The Paradigm of Globalism

Technovation 21 (2001) 673687 www.elsevier.
com/locate/technovation
The paradigm of globalism

Borisz Szanto
*
Academic R&D Research Unit, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Muegyetem rkp 9, St. ep. 15, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary Received 17 June 2000; received in revised form 30 September 2000; accepted 24 October 2000
Abstract To bring globalisation, broadly experienced nowadays, to the light of a phenomenological examination, we ought to assume that what we are facing is neither a historical accomplishment nor a kind of global criminal assault. Globalisation as a phenomenon is objectied by the developing human being. This means that in this essay the characteristics and the laws of the process of globalisation are to be derived from the phenomenon of the socio-technical development. The realisation of functional results on a global level and the growing number of globe-size technologies indicate a new paradigm of cognitive activity, an endeavour of innovative intelligence to reach an even higher level of development. On the other hand, the recent trend of socio-technical development, as well as static and dynamic features of the paradigm of globalism, suggests the danger of the crises we may face soon due to the inherent antagonistic contradictions of human development. The phenomenon of globalisation is evidence of the fact that the global functional range of human action has reached a kind of natural barrier, and the error percentage we have been piling up is likely to reach its critical point too. It seems that without a thorough investigation of such Omega-Point phenomena and without the conclusions we ought to arrive at we can hardly understand what the new thing that is bound to start with it is and whether or not we can have any inuence on this process. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Development; Innovation; System
At the beginning of 1960s, the military world powers extended their range of activity to outer space. By this very step, the human being rst spread out his sociotechnical activity over the natural size of his planet. A new global or better-to-say globe-size technology has been created, which can be controlled and governed by a single person. This step signies a verge in human development (Freeman et al., 1992). It is a sign of a newly emerging capability of the human being, the appearing paradigm of globalism, the behavioural pattern of a new kind and its unexpected shaping social impact. What happened is that the old frontiers and accepted denitions and conventions to which we were used, disappeared without our knowing it (Peres, in Gonzales, 1998, p. 17). Born basically rst in a narrow eld of specic application of technology of destruction and global military control, the phenomenon of globalisation of technology
has gradually, but in an accelerating pace, reached the intensity at which the everlasting foundations, frontiers, conventions and systems of social values are shaken to the extent that some of these factors can be expected to be corroded away in the near future. Consequently, the demands placed on the state and political leadership are new and utterly different from everything we have known in the past (Borner, in Gonzales, 1998, p. 5).
1. Innovation, culture, otherness In the last decades of the 20th century, the accelerating rate of socio-technical development already sounded like a boring triviality. At least in the countries engaged in the mad chase of innovation, people were no longer astonished very much when they heard about, or experienced themselves, the accelerating tempo of socio-technical progress. After all, in the 20th century innovation lag (the time period between the idea and the beginning of its exploitation) has shortened from 50 to 23 years; the learning lag or the time period needed for adap-
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tation of a new technology has shrunk in the developed countries from 67 years to 23 months; the scale of goods has increased by orders of magnitude, while the product-life has halved; the diffusion-lag of innovation is also halved every 20 years. Many of us and not exclusively only the scientists have experienced the need to renew our professional knowledge drastically two, three or even more times; lifelong learning is already a must for plenty of us. Thirty to forty years ago the very notion of innovation had a resonance of a certain scholastic snobbism. However, still quite strange, today innovation is a must for leading companies, perceived as a part of their everyday life. At the same time, we are just beginning to truly recognise the fact that the innovative human being is the only creature continuously capable of introducing something new into this world. This late awakening might easily be non-accidental, because if the world is nothing else than a process, and as it is already known all the processes are deteriorating and nite, the human innovative self-perfection, i.e. unfolding of capabilities to their full extent, and therefore the socio-technical evolution might be most probably, if not in its full capacity the only positive process, the direction of which is opposite to that of general decay. Human prevailing culture is based on routine activity, and therefore any innovation is alien to it. General culture or the combined psychological effect exercised by it upon each member of the society can be dened as traditions, conventions, symbols, and agreements shaped in the course of history and widely considered unchangeable. We may add to it man-made objects, taboos, rituals, institutions and institutionalised processes, which themselves also have a certain symbolic signicance. Culture provides individuals with behavioural patterns, endows them with attitudes and perspectives, and creates needs. While, at the same time, it also erects barriers around them. Being a member of his own culture, one is let us say automatically furnished with manners and an attitude, contemplation and social values. Culture is the product of an anthropogenic activity, and therefore is its depository and archive. At the same time, it is its means, and even its constraint. The paradigms, as behavioural patterns and the way of awareness favoured by the majority and therefore forced upon the minority, restrict the activity of individuals to a certain extent. It seems that a conventional culture may even provide goals to human actions by its restrictive effect, as well as a virtual feedback, a kind of a comforting approval or as an alarming disapproval of ones function. For the one who dwells on his social boundaries, culture is what a rail is for the train: a pathnder and conductor of ones behaviour. The development of technology has been hastened a great deal in the 20th century, rst of all by mass education. As always during the human history, whether one
likes it or not, the preparation for war was the main engine of the technological progress in the 20th century as well. However, innovation has been raised to its ageforming signicance and to the nearly absurd present speed of change by the outburst of technological war between the USA and the USSR during the so-called cold war. The race in development of military technology dragged innovation just like a locomotive to heights not justied by any economy or other social activity. Technological war has proved that innovation can be effectively exercised and the tension it always causes can be handled by proper engineering management even in an otherwise antagonistic socio-economic environment. Technology can be sufciently developed despite the otherwise catastrophic economic or cultural underdevelopment of a country. During the last few decades, this method of innovative self-development has already been implemented in the civic area by several underdeveloped countries, and it has successfully elevated them to the very top of well being on the world scale. Culture faces innovation usually with difculties and constraints, just because anything new or unusual is automatically considered different and therefore alien. This means that any difference or otherness is bound to be levelled off by the general uniforming effect of the culture. On the other hand, it is true that nowadays a general culture faces the difference much more often than, for example, at the beginning of the 20th century. In spite of this, genuine new things are still far from being met amiably. Furthermore, the fact is that no original idea is preceded by any real social need that may justify its birth. A drastic innovation is still bound to cause local and even wide social conicts. It is broadly observed nowadays that this is the case even when innovation is lifted up to the rank of strategy, becoming a part of the production of the difference. When the speed of innovation, the tempo of change, is increased to absurdity as can be witnessed in computer technology today, where a component or a programme may become outdated even in a year the tension between the culture anchored to everyday needs and the accelerating sociotechnical development is especially evident. The tension can also be noticed between the social effect of innovation and the place reserved for it by conventional or mainstream political economics. The latter draws its conclusions from the laws of routine production and the customary turnover of goods, the prevailing manipulation by everyday values, from the notion of the market, and not from anything dubiously new, strange and therefore annoying. A genuine innovation does not come into being upon the market or any other economic inuence. It is not an economic prot that innovation is initiated and even motivated by, neither if market is understood as an interface between the supplier and buyer, nor if it is a balance between
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supply and demand. Innovation if it is not just a minor improvement is born by something else that lies outside the range of everyday economy and its notably routine activity. This is why it is not at all easy to create social needs for an unknown new product, to make unconventional goods habitual for the market, and why it is so difcult to make an indigenous innovation dispersed in society. It needs effort, and quite considerable effort. Neither the market model that indicates the balanced total demand of goods, nor the theory of economy based on the exchange of goods, considers innovation the subject of its own. In both cases, there is and rightly suspicion of an information monopoly, since industrial property rights, patent protection or the utilisation of a tentative monopoly in the case of innovation, as well as corporate information, e.g. information monopolised by enterprises, play very crucial roles. Moreover, since the theory of an ideal market was introduced, with the idea of perfectly informed actors as its premise, conventional political economics essentially look upon innovation as an exotic and therefore dangerous phenomenon. The phenomenon of innovation does not follow from the specics of human economic activity based on consumption, therefore, it cannot be derived from market mechanisms or regarded as a product of free market forces. It is not to be considered an automatic result of the well conceived motivation of employees or investment in R&D. On the other hand, from a technological point of view it brings to our homeostatic economic life and the satisfaction of our basic needs the very change and the very source we may capitalise on. Economically, the creation of difference can actually also be regarded as an attempt to get rid of a monopoly people may be accustomed to, with the purpose of bringing another monopoly to life (to become habitual to something is also a kind of monopoly). Throughout the human history, true innovation has always been turning up along with drastic changes of social values, shocks of reorganisation and restructuring, the introduction of new socio-economic restraining mechanisms and excessive shifts in social conditions. A real innovation always represents a new social value unknown before. It is often very different from the common system of values a society is accustomed to. Therefore, its cultural manifestation is the difference itself. In fact, innovation reveals itself outside the conventional culture and the everyday economic market because of socio-technical functioning and self-developing innovative intelligence. It is something different from the routine activity we are accustomed to. On the other hand, in a current accelerated period of socio-technical evolution, innovation itself can, to some extent, be performed routinely, i.e. as an industrial activity or strategically planned chase of innovation. One becomes capable of performing industry-like innovations on a higher level
of self-development and excellency. Just like in the case of art, innovation with its own system of values to some extent can be institutionalised; the dynamic balance of alteration can become steadily maintainable. Let us say production of new values, or creation of the difference, organises itself into a kind of innovative industry. This recently still progressing chase of innovation will most probably move the society further from its more or less static state towards a dynamic, continuously changing and therefore loose, unusually vague but not at all chaotic state of affairs. Friedrich Nietzsche was probably the rst one who predicted at the end of 19th century that the most important cultural operation of the coming New Age would be the revaluation of values (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 9). And indeed, my contemporaries could witness together with me how the otherness from something widely chased and persecuted for a thousand years became a value in the process of globalisation at the end of 20th century. It is not the difference for the sake of a difference, but the multi-colouredness, the mutability, the valued otherness, the excellent difference that is becoming in our days even an indicator of the countries and companies aptness of self-development. However, innovation is not simply produced by this kind of otherness. Both innovation and difference in excellency, as an attempt of revaluation of social values, are just manifestations and unavoidable subordinate phenomena of the accelerated socio-technical development. They are the symptoms of the deep socio-technical processes and their laws. The cyclic revaluation of social values usually starts with their reckoning, the awakening of the value awareness. We are aware of the social system of values when it is stiffened enough and people get used to them. The value can be partly questioned, reconsidered and modied upon individual initiative only when it is adequately consolidated. The demand for change is usually formulated as an individually launched value, and is spread or diffused all over society until it is objectied nally into a new system of values (Groys, 1993). The revaluation of conventional values, the re-consideration of the prevalent social value system, is nowadays quite common, rst of all in case of technical goods and technology. With the exception of architecture and design, which are somehow more connected to art, tradition has no sense in engineering, albeit the model following can be observed in the case of technology too. In the eld of technology, innovation means departure from the social value system and the very model pursued until now. Manifesting a signicant difference, technical change is never considered unethical, as it usually is the case in other conventional segments of culture (Szanto, 1985, p. 212). In the case of technology, the deviation from the former model is conscious and programmed. Innovation is in fact a distinguished mode of func-
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tioning of humanity on its way to socio-technical evolution. In addition, innovation as such is a capability specic only to the human race. The essence of innovation is the intellectual self-realisation and self-development of the individual with the social diffusion of its results, the socio-technical evolution of the society and its feedback upon the individual. It was innovation and not at all the routine labour that made Homo Sapiens a human being. The innovative functioning of socially placed human beings has, anyway, to be linked with the pluralistic system of social values. Therefore, the modication of such a system of values is accompanied by expanding heterogeneity, the increasing role of individuality and the equality in exceptionality. The process of the recent spreading of individualisation does not mean at all the disintegration of the society. For an individual to be an active member of several social nets and to obtain for that indispensable exibility, free decision making is a precondition of proper functioning. This kind of social atomisation is required to make innovative integration concentrate itself faster and faster, with less and less constraints. Yet, individual freedom can really be provided only by a welfare society and by a well functioning market economy, because without the satisfaction of basic (mostly consumption related) needs, the freedom of individual action remains just an abstract notion. A well-being society satises rst of all such basic human rights as food, energy, employment, healthcare, education, safety, dwelling, cultural identity (need to belong to), along with free thinking and development. Basic conditions of modern co-existence are to be added to this list of human rights: transport, communication, information, justice, democracy, sustainable environment, good governance, an acceptable system of values, and art. One can say that the routine-economy or as it is called by the Lausanne School of Economics (Garelli, 1995) the economy of proximity (the opposite to the innovative economy of globality) is to satisfy the basic needs of human beings to the extent that the word need should not even come to the mind. This is the only way the routine-economy can truly serve as a base for future values and their global manifestation.
2. The objective phenomenon of globalisation For many people, globalisation is the newest jeopardy sweeping down upon our necks. For others, this is seemingly a new positive phenomenon of our age, the sign of adulthood of humanity. For me, globalisation is a milestone, the sign of arrival to a natural barrier, a kind of limit with a qualitative shift ahead. Most probably, there is no need to elucidate in detail the often talked about and commonly known features of globalisation. The past 2030 years have changed the
world economy, the global political conditions, as well as the private life of people to the extent that it is just enough to hint at it. Due to globalisation, private life has drastically changed rst of all in welfare countries. People travel often and quite far; they are more active and well informed. They have got a high degree of autonomy, but desire an even higher one as far as decision making and freedom of participation in actions and individual action are concerned. Being well trained, they are seeking new challenges and wish to change their profession after a while, and this kind of change occurs more and more frequently. We ought to add a kind of new feeling to this list of the psychic features of globalisation. The feeling of the destructively rapid development of technology, the menace of technological determinism, the fear of falling behind due to the insufciency of information we may or may not get, anxiety because of the possible loss of relative values, and rst of all the terror of unication. The frequent revaluation of these kind of feelings, as well as the periodic re-formulation of notions attached to this phenomenon of globalisation, are also the psychic needs that are already manifested quite frequently. For many of us, globalisation has a sensation of the globe shrinking to the size of a working place, naturally in the light of human activity. People are ready to ascribe the fact of the hasty diffusion of new technical achievements throughout the globe to the socio-technical development, principally because these achievements are assumed to serve the whole of humanity. In fact, we know of course and this is also one of the features of globalisation that innovation also has its impact upon the market competition. Technological war is also still the feature of todays world in the middle of a never experienced, relatively high fraternity, and broad cooperation. Many of us consider the still bizarre but already widely used notions of co-operative competence or marginalisation of losers as presumptions also clearly attributed to the impact of globalisation. In the same way, we ascribe to the phenomenon of globalisation the symptoms of one-way or mutual dependency of people, rms and even nations. We feel also that a kind of a pressure of adaptation forces us to adapt ourselves to the rapidly changing economical, political and technological environment, and this effect should also be tied to this phenomenon. The fundamentalism of the ideology of techno-globalism may be afliated to the same kind of feelings. New world, new age, new rules of game, interdependence, tight partnership are little by little becoming banal slogans of our days. Although the market theory of classic political economics regards globalisation in most instances as a disaster, and so far it has failed to give a proper explanation for this phenomenon, the type of ambitious battle cry the whole world is the market of mine is heard more and more frequently. The plot of oligarchies against the
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nations of the world, the entanglement of the world by trouble-mongering public nuisance, the new forms of dominance/dependence relations, the new class of oppressors and exploiters, the national values falling victim to the new valueless globallocal conditions, the fragmentation and centrifugalisation this is how the growing sense of uncertainty and incomprehension accompanying the phenomenon of globalisation is manifested today. However, the comprehension of the phenomenon of globalisation is not at all made easier by true but seemingly supercial and external signs such as transparent state boarders, spreading democracy, connecting worldnet computers, 40-second-long run of information between stock exchanges in New York and Tokyo, unlimited market expansion, global economy and wealth distribution, asymmetric interdependency. Last but not least, the spasmic seeking of self-identity many of us feel to be forced to is supposed to be ascribed to globalisation as well. The pattern of virtual globalism has been achieved by intellectuals initially in the cognitive sphere, and rst of all in science. This paradigm of global cognitive functioning was later upgraded to the strategic socio-technical level and obtained its evolutionary dynamic and global social pattern. To place globalisation under the magnifying glass of phenomenological investigation, we ought to presuppose that we are not simply facing a kind of a technological or historical achievement, the side effect of free worldwide trade or a plot of oligarchies, the assault of dark forces of globalisation, which place themselves above the nations. Globalisation is a phenomenon objectied by the development of human beings, the result of development (Peres, in Gonzales, 1998, p. 17). On the other hand, it means that the phenomenon of globalisation, the laws and regularities characteristic of this phenomenon, should be deduced and conceived from the phenomenon of development. 2.1. What is social development? If society is taken as a conglomeration of actors, which changes according to the free will and interactions of its actors, as a kind of chaos with its Brownian movement and law of randomisation, no development can be considered an objective process. In a case like this, any change of aggregation should be taken as purely accidental, and therefore no regularity and consistency can be attached to the row of such changes. Consequently, globalisation in this sense cannot be anything else than either random and temporary occurrences of globe-size deliberate actions like monetarism, together with social injustice and other outcomes it causes, or a conspiracy of let us say multinational corporations. Apart from the fact that this kind of a random change cannot really be examined as a process of development,
one may note that what in both cases is habitually understood as social progress is nothing other than economic growth. The contemporary views mostly speak about economic globalisation. Overwhelmingly, it is usually taken for granted that the objectivity of social reality is provided by economy. The consumption features of our physiology do not only assign a character of determination to the bigger chunk of the human activity if not to the whole, but also constitute the very base of our world and reality viewing. We live for economy; we think and talk about economy, and anything we bring about can and should be expressed in the idioms of economy. The terminology we normally use is production, satisfaction of needs, value, distribution, consumption, money, ownership, power (hegemony), etc. There is no end to declarations like these: everybody knows that development means the growing might of our economy; economy is based on the knowledge we produce; knowledge is commodity; (re)production of knowledge; knowledge industry governed by market; return of R&D investment; value-production by R&D and maximum innovation for protable progress, etc. The regularities we observe are almost entirely attached to the notions of ownership and authority. Societys social structure is still widely understood to be a property and power related layer-cake (feudalism, capitalism, socialism) made of classes (groups categorised by their possessions and their consumption ability); the engine of development is the redistribution of resources (symbolic equivalent of assets); economic development signies the accumulation of assets, and social development indicates the alteration of the wealth structure. According to the conventional and still dominant system of social values, it is economic growth that should be reckoned as development. The common system of values binds our value-judgement mostly to the consumption, the self-preservation and a sustainable rate and endurable magnitude of change. Our economic vocabulary convinces many of us that knowledge can be produced; however, it is nonsense. It is often taken for granted by economy minded people that science is something that should repay itself, justied by the prot it is expected to provide. The only measurement of development they recognise is a bank account. However, by the end of the second millennium, a different kind of development has slowly gained its social value in advanced countries. The value of self-development may still be driven to the corners of culture, to a certain extent backed off to education, and chiey prevails in intellectual activity, yet it is already and unquestionably the leading algorithm of the corporative innovation strategy. Innovation is not at all just R&D. It is more a method of self-development and through the application of innovation strategy a method for the development of market competitiveness. By the end of
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the millennium, innovation has reached the level of an industrial scale of application. It is quite feasible that this kind of development is probably the only capacity of self-transformation that really makes the difference between a contemporary human being and his predecessors. Let us now look deeper into the structure of the process of development. The process of social development just as any other kind of development principally incorporates two characteristic algorithms of human activity: the algorithm of change (self-sustenance and selfimprovement or the process as such), the algorithm of the change of the change (innovative self-perfection by unfolding of a new capability or modication of the process of change). Therefore, the process of social development has little to do with the change due to the accidental selection, with the shift from simple patterns to more complex ones, or even with purely the maintenance of vital conditions. It is the adaptive alteration, as well as the innovative self-perfection or self-development, of innovative intelligence that are to be taken as the essence of sociotechnical development. Social development can be described in this sense as a cognitive evolution (Szanto, 1995, p. 12). However, a society-wide cognitive evolution cannot even be imagined without mass education and the expansion of scientic activity, which should naturally be based on the appropriate satisfaction of needs and the creation of preconditions, i.e. on an adequately developed economy, in an optimal case: a well-being society. Economy in this connotation should be understood as a human activity devoted mostly to the dynamic selfsustenance and self-improvement of human beings and their society or to the satisfaction of needs of consumption, and partly to self-perfection. I said partly, because the algorithm of self-sustenance however dynamic it is should be kept constant and reliable enough to keep the vital processes going on. On the other hand, it should be self-improving to the extent that the process could adjust itself to the changing environment. Let us suppose our environment does not change at all. (This is absolutely out of the question, since living creatures are in constant interaction with the environment and therefore always change their surroundings). In this case, social development would mean an increase in the rate of satisfaction of needs, i.e. a linear growth of production. A changeful environment forces the socio-technical activity to adapt itself to the changes it encounters, to develop the capabilities that are indispensable for functioning among ever newly formed circumstances. Economy is therefore a process of quantitative changes and, to some extent, the qualitative modication
of this process. Since any modication of the process disturbs and therefore puts the postulate of reliable supply of consumer goods into jeopardy, the change should be limited. As far as economic activity is concerned, conventional socio-technical development means a qualitative change kept within the limits of a certain band. A band-type regulation indicates that socio-technical activity that does not reach a certain minimum, is to be stopped or newly recommenced. Those who want to keep the pace should develop themselves (obtain new abilities and the best means available to perform them as required), i.e. to adapt to the capacities achieved by others. Those who are inclined to acquire more faculties than needed by market are simply deprived of resources for their realisation. The more developed the economy is, the wider is its band of regulation. The width of the band indicates the evolutionary level of the economic development the entrepreneur is forced to adapt himself to. A bunch of goal-oriented socio-economic mechanisms, like regulations, laws, symbols, conventions, the system of social values, etc., rail such adaptive or conventional developments. This is what makes the otherwise non-linear human activity routine and linear within the band. Adaptive self-development is measurable, calculable and predictable. Its anticipated limited change, its approximate constancy makes the application of money and other symbols possible. Parameters of the adaptive development can be, besides GDP, productivity, scale of goods, turnover, pricehyperbole, etc., as well as capacity of self-development and adaptational or learning lag. On the other hand, innovation or introduction of something entirely new and unexpected the algorithm of the change of the process of change is a non-linear act of unpredictable consequences. It cannot be planned, and from the point of view of the conventional (economic) social activity innovation is usually expensive, risky, disturbing, destabilising and pregnant with conicts (Szanto, 1985). In return, innovation creates a new, frequently unknown faculty, which introduces a value different from the customary system of social values. In this respect, innovation is rst of all the way of individual self-perfection, the rise of the personal problem-solving ability, and due to its societal diffusion may become routine economic activity and induce considerable changes in society. The increasing problemsolving ability may heighten the productivity and competitiveness of companies. Properly institutionalised socio-economic mechanisms, like risk capital, governmental assistance, etc. and a favourable social atmosphere help to create advantageous conditions for innovation, making it a real engine of development. This is how the innovative industry of new values came into being in the last 20 years.
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2.2. How to model the process of development? Im Anfang war die Tat! (Faust, Goethe) To describe the phenomenon of development, rst we need to choose the model we can start our theoretical investigation from. Such an initiative model will help to place the phenomena of development, globality, innovation and otherness on a common conceptual platform. It must also be mentioned that the way we conceive reality always means the application of a model, a mode of antecedent structuring. Therefore, we had better do it consciously. Departing from the principle of the indivisible wholeness of the world, we may immediately notice that whatever initiative model we select, it describes the reality of the same Wholeness. Therefore, the models should be regarded coequal and capable of outlining each other. We have known for nearly 150 years from the postulate of Clausius on the deterministic propagation of heat, widely known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that the world is not an order of Aristotelian things, but rather a process, and as such like all the processes of this world nite. The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not leave any doubt regarding the regressive character of the general and universal process of development and its transient outlook. The [Material & Soul] model we traditionally use for the description of the one-world reality can hardly be regarded as appropriate in this respect. It is obviously a static model, and therefore its inert character does not allow us to make even a hint at any process of development. There can be only two ways of change allowed in this case: random selection caused by accidental alteration and/or by natural elimination or intervention from outside. Both ways exclude the principle of inherent change and in fact essentially recognise due to the static character of the model we use only changes upon external interference. The historically forged dichotomy of this conventional descriptive model of the world-reality the mostly dogmatic and one-sided interpretation of these two principally inseparable components both by materialism and idealism does not make it possible to bring to light development as a phenomenon either. In principle, none of its components can even be dened without each other. Of course, the [Material & Soul] model I use the symbol & to express the Wholeness of the phenomenon this model is supposed to represent cannot be just dropped either, since it is as legitimate as any other model (depending on what we choose it for). I do not exclude that to express one side of the model by the other one, to originate let us say the right side from the left one, might even be an advantageous endeavour. I would just allow myself to suppose that there can be more effective ways of cognition.
[Material & Energy & Information] or the so-called Zwick-model of reality in our case also does not seem advisable to be too much relied upon, since this model is also static in its character. However, innovation (the change of change) can certainly be interpreted as the generation of surplus information (Szanto, 1985). What more we get from this model as compared to the previous one is essentially the variable of information. It states that the parameter of information is as appropriate in its own right to describe and compose reality as the other two. The world consists of information just as it contains material and energy. What any living creature or we consume is material, energy and information as well. Information here means not only data (memory), but programs (algorithms of events) and their boundary conditions too. On the other hand, the Functional System model (Anohin 1978, 1979, 1980; Szanto, 1990) indicates the act of the change itself, and therefore is quite suitable for the description of the process of development. I have to admit again that the previous two initiative models are contrived on the premise of a perpetual, not very much alternating world; its evolution regarded as the stochastic resultant of random changes. In the case of the third dynamic version, we model the functioning act of the change itself, postulating that the world is the process of permanent changes, its evolution is to be regarded as the change of the change. Instead of trying to explain whatever dynamism we may expect or by chance experience from static objects we see in front of us, in the case of the third or functional model we explain the static appearance from the phenomenon of activity taken as the premise of our theoretical investigation (Szanto, 1995). Activity or acting is taken as a very basic characteristic feature of the universe we observe. Matching the conventional [Material & Soul] model with the model of the Functional System we obtain its static symbolic representation as [P&CA], a non-linear system with P as the passive component, A as the active component and C as the factor of its constraint. Taking a human being for A, his means for P, and the restrictive effect of culture, laws, socio-economic mechanisms, etc., for C, we obtain the model of the socio-technical action or technology, as we usually call it. First, this model means that neither the passive nor the active components can be dened without each other. The Functional System cannot simply be mixed up from the different elements as vegetable soup; it is not in any respect the effect of the co-operation of the components either. In fact, the Functional System cannot even be disjoined without loosing its system character, since each of its parts is dened by all the others. This nature of the indivisible Wholeness is expressed by the sign &, as mentioned already. I have to admit that this basic property of the system, the very basic teleological phenomenon of the world, which always comes into being when any
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action is to be performed, is still often misunderstood or ignored. It is easy to notice that the Functional System of [Human Being & his Means] type (actually, this is the very essence of the notion of technology, as such) having in it two passive determinants: a passive performing factor (Means) as well as a constituent of socioeconomic constraint (C) imposed on the individual action by the human society is bound to create a limit for its own functioning. Passiveness is bound to apply breaks upon activity. Moreover, the relative passiveness causes activity to organise itself into a functional task force. From our point of view it is all the same whether the systems gap brings about passiveness against activity, the postulate we have started from, or passiveness creates the gap: anyhow the rate of passiveness can only enlarge. This means that the Functional System cannot be an entirely and perfectly closed system, due to the passiveness of its inner elements. Nevertheless, the semiclosed Functional System should be nite in its character. Consequently, not only the action is bound to be performed in steps, but also any sequence of such step-actions is conned to end. This fact indicates that in a world where operation or action is to be accompanied by built-in constraints and slowing factors, a non-linear activity cannot be anything other than periodic, slashed into events, and cyclic in its constitution. The systems periodicity and its phasesuccession bridge the controversy between the homeostasis of the systemic act or performance of a Functional System and therefore the very alteration of action. The alteration manifests itself not within the system, but between its phases. According to the model of the Functional System (FS), the process of its development is ragged into its functional phases, consequently to periods of concrete step-actions or events. Therefore, the FS model also mirrors the natural cyclicity of real functional processes. The action can be represented by a development of its sub-acts FS0FS1FS2FSn a sequence of system phases, where each phase means a concrete event of action. Each phase or each subact of change operates in a homeostatic mode. The sequence of phases means rhythmic succession of events, systems of step-acts periodically disintegrating and mobilising themselves again and again. In respect of a single process of sub-action, the FS is nothing else other than the algorithm of change. In addition, as the algorithm of change, it is of an invariant structure, but with the capability of self-perfection. Just as the entire Universe, it is a self-governed process. In another respect of periodic alteration, the Functional System is the subject and performer of changes, a gatherer of aptness, a carrier or vehicle of capabilities, i.e. a substance in its
Aristotelian meaning (the subject of all alterations and the vehicle of faculties Aristoteles, 1992). In its functional succession, each phase of action is a continuance and the consequence of the previous phases. It is their inheritor, the guided performer of its own phase-program, and a guiding model for the next phase as well. As a system, each phase receives input information emitted by the previous phase and other external sources and builds its action upon it. This means that the phases of the Functional System process input information and generate output or additional information. Applying the [A&E&I] model, we may call the Functional System a generator of Information. Let us immediately note that this information may easily mean a kind of error or a wrong input for the next system phase. Error is a natural part of our world, and this is why the Functional System should be of a self-restoring, selfperfecting character. The system inherits all the activity limiting factors compiled in the past, and this burden of inertia connes its activity like barriers or rails: memory piled up during previous phases; the steady effect of unalterable means, xed institutions, unchangeable conventions, accustomed paradigms, etc. Each subsequent act of the functioning therefore requires a new specic capability, from the new phase of the system, to bridge the new contradiction, the contradiction between activity and the constantly growing inactivity, between self-development and self-preservation. In each case, it has to reach an optimal concentration big enough to accomplish the alteration in spite of the inertia and error accumulated during all the previous phases but manifesting themselves as a new contradiction now. Consequently, whereas the percentage of error can only grow, the concentration rate has to increase from phase to phase along the axis of development up to its inevitable limit, the point of Omega (Teilhard de Chardin, 1980). The algorithm of the functional FSx system means the extension of the radius of action towards its optimal rx range, to allow the system capable enough to reach its Rx optimal phase result to mobilise itself from the Ax active and the Px passive components. Let us consider the FS0 functional system, the very rst system the sequence of phases starts from. It can be observed that each further FSx means a system capable of a specic alteration, since it is mobilised with a different input, a distinct moulding of potential components, requiring a different action range and a bigger effort to deal with the altered preconditions (accumulated experience, more rigid environment, etc.). In spite of these differences, the FSx system remains always the phase, derived from FS0, a non-linear totality with essentially the same constitution but a changing capability. Any process can be modelled as a sequence of the functional phases, and therefore any functional result can be regarded as the
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formation regulated or programmed by previous phases of action. 3. The features of globalisation To illustrate the essential part of the paradigm of globalism, let us take as an example a research team of a multinational corporation. Let us suppose that one member of the team works on the very same task in the USA, another one in Great Britain, and the third one in New Zealand. As far as the formulation of their common problem and joint efforts to solve it are concerned, they form a single task unit, an entity, and an isolated functional system. A single member is able to look through the whole system and keep in hand its complex technology. The problem the team is striving to solve is outlined and determined together, the vision of the future is also elucidated jointly, and their result can only be their common achievement. They are not worth much without each other. Their aptness is their aggregate faculty. This is why they constantly keep in contact, thanks to modern technical devices and global services they have access to. Let us observe also that it is not their peculiarity, but the global range of their action that makes their globalism a paradigm and the process of globalisation a phenomenon. The socio-technical functioning, which can be described by the model of the Functional System (Szanto, 1990, p. 146), is static in its parameters if we select those that are connected to the concrete phase or a single act of functioning; and it is dynamic, if they are the parameters of a sequence of phases. Let us divide the system parameters into two parts: static and dynamic features. The features of a global Functional System do not differ from those of any other socio-technical func tional system (Szanto, 1990). Consequently, globalisation as the manifestation of a globe-size Functional System can be described by its parameters, and the direction of their change will indicate the trend we should expect. 3.1. Static features of globalisation The change is carried out by a single sub-action or phase of the system (a team and its means) with its goal achieved and results of functioning realised. With the result attained, the system brings about a dual effect: it improves its own capability or acquires a new aptness, as well as producing changes in its environment. The global socio-technical functioning instigates global and not local changes in capabilities and environmental transformations. Self-preservation is a property of each teleological1
Teleology (in vitalist philosophy) is the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.
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system-phase. Homeostasis2 in the case of such a system means a self-generating and self-sustaining process of a goal-oriented act of change, striving for stability within its in-phase interval. The system as a process of a single purpose driven sub-action constitutes an entity that operates as a non-linear totality in the mode of temporary homeostasis with an abundance of feedback loops. The system adjusts itself by inner correlation at the beginning of each phase-act to its environment and to the prospective (imaginary) result (Anohin, 1978, p. 253). It is the realised result that tells us whether it serves only the routine process of self-preservation of the system, or represents a signicant change, i.e. an innovation. The most interesting and important feature of the Functional System is its consciousness, the capacity to realise its own potential capabilities intently, i.e. to develop itself. Realisation of each functional result on a global level indicates a self-governed conscious action of human beings, the new paradigm made possible by modern technical means, a new behavioural pattern of mostly cognitive activities, an endeavour to reach a higher level of innovative intelligence, as well as an attempt to alter the manmade world. Its Earth-wide information hunger (the team works as a scanner of benecial information), its inner information processing, and its generation of additional information depend on the properties of the system and on its level of development. The development of the Functional System means, rst of all, the rise of its problem-setting and problem-solving abilities, i.e. the cognitive evolution (Szanto, 1990, p. 262). Information hunger, processing and generation of information, as well as the cognitive level of the problemsolving ability are to grow exponentially all over the globalising world. At the same time, the rapidly growing generation of the information is to force functioning units to spend more and more time, energy, money, etc. processing mountains of information with the purpose of obtaining the useful bit of it. The system separates itself from its environment. The members of the team keep in touch more with each other and their worldwide network chiey inside multinational corporations, rather than with the universities and research laboratories of their own coun try (OMFB, Mosonine, 1997). Neither state-borders, nor governments and the local culture of their own environment are of any concern for those engaged in a goal-oriented act of global functioning. Thanks to the autonomy of its self-correction while
2 Homeostasis is the tendency of a system (for example, the physiological system) to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts (Webster Dictionary) to any situation or stimulus tending to disturb its normal condition or function.
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in the state of decision compulsion, each single phase of the system keeps its functioning steadily goal-oriented. On a global level the inner correlation of the goal-oriented, autonomous corporative organisations, which strive for stability in a more and more changeful environment and simultaneously are under the pressure of decision making, will be enhanced by a rapidly ourishing abundance of feedback facilities with no concern of local regulations other than their own. The pursuit of a common self-dened goal means a strong motivation for a team. It means that the drive and determination for projected results are common features, especially when supported by effective socio-economic mechanisms and the successful experience of the past. At the same time, the system itself is in an unrelenting uncertainty. In spite of its goal-orientation, it is undetermined, because there are so many ways ahead leading towards the projected result. Therefore, its functioning only partly follows the logic of causality. The day-by-day growing uncertainty is also the outcome of non-linear functioning, but at the same time, it is accompanied by a sense of the dynamic condence of the right direction of development. With its result achieved, the system, as a sub-action, disbands itself into its elements, to mobilise itself again at the next phase or act with the inner goal to realise its forthcoming projected result. There is no need for any command or stimulation. New mobilisation means a new effort of will-power and new concentration to subdue the barrier in front of its goal; to bridge the contradiction created by the problem setting itself. Each re-mobilisation goes with scanning of the potentially selectable components and means within the reach of the system. The number of the would-be components and means is to always exceed the number of those actually chosen. I would call this phenomenon the law of the overstretched range of action. The Functional Environment of an FS is far from meaning just surroundings. It is an entirety of potential and actually functioning systems organised into a hierarchy, like the body of a living creature around its inner system of let us say food digestion. The Functional Environment (FE) means an interaction between the FS and its environment. The FS initiates the alternation of the FE by the results of its activity disposed into it. The FE is to be inevitably alternated by the functional activity it hosts. For us, this manifestation of the natural laws of functioning is so painful nowadays that I repeat it in a plain form: it is our own activity that spoils our environment. We cannot stop or alter this tendency. The only thing we are able to do is to compensate the effect of actions
by conscious and carefully designed counter-interventions, and their effect, and their The FE adjusts the alternation of the FS activity if the system does not correlate with the values of its hierarchy, i.e. keeps it band regulated. The living organism is not only a FE for its systems; the body also constitutes a hierarchy with a power to force any of its inner Functional Systems to alter their structure or even terminate its activity, if needed. This power is obtained by various unifying and harmonising inner ows of the organism, like blood and other liquid circulation, the nervous system, etc. Our mind is a systemic property with the ability to perform an analysis, i.e. to compare inner and outer signals, experiences and perspectives; the impact of the hierarchy and that of the systems functional environment. The capacity of mind makes a unifying centralised control also the feature of an organism. The same stands for institutions, companies and other organisations. An organisation is just like a hierarchical living organism is for its functional units, and if the unit stretches its range of activity over the globe, the organism of a company is also to extend itself and include the eld of its action into its integration. Corporative organisations are to follow their own globalising inner functional systems. Go global is already a must for them. The system components (participants, means) correspond to each other in values; more precisely, each one of them is worth what it provides. Together they perceive a kind of team spirit. They belong not to each other but rather to the team as a whole. It is not a part-to-part relationship, but rather the whole-to-part one that prevails among them. The global network of such teams forms naturally without the centreperiphery interrelation, so habitual in conventional companies. The principle of the highest number of degrees of freedom or the postulate of the lowest level of individual restraints applied to the potential components of the system and to the system itself does not contradict with the implementation of planning, for which a proper (acting only when indispensable) centralistic hierarchical structure is certainly required. It is even a precondition of the systems more rapid integration, and therefore a prerequisite of the accelerating development. A company controls and guides its socio-technical functioning systems via its organisational hierarchy, trying to assist them by forging a favourable functional environment and increasing their self-reliance. The state on its own side controls and guides its enterprises, guarding their independence and looking for infrastructure. Regional unions are going to watch and inuence their states. With the spreading of the paradigm of global functioning, multi-national, multi-
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professional, multiple and multi-competent organisations are bound to follow this more and more diversifying process. Their structure sheds off its rigidity more and more, allowing their potential parts to reach higher degrees of autonomy of functioning, and modernising inner integrating ows of information, assets, goods, etc. Paradoxically, this freedom makes the hierarchical control and guidance much more effective, despite the organisational framework becoming less and less stiff. The state, on the other hand, is going to lose its strict control over such organisations, and, at the same time, tries to keep its functions of regional control and guidance unrufed. To bring a promising but, in fact, unlikely and even at its beginning alien event of innovation into its accomplishment, the environment of a FS has to be much more abundant, multi-coloured and, potentially rich enough to satisfy the needs any actual phase-act may have (a human eye uses, for example, 4000 neurones from 25,000 available). The FE ought to offer to each mobilising system many more possibilities than it really can make use of. This is the only way in this world to overwhelm the inuence of the growing percentage of error. The ever-developing socio-technical Functional System makes the stock of potential components grow even faster. This means that the drawing up capacity of potential components, their number of freedom degrees, and their value of distinction should grow faster than the range of functioning, at least by an order of magnitude. I would call it the law of functional environmental redundancy or the phenomenon of exceeding expansion of multi-coloured functional global environment.
3.2. Dynamic features of globalisation The problem setting and problem solving socio-technical system periodically mobilises itself, progressing from phase to phase, from result to result, at each phase selecting a solution from various alternatives. Just as the process of walking cannot be judged from a single step, this cyclical progression of functioning and its dynamic alteration can only be described by the state-sequence, as a single progressing action divided into a succession of act-steps. Important changes on the global scale can be forecasted only on the basis of both static and dynamic features, taking into account the alternatives of development of the proceeding actions. The paradigm of globalism is already ultimately with us. The trend of its development can be and should be inuenced, depending on our understanding of the process and the strategy we may have. Manifesting itself in phase-series, the system as a plane in the air keeps the dynamic equilibrium of
its proceeding stable. We may call it a progression, providing the system is able to increase its capabilities from phase to phase. Otherwise, its progression may turn into regression, the loss of its aptness. (In this case, the Stagnation as such cannot be dened and the Development is understood as change of aptitude.) Generally, socio-technical regression or determined backsliding goes with a desperate search for a niche, drifting toward a narrower and narrower specialisation, capacity declining, staff and properties shrinking, markets constricting, horizon of decision shortening, number of the decision alternatives diminishing, disability to cope with changes growing, partners lost. The system in regression is slowly falling into extreme autarchy, dysfunctioning and fatal disintegration. Globalisation is not at all a paraphrase of the progress. With the paradigm of globalism becoming general, both progression and retrogression are going to occur on the global level too. The consequences of a globe-size regression are unknown for the time being, but their effect is going to be very much global as well. The degree of autonomy or as I would prefer to call it the number of the degrees of freedom to act is obviously increasing on individual as well as on social levels. One is inclined to judge this fact as an achievement of our triumphant civilisation. As far as my opinion is concerned, the growing number of individual freedom degrees indicates rather a necessity to counterbalance the individuals diminishing ability to realise his potential capabilities by the inner impulse of self-realisation. Paradoxically, the ability of the human being to realise his inner faculties needs more and more concentration, more and more favourable socio-technical conditions. One looks nowadays for more and more challenges because one needs unfavourable, i.e. a mobilising situation to trigger the realisation of his latent talents, to try himself, to ght his own growing individual inertia towards change and development. The most important and maybe the less perceptible feature of dynamic development is the aptness and competence obtained on a corporative level. This is, actually, what we are to consider as progression. The process of globalisation just goes through us and alters our capacities. The trend of their progression or regression is going to be increasingly a matter of the highest concern on a global level. The incredible race in the eld of innovation has already resulted in the fact that the notions of something new and a truly creative idea have disassociated from each other. Nowadays, innovation is often taken as a purpose in itself. This haste has already divided companies roughly into three groups on a global level too. The rst group is formed by the most advanced rms, usually spin-offs of military research, armed
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with high-tech electronics. This is the avant-garde, which rst reached the level of globalisation and achieved the new paradigm of globalism. Both dynamism and globalism of the avant-garde are effectuated by the high rate of its self-development, the progression of its problem-setting and problem-solving abilities, its cognitive evolution. The second echelon is going to form itself soon from rms armed by the same globe-size technology but able only to follow the avant-garde. They are good enough to adapt innovative results of others but have not yet reached the higher level of innovative intelligence and strategy of self-development. On the other hand, the chunk of economic benets this echelon is going to harvest is at least as big if not bigger as that of the avantgarde. In economic terms, they earn relatively far the most benets with much less effort, while staying at the lower stage of cognitive development. It is just like when higher education is spreading in the society with the highest level getting wider and higher. Its economic output can be enjoyed by the whole society, albeit the populations average level of education remains almost the same, yet with a greatly improving standard of living and better social conditions. The third group is the huge camp of those who just tail away. For the time being, this group seems to marginalise and lets itself drift along with the events as they come. However, with the same globe-size technology in their hands, their local marginalisation is going to become global. Every one of us is going to have their unsolved problems, their boring lack of aptitude and their change resisting fundamentalism in front of our own door all around the globe. In our worldwide speedy innovative pattern of development, permanent progressive self-perfection can only be accomplished by means of an offensive strategy. A less ambitious strategy may not be good enough even for follow-up tactics, and can easily be outvalued by other progressing systems. In spite of its ever-indeterministic phase-acts, a developed Functional System is directed by its strategic ideals. Based on a variety of scenarios, this strategy means the selection and planning of long range ways of selfdevelopment. Strategic planning of an offensive character is going to spread all over the world. One can stay in avant-garde, going global only by permanent innovation, relentlessly maintaining ones selfdevelopment.
4. Further outcomes of globalisation The paradigm of globalism makes the organisational, state, legal, monetary and other institutionalised boundaries transparent for socio-technical functioning. Con-
ventions, traditions, social systems of values and different cultures usually cement these borders. It is the technical solution only, which is normally free of the impact of conventions and traditions. Innovations and the paradigm of globalism just go through institutionalised barriers with almost no difculties at all. Therefore, innovation frequently means a kind of provocation for old institutions and their system of values all around the world. It creates a contradiction between the valued practice adjudged unchangeable and an attempt at its alteration, between the good old value and the very new or future-value innovation seems to represent. The day-by-day practice of self-realisation and selfdevelopment, the everlasting self-justication, is going to become a necessity in the near future all over the world. Amid the more and more frequent contradictions and conicts, in the midst of permanent crises, selfevaluation and, correspondingly, the continuous, voluntary so far, re-evaluations of the social system of values are going to advance into an essential common paradigm of behaviour. This would by no means completely invalidate the ever-existing system of social values and lead to anarchy. I presume it would rather induce the shaping of a new system of dynamic values oriented towards the ideal of development. Anyhow, globalisation is going to institute a new system of social values, this time on the global level. However, it threatens to skip over, to disregard only that local otherness which cannot represent a vital value. A valuable difference, the excellence, is going to be much in demand, since this is the very base of the development, the process of gathering of newer and newer capabilities. Multinational corporations today prefer to have research network and development facilities based on local values and capabilities, rather than a centralised R&D base. To some extent, it may indeed lead to the loss of national R&D values, but the real otherness placed hierarchically above the local values by globalisation will rather obtain a sharp contrast and become more integrative. The Functional Systems of a global size just like all natural entities organise themselves into a hierarchy. On the other hand, striving for decentralisation in their vicinities, they do not tolerate any impact of external hierarchies and do not join other hierarchies. We are to expect centralistic corporative hierarchies increasing in number all over the globe. This denitely requires maintenance of the worldwide democracy and its sophisticated institutions. Democracy nowadays indicates let alone the high degree of autonomy of the individual an articially maintained co-existence of wandering centralistic hierarchies. Therefore, democracy cannot be a consequence either of decentralisation, or of the functional socio-technical development. Democracy is not just the way to let a thousand owers ourish, the declaration and manifes-
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tation of social pluralism. Nature knows only the centralistic hierarchy, and does not know democracy as a kind of co-operative hierarchy. The symbiosis (mutualism, parasitism) it uses cannot be considered as hierarchy. Democracy is a human invention, designed to let manyfoldness prosper, to give the oor to values other than those prevailing here and now. Therefore, democracy is rst of all an institutionalised negation of the ever-dominant social system of values. Meanwhile, centralistic hierarchies of multinational corporations spread their prevalence over the entire planet. It is a peculiarity of globalisation that a single person, hierarchically well placed, for example, in a multinational rm, is able to govern even technology of a global range. And it is also its trait that for the sake of a greater exibility, the decision making and co-ordinating junctions or focal points arrange themselves into a network, which is democratic by its mechanism but is anytime able to take if needed centralistic decisions. We are eyewitnesses of the fragmentation of knowledge (professional information) and the intensication of specialisation, which looks like a process approaching its own Omega Point,3 the knowledge next to nothing. The deeper the professional knowledge is, the higher the probability that its bearer will t higher and higher requirements of a mobilising world-team. Expertise, as a capability and as an otherness, should be different and characteristic enough to be noticed and properly selected with the purpose to intensify the functional development. This means, intensive integration is to be accompanied by a deepening fragmentation. Otherwise, the more and more forceful concentration cannot be achieved. As a paradoxical consequence, we have nowadays reached a situation, when exaggerating a bit we are not to expect from a physician, who has passed all the required professional examinations and specialised in right earlobe decease, to be able to see an indivisible individual being his patient. Narrowing professionalism may make broad intelligence outworned. The adaptation pressure, the effect of globalisation applied upon local systems, forcing them to increase the level of the potential services of their functional environment, ruthlessly whirl off all those, who fall behind. Those who are not characteristic enough and do not hold high respect for the signicant otherness, those without values, are going to be thrown to the periphery of society. As a counter reaction, an aspiration to
Omega Point is the last of any series. The Point of Omega of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and an outstanding philosopher of the 20th Century, is a natural limit of Human and the World development. In the case of globalisation the Point of Omega means an inaction point of curvature of the process of Human development, a change from linear or exponential growth to the S-curve of saturation, a sign that the very logic of the process has changed.
belong somewhere, it does not matter where type, the longing for solidarity and unity is spreading all over the globe. This kind of desire reanimates the inclinations towards a clan, gang, family, rm, ock, party, nation or simply any kind of gathering. This opens an escape route for masses terrorised by the psychic pressure of globalisation they feel, and this is what drives them into aggressiveness. Plenty of people try to escape from the threat of change to its negation and wrap themselves up in fundamentalism. And even more of them are those who just stockpile their feeling of oppression and hate, and can hardly wait for the rst signal to swoop down on otherness, the very cause of all the troubles they have. The external conducting mechanisms are created by the systems themselves. More precisely, the results of their functioning, deposited and remaining in a functional environment, solidify themselves into steady socio-economic mechanisms, as organisations, conventions, means, symbols, legal regulations, etc. The corporative functional results and solutions form the institutional patterns of the future worldwide socio-economic mechanisms. The new structures gradually become institutionalised, the new socio-economic mechanisms become crystallised on the global or macro-level of society as new global path-conducting and steering mechanisms. The new faculty of global functioning and its institutions are spreading all over the globe following the logistic S-curve of saturation. The correlation between hierarchies plays the role of a forerunner of a global functional network gradually forming itself into a kind of global living organism. Some 60 multinational corporative empires have already concluded about 300 agreements to put constraints on the global competition. The network of strong points and epicentres of globewide functional systems, the tangle of decision-making centres with the capacity for quick reallocation of resources, has already come into being, becoming more and more consolidated. Multinational corporations try to utilise local capacities globally to enlarge their opportunities offering them their network-like global macrostructure. These macro-organisations slowly develop their inner circulatory loops, integrating ows as well as informative and control net-organs. The global body is just in the process of self-constitution. Integrating and harmonising ows of this future global organism are covering the globe in various modes more and more. The already functioning global correlation mechanisms, currents and institutionalised brains will do for a while, especially if something like an immune system also comes into being to prevent any local dysfunction from becoming global. This global semibody is to serve different inner centralistic hierarchies (like multinational companies). A single global hierarchy with an inuential government at its summit will frame itself only if the globe as whole would have to face any kind
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of serious jeopardy. The Head or the world-government will be needed in the future then, however, probably at once when globe-size emergencies or urgent centralised decision-making necessities crop up. The means (technical goods, symbols, language, legal regulations and other constraints) and even behavioural paradigms are going to be stereotyped. The means are actually going to be unied by globalisation. Those means that serve the dynamic functional development on a global scale are going to be developed more intensively, especially the inner ows and currents of the forming world-body, the instant necessities of transportation, ows of goods, capital and values, diffusion and ltration of information, along with the means of control and evaluation.
5. Conclusions Technical means do not progress; they just change. As a matter of fact, it is the human capability to innovate, more precisely the ability to develop the capability to innovate, which really progresses. The ability to develop the ability i.e. the self-perfection is a factor behind various exponential processes in human society. There are three crucial trends of development to be distinguished today: 1. The exponential trend of the condensation of a structure. It can be expressed by [Information/cm3 s] and tends toward its limit. 2. The growth of the percentage of error seems to show an exponential trend too. It also tends towards its natural limit. 3. Globalisation or the number of globe-size technologies is exponentially growing as well. The paradigm of globalism means that the functional range of the human socio-technical activity has principally reached its natural frontier. Therefore, the logic of its tendency should follow the S-curve of the process of saturation. Consequently, there is no reason at all to consider globalisation merely a new-fashioned slogan, to hate or to love it, or to use it as a bogey good enough to frighten those with weak nerves. In addition, there is no reason not to pay proper attention to the phenomenon of globalisation. I would not argue against the statement that anthropogenic functioning might extend its range of activity even over the very frontiers of our planet system. The fact that I wish to highlight once again is that human socio-technical functioning seems to reach a kind of natural border. Growing gradually during the millennia of human history, the range of socio-technical functional
action has denitely arrived to the nite size of its very place, the globe of the planet Earth. Anyhow, this fact suggests the necessity of a forthcoming qualitative leap in human development. One may experience a less concrete but an explicit feeling that the error ratio piled up during the long history of human socio-technical activity is approaching its limit too. It cannot be otherwise. The law of the overstretching range of action signies exactly the fact that functioning is forced to overwhelm and counterbalance the growing error percentage it itself is inevitably creating. Yet, we are not completely defenceless. Dealing with the problem of the error consciously, we might be able to select solutions with less harm to the environment and to offer, for example, by-products of our action consciously to those who still might put them to use. For this, one needs to think on the level of a global system of values, because the by-product which is poisonous or just garbage here, may become a healing medicine somewhere else. We can and we ought to expose the regulations that will help to place sufcient constraints on the self- and environment-destructive activities of the human being. Norms of ethics are to be adjusted to the phenomenon of globalisation too. Maybe by propagation of information and culture as well as by self-restriction, the Point of Omega can be adjourned to some extent. However, all these measures can only postpone the problem. The problem cannot be just brushed aside. Principally, it can only be solved by an effective intervention. I have also to conclude that if my conception is correct the change of paradigm humankind is already facing has never been during its history so drastic as we may expect it in the near future. It is not going to be caused by the restructuring of the always-limited resources or by any kind of emotional and mental aberrations, as is usual. The roots of the approaching drastic shift of the paradigm are grounded in antagonistic contradictions inherent to the human development and the universal development itself (Szanto, 1998). To nd out the mode of operation sufcient to prevent the otherwise quite natural consequences of world development, we ought to take such kinds of the Omega-phenomenon seriously and at least reveal their rules and laws. It is the well-designed technology policy and strategy of its implementation that might provide the most effective instruments to solve the problems of the Omegaphenomenon. In short, technology policy means the policy of favourable boundary conditions and assistance to innovative intelligence, support to the creation of a technological advantage, as well as to its economic and social utilisation, i.e. the backing of innovative activity. Technology policy the specic value and concept system of techne is not to be derived from the emanci patorical system of values and routine political decisions as usually happens. We ought to determine it as precisely
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an engineering project on the basis of the dynamic structure of values as well as the rules and laws of the process of development. It is the power of the intellect, the human innovative intelligence only that might be able to outweigh all these regressive trends. All the universal processes we know including the Universe itself are of a regressive character and tend towards their limits. The only exception I can mention here is the growing power of the thought, the cognitive evolution of mankind. Moreover, I am convinced that the power of human intellect has never been as high as at the beginning of the third millennium. Surely, there is a race going on between human innovative intelligence and the general regression we are witnessing, causing and participating in. The human being is in a desperate contest with himself. Actually, this is what the problem of sustainability really means. References
Anohin, P.K., 1978. Izbrannye trudy (Selected Works). Nauka, Moscow (in Russian). Anohin, P.K., 1979. Izbrannye trudy. Sistemnye mehanizmy vysshej nervnoj deiatelnosti (Selected Works. System Mechanisms of the Highest Nervous Activity). Nauka, Moscow (in Russian). Anohin, P.K., 1980 Uzlovye voprosy teorii funkcionalnoj sistemy (The Key Questions of the Theory of Functional System). Nauka, Moscow (in Russian). Aristoteles, 1992. Physica. Hatagu Sp Alaptvany, Budapest. Freeman, C., Hagedoorn, J., Jahoda, M., 1992. Globalisation of technology. Global perspective 2010 tasks for science and technology. Paper for FAST programme, SPRU-MERIT, University of Sussex. Garelli, S., 1995. From Competitive Enterprises to Competitive Societies, The World Competitiveness Report 1995. IMD, Lausanne, pp. 611.
Gonzales, F., Guttres, A., Lafontaine, O., Peres, Sh., Schroder, G., 1998. Shaping Globalisation. International Conference 17th and 18th June 1998. Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin. Friederich-EbertSchtiftung, Bonn. Groys, B., 1993. Utopiia i obmen (Utopia and Exchange). izd. Znak, Moscow (in Russian). Nietzsche, F., 1967. Jenseit von Gut und Bose. Erstes Hauptstuck, Werke, Munchen. OMFBMosonine, F.J., 1997. Az innovacio nevtelen hatorszaga. A kul foldi mukodotoke multiplikator hatasa (The Anonymous Hinterland of Innovation. The Multiplicator Impact of Foreign Capital). OMFB Budapest (in Hungarian). Szanto, B., 1985. Innovacio, a gazdasag fejlesztesenek eszkoze (Innovation as a Means of Economic Development). Muszaki konyvkiado, Budapest (in Hungarian). Szanto, B., 1990. A teremto technologia. A tarsadalmi-technikai evolu cio elmelete (Creative Technology. The Theory of Socio-technical Evolution). Kozgazdasagi es jogi konyvkiado, Budapest (in Hungarian). Szanto, B., 1995. Tudomanyos munkassag attekinto osszefoglalasa. Habilitacios tezisek (Concise Summary of Scientic Activity. The ses of Habilitation). A Budapesti Muszaki Egyetem habilitacios tez isfuzetei, Gepeszmernoki Kar Habilitacios Bizottsaga, Budapest (in Hungarian). Szanto, B., 1998. Socio-technical functioning and anthropogenic crises. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 15, 297313. Teilhard de Chardin, P., 1980. Ut az Omega fele (The Way Toward Omega). Szent Istvan Tarsulat, Budapest (in Hungarian)
Borisz Szanto was born on 1 July 1936. He received his M.Sc. in mechan ical engineering (1958) and his M.Sc. in nuclear engineering (1963) from the Technical University of Budapest, his PhD in economics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985), and his Dr. habil (habilitation) in technical sciences (1996) from the Technical University of Budapest. He uently speaks Hungarian, English and Russian. Selected books he has authored include: Monograph Innovation as a Means of Economic Development, published in Hungarian by Muszaki konyvkiado, Budapest, in 1985, and in Russian by Progress, Moscow, in 1990 (296 pp); Monograph A teremto technologia. A tarsadalmi-techni kai evolucio elmelete (Creative Technology. The Theory of Socio-Tech nical Evolution), published in Hungarian by KJK, Budapest, in 1990 (460 pp).

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Technovation 21 (2001) 673687 www.elsevier.

* Tel./fax: +36-1-285-29-73. E-mail address: szantob@imvt.bme.hu (B. Szanto).

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

B. Szanto / Technovation 21 (2001) 673687

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