David and Doug,  this will be a hit and miss reply to your energetic and interesting exchange.

Doug, decommissioning cities is an interesting process I hadn’t explicitly thought about- although the possible future roles of dense populations intrigues me.  [[Roles being the components of social systems is interesting.]] My personal ideal habitat would hydraulically rise up from the ground in some beautiful natural setting, like a forest meadow. With the meadow as roof. But, this would be cumbersome for gathering with others. Will humans in the future desire to visit/live in different settings? 8 billion persons can’t visit the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. How to balance the “cosmopolitan” with the “ingrown rural”? What is the best habitat mix for different cultures. Is it OK that some cultures have ways of living that would be offensive to each other, but not oppressive for those within? [[Example: eating behavior – eating live insects while dancing vs high formal banquet manners.]] To what extent should biological parents dictate the raising of their children?

YOU HAVE WITNESSED A PROCESS I CALL “QUESTING”: rapid generation of ideas.

I have long been interested in populating the oceans. Part to house climate change refuges and to let “land” recover. There is some research on this underway, but none envisioning a major shifting. Structures designed to resist storms; tall structures above surface lower below surface during storms. Solar/Wind/Thermal-Gradient for power, suspended “shelves” for food production. I call them Floating Archipelagos – webs of small linked floating islands.

Humans everywhere prefer to live in comfortable and safe habitats – which are only secure “in nature” in a few areas. Treat future habitats as we would elaborate space-villages. If climate change goes really bad, this will become a necessity. We need to begin serious research on these technologies today. Wilderness and Gardens are different.

Good to see the names dropped here familiar. Stafford Beer is also a favorite – and I had the fortune to have had private talks with him, and Maturana. Also Varela, but I didn’t know who he was at the time, other than he substituted a conference presentation for Erich Jantsch (who was ill) and I rode the bus back to the main conference in dialog with Varela.

I speculate that the USA crackdown on Allende’s Chile was because Stafford Beer had established an experimental intelligent & viable (socialist) economic decision process – which was detected by the top capitalists as very dangerous. Pepsi-Cola was deep into the coup  and John Sculley was Pepsi VP during this period. Sculley later going with Apple may imply that he had knowledge of what Beer was doing for Chile.

Re GlobalGEA and Bill Veltrop: Bill has read my chapter and has commented here. Bill and I have had a very deep exchange – which will continue after he returns from a vacation, during which we agreed to have no interaction. Bill is exploring Social Metamorphosis of existing “social systems”, while I explore Societal Metamorphosis of the whole of humankind.

My distinction between “social” and “societal” is experimental. Direct person-2-person interactivity within close networks (real WEBS) is the primary criteria for “social” system.  “Societal” systems are holons above “social”, and function more as “machines” than as living organisms. However, having living organisms “down in the holarchy” their machine-like processes are continually being disrupted.

Since societal systems are never directly observed (in our Naïve Realism) it is dangerous to apply ordinary metaphors for them or to expect that they follow “laws” confirmed to be valid only in the worlds of Naïve Realism. There may be Societal Weirdness somewhat akin to Quantum Weirdness.

In one of my metaphors, humankind in the past few millennia of “civilization” is analogous with the birthing of a living organism. There is trauma and risk. Stan Grof (of holotropic breathwork) has explored trauma to babies during birthing. Humankind is “awakening” to a vastly nu and challenging reality – but primarily of ourselves interacting with Gaia, for which the metaphor of birthing isn’t useful.

Humanity (NU) will build on our accumulated knowledge and knowhow (exponentially exploding – SEE: Synergistic Emergent Eruption) and not on a continuation of most social and societal structures and practices.

For some reason, nuet sends Larry the thought of Carlos Castaneda leaping off the cliff with full trust in the future, as instructed by Don Juan.  Would launching UPLIFT be such a leap? Actually, no, as there is no mortal risk. Psychologically, probably yes. We must launch a futuring process without our expected clear existential vision of “the future”. If we attempt to bring along too much baggage (from the womb) we will be too “heavy” and won’t become airborne.  Yet, what we do now – today and tomorrow – must be done by ourselves, still burdened by our conditioning, habits, and constraining circumstances. Will it be like walking a tight rope, learning new balance – but balance-in-collective, not alone?

At this moment, for me, is to decide whether to keep this new computer that isn’t working right, or go back to Win8.1 & 32bit – where a mouse and external keyboard can still function.