Roadmap to Technocracy

How will we get there from here?

One of the most commonly asked questions about Technocracy has nothing to do with how it works, but instead how will ever come about? People want to know how will it be implemented, what will be involved, how soon it could happen, what sort of troubles lie ahead, and possibly even what will be expected of them. Some people even opine that regardless of the merits of Technocracy, without a viable strategy to make it happen, the idea is useless. And still others think that there is no way to make it happen, not with all the problems we can all see facing such a staggering change, so what is the point of giving it any more thought?

Technocracy's official position on the subject of transition has always been one of vague dismissal. There are reasons for this, but this does not mean that we cannot begin work to develop such a strategy. This strategy may not be complete for some time, but we can start. The main reason given for not developing a strategy now is because it is too early to tell when Technocracy might be possible to implement, and the best strategy to use will depend heavily on the conditions at that time. For instance, a strategy used during the 1930's would very likely be different from one used today, given the very different circumstances, such as economic climate, political climate, the prevalence of mass-media, and the availability of certain technologies such as computers, television, and the Internet. The founding members of Technocracy could not have predicted that it would take at least 80 years before Technocracy would be installed, so how could they devise a strategy for today's (or even the future's) conditions?

But as I said before, we can start, and in fact it already has been started. We will begin by looking at the topic Technocratically, that is, starting with our goal, and figuring out the requirements for that goal, and then the requirements for those requirements. This is called the Katascopic method and is used in virtually all engineering projects, and thus also features heavily in Technocracy.

Requirements

Technocracy has stated that is has three requirements in order to make it possible:

That there be a sufficient amount of natural resources to be able to produce an abundance of goods and services.
That there be a sufficient amount of installed technology to turn those resources into use forms.
That there be a sufficient number of trained personnel to operate that technology.

According to Technocracy's research, North America already has these three requirements. Given the advances in technology it may even be possible that other areas of the world do as well. But if this were really all that was needed, then why hasn't it been put in place yet? It is because there are other requirements not part of this list. This list features only the physical requirements to make it possible, and they were emphasized in order to point out to people that it was indeed possible. Two other, non-physical requirements exist as well. The first is obvious, the Technocracy Design. We have that (to some degree anyway), so what else? The second is the informed consent of the public. This last requirement is the big one that we are missing, and thus becomes the focus of our beginning to construct a plan to build Technocracy.

Another Requirement

As I said before, the plan to make Technocracy happen has already been started. Since all we need now is this last requirement of public consent, Technocracy's focus has been to educate the public about itself. Once this is done, all is needed is for the people to “consent” (in whatever manner this ends up taking), and the transition will begin. But how do we get there, and what will the transition itself look like?

It's that second question that is the tricky one that Technocrats have long tried to avoid tackling, for reasons already given. But if we look at what will be required for answering that question, we will find a new requirement that we need to work towards. So the reason that we can't tackle this question now is, as stated before, that we do not know the conditions at the time of implementation, because we don't know when this will occur. From what we know already we can conclude that this most likely will occur immediately after the “consent” of the public has been given to do so. But another reason is because the original Technocrats, as well as the ones that have succeeded them, realize that they themselves are not sufficiently qualified to answer that question, or at least not as qualified as they could be. Here's what I mean by this:

If we are to assume that at some point in the future, consent for Technocracy will be given by the vast majority of the public, then this will most likely include the vast majority of the technically trained personnel (mentioned in requirement #3) of the continent as well. Since it will be these people who are the ones who will be operating the Technate, they will be the ones best qualified to determine as well the best way to transition the economy from its current scarcity-base to the new Technocratic one. The combined qualifications of the continent's best experts in the future far outweigh the combined qualifications of the original Technocrats, or any collection of them since then. This will be because there will be far more of them, they will be qualified in the science and technology of the time (whatever point in the future this will be), they will know exactly the social, political, and economic conditions at the time, and they will include the best the continent has to offer. No group of Technocrats to date meet any one of these qualifications, let alone all three, thus, any plan we come up with now (or in the past) will be woefully inferior and inaccurate when compared to the one that will be devised and used by this future transition team. Moreover, any attempt to inform the public with such a plan would amount to fanciful speculation at best, sheer lying at worst. Thus we must leave this job up to those most qualified, and they exist in the future.

Public Education Campaign

So what of this plan that we can make now then? As I said before, this will mostly involve how we get ourselves to that point where people can give their informed consent, and the new group of experts can begin to formulate their plan for the actual transition.

But this in itself is a monumental task, is it not? Many people think that it is not even possible to convince people of Technocracy's merits, let alone educate them. Technocracy has never sought to “convince” anyone that its program is superior to anything today. To do such implies that this is a matter of opinion, when in fact it has been the position of Technocracy that its conclusions are based in scientific fact. This means that they are either true, or not. Technocracy has already put forth its evidence and thus far no attempt to discredit it on purely scientific grounds has prevailed. It may take a lot of counter-evidence, previously unknown, to prove that it will in fact not work (issue of transition aside).

But how do we teach then, all these people about Technocracy? It is a big subject, requires a lot of technical and scientific knowledge in order to understand, and many parts of North American society are more than a bit disdainful of anything scientific. How then, do we accomplish this task? Is it even possible?

I believe that it is, and for many reasons. I will not say that it will be an easy task, or that it will happen quickly. I will not say that it is not without risks, nor that it is guaranteed to succeed. What I will say is that there exists, right now, more than enough information about how to accomplish this task out there for us to use. All we need to do is find it, and use it in the most intelligent and efficient way possible. This way we can get the job done in the quickest time possible and with the least risk and effort. Once this is done, the people can decide for themselves whether or not Technocracy is what they really want. Here I will show you some of what I have learned about how to accomplish this, and how it will help.

Tools of the PEC

One of the best ideas out there that can help us and thus one of the most essential ones is that of “organizational intelligence”. This refers to the fact that organizations have an “intelligence” much like people do. They can be smart, or stupid. This is why some organizations, like many large corporations, are so very powerful and effective, while others, for instance certain government bureaucracies and many small non-profit groups and companies, can't seem to do anything right. This isn't necessarily a reflection on the combined intelligence of the people comprising these organizations, but rather it has far more to do with the processes, procedures, and policies used by those organizations. Some are good, some are bad. Many are only good under certain circumstances, such as certain business sectors, organization sizes, or economic conditions. Most tactics used by the Roman army would not be very useful for an army today, for instance, nor would the strategies for defending a small jungle nation work well for a large, multi-climate nation. Thus it is in the best interest of any organization, regardless of its size or purpose, to learn as much as it can about those processes and procedures that work best for organizations like it, and in similar circumstances.

This begins the concept of a “learning organization”, one that uses information already available in order to increase its own effectiveness. This is essentially the idea of “why reinvent the wheel?” I've seen too many businesses and other organizations fail because they failed to learn from the example of others, whether it be their mistakes, or their successes.. But being a good learning organization does not stop there. The best will continue to learn, to seek out more information that others devise, and even to devise its own. It must constantly re-examine its methods and activities and compare their success to their goals, because conditions will change (even the growth of the organization), and new challenges will arise. Learning to anticipate and prepare for new problems will also vastly increase your successes.

Thus, just by using this principle alone, a tiny organization or movement with little or no experience or knowledge about how to succeed, even against seemingly impossible odds, can learn and grow into an intelligent, knowledgeable, adaptable, and successful one. Now if the Technocracy movement had only embraced this one idea rather than remaining statically bound to the ways that worked for them in the 1930's, then perhaps it would look very different today.

So is this where we have to begin from, from scratch? Even if it were, we would be off to a good start, and anyone willing to put in the time and effort should be able to get this movement off the ground. But it is not, as we have already begun this research,and found many tools that will help us further develop our plan for educating the public about Technocracy. And each one will help us a great deal. Even still, this is only a drop in the bucket of what is out there. Many organizations are using many ideas to further their own agendas, many that run counter to the public good even. If we can find these, weed out the ones that compromise our ethics, and apply them, each one should allow us to accomplish ever greater amounts towards our goal. If you have a hard time believing this, just look at some of these examples and how they will help:

Katascopic Planning

This is a well tested system used for a long time by engineers, project managers, and others for developing the best plans, ones that are the most effective and efficient. (For an example of others, many successful authors use this method for developing their novels before writing them.) If you are familiar with Technocracy at all you should have come across this concept by now. If not, you can find it in both the TTCD, the Technocracy Study Course, or perhaps the best explanation is in the article entitled: Technocracy Comparative (available online). But we need not wait for the Technate before putting this great system to use. We begin by choosing a goal, such as “To inform the public of North America sufficiently so that they can decide whether to install a Technate.” From there, the process dictates that we devise requirements. These might be “A: That the public be sufficiently educated about Technocracy, B: That a sufficient majority of citizens be so informed, and C: That only citizens of North America be counted towards this total.” These are examples, and may be revised if anyone can suggest better. After these requirements are done, then each of these will need their own requirements devised, and so on down the line. The end result will be a complete set of operational instructions for the entire movement. These instructions will in many cases be so specific that anyone could employ them, letting newcomers to the movement get involved right away. Included will be procedures for evaluating and updating the entire plan, researching new methods, and ensuring that we are using the best methods in accordance with our goal. It will also ensure that we are doing things in the most efficient way possible, requiring the least resources (time, money, people, etc.) for any particular result. This is important for any organization, but absolutely essential for one starting out with as little as we have right now.

So is this something we have to start from scratch as well? Not at all. This plan has already been started, and is currently called the Technocracy Katascopic Project, or TKP. While much useful progress has been made, progress is still going much slower than needed, and we need more people to help out with its development. If you are unsure of whether you will be able to help with it, check out the TKP page on www.technocracy.ca. In essence, it is not much harder than making a shopping list, and once you get the hang of it, comes fairly easily. Having more people on the project not only means that it will get done faster (allowing us to reach our goal faster, and hence have Technocracy sooner), but also will make it better, as having more people with different perspectives, experiences, and knowledge with improve the quality of the entire plan, and thus its effectiveness. No qualifications are needed other than to be able to read and write English.

Efficiency

As stated above, efficiency is one of the most important characteristics of any organization, in particular ones that are small with little resources. This is because we need to have the most results for the least effort and cost in resources. There are many ways to improve our efficiency, and here is a simple one that should nonetheless have a big impact.

It is called the Pyramid of Receptivity. The basic idea is that each person will be different in how receptive they will be to learning about Technocracy. At one extreme of the scale, we have people who will not want to listen to anything about it no matter what you do, and may even become hostile should you even mention it. At the other end are people who already know much of what Technocracy is saying, but have just never encountered the movement, or even the term for it before, and are very willing to learn more and get involved. It goes without saying that the latter types will require far less effort and resources to teach than those at the other end. Thus, it would be the most efficient use of our time and effort to begin by concentrating on those with the highest receptivity first.

But what of this “pyramid”? This is just a rough way of looking at this strategy overall. It assumes, rather conservatively, that the people with the people with the highest receptivity will be the fewest in number, while those with the least will be the most in number. This is represented by a triangle (or pyramid), graded vertically, with those with the highest receptivity occupying the highest level, and those with the most at the bottom. Thus, our strategy is to begin at the top, because those people will be the easiest and require the least effort. Once that is done, we have to move on to the more difficult ones immediately below them in the next level of receptivity down the pyramid. These people will require more effort not only because they are less receptive, but also because they are greater in number (according to this model anyway). However, we will now have the resources and efforts of those gained from teaching the people in the first level, those with the highest receptivity, to help us with that. This should even out the difficulty, more or less. Once that is done, we move on down to the next level, but with the help of the people from the second, and so on down to the bottom.

Now, there are two things that will make things easier than this conservative model suggests. One is that those near the bottom will not likely be the greatest in number, this will most likely lie somewhere in the middle, or just below the middle. This means that once we reach the half-way mark (or just beyond it), the rest should be far easier to do, because our effectiveness per person will rise as we gain supporters. The second is that it has been observed that many social movements gain a great deal more momentum after they reach a certain critical point (often unknown), usually around only a small percent of the population. This is also not accounted for in the Pyramid model and should help things even more significantly.

Now, there are issues still with this process such as being able to identify the receptivity of people, but there are ways of doing this as well. There are already many people involved in many groups with ideas similar to Technocracy, usually encompassing only a part of it. These people will likely be our best bet, but I will leave further details to those interested in knowing more. Overall, this strategy will help maximize our efforts by giving us the greatest results for them.

The Katascopic method, mentioned previously, is another tool to help with efficiency. By planning out our efforts ahead of time, keeping mind efficiency as a “requirement”, automatically makes this a priority, and 'requires' that efficiency be built-in to each step, each procedure, and each activity. For example, when evaluating two or more proposals for a solution to a particular problem, the one with the greatest level of efficiency will be favored, all other things being equal. Other factor may interfere with this, but that is getting into the situational complexities of any kind of planning.

Conclusion

These are but a few examples of the kinds of things that can help our movement not only get off the ground, but become very successful. The proof is in the fact that these ideas were taken from organizations that have been successful in using them, and when one considers that each of those usually only uses one or a couple of these ideas, and that we can learn from and collect as many as possible, we have the potential to become the most successful social movement ever. This is in addition to the fact that we simply do have the facts on our side. People were responsive to Technocracy at one time, and very much so. The only thing that has changed is how people communicate, and Technocracy's decline can be attributed to its inability to evolve with this change. With the right information, we can get it back on track again, and even better than ever, as a learning, intelligent, adaptable, and evolving movement capable of learning from and overcoming any obstacle in its path. The only missing ingredient now is you, and your willingness to put in the time needed to help out. Can we count on you?