levels of performance which presently lie beyond our wildest dreams. We will ride this primordial power, compensating for our own powerlessness. Wave Riders for sure.

Preserved 2011-11-06. More...

Image credit: Joan Thewlis CC-BY-NC-SA

Wed, Nov 9, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, polytopia, Sustainability, advance, thrivability
Sent to project: Polytopia

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