Self-organization in Indigenous Cultures And what that can teach us about self-organization in high-tech societies

Mutual positive feedback in Open Source Community Sharing and Improvement: Public access to remove bugs, tailor code to other purposes, and find problems. Group recognition: When credit accrues to group, individuals feel rewarded. The rediscovery of creativity, lost in the mass production of commercial software products.

Why use modeling/quantitative analysis at all? If STS only has humanities, and technoscience only has tools of science and technology, we tend to form our own basins of attraction, self-confirming prejudices, etc. The tools of science and technology are too powerful to leave behind. Quantitative data can surprise us in different ways than that of qualitative. Using the language of the sciences helps communicate with them, establish collaborations.

Why focus on friction and conflict? Our utopian visions can be boring, eg traditional Christian descriptions of heaven lack lust, sloth, gluttony and other pleasures. The strife-less utopian visions can be unrealistic. Before we get to utopia there will be plenty of friction; better to have that built in from the start. Friction and conflict have positive value, not just negative: they are creative, help us get out of ruts, see with new eyes, etc.

Jeb Barzen and Richard Beilfuss at the International Crane Foundation: seeded 1 acre a year for five years, using the same seed mix and the same techniques. Even though all the seedings were in the same crop field, each turned out very differently from each other, and even changed year to year. 2012: sandhill prairie 2013, same prairie How to get to a new basin of attraction? Examples from prairie restoration Self-organizing systems are context dependent

How to get to a new basin of attraction? Examples from prairie restoration Aldo Leopold, University of Wisconsin 1934 recreated a prairie from Curtis farm: 1)Plowed fields did not revert to prairie—aggressive non-native species took over 2)Fire did revert to prairie – for native species a starting point they had evolved to use. 1990s, University of Tennessee ecologists Pimm and Drake: 15 to 40 different species of algae and microscopic animals, added over time in various combinations and sequences to a large flask. After 10 to 15 days, a stable, self-reproducing slime ecology: vastly different depending on the sequence. A new basin of attraction is possible but requires trial and error. Better to put resources into facilitating experimentation (friction?) than a final vision Self-organizing systems are dependent on sequence as well as context.

How to get to a new basin of attraction? Examples from Lansing 1970s the Asian Development Bank forces Bali farmers to use HYV rice, artificial fertilizers, pesticides. 1980s Lansing uses his simulation to help end the development project. June 2012, Bali’s subaks listed as a UNESCO world heritage site

How to get to a new basin of attraction? Examples from Open Source 1983, SeptemberGNU ProjectAnnounced by Richard Stallman as a project to create a "Free Unix" 1985Free Software Foundation Stallman -- to support Free Software projects, begins GPL 1991PythonFirst released by Guido Van Rossum in 1991.Guido Van Rossum Creative Commons 2001 – becomes “basin of attraction” for Wikipedia, Nine Inch Nails, Flikr, Al Jazeera, Public Library of Science, etc.