Sceenius: the macro in micro, Nepal, anyone?
[ by Charles Cameron — an interesting research angle to keep an eye on? ]
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I haven’t explored my friend John Kellden‘s project, Sceenius, yet, but thought some Zenpundit readers might be interested in the suggestion by his colleague Ron Scroggin that accomnpanies this diagram:
Crystal ball Nepal: How do we design the future?
The current tension between the world’s momentum and its inertia is playing itself out in Nepal’s ancient cultural landscape, revealed in interacting social, economic and geographical forms, which include some of the worlds lowest, and its highest features. What is happening in the world is happening in Nepal.
Small in geographical area, Nepal’s spectacular landscape rises from 194 ft elevation in the tropical Terai to 22,966 ft, at the summit of Sagarmatha (Mt Everest), where arctic weather conditions prevail. Its timescape spans the worlds of the ancient nomadic culture of the Raute people in western Nepal, and of the jet-age culture of capital city Kathmandu.
Nepal’s extremes in many dimensions make it a highly readable barometer of life’s conditions. The people, divided by caste, religion, ethnicity, and politics are stitched together in a social quilt which mirrors the country’s radically exaggerated terrain, weather, and ecosystem.
Nepal is therefore a crystal ball into which we can project the world’s social, organizational and political conditions, and see there the jobs, pains and potential gains they entail, reflected in exaggerated relief.
If you find that idea interesting — and any opportunity to study organic, high-dimensional “model worlds” seems worth checking out to me — the whole piece is worth reading, and maybe you’ll want to check in with Kellden, Scroggin and the Sceenarius team.
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More on world-modeling coming up.
