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WORLD PRESS RELEASE
FOR GENERAL RELEASE 12 p.m. est. December 4, 1989
WORLD GOVERNMENT LINKS CYBERNETIC PROCESS FOR 1990 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
TORONTO CONFERENCE JOINS WORLD CITIZENS WITH CYBERNETICIAN
WASHINGTON--A unique and perhaps historic gathering took place at Toronto's Windsor Arms Hotel the weekend of November 25th. World Citizen Garry Davis arrived from a nine-month trip to Tokyo where he established a 'Pacific Rim' branch of the World Service Authority. He met with World Government pioneers Georgia Lloyd and Frank Bourne and cybernetician Stafford Beer, President of the World Organization of General Systems and Cybernetics. Their purpose was to inaugurate a new and revolutionary peace process incorporating principles underlying the late Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome. This leads toward the World Government Constitutional Convention that convenes at the Town Hall of Christchurch, New Zealand, on 18th September, 1990. Beer, author of eleven books and consultant to national governments and corporations in eighteen countries, joined the World Government of World Citizens in 1985 as Coordinator of its World Cybernetic Commission. The global human rights government founded by Davis in 1953 was an outgrowth of the world citizenship movement launched during a United Nations' General Assembly session in Paris in 1948. It now has a constituency of 350,000 registered citizens. Its principal offices are in Washington, D.C. and Tokyo. Beer's scientific approach to peacemaking is based on what he calls the "Technosphere." The world of rock, the geosphere, he explains, is clothed in a seamless robe called the biosphere - in which breathes life. By now, this is in turn enrobed by the technosphere - a seamless robe of telecommunication. According to Beer, this makes possible the "Infoset," which is a group of thirty people who share information of a mutually interesting kind, share too a dedication to turning their insights into active service in this world. According to this theory there is no longer any need for members of any Infoset to be physically, geographically or politically in any one place. They "meet" in the Technosphere. They have no location; they represent no locality. The Infoset is unified by its sharing of knowledge and purpose, and transcends the outmoded classifications of country, economic bloc or race. Beer's idea is that once a small number of Infosets has been inaugurated, this mode of human collaberation will breed. The technosphere will be inhabited by self-organizing mini-parliaments of world citizens. For years Beer has organized the 'Problem Jostle' by which the Infoset identifies and selects the issues it wishes to address. He now adds a protocol called "Team Tensegrity." This is a procedure that organizes the Infoset as a total democracy with absolutely no hierarchy among the thirty members - and then moves on to the organization of Infosets themselves, thirty at a time. This is a mathematical design that embodies the structural strength (tensegrity) of the geodesic dome and translates it into human terms. Adding to this intriguing new method is the potential linking of selected world citizens in "mondialized" cities by satellite conferencing to address global concerns such as war itself and environmental devastation. "World citizenship is an idea whose time has come," Davis said today from the WSA Washington, D.C. office. "People everywhere are rebelling against oppressive and outdated political systems based on exclusive nationalism. They claim human rights in terms of freedom of political choice, an end to poverty and war, a clean environment, and a fulfilling life. Daily events from Beijing to Prague, Windhoek, Manila and San Salvador reveal a vast global political vacuum which can only be filled by new and transcendent institutions and new ways of doing things consistent with the new reality. Cybernetics, which is the science of effective organization, has been drafted by our world citizen government to develop the necessary new designs - and we have a world authority already on the job since 1954 to coordinate them. By the year 2000, we must have a peaceful world community. Otherwise, the so-called nuclear age may be humanity's last." Asked whether his new terminology and the talk of mathematics was really necessary, Stafford Beer pointed out that if the world stands in need of radical change to meet the macro challenges of our times, then the old tools will not be of use. They limit rather than facilitate what can be done. But operating manuals will be written, he added, so that people may work the system without fuss. "It's easier done than said," smiled Beer. The Christchurch meeting will officially start the process which is expected to cover a ten-year span and usher in the next millenium. The principal operational center for the Convention is presently in Tokyo at the World Service Authority 's 'Pacific Rim' office at Nakano-ku. World Coordinator Garry Davis, now in the U.S., will introduce the new technique to the world citizen constitutency. Meanwhile he is raising funds for the Convention itself from individuals - via the new organization, World Citizens For Constitutional Law - from foundations and from certain large corporations which have 'gone global,' both conceptually and actually.
WORLD SERVICE AUTHORITY
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