Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info
Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the DaZiBao (Rio) process Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest since 1995, continually updated ever since. Now available for broader distribution and comments in this blog - enjoy, and come again !
9 Feb 2009 @ 06:50
Berlin is vibrant as ever, yesterday was the opening of Cinema for Peace at the Berlinale and Mikhail Gorbachev was there to remember 20 years ago when the wall came down, and his "new thinking" request. We discussed later at the press conference if we not still have this chism of East-West, Good-Bad, Capitalism-Socialism in our minds, in our ways we think and act. Mikhail Gorbachev called it a human-made TRAP which humanity seems to be doomed to create, but also saw some change in politics and our mindsets ! - and presented his Green-Cross foundation is making differences.
Later we discused engineering blueprints and architectural designs, not for building the other trap-dilemmas, but to more comprehensively connect old and new designs and vision. I showed to some collegues our work on "orientation frames" for education and capacity buiding. see here the discussion, coverage, and picking up of his "new thinking" for nearly 20 years as well.... see: "old" Club of Budapest Viewsletter.
Mikhail Gorbachev told us also how he encountered Reagan, how he made shure they talked on the same level, on "equal footing", and so stared a new era of going beyond "empire" and mono uni-lateralism to a multi-polar and mult-lateral world. Is this a new or old, as a vision or reality...?
Thinking about the Thinking Learning Spaces in the "Age of Engightenment" and workshops on "Out of the Box Thinking" and "Paradigm Mapping" we do I decided to make it back to the glamour and celebrities today.
Last night was the "Gala" at the Konzerthaus, Gendarmenmarkt. Impressive people, but also lots of glammor, glitter, and vanity.
On the ohter hand I was impressed by Ben Kingsley, Hans-Dietrich Gentscher who helped us remember the Berlin Wall comming down 20 years ago and which last not least Michael Gorbatschow played to make a difference to cold war. Ben Kingsley mention in his speech announcing Gorbi, that he had mentioned politician who had only their "sectores" in there mind and that is not making peace, but confrontation and war. Gorbi told us to step out of the box !! Documentation and more can be found here: www.cinemaforpeace.com Please also visit www.9-d.org were I report on how to leave the boxes and avoid traps. First in our thinking and concepts and then through sahring and negotiating transforming it to shared visions and actions.
7 Dec 2008 @ 20:15
I was just reading about an Event in Greenland in July 2009. I was puzzled, when looking for hotels as this is a mayor event needing lots of attention and visitors, searching for locations of International Hotels, that on the worldmap of the Maritim Hotels, there is no Greenland on the map! So no bed- no lodging for the project!? I have seen not only worldmaps with 2 Greenlands before, so I seldom see somethng new, but no map and twice a day yet, without this incredible large Greenland, can it disappear when the ice melts ? So here my 2nd surprise map:
Shoked I was when in my monthly journalists journal, I find another such map, a worldmap without Greenland ! It is done by Journalists without Borders ! an active, conscious organisation, so why should they confuse the world by thinking and displaying it instead of "without boundaries", "without certain islands" ??
My feeling it that this is ignorance and negligence: ... [more] More >
6 Nov 2008 @ 21:48
YES WE CAN - but how do we elect what and when and what does it mean to democracy, how Elections Strategies are Obamas architect David Plouffe here: [link]
This piece is on the 2008 US election strategies in the light of my experience with the election change analysis visualisation efforts (Wahlwanderschaftsanalyse) in Germany in the 80ies. (INFAS at that time and how I was involved with visualizing and mapping).
Maybe start here on how to present complex matters, how that might help to make more transparent complex, dynamic, multi-secoral, multi-level issues and the proportions and consequences connected to it, and how such "insights" are used and misused:
[link] - sld009.htm I need to frame this properly as this will have tremendous effect on our democracies. I would really love to see how far David Plouffe already moved towards what we called situation rooms in the late 8oies, early nineties.
Maybe I should make an old script available:
H. Steffen, H. Benking; Computer Graphics for the Processing, Analysis and Output of Corporate and Market Data, Berlin, CAMP 85 and H. Benking; Präsentation und Technik, INFOGRAFIK 3/87 a good round-up can be found here:
Possibilities and Limitations (Challenges) of Data-Visualisation with Computer Graphics ... - Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Datenpräsentation durch Computergrafik ... , Informatik im Umweltschutz, Springer Verlag, 1987 [link]
The frame of reference? see the Cognitive Panorama and the Cognitive Spaces overlap here: [link]
Please check the link above and come back as I feel I should work on this.
5 Nov 2008 @ 16:58
"CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA" - THE WORLD REACTS [link] I read in Uffington Press Blog. But how about Africa and the rest?
I was pleased to hear Bishop Tutu speak up and was congratulating. MY hope would be to revisit AFRICA BEYOND POVERTY. Lots of work done between 1993 and 1995 with strong support from Bishop Tutu but also the Finish and Dutch governments, and also revisit not just "footprints", but proportions and consequences. More >
3 Nov 2008 @ 22:01
last weekend - exhausting to the very end Berlin groofed around the 2nd VISION SUMMIT at the Berlin Free University.
The theme? Social corporate, corporate environmental, or cultural, economic, historic responsibility,... I lost track. pls. excuse....
Here we report about Mahammed Yunnus, but ALSO Genscher, Geissler, Alt, Spiegel,... (more] ? [link]More >
30 Oct 2008 @ 16:49
this is what I encountered last night:
“Art does not reproduce the visible rather, it makes visible"
Visibility and concreteness in modern times. A theme I care for since 15+ and more years.
How can we make visile and tangible so people and feel and are not dumbed down ?
Concreteness and Subjectivity had always to do with something we cvan hold, moce, see freom diffent directions and distances.
I will not go into humane society or caberculture - but revisit, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, and artist I adore.
Paul Klee last night: “Art does not reproduce the visible rather, it makes visible.”
I am lost and found between Paul Klee “to make visble” and Franz Marc “to see with new eyes”.
so maybe I am an artist as I make visible - more about thsi and the early days of visualisation down below. More >
22 Sep 2008 @ 20:16
Very roughly by rule of the thumb: 2 000 Dollar per capita, for every person in the USA ? or 100 Dollar for each inhabitant on this planet ? - for money given away for bad risks? - and how much alltogether already for such trash funds? 1.5b Dollar?
The problem seems to be not just of grounding and ethics, but the whole thing is intangible and abstract, so we have to imagination, no senses for what is going on and at stake. I write since about 20+ years about scales, proportions, and consequences. I learned it in the field of ecology, where you have slow and rapid change, dynamic interactions across subjects and sectors, and levels.
Milliards or Billions 10 power 9 or 12 - are quite different in German and English. We need 1000 Billions in German words for 1 Billion used in the English language space! Confusing isn't it ? So some people propose to speak about Giga (power9) and Tera (power 12). Why I focus on this many zeros? Beside the examples below I had my kick when someone entered our office and told us about the data stored on all their CDC computers in the world. It was Penta (power 15) ! So now consider all the data stored today in earth-sciences or worse on all GOOGLE servers today !
So who would be educated and experienced to discuss the magnitudes involved here, and can help us get a clue on how to not loose "touch", come to grips, and help us to jointly confront and grapple with the issues related with such "new dimensions" ?
Our leaders and journalist all too often fail - they confuse by factor 100 or 1000 on a daily basis. But how to make a difference, when not to learn, imagine, and communicate in new ways. More >
This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PERSONAL BLOG an ARTISTIC and PERFORMATIVE MEDIA INTERVENTION !
The Log links to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. My favorite stories in the WHOLENESS SEMINAR include:
BELA BANATHY: "GENESIS
OF GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY" and "IVAN HAVEL: Longing for Unified Knowledge" where a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early foundations General Systems, mumbling "this is not my field" or where Ivan M. Havel expresses his search for other kinds of knowledge.
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, bricoleers??? - career designeer, .... Some even "hank" which I disliked or Story which I liked very much !!
I have no single answer as I feel we need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life ! in spectra and fields in multiple embodied spaces.
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!
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9 Feb 2009 @ 06:50
7 Dec 2008 @ 20:15
4 Dec 2008 @ 22:01
2 Dec 2008 @ 22:48
5 Nov 2008 @ 16:58
3 Nov 2008 @ 22:01
30 Oct 2008 @ 16:49
22 Sep 2008 @ 20:16