Theoriekultur - Wiki
Patterns Of Demonetisation /
Franz Nahrada

 

Personal Introduction

Sociologist by intention, I turned initially (in the seventies) against the structure and practise of social sciences out of disappointment in their lack of practical relevance.

In the aftermath I tried out and was associated with manyfold practical perspectives of social change / politics based on scientific guidance - the holy grail. But it increasingly became obvious that this approach did not work. "Science" can analyze the failure of "what is", but rarely provide the foundations of "what else" without practical examples, inventiveness and creativity.

In the eighties I did work for Apple Computer as consultant and teacher for user programming with HyperCard.

In the eighties, I put together the strands of user programming, communication, information organisatioon and retrieval with a totally different subject, namely the survival of remote and peripheral living places, especially villages. In some loose feedback contact with Corinne and Eric McLuhan I later coined the term "Global Villages" (in plural!!) to describe a possible reality, where local community and global communication and collaboration would create a very powerful virtuous circle. A Global Villages Network is still high on my agenda. So far, the thing that might come closest at least in concept to this project, despite a slightly "stachanovist" mindset, is Open Source Ecology.

In the nineties, I was active in - what you could call - the scene of early Internet adopters and created several events that helped to bring the awareness of the enormous possibilities of networking and communication to the public mind. We did conferences on all aspects of the technolgy, especially on teleworking, education and, over all, digitised culture instead of digital culture (CULTH).

The commercialisation of the Internet brought a big drawback in its use as a meaningful empowering tool, and I went to some personal grievance and seclusion around the year 2000. My main concern in the following years was the creation of living examples of Global Villages. For some years it seemed that we could walk ahead with a center in a Styrian Village named Kirchbach, but the shortsightedness of some local actors and the lack of true cooperation never allowed this center to reach its full potential.

So I now, in 2015, based on all this practical experiences, back to a bit of visionary thoughts. The following sketch is one of the main lines of these thoughts, very much linked to the idea of Global Villages as organically integrated local environments.

(C) Die Autoren changed: 30. April 2016