WARP
= World Advanced Research Project, the international center for transition science
URL = http://www.cts-warp.org [1]
Description
"In the 21st century humanity faces huges challenges. We live in a world threatened shrinking natural resources and an ever increasing economic exploitation for great majority of people. Global warming, food shortages and wars will be the reality of our children's lives unless the current course of civilization is changed. The economic, environmental, social and energy crises closely interlink, with each crisis intensifying the next. The World Advanced Research Project WARP is a collective endeavor by researchers both to understand this World and to work out how it can be changed in a way that will benefit the great majority of humanity.
We intend to bring to this task skills and knowledge from a variety of disciplines: political economy, mathematics, complexity theory, information theory, biology/environmental, network theory, political and military science. To enable interdisciplinary exchange and cooperation we will establish common sources of knowledge and internet based courses. We aim to run as a virtual college of researchers, working in the same way as the open source community, embracing the values of openess, and the voluntary contribution of time and expertise for the public good.
We are appealing to researchers who share our values and aims of a sustainable democratic world civilisation free from want and exploitation, to join us in the research. We aim to construct networks of collaborative work, that will look at the major questions of today. We produce reports and policy proposals that will be resource for social movements and progressive governments. By working together in a collective endeavor with a decentralised division of labour we can harness the hive intelligence of the progressive scientific community to achieve more than we could do as individuals. If you are tired of thinking there is no alternative, there is no hope and no solution, we are not alone." (http://www.puk.de/en/warp-blog/blog/about-warp-en)
Details
The World Advanced Research Project Streams:
In the 21st century humanity faces huge challenges. We live in a world threatened by shrinking natural resources and an ever increasing economic exploitation for the great majority of people. Global warming, food shortages and wars will be the reality of our children´s lives unless the current course of civilization is changed.
The economic, environmental, social and energy crises closely interlink, with each crisis intensifying the next. The World Advanced Research Project WARP is a collective endeavor by researchers both to understand this World and to work out how it can be changed in a way that will benefit the great majority of humanity. We intend to bring to this task skills and knowledge from a variety of disciplines: political economy, mathematics, complexity theory, information theory, biology/environmental, network theory, political and military science. To enable interdisciplinary exchange and cooperation we will establish common sources of knowledge and internet based courses. We aim to run as a virtual college of researchers, working in the same way as the open source community, embracing the values of openness, and the voluntary contribution of time and expertise for the public good.
We are appealing to researchers who share our values and aims of a sustainable democratic world civilization free from want and exploitation, to join us in the research. We aim to construct networks of collaborative work, that will look at the major questions of today. We produce reports and policy proposals that will be a resource for social movements and progressive governments.
By working together in a collective endeavor with a decentralized division of labour we can harness the hive intelligence of the progressive scientific community to achieve more than we could do as individuals.
How we propose to work
We will form small working groups on research projects with at least 3 people per group. The first phase of each project will be to formulate on a wiki a set of theoretical and empirical questions to be investigates. We will use wiki type media to coordinate and initially draft internal working papers which will be available for comment by the whole research community. Final publication will be in paper and online reports. If you are willing to help please write to us at the above email address and discuss how you want to participate.
1 Literature database
It is important for WARP to have common knowledge and understanding about some areas relevant to our research and political work. We will therefore establish a collection of texts and e-learning tools in several languages which also can be used as a base for study circles and seminars
2 Proposed research projects
What we give below is an initial proposed group of research projects, we anticipate that participants will propose additional projects.
2.1 Unified econometric models: The aim of this is to apply initially to other European countries and then possibly to China, the highly sophisticated model that Klaus Barsch has developed for Germany. This is currently used by the Trades Union movement in Germany to investigate the implications of policy changes on the living conditions of their members. A schema model is available that can be parameterised to other capitalist countries where it could be used to challenge policy proposals put forward by business interests.
2.2 Questions of Money and Monetary Crises: This working group will look at the crisis in the Euro, proposals for international monetary reform and issues of sovereign debt.
2.3 Scientific studies of revolutions, database of them: This group will investigate different revolutions and revolutionary processes basing on the complexity theory framework and analyse factors for success and failure with help of muldidimensional machine learning tools.
2.4 Class structure during transitional periods: Xizu Lu to lead
2.5 Role of new technolgy and the media in social and revolutionary movements: Michel Bauwens to lead
2.6 The role of peer production and intellectual property issues: Michel Bauwens to lead
2.7 Issues of agronomy and food security and genetic engineering: Salvador Vega y León and Manuel Limonta to lead
2.8 The military question in times of transition: Prof. Heinz Dieterich to lead
2.9 The energy question assessment of the implication of nuclear and wind power
2.10 Population based studies: This group will investigate ideas, understandings and opinions of population samples with help of qualitative methods like interviews within the grounded theory framework. The purpose is to enable WARP to later carry out surveys to determine the level of support for alternative forms of economy and society."