The 9 Laws of God Interpreting Kevin Kelley’s landmark writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
To gain inspiration for Futures practice, we aim to rediscover meaning in a variety of texts, chewing over their context to enrich our own thought process. Kevin Kelley’s amazing work spans writing, techforecasting, photography and conservation, and in his role as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, writing some amazing pieces, which resonate strongly with Futures thinking. Here, we revisit his amazing piece, the 9 Laws of God, that formed part of the Spring 1994 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog. http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/1330/article/338/the.nine.laws.of.god
THE 9 LAWS OF GOD Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
#1 Distribute being.
The spirit of a beehive, the behaviour of an economy, the thinking of a supercomputer, and the life in Me are distributed over a multitude of smaller units (which themselves may be distributed). When the sum of the parts can add up to more than the parts, then that extra being (that something from nothing) is distributed among the parts. Whenever we find something from nothing, we find it arising from a field of many interacting smaller pieces. All the mysteries we find most interesting - life, intelligence, evolution - are found in the soil of large distributed systems. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
SHARE. One way to insulate practice from monotony in the short-term, and mis-direction in the long term is a culture of promiscuous collaboration. The power of diverse and inclusive groups that are similarly oriented but from different backgrounds makes for potent problem solving capacities, with members of these groups contributing in new and interesting ways. We then provide agency to leaders who develop within these groups to lead projects for a duration that they see fit, in an open and informed system. The curation and cultivation of these groups needs to be extremely progressive, with regular critique and outside input forming a core part of the programming.
#2 Control from the bottom up.
When everything is connected to everything in a distributed network, everything happens at once. When everything happens at once, wide and fast-moving problems simply route around any central authority. Therefore, overall governance must arise from the most humble interdependent acts done locally in parallel, and not from a central command. A mob can steer itself, and in the territory of rapid, massive, and heterogeneous change, only a mob can steer. To get something from nothing, control must rest at the bottom within simplicity. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
EMPOWER. To move away from the age old Top-down system of organisation into more collaborative and Brownian-motion inspired energised particles paradigm allows us to create meaningful adjacencies. The bumping together of two energised workers within the system lead to surprising and serendipitous outcomes, greatly affecting the quality of the output. The grammar of tiny iterative actions, openly and promiscuously shared, on available social networks allow us as a discipline to make vast and sweeping upgrades, and stand on each others shoulders to critically reexamine our role as practitioners.
#3 Sow increasing returns.
Each time you use an idea, a language, or a skill, you strengthen it, reinforce it, and make it more likely to be used again. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
DO. A culture of continuous iteration, both in problem solving as well as skill-development is endemic to practice. Design solutions are then visualised as waveforms, with shorter eddy currents within longer wavelengths, longer inquiries in ethics and building a ‘body’ of work that contain within them shorter experiments in materials, form and process. The idea of conscious and enlightened doing itself allows one to be aware of both time flows, with the shorter iteration finding meditative significance in engaging with the absolute present, and the longer iterations finding deeper resonance with longer cultural shifts.
#4 Grow by chunking.
The only way to make a complex system that works is to begin with a simple system that works. Attempts to instantly install highly complex organization - such as intelligence, or a market economy - without growing it, inevitably lead to failure. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
HOMEGROWN. Something that find instant resonance in the domain of Food and Hospitality, the idea of homegrown works itself into the nature of practice as a whole. Homegrown expressions tend to understand nuance, posture, technicality and specific response, something that transplanted processes tend to misinterpret. The idea of looking for hyperlocal processes to describe, rather than globally prescribed processes becomes critically important. Homegrown expressions tend to provide an answer to the elusive quality of ‘soul’ in work, where a local, purely topical solution achieves worldwide resonance in essence. These solutions tend to work on the grammar of looking for small wins, which eventually snowball into large-scale change and progress.
#5 Maximize the fringes.
In heterogeneity is creation of the world. A uniform entity must adapt to the world by occasional monumental revolutions, one of which is sure to kill it. A diverse heterogeneous entity, on the other hand, can adapt to the world in a thousand daily mini-revolutions, staying in a state of permanent, but never fatal, churning. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
CHURN. Diverse heterogenous groups have a strong chance of creating truly innovative solutions across disciplines. We see this exact group structure in a wide spectrum from steering ethical coding in AI, to creating small urban action committees to creating immersive media experiences . The power of collaboration resides in the heterogeneity of these groups, and their ability to manage internal stresses to create future-proof solutions and meaningful engagements. The constant churn of the group is then an innate nature of the practice, and is to be expected. The Present is always boiling over into the Future, and the strong currents flowing through time make the experience far from pleasant. This churn is to be harnessed, and eventually used to create meaning.
#6 Honor your errors.
A trick will only work for a while, until everyone else is doing it. To advance from the ordinary requires a new game, or a new territory. But the process of going outside the conventional method, game, or territory is indistinguishable from error. Even the most brilliant act of human genius, in the final analysis, is an act of trial and error. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
GLITCH. Introducing errors or provocations allow large leaps of imagination, resulting in seemingly disruptive thoughts taking root amongst more conventional groups. All Futures are provocations, and the curse of all Futures practice is to be proved wrong eventually. Engaging with Futures then becomes less about prediction, and more about making the present more meaningful. Chance and unpredictability create follies. Follies are objects in a garden of no particular purpose. Follies are also mistakes.
#7 Pursue no optima, but multiple goals.
Simple machines can be efficient, but complex adaptive machinery cannot be. A complicated structure has many masters and none of them can be served exclusively. Rather than striving for optimization of any function, a large system can only survive by "satisficing" (making "good enough") a multitude of functions. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
MESSINESS. In engaging with iterative processes, messiness is to be expected. The quest for perfect solutions was a hangover of the Industrial age. This has been replaced by the more complex yet honest worldview of a vast entangled network of issues, where a messy iteration is the only course of action available to practitioners. The nature of iterative solutions also change the parameters of the rest of the system, by introducing incremental change. This eventually creates a more responsive, adaptive ecosystem for a future larger iteration to be successful. Every large leap in the Future is a small step today.
#8 Seek persistent disequilibrium.
Neither constancy nor relentless change will support a creation. A good creation, like good jazz, must balance the stable formula with frequent offbeat, out-of-kilter notes. Equilibrium is death. Yet unless a system stabilizes to an equilibrium point, it is no better than an explosion, and just as soon dead. A Nothing, then, is both equilibrium and disequilibrium. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
IMPROVISE. Changing projects midway and injecting fresh ideas mid-stream into mainstream work seeks new expressions and larger goals. While the larger parameters are already set in place, we are then liberated to create tiny eccentricities and moments of genius while not shaking the entire edifice. In creating grid and alignments for spaces, we constantly encounter opportunities for breaking the grid, while returning to it after a momentary foray. These variations then allow diversity within unity, and set the stage for heightened expressions.
#9 Change changes itself.
Change can be structured. This is what large complex systems do: they coordinate change. When extremely large systems are built up out of complicated systems, then each system begins to influence and ultimately change the organizations of other systems. That is, if the rules of the game are composed from the bottom up, then it is likely that interacting forces at the bottom level will alter the rules of the game as it progresses. Over time, the rules for change get changed themselves. Kevin Kelley, Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1994
BUMP. In creating meaningful collisions at the very singular inter-personal level, we set the stage for larger shifts in consciousness. The city of the Future depends on the facilitation of spaces for humans to interact with each other to create meaning. Any move towards dissolving boundary conditions is then to be celebrated. Meaningful adjacencies create Meaningful collisions. In progressive workspaces and life spaces, actively reconfigured objects make spaces more energised than static backdrops. When design experiences grow and evolve, we create opportunities for magic at the very grass-root.