25 giugno, matteo tonoli: “forward thinking and new models of sustainability” (seminar held in Italian, thx to the ‘neocybernetic crew’)

Forward Thinking and New Models of Sustainability

Matteo Tonoli

25 giugno 6pm

LINK TO THE MEETING

I will start with a symbolic episode, “raining stones,” from Douglas Rushkoff’s book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.

Throwing rocks and protesting require a second-order view of the future (Wiener and Rosenblueth), on a generational scale. This vision is difficult to acquire because crushed by presentism (a consequence of the information and digital noise explosion of the 2010s), it flattens our temporal perception, limiting it to instants of eternal present under the banner of the “disposable.” This phenomenon impoverishes the vision of a possible future and, in some ways, makes us unable to glimpse its real implications.

I will argue that sustainable leadership must overcome presentism and adopt a generative, auto-poietic relationship with time in its dimensions of memory, present and future. Specifically, the tool that allows one to “prune the crown of the tree of possible futures” is accountability: knowing how to model the future to understand the consequences of actions on a generational time scale. As a result of these predictions we then act on the present, in a retroactive process.

A central aspect of this reflection is the retrieval of la parole (Grothendieck), a fundamental tool for imagining the future accurately and consciously, and then communicating it effectively to the actors involved in the sustainability chain. Linguistic sustainability then becomes a key element: a clear, unambiguous language that leaves no room for bad faith (Sartre), or that tendency to deceive ourselves (as happens when we reduce global warming to climate change, confusing cause and effect). In this sense, pertinence, which for Augé is the ability to “understand an epoch and speak to an epoch,” is essential for responsible communication.

I will conclude by emphasizing how a leadership that can retrieve the deep sense of the word and communicate it, succeeds in speaking with a political language. A language that, nourished by a highly informative past breaking into a dense and lived present, works every day to expand the horizon of possibilities (von Foerster).

An engineer first and sociologist later, Matteo Tonoli translates his many interests and passions into reflections on several issues that include complexity, innovation, the relationship between science and society, design and music. He is an education consultant and his latest work has been published within the collective volume Communication and Scientific Uncertainty in the Knowledge Society (Cerroni and Carradore, Franco Angeli, 2021).

 https://neocyberneticcrew.org/

#CommunicationAndScientificUncertaintyInTheKnowledgeSociety #complexity #disposable #eternalPresent #ForwardThinkingAndNewModelsOfSustainabilit #Grothendieck #innovation #laParole #linguisticSustainability #MatteoTonoli #NeocyberneticCrew #ouglasRushkoff #presentism #sustainability #temporalPerception #theDisposable #ThrowingRocksAtTheGoogleBus #vonFoerster #WienerAndRosenblueth

25 giugno, matteo tonoli: “forward thinking and new models of sustainability” (seminar held in Italian, thx to the ‘neocybernetic crew’)

Forward Thinking and New Models of Sustainability

Matteo Tonoli

25 giugno 6pm

LINK TO THE MEETING

I will start with a symbolic episode, “raining stones,” from Douglas Rushkoff’s book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.

Throwing rocks and protesting require a second-order view of the future (Wiener and Rosenblueth), on a generational scale. This vision is difficult to acquire because crushed by presentism (a consequence of the information and digital noise explosion of the 2010s), it flattens our temporal perception, limiting it to instants of eternal present under the banner of the “disposable.” This phenomenon impoverishes the vision of a possible future and, in some ways, makes us unable to glimpse its real implications.

I will argue that sustainable leadership must overcome presentism and adopt a generative, auto-poietic relationship with time in its dimensions of memory, present and future. Specifically, the tool that allows one to “prune the crown of the tree of possible futures” is accountability: knowing how to model the future to understand the consequences of actions on a generational time scale. As a result of these predictions we then act on the present, in a retroactive process.

A central aspect of this reflection is the retrieval of la parole (Grothendieck), a fundamental tool for imagining the future accurately and consciously, and then communicating it effectively to the actors involved in the sustainability chain. Linguistic sustainability then becomes a key element: a clear, unambiguous language that leaves no room for bad faith (Sartre), or that tendency to deceive ourselves (as happens when we reduce global warming to climate change, confusing cause and effect). In this sense, pertinence, which for Augé is the ability to “understand an epoch and speak to an epoch,” is essential for responsible communication.

I will conclude by emphasizing how a leadership that can retrieve the deep sense of the word and communicate it, succeeds in speaking with a political language. A language that, nourished by a highly informative past breaking into a dense and lived present, works every day to expand the horizon of possibilities (von Foerster).

An engineer first and sociologist later, Matteo Tonoli translates his many interests and passions into reflections on several issues that include complexity, innovation, the relationship between science and society, design and music. He is an education consultant and his latest work has been published within the collective volume Communication and Scientific Uncertainty in the Knowledge Society (Cerroni and Carradore, Franco Angeli, 2021).

 https://neocyberneticcrew.org/

#CommunicationAndScientificUncertaintyInTheKnowledgeSociety #complexity #disposable #eternalPresent #ForwardThinkingAndNewModelsOfSustainabilit #Grothendieck #innovation #laParole #linguisticSustainability #MatteoTonoli #NeocyberneticCrew #ouglasRushkoff #presentism #sustainability #temporalPerception #theDisposable #ThrowingRocksAtTheGoogleBus #vonFoerster #WienerAndRosenblueth

Now is the intersection of all times.

🛣️ ⏳ 🕰️

#EternalPresent #TimelesNow #DivineMoment #TemporalCrossroads