Rüdiger Lutz:

Taming the dragon - part three - epilogue

All in all, it's just another brick in the world - 1989 in Berlin the wall came down, 2005 A.D. in Jerusalem a new wall is separating the city. Serendipities are accidents by contextual meanings. It takes three to make two instances a serendipity. A Boeing 747 in a high-rise tower is a terrible thing to happen, two airliners in two Manhattan towers are a statement of global terrorism, a planetary drive-by shooting, executed in USA, Spain and England a definitive act of sheer incomprehensible violence against bystanders in an open society. But in our global corcoran nobody is outside, everyone is part of the game. The pure spectator is obsolete, participation is mandatory in a free world. Planetarians of all galaxies unite to the common cause: the eternal recycling of the universe as entropic and synergistic affair. Out of chaos evolves the radiance of hope in coming aesthetic attractions.
The multifold trend of appearing futures is mirrored on the serendipitytrail in zillions of particies and instances of timeless validity.
Classical piecemeal approaches of linear problem-solving approaches are replaced by non-invasive interaction procedures and interference pattern-languages. If high-tech is the answer, what was the humble question ? asks the holo-designer in everincreasing frequency (FAQ). There are not enough holes in the universal flying carpet, to get rid of the endless mass of obsolescence, coming from ages of exponential growth in ressource-depleting and power-weight-watchers horror vaccui in millenia. The wormholes are waiting for useful waste to replace the archaic irrelevance of hierarchies in graveyards of the grateful dead. Economies are crumbling, the invisible hand of Adam Smith is the hidden agenda of the systems-people, and Milton Friedman could not top Karl Marx analysis of capital dynamics.
Economy is a mere brain damage, not a science, postulates Hazel Henderson and reassures you to do your homework: Entropy Work is the "new work" of Fritjof Bergman, and in times of unseen inequalities a $ or Euro can mean Live(8) or nothing at all, the GNP in global view is an eternal fractal of multidimensional meanings Read the Green (Buck) and freeze, there is no handicap for winners, par is for loosers and the 19^th hole is preparing for the 21^st century. Last century was the requiem of the modernist deconstructivists - and they succeeded in giving Armageddon a new face: An exploding population on a shrinking planet and no way out. First landing on the moon, our even smaller companion showed us the earth in context. Space is bigger than we thought, bigger than we can think. The round-up of the flat earth was just the beginning, now we start to think beyond space-time limitations and get into the flux of interdimensional insights. The new frontier is nothing external, it's intrinsic, Siegmund Freud's "Es" and Leibniz "monads" are coevolving in our skin-encapsuled minds, communicating with each other in a never seen before complexity. The media massage plays its role as catalyst in paradigm-shifting and opener of new doors of perception. Worldviews are colliding on a planetary scale as dogmas collaps in the frameworks of unbuilt metabolisms of serious systems-designers. The (w)hole is more than its part(icie)s, the enemies of the open society (Karl Popper) are members of the same peer group as the backbones of the ruling system(s), like the aristocrats were the avantguarde of the proletarian revolution. The Rolling Stones have never been backstreet-boys and are now Sir Mick Sir Bob or Sir Paul, like all the reintegrated revolutionary drop-outs of the baby-boom are finally assimilated by the green, green grass of home. The lost virginity of the counter-culture is history and meaningful enlightenment comes by the way through serendipities, which failed to fail safe.
So the safety-architecture of the moment is corcoran-like and totally missing the point of no return. The system may become so static and fixated in non-dynamic freeze, that the parts are unable to make the smallest move without the risk of suizide - that's the strategy of terrorists, you cannot beat them, they are already dead or in selfdestruction. The "open systems approach" (W. Churchman), now embraces the lost hopes and holistic ideals of the unrealistic globe-trotting (re)searcher on the serendipity trail, trying to discover the moments and pieces of challenges to deep reason.
The path itself is non-deterministic and momentarily open ended, so The wanderer may be trapped in loopholes or labyrinths of mirror images and self-deception. Reincarnations of the lost worlds are no evidence for betterment or self improvement, but pure post-nostalgia of failed utopian enterprises. Innovation is more than recycling of the past, it inherits the sparkles of the universal, perennial wisdom of invisible landscapes in different futures. Polydimensional access to the serendipity trail is guaranteed, when you take the chances of failing and still pursuing the light and radiance of hope, which never fades completely as your inner guide will show you. Surf the incompleteness-wave and stay tuned!

For this endeaver we need a guarantor.

The systems-guarantor is no fail-safe-technology, but an unreliable source of eventualities and chances, which may or may not be true. To test the validity of appearing serendipities you have to surf careful on the waves of incomplete theorems and equations, all of them meaningful and even delightful, but not necessarily relevant at your point in time and space of intervention. Timespace is a priori, therefore outside your variable domain. These categories transcend the designers manipulative skills, nonetheless they could be appreciated and used.
Taming the dragon also means good timing. Sometimes there are actions just not at the right place and time. If it's unnecessary to innovate a system, it is necessary not to change anything.
And there are situations, which call for intervention. So the systems-designer has to ask primarily: Who benefits from the change and who becomes a victim of this interference ?
At that point the design will alter into politics. Therefore the designer has to be reminded of pillar 1. Non-political design is the challenge to an superior view of the situation. Take in a third and fourth position, refocus the problematique in different contextual situations. There are always more than two sides of the coin - and there are different options, when to implement the new rationale.
Timing is allocation of events and issues in specific places. Where are the hot-spots for a successful design ? In a pattern-language way, change-procedures can be outlined like a piece of music, sounding right or wrong in its overall performance. The "good line" is mostly sensed and felt by people, they resonate to the best tunes and appreciate the aesthetics of the arrangement. "Architecture is frozen music" and "music is melted architecture" says the artist and the systems-designer goes with the flow of structural manifestations of the vibrant dynamics of change. "You never step into a river twice" reminds Heraclitus and so you know, that every design is a preliminary statement in an ongoing process - there is no finality in creation, only steps on the neverending stairway to completion.