August 4th - Online Conference

by Igor Srdoc B.Sc.Com

The First NET Virtual Conference has been held on Friday 04. 08. 2006 on Skypecast. The conference was public. Its main purpose was to address those subjects that have not been covered by the Umea meeting. We hope to have these kind of virtual meetings more often than the annual physical conferences because more intensive communication between N.E.T.'s members and also the public is going to produce in better coordination and clarity of the tasks and goals that lay before us.

Rules

The following rules have applied to the meeting.
  1. All participants must have a microphone and Skype installed.
  2. Please cease all uploads and downloads during the conference for better sound performance.
  3. Please be punctual. If you join the conference after the first half an hour (1800-1830hrs) wait until you are adressed by the host who will ask you to introduce yourself.
  4. During the first hour conversation is to be rather casual, but after that you should ask for permission to speak (due to the presentations) and interrupt only if it’s absolutely necessary. If you have something to say during the presentations use writing instead of talking.
  5. During each presentation only the speaker is allowed to talk. If you have any questions write them down and ask them after the presenation is over.
  6. Each presentation should not last longer than 20 min, but it can be shorter. The remaining 10 min are reserved for questions and general debate on the topic at hand. If the debate requires more than these 10 min, it will be paused and continued at the end of the conference when all other presentations are done.
  7. Be respectable at all times. If your behaviour seems unapropriate to the host, you will be warned once and if repeated you will be muted.

Participants

Agenda

Presentations

The presentations have been carried out as followed:

  1. NET Webpage (Igor Srdoc) at 1900 hrs
  2. Pilot Survey (Dr. Andrew Wallace PhD) at 1930 hrs
  3. Pilot Survey part II (Mansel Ismay) at 2000 hrs
  4. NET Administration (Enrique Lescure) at 2030 hrs - CANCELED due to absence

Report

The virtual conference was held on Friday 04.08.2006, as planed. All the participants that announced their appearance on the conference have managed to do so, except for Enrique Lescure, who was excused because of absense. We have also had an unexpected, but nevertheless pleasant visit from Martin Kohl (aka Cybersamurai) who has contributed greatly to the development of the convesation. The conference started rather informally and served as an introduction to the presentations that the speakers had prepared. The interaction revolved mainly around some general questions about technocracy and the current status of the NET movement.

The main problems during the conference were of technical and human nature. The technical problems were noise that would appear when a new participant joins, but that seemed to resolve by itself over time. Another small inconvenience that everyone experienced was the delay of aproximately half a second from the actual time that someone else spoke, but if the participants act according to the rules of healthy and resprectful communication then it shoud not come to more than a few short pauses. The problems of human nature were the new participants that joined the conference, but had little or no idea as to what the event is about. That is why it has been decided that the host of the conference is going to mute every newcomer and greet that person by using the chat window which connects all the participants in nonverbal communication. This may make participation in the conversation for the host a bit more difficult and that is why the greeting message is going to be prepared in advance and the guest directed to some basic resources (probably on this very site).

The first, rather comprehensive, presentation was from Mansel Ismay who talked about his Ten Points in which he has summarized the issues that the technocratic movement needs to adress in order to evolve from the plain ideological state that it is currently encumbered with. The points are as follows (written by Mansel Ismay): 
  1. Infrastructure (The essence of the original energy survey)
  2. Ownership vs. Usership (How to define each in the social realm, how to quantify them and measure their influence on behaviour)
  3. Measures and mediums of distribution (Mainly measuring the influence of that which allows individuals and groups access to wider wealth, money, energy credits. Energy credits are just a measure of distribution, whereas money is also a medium and a measure)
  4. Separation of economics and politics (inc. technical administration in the economic part. A small expansion on that would be to highlight the need for a separate administration of matters of distribution and matters of social and cultural natures)
  5. Urbanates, holons and distributed fixed residential infrastructure and communities (Separate from infrastructure as it is fixed, concerns the movement and storage of people and includes communities and how they interact)
  6. Abundance and scarcity (How to define and measure them, how the two interact)
  7. Psychology and people (Everything from motivation and learning, passive vs. active roles in each, social and cultural aspects, economic...)
  8. Technology (What is available, how it has been implemented, what is sufficient? e.g. continental hydrology may be considered part of technology/infrastructure but is not currently implemented)
  9. Personnel (What is sufficient, how personnel can move around the European continent, how to measure their input, etc.)
  10. Geography, geology and natural resources (What is sufficient, what is available now, and so forth)

These are just the outlines of the concepts that require further reserach and elaboration, thus anyone interested into these subjects is welcome to contribute individually (by submiting articles, participating the forums, conferences...) or by joining/starting a working project.

The second presentation was conducted by Dr. Andrew Wallace PhD on the pilot survey. The pilot survey looked into the feasibility of conducting a full survey from Internet sources. We can find sources available on the Internet. However, the data appears as being incomplete. Additionally, we need to present the data in terms of energy. The pilot survey concluded that using EU sources and conducting a full survey just within the EU represents the best way forward at this current juncture.

The third and final presentation was Igor Srdoc's elaboration of the current status of NET's webpage, the workings behind the site and tasks that lie ahead. The presentation was supposed to be an introduction to the backend of the website, but since it was not certain as to who will be making use of the administration panel in the future and the fact that individual and partial instructions would make more sense that a global and comprehensive approach. That is why the presentation was cut short of the part which serves as the sites manual and we moved on to the most vital tasks that away their completion. These were:

  1. Transfering the domain name from spazz.mine.nu to technocracyeurope.eu
  2. Raising the quantity and quality of the articles on the site
  3. Providing clearer guidelines for new as well as old users

There are many other tasks and goals that require attention, but these either belong to the category of small administrative operations (such as installing new elements on the website) or will await the completion of the above mentioned priorities.

Another issue that this report should cover are potential future virtual conferences that NET is going to organise. The participants of this meeting have concluded that this project has been, although carried out with little preliminary experience and definite drawbacks (see the second paragraph), nevertheless very productive in many ways. Not only have the participants gained intellectual benefits during the conversation one with another and broadened their views on the various concepts of tehnocracy, as the reward was also a social one – the morality of the group and a sense of dynamic activity about the organisation has risen beyond the passive and resignated state. Thus the most important conclusion of the whole conference would concern the evergrowing need for these meetings which condense and channel the potential forces of the organisation's members. That is why it is my opinion that we should organise as many of these kind of meetings as possible in order to keep ourselves coordinated and to break the obvious geographical barriers. These meetings can concern one or more topics regarding NET itself or can even cosist mainly of debates on controversial issues regarding technocracy. Another very important element of these kind of meetings are casual parts in which all participants get the possibility to express their own concerns.