hi Dave, my apologies for being slow in responding to your interesting observations. what surprises me is that everyone has a different perspective about the questions and i had not considered these points of view, so it is exciting to consider it further...
one difference i tend to see between views is that of making them tangible in examples which could/can be related to everyday experience. whereas it is a bit hard for me to realize a literal manifestation, as it is still an abstraction for me and it may not correspond 1:1 to more developed views of culture in which the economics/politics/sociality are more clear, or less fuzzy. i don't know so i am going to put some more ideas out here in case others have a better idea of what this really is as a questioning. for me it is not traditional categories of commerce, and political organization which bounds the ideas of commercial communism or social capitalism. it does not seem to be a thing, possibly it is more of some kind of process, a manifestation of proceeding in a certain way, regardless of mission statements, etc. maybe it is a type of organization of effort, work, though, and maybe this appraisal is confused as it is only a sketch whereas others who know structures that relate to these concepts, inside and out, could bring greater fidelity to the domain of these ideas. i.e. a given corporation can function with a type of governance, even to succeed as a model of governing, and yet there would still likely be a dynamic which could pursue social capital vs 'communal commerce' or commercial communism (to me it is close to being equivalent and neutral, to this idea). i guess what i am trying to get at, as an idea, is that it may not be 'traditional', rather conceptual, possibly, in relation to superstructural relations with these ideas as they are usually contextualized. it may be a function of bureaucracy vs individualism, or of a type of cultural determinism, which is also not one or the other as a static choice and pathway, rather a shifting switch for cultural manifestations. for instance, if placing the ideas in a traditional bureaucratic organization, two examples might show a similarity and difference in the way these ideas seem to exist in the macro-sense... Thomas P. Hughes (STS, science-technology-culture) is a historian of technological systems and i believe in one of his works he looks into NASA as an innovational organization of large systems. to me NASA is emblematic of a 'social capital' approach to ideas in which the role of the individual and ability to change, question, review, adjust and to invest in long-term exploration, research and development, and to make it break-even in some cultural sense - shows the potential and a unique value system which harnesses human goals, imaginations, and translates this way. a bureaucracy could not come up with the idea of hitting a comet on the 4th of July and the social value as an event, and real scientific value, etc. there is something about NASA that is in some way a counterpoint to most everything else, in the corporate world, maybe DARPA too (though possibly less altruistic), the national park systems, etc. an aspect that ideas have an overriding value and guide decision-making and ideas of how profit is evaluated. as such it may be how it interacts with the 'frontier' and this makes it a necessity, avant-garde bureaucracy. the opposite approach could be seen in something like the World Trade Center redevelopment efforts where the bureaucracy functions as a giant automatized machinery which 'develops' by way of a process that is fixed and unable to change, to question, as it has an answer of its own design that requires that it does not need to ask particular questions, or special values, as it is a monolithic approach to, say, business-as-usual. it may be a functionalism, a pragmatism that this is how things get done and all that needs to be done is to get out of the way. maybe this is how countries are terraformed over time, developed by fixed processes, like programming code for a 'suburb' as an idea, in which the variables are figured out by earlier tests (in social capital ideas/investments) then to later become steamrollered as a prefigured solution, which may have its profit and economic value in not opening up the processes to questioning (as it would lose its efficiencies this way, reinventing the wheel at every junction, or reinventing the suburb at every city). in this way it may be considered the rear-guard and may function within a simple uninterrupted agenda. the thing about it, is that it would not necessarily have to be a judgment (social capital good, commercial communism bad), as it could feasibly exist as the same time within an organization or approach, in that some problems could require one approach or the other given the context and the goals. if it is a dynamic situation and the questions need to be reconsidered to improve upon existing methods/approaches, then a social capital approach may open up possibilities. whereas, if there are too many choices, and all that is needed is static solutions without openly questioning every move as it has already been refined and works suitably well given the evaluative criteria, then it may be the best option. example: the garbage pickup of trash cans is not working well as aluminum cans have entered the waste stream and are being thrown into landfills while they still have some value. the commercial communism approach would be working fine if there was no change, the centralized and static organization of picking up trash, evaluating the exchange, and making a profit based on the value-- yet some social capitalist enterprises have started to collect the cans and make a break-even or better profit just by collecting the cans themselves as recycling. so the garbage company could employ a new open questioning to review their processes, and evolve their models of how they model things, ideas of what garbage pickpup is about, their economic- and social- models/missions, and they may 'switch' and make a change, then go back to normal unquestioning, automated processing of the flows as a way to secure their systematized approach. this fictionalized scenario attempts to capture some dynamism and stasis that is mediating by the different approaches, ideas really, of what is of value, profit. and they both are legitimate it would seem, up to the point where questions are asked, reviewed, answered. that is, a process (such checks and balances in a democracy, or ideally, protest or advocacy of issues in relation to status-quo procedures versus the need to take into account other values, economics, social aspects beyond the ken of traditional concepts of, say, use of genetically modified crops in foodstreams, or any number of given issues). the solutions that may arise, say an entrepreneur who finds a pathway towards a type of profitability, may actually be the R&D arm of the communal commerce that is a societal automaton. the question of individuals (and groups) in relation to these automated procedures, then, could be seen or considered as functioning as a type of open questioning of things in relation to questions already answered, then the role of ideology versus these ideas, etc. for the above-mentioned aspects of WTC redevelopment i have broken down this entire concept of ideology in which business-as-usual (development) wreaks havoc on a unique questioning in terms of cultural values. as such, in this instance it is the unique questioning that should be developing this specific site, and it is not, and so the dynamic and static aspects are put in relation to one another in a shared design context. WTC Memorial Park vs Ground Zero (1) http://mail.architexturez.net/+/Design-L.V2/archive/msg00617.shtml definitions (1) http://mail.architexturez.net/+/Design-L.V2/archive/msg00618.shtml now i am not sure how well this will translate as a 'finished idea' to present as a whole worldview of how everything relates to everything else in the fidelity of traditional analyses. yet to me it is not a goal as much as anecdotal evidence that something is afoot with the concepts that defines/reveals/unveils something of an essence of cultural decision-making or choices or something. what it is, beyond a sketch, i do not know. though i relate it to a concept which i do have a bit more thinking on, and so would like to introduce one more aspect as a matter of comparison and to contrast: much is written about worldviews and the world as a machine, organism, film, all sorts of perceptions... and to me this conceptualization of culture (economic, social, political) fits within one of these that is particular interest to me: the world as a circuit. there is something worthwhile to trying to learn a bit of the basics about electronics as it translates rather well conceptually with most everything that is in question today, yet often answers are coming from different paradigms other than its own (electro- magnetic, if going further, with conceptualization). the thing about 'circuits' that is interesting to learn about is the power of something so simple as a 'parallel' versus a 'serial' circuit layout. Series and parallel circuits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_and_parallel_circuits each allow different things to happen within a given circuit, and often they are used together in order to do more complex things. the aspect which corresponds to the ideas of 'social capital' and 'commercial communalism' is that both are, in my opinion, working in the same network, using a particular approach designed for specific reasons. that is, in some places the parallel circuit is most optimal and in others a series approach is. likewise with aspects of value, exchange, outcomes in relation to culture, development, and questions. e.g. if one does not go on autopilot with certain things, becoming autonomous in a sense, say to take out the trash or clean the sink, more effort than is needed may be exerted on things that are likely better to just do as they have been done before, as it is the best approach given the circumstances. whereas if there is a raccoon in the trash can in the alley, and bringing out the garbage repeatedly results in being bitten by an animal with possible rabies, it would be optimal to question procedures, in other words to adapt to the dynamic changes, etc. the part relating the 'circuit' as conceptualization of worldview, then, may see these questions as a type of ecological relationship that is shifting and changing and also unchanging and challenging. and what are the interactions between these two aspects of the circuit mediated by- that is, how do different views or ideas of the two approaches relate and interact with eachother? is it Live8 and the G8, in a way, both working on African aid? it would seem closer than 'capital' vs. anticapital, corporate vs anticorporate, empire vs. multitudes. the world as governed could be considered also as a type of circuit, self-balancing at that, if it is in some kind of equilibrium (terrorism, even, as being a feedback mechanism for closed questions and the need to change/adapt/optimize to transform the circuitry, is one possible interpretation where views of what is valued or profitable as an idea, ideology, belief, or philosophy may inform actions in a similar processing). the world as a circuit, if governed in terms of ideas and values held in- between static solutions and dynamic options may be the crux of questions like democracy as it is related to issues of economic, society, beliefs of organization - where the circuit may balance in a different way in different cultures and with different needs, yet open and closed approaches may always, still, exist and need to be defined, considered, reconsidered, changed, over time... another great thing learning about electronic circuits is the relationship of these concepts into more complex conceptualizations manifested within the computers of electronics engineering. 'hardware' and 'software' are based in circuits, the switches on circuitboards and their mathe- matics directly originate from the circuitry, the logic used, the worldviews constructed upon these foundations also. that is, just like with issues of RISC and CISC or digital and analog, they all go back to the basic concepts of the circuits from which they have evolved, in some way. the 'all or nothing' ideologies, belief- systems of 'digitalism' is one example of this becoming detached from the physical truths of circuits, the tangible stuffs, whereby little is (if at all possible) simply 'digital' in manifestation, likewise, most things mix the realms of parallel-series and digital-analog. so too, social capital/commercial communism. my thinking is fuzzy and may not be accurate yet it is a sketch of how these relate as ideas and how, whatever the questions are with the concepts, they appear to share a circuit or world in which they operate, right now it is often to the detriment to each other though it has also been shown to be possible to work such systems together as, bridging circuitry. world as a circuit, then, could also be a way of relating the world together as both being similar and different, whole and part, one and many. ideas of social capital and commercial communism, may offer potential relation beyond traditional concepts of these, as organizations of government or business, so that commonalities in North Korea for instance, between open- and closed- access to the larger or smaller systems may be able to change in relation, to integrate yet have some autonomy afforded by circuitry. trade between Cuba and the .US too, communism and capitalism being quite crude if compared in terms of shared ideas of human values, of health, prosperity, and differences of view. a healthy and sustainable Russia and Eastern Europe, in relation to hybrid circuits, ideas which merge fixed and changing conditions and questioning so as to evolve static systems to improve, while securing a need for balancing of dynamics so as to not break the circuitry. it is a more subtle way, possibly, to approach issues of values, profit, ideas, outside of a monetary-only perception of the worth of action, inaction, questions of scale and organization. what if the middle-east is a circuit that is, ultimately, needing to find a new relation to the whole world, through serial and parallel adjustments, and vice-versa. to 'not change our way of life' as a ideology pretty much fixes the 'war on terrorism' as a dumb and mindless approach to a new questioning of how new situations are addressed. right now it is on autopilot, the machinery of world- state, the circuit seeking to self-balance by short-circuiting itself, by shorting out parts of the circuit to force changes in a relation of approaches, closed ideas that are answered, unquestioned and all that that entails in terms of 'communal commerce' of that, 'commercial communalism' of Homeland Security as an id=E9e-fixee, and the 'social capital' of better ways of approaching new conditions, questioning, changes, adapting, altering -- these are not invested in as a strategy, to use human imagination, ideas of peace, diplomacy, ingenuity, respect, to enter into a better organization and manifestation of a shared cultural circuit. with human beings added into this circuitry, themselves also a circuit, having hardware, software, and the code which mediates them (nervous system, brain, and consciousness), the balancing of peoples differences can also be considered in this way, belief as a type of automatism, fixed decision making, xenophobia as a type of ideological coding which preordains interactions, programming of cultural interactions in this way are a signal of things to come unless circuits are designed differently, to interact with others in ways that are optimized, evolved. as such, the .UN itself is a testing ground for employing such ideas of a world circuitry which is balanced and self-balancing, as a type of governance and a type of corporation, of the most complex order where the potential is for ideas of social capital to be questions among varying views, instead of the locked-in ideological (answered questions) approach that limits any possibility of change, improvement and tries to determine circuitry based on only one view as being the only right approach, etc. maybe there are partial truths, falsehoods, distortions, though in a shared common context which can structurally relate and clarify what is held in common, goals, agenda, relationships in which to work to improve the common lot... or, world circuit, both communal and capital. some imperfect ideas approximated as sketches. brian brian thomas carroll: research-design-development architecture, education, electromagnetism http://www.mnartists.org/brian_carroll http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/= # 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