Debate on the papers of Session 3 341
depending on the information manipulations that we make. And the question here is
whether we are moving from a swarm kind of thing, where we have an object which
we can divide into sub-objects that can collaborate towards the goal, to a kind of a
utility-focused paradigm, where different particles that through information exchange
suddenly form different multiple substances and objects. This has to do with what
Paul Coates said, and I think that he is right, and Oosterhuis too is very clear about
this, but it is a very risky thing.
These are the two main directions concerning creativity that I saw this afternoon:
one is objects divided into sub-objects that are then used to re-form the whole, and
the other is particles forming different objects. And I think that the question could
be between those two. The other question that came up along with creativity was
that of performance, which is also not new. I remember that during my PhD in France
in the 80s I made a lot of analyses of value – so the performance is reviewed; what
is very interesting is that it is reviewed with these tools.
Saeed Arida, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Just a quick comment on the question of the paradigm shift. I do not know why we
are so obsessed with knowing whether we are in a paradigm shift or not. It is a tricky
question; I think only Michel Foucault would be able to answer it in the order of
things. It is always a historical thing to discover if the human culture went through
a paradigm shift. I think it is an impossible task to know if we are experiencing a
paradigm shift now. It will take us some time, twenty or thirty years at least, to be
able to look back at the present time and decide if we have a paradigm shift or not.
So I think that it is an unproductive question.
Antonino Saggio, Rome, Italy
It was a rhetorical question, you see. It is evident that we are in a paradigm shift,
otherwise you do not understand absolutely anything. We are already in a shift that
is has been going on for at least fifty or more years. A huge amount of literature
has been written about this. It is clear that we are in a completely different phase.
Saeed Arida, Cambridge, U.S.A.
But history says that human culture does not move by shifts, it has always moved by
small transitions. Only when we write history do we define shifts, so...
Antonino Saggio, Rome, Italy
The idea of the shift of paradigm is not invented by me, Thomas Kahn wrote about
this. There is a moment when we cannot build and progress with old tools and we
must "jump" into the use and understanding of new tools.
Saeed Arida, Cambridge, U.S.A.
That is excellent.
Constantin Spiridonidis, Thessaloniki, Greece
I think that it is beyond any kind of discussion that we are experiencing a shift
of some kind, whether it is paradigm, or a technological paradigm, or a paradigm