So the years waxed and waned, and the great-grandchildren of Adam lifted up their voices and cried with a mighty tumult, saying, “Write!” even as the generations that had gone before. Wherefore did Adam promise yet once again. And again did he procrastinate, as in the days of old, he loving his ease the more as the winters did gather upon his head and other the signs and symbols of age accumulate about him. For even so is the estate of man: one day he cometh up as a flower, fair to look upon: but the next day is he cut down and trampled under foot of men and cast into outer darkness, where the grasshopper is a burden and thieves break through and steal and he hath naught of raiment but camel’s hair and ashes, and a leathern girdle about his loins. So the years waxed and waned, and generations passed, and three centuries came and went, and the fourth was far spent. And behold all the seed of Adam had made the welkin of the drifting ages ring with that petition which they had come to know by heart, and Adam had magnified the clamor with his ancient promise, yet had he still procrastinated, as in that old day when the World was young and Eden a dream of yesterday. Now came forth all the host of his posterity, a mighty and exceeding multitude that no man might number, and did lift up their voices and did utter as it were in quaking thunders, the saying, “Father of the nations and peoples of the Earth here gathered in thy presence from the four winds and the uttermost parts beyond the great seas, take thy pen and write of the glories and the joys of Eden, tht we may see with thine eyes and be blest in the contemplation of it.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Then did Adam answering say, “Lo, ages have rolled their waves of care and sorrow over me, and regret for the divine Eden hath grown with my years, until it hath come to pass that now am I no longer able to bring back the memory of that gracious time, so wasted and obliterated is it with these centuries of picturing in my mind that woful day that saw me banished thence.” Then went that great multitude forth unto the far regions whence they came, saying one to another, “Lo, this old man hath beguiled us to our hurt. Therefore, when it shall come to pass that another Adam departeth out of another Eden, let it be the law that he shall write that which he hath seen whilst yet it basketh in the gold and purple crimson of the morning of his memory, ere the clouds and the night of age close down and hide it away and it be lost forever. Then shall he be clothed in sack-cloth and fine linen, and men shall bow down and worship him, even as did the children the fatted calf in the plain, what time the floods came and the winds blew, and beat upon it, yet it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock; and an exceeding great fear came upon all that saw it, and their legs quaked and their limbs clove to the roof of their mouth and they fled away to the mountains, crying, “Hold the fort for I am coming.” Honesty cannot know itself; aware of telling the truth. The pure heart, blind to its own purity, sees only outward; the reflective heart is devious. Unaware of weeping. And as we deceive ourselves, we deceive also others. Self-awareness comes into being in the midst of struggles for power and is immediately put to use. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

One defends oneself, or seeks advantage, by misrepresenting oneself. We must understand that man can do nothing. However, he does not realize this and ascribes to himself the capacity to do. This is the first wrong thing that man ascribes to himself. That must be understood very clearly. Man cannot do. Everything that man thinks he does, really happens. It happens exactly as “it rains,” or “it thaws.” In the English language there are no impersonal verbal forms which can be used in relation to human actions. So we must continue to say that man thinks, reads, writes, loves, hates, starts wars, fights, and so on. Actually, all this happens. Man cannot move, think, or speak of his own accord. He is a marionette pulled here and there by invisible strings. If he understands this, he can learn more about himself, and possibly then things may begin to change for him. However, if cannot realize and understand his utter mechanicalness, or if he does not wish to accept it as a fact, he can learn nothing more, and things cannot change for him. Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and, having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine. First of all, what man must know is tht he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable “I” or “Ego.” He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without an end. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

The illusion of unity or oneness is created in man first, by the sensation of one physical body, by his name, which in normal cases always remains the same, and third, by a number of mechanical habits which are implanted in him by education or acquired by imitation. Having always the same physical sensations, hearing always the same name and noticing in himself the same habits and inclinations he had before, he believes himself to be always the same. In reality there is no oneness in man and there is no controlling center, no permanent “I” or Ego. This is the general picture of man: Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like and every dislike is an “I.” These “I’s” are not connected and are not co-ordinated in any way. Each of them depends on the change in external circumstances, and on the change of impressions. Some of them mechanically follow some other, and some appear always accompanied by others. However, there is no order and no system in that. There are certain groups of “I’s” which are naturally connected. We will speak about these groups later. Now, we must try to understand that there are groups of “I’s” connected only by accidental associations, accidental memories, or quite imaginary similarities. Each of theses “I’s” represents t every given moment a very small part of our “brain,” “mind,” or “intelligence,” but each of them means itself to represent the whole. When man says “I” it sounds a if he meant the whole of himself, but really even when he himself thinks he means it, it is only a passing thought, a passing mood, or passing desire. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

In an hour’s time he may completely forget it, and with the same conviction express an opposite opinion, opposite view, opposite interest. The worst of it is that man does not remember it. In most cases he believes in the last “I” which expressed itself, as long as it lasts: that is, as long as another “I”—sometimes quite unconnected with the preceding one—does not express its opinion or its desire louder than the first. Now let us return to two other questions: What does development mean? And what does it mean that man can become a different being? It has already been said that the change will begin with those powers and capacities which man ascribes to himself, but which, in reality, he does not possess. This means that before man can acquire any new powers and capacities, he must actually develop in himself those qualities which he thinks he possesses, and about which he has the greatest possible illusions. Development cannot begin on the basis of lying to oneself, or deceiving oneself. Man must know what he has not. It means that he must realize that he does not possess the qualities already described, which he ascribes to himself; that is, capacity to do, individuality, or unity, permanent Ego, and in addition Consciousness and Will. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

It is necessary for man to know this, because as long as he believes that he possesses these qualities he will not make right efforts to acquire them, exactly as a man will not buy costly things and pay a high price for them, if he thinks that he already possesses them. The most important and the most misleading of these qualities is consciousness. And the change in man begins with the change in his understanding of the meaning of consciousness and after that with his gradual acquiring command over it. What is consciousness? In most cases in ordinary language the word “consciousness” is used as an equivalent to the word “intelligence” in the sense of mind activity. In reality consciousness is a particular kind of “awareness” in man, independent from mind’s activity—first of all, awareness of himself, awareness of who he is, where he is, and further, awareness of what he knows, of what he does not know, and so on. Only man himself can know whether he is “conscious” at a given moment or not. This was proven long ago in a certain line of thought in European psychology which understood that only man himself can know certain things in relation to himself. Applied to the question of consciousness it means that only man himself can know if his consciousness exists at the moment or not. That means that the presence or absence of consciousness in man cannot be proven by observation of his external actions. If man realizes that up to the moment of this realization he was not conscious, and then forgets this realization—or even remembers it—this is not consciousness. It is only memory of a strong realization. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

The fact that the consciousness in man, whatever it means, never remains in the same state. It is either there or not. The highest moments of consciousness create memory. Other moments man simply does not remember. This more than anything else produces in man the illusion of continuous consciousness or continuous awareness. Some of the modern schools of psychology deny consciousness altogether, deny even the necessity of such a term, but this is simply an extravagance of misapprehension. Other schools—if they can be called by this name—speak about states of consciousness—meaning thoughts, feelings, moving impulses, and sensations. This is based on the fundamental mistake of mixing consciousness with psychic functions. About that we will speak later, but in reality, modern thought in most cases still relies on the old formulation, that consciousness has no degrees. General, although tacit, acceptance of this idea, even though it contradicted many later discoveries, stopped many possible observations of variations of consciousness. The fact is that consciousness has quite visible and observable degrees, certainly visible and observable in oneself. First, there is duration: how long one was conscious. Second, frequency of appearance: how often one became conscious. Third, the extent and penetration: of what one was conscious, which can vary very much with the growth of man. If we take only the first two, we will be able to understand the idea of possible evolution of consciousness. This idea is connected with the most important fact very well known by old psychological schools, like for instance the authors of Philokalia, but completely missed by European philosophy and psychology of the last two or three centuries. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

This is the fact that consciousness can be made continuous and controllable by special efforts and special study. When the Catholic Church demanded that Martin Luther repudiated his attack on the authority of popes and councils, he refused to recant: “I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” Nor would he compromise: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” Luther’s intransigence was based on the divinity of his positions. When defining what was right, there was no room for compromise. His firmness had profound long-term consequences; his attacks led to the Protestant Reformation and substantially altered the medieval Catholic Church. Similarly, Charles de Gaulle used the power of intransigence to become a powerful player in the arena of international relations. As his biographer Don Cook expressed it, “[De Gaulle] could create power for himself with nothing but his own rectitude, intelligence, personality and sense of destiny.” However, above all, his was “the power of intransigence.” During the Second World War, as the self-proclaimed leader in exile of a defeated and occupied nation, he held his own in negotiations with Roosevelt and Churchill. In the 1960s, his presidential “Non!” swung several decisions France’s way in the European Economic Community (EEC). In what way did his intransigence give him power in bargaining? When de Gaulle took a truly irrevocable position, the other parties in the negotiation were left with just two options—take it or leave it. For instance, he single-handedly kept England out of the European Economic Community, once in 1963 and again in 1968; the other countries were forced either to accept de Gaulle’s vet or to break up the EEC. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

De Gaulle judged his position carefully to ensure that it would be accepted. However, that often left the larger (and unfair) division of the spoils to France. De Gaulle’s intransigence denied the other party an opportunity to come back with a counteroffer that was acceptable. In practice, this is easier said than done, for two kinds of reasons. The first kind stems from the fact that bargaining usually involved consideration beside the pie on today’s table. The perception that you have been excessively greedy may make others less willing to negotiate with you in the future. Or, next time they may be more firm bargainers as they try to recapture some of their perceived losses. On a personal level, an unfair win may spoil business relations, or even personal relations. Indeed, biographer David Schoenburn faulted de Gaulle’s chauvinism: “In human relations, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up having none. De Gaulle’s rejection of friendship thus hurt France.” A compromise in the short term many prove a better strategy over the long haul. The second kind of problem lies in achieving the necessary degree of intransigence. Luther and de Gaulle achieved this through their personalities. However, this entails a cost. An inflexible personality is not something you can just turn on and off. Although being inflexible can sometimes wear down an opponent and force one to make concessions, it can equally well allow small losses to grow into major disasters. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Ferdinand de Lesseps was a mildly competent engineer with extraordinary vision and determination. He is famous for building the Suez Canal in what seemed almost impossible conditions. He did not recognize the impossible and thereby accomplished it. Later, he tried using the same technique to build the Panama Canal. It ended in disaster. The Suez Canal is a sea-level passage. The digging was relatively easy since the land was already low-lying and desert. Panama involved much higher elevations, lakes along the way, and dense jungle. Lesseps’ attempt to dig down to sea level failed. Much later, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers succeeded using a very different method—a sequence of locks, using the lakes along the way. Whereas the sands of the Nile yielded to his will, tropical malaria did not. The problem for de Lesseps was that his inflexible personality could not admit defeat even when the battle was lost. How can one achieve selective inflexibility? Although there is no ideal solution, there are various means by which commitment can be achieved and sustained. When experts are asked to forecast the future and its requirements in complex settings, their customary response is to acknowledge the difficulty of prediction and then do the best they can with their particular expertise. This strategy of making a “best guess” is entirely sensible. In many situations, any one of several actions is better than no action. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

Retrospection also shows that in hard-to-predict moments often someone did identify what would happen and had a good sense of what could have been done. For example, in the domain of information technology there was an early vision of what became of the World Wide Web. However, a carful observer of such moments also sees that there were usually many conflicting expert predictions in play, even for the effects of a single factor. Before the fact, there was no reliable way to discern which prediction would turn out to be right. Even though something may be better than nothing, and even though someone among the contending experts may be right, it can still be very disquieting to act on the “fiction” that we have a reasonable prediction of the consequences of a particular event in a complex system. An alternate line of response to the difficulty of prediction is offered by various forms of scenario generation. This is the exploration of what are thought to be major driving forces of the situation, looking for policies that are robust even if there may be changes in currently dominant factors. By encouraging structured thought about the future, scenario generation tries to secure the benefits of preparation: being ready with some plausible response as the unexpected unfolds. The approach still requires an ability to identify correctly the principal driving forces in the system, and how they will affect the outcomes of interest. The approach is hobbled if we cannot answer these questions. For example, scenarios for the future political development in less affluent countries depend of whether current social structures will hold together or fall apart. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Social structures are likely to be affected by the clear trends of increasing development of information technology in these countries. Scenario development may be impossible if we cannot say how a process such as fragmentation of social structure will be affected by technologies such as rural cellular telephones and satellite television because the driving forces remain obscure. We believe that the difficulty of prediction in complex systems does not make the situation hopeless, although it does require a large shift in the conceptual tactics. The framework we develop here can complement and strengthen conventional and scenario-building approaches to changing the future of complex systems. To see how the framework can help, we need to consider the role of complexity in prediction difficulty, and the ideas from complexity research that can be applied in response. What makes prediction especially difficult in these settings is tht the forces shaping the future do not add up in a simple, systemwide manner. Instead, their effects include nonlinear interactions among the components of the system. The conjunction of a few small events can produce a big effect if their impacts multiply rather than add. The overall effect of events can dramatically change the probabilities of many future events. A collection of complex systems is therefore a kind of dynamical zoo, a “wonder cabinet” of processes that change (or resist change) in patterns wildly unlike the smoothly additive changes of their simpler cousins. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The complex systems World is a World of avalanches, of “founder effects” (where small variations in an initial population can make large differences in later outcomes), of self-restoring patterns (in which there can be large disturbances that do not ultimately matter), of apparently stable regimes that suddenly collapse. It is a World of punctuated equilibria (where periods of rapid change can alternate with periods of little or no change), and butterfly effects (where a small change in one place can cause large effects in a distant place). It is a World where change can keep recurring in a fixed pattern where rapid and irreversible change an occur when a certain threshold of effect is reached, and where great variety can exist at a large scale, even though small patches have very little variety. These are not completely disorderly Worlds, so turbulent that useful lessons can never be learned. They have structure, and beneficial adaptation can sometimes occur. However, prediction and choice of the conventional kind are not very reliable. It is worth noting that the difficulty of predicting the detailed behavior of these systems does not come from their having large numbers to get better predictions than would be possible for smaller systems—think of the gigantic number of colliding molecules in a perfect ga, where pressure, temperature, and volume conform to Boyle’s Law. Conversely, there are some notable complex system models, such as Conway’s “Game of Life,” where very complex behaviors arise from the interactions among small numbers of extremely simple elements. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

For us, “complexity” does not simply denote “many moving parts.” Instead, complexity indicates that the system consists of parts which interact in ways that heavily influence the probabilities of later events. Complexity often results in features, called emergent properties, which are properties of the system that the separate parts do not have. For example, no single neuron has consciousness, but the human brain does have consciousness as an emergent property. Likewise, a uniform price can emerge in an efficient market of many buyers and sellers. Research in recent years has begun to develop a literature on emergent properties and other characteristics of complex systems as a class (see, for example, Belew and Mitchell, 1996). To distinguish systems that do have a lot of “moving parts” but may not be complex, we will use the term complicated. Speaking of complicated, one of the suppressed business forms struggling hardest to break free from old-style managerial bureaucracy is the mom-and-pop enterprise symbolized by people like the Rossis and D’Eustachios in Italy. There was a time when virtually all businesses were, in fact, small family-owned firms. Beginning mainly in the19th century, as companies grew larger, they transformed themselves into professionally managed bureaucracies. Today, as we have seen, independent family-run units are once more multiplying. However, in addition, we have witnessed the spread of franchising, which links mom-and-pop operators to the financial and promotional clout of large firms. The next logical step will come when family enterprises crop up as respected, powerful units within large corporations as well. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Most large firms engage in a cynical rhetoric about “family.” A well-tailored chairman smiles at us from the pages of the annual reports as his ghostwritten text assures us that everyone in the firm, from the chairman to the janitor, is a member of “one big family.” Yet nothing is more inimical to family forms of organization and, indeed, hostile to family life itself than the typical business bureaucracy. This accounts for the widespread corporate ban against hiring both husbands and wives. Such rules, intended to guard against favoritism and exploitation, are now beginning to crack in the United States of America, as the number of highly qualified women in the work force increases and companies face difficulty in relocating one spouse when the other has a good job locally. We can expect to see couples hired by companies—as couples. Before long we will no longer see a wife-husband team placed in charge of a profit center and permitted—in fact, encouraged—to run it like a family business. The same result is likely to come from the acquisition of companies like the D’Eustachios’ Euroflex. If that firm were to be acquired, would it make sense to break up the family team that built it into a success in the first place? Smart acquirers would lean over backward to leave the family form intact. Familialism, sometimes overglamorized, presents many challenges for top management. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

A high-powered husband-wife team can be a formidable political force in the firm. The sublimation of expressed emotion—a corporate norm—may well give way to the shouts, tears, and seeming irrationality that often go with family life. Male-dominated companies may have to make room for women managers backed by husbands or other relatives. How in this system does one make sure important jobs are not handed off to the unprepared son? How should succession be handled? None of these problems is easily solved. On the other hand, fam-firms have great advantages. In contrast to large bureaucratic firms, they can make quick decisions. They often are willing to take daring entrepreneurial risks. Family firms can change faster, and adapt better to new market needs. Communication through constant face-to-face interaction and even pillow talk is swift and rich, conveying much with only a grunt or a grimace. Family members typically enjoy a deep sense of “ownership” in the firm, evince high motivation, are strongly loyal, and often work superhuman hours. For all these reasons, we can expect family firms to proliferate inside as well as outside the smarter giant firms. The Pakistani management expect Syed Mumtaz Saeed has acutely observed, “The dehumanization of the industrial era in the West has been a consequence f the relegation of the family to a purely social and non-economic role. Thus, the manager and the worker of the modern age are torn between the work-place and the home in a physical sense, and between the family and the organization in an emotional sense…This conflict is central to the problems of motivation, morale and productivity in modern Western societies.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

Saeed argues that Third World countries should reject bureaucratic impersonality and Western antifamilialism and build economies that are, in fact, based on family. What he is arguing for is the retention of a classic paternalism that not only was wiped out in most big companies in the West, but is diminishing even in Japan. However, this one is quite different from the flex-firm, in which it is theoretically possible to have one profit center that is thoroughly paternalistic and others that are decidedly not, once unit that is run like a Marine boot camp, another like a commune. In the coming shift toward diverse organizational forms, corporate anti-colonialism, as it were, will lead to the liberation of the family business within the frame of the flex-firm. Yet, the family firm is only one of a host of colorful business formats that will shift power away from manager-bureaucrats in the years ahead. Across the board, then, at almost every level, Japan faces structural rigidities that, taken together, are even more difficult to eliminate than nonperforming loans in its banks or technical and organizational backwardness in the service sector. Indeed, it is structural rigidity itself that threatens Japan as the fast-arriving future confronts it with unprecedented challenges. In Japan as elsewhere, there is a point at which rigidity becomes rigor mortis. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Facing declining birthrates and rural depopulation, hundreds of “marginal villages,” could vanish in a few decades, but some small towns are fighting back. While young residents are leaving the countryside in droves and concentrating in larger cities, major urban centers such as Tokyo and Osaka are gaining voters. However, rural towns are attracting tourists with mascots, beer gardens, dinosaur attractions, and they are doing fairly well. In fact, during the country’s Gold Week celebrations, more than 20,000 reverlers came to Kanna’s Koinobori festival, which featured  hundreds of carp-shaped streamers decorating the village and countryside. Meanwhile, the sprawling dinosaur museum, marked visitor number 1,111,111 in the summer of 2019.  Urban-rural wave conflict has long been a fact of life in Japan and the government has used public debt to suppress this internal conflict for the past few decades. Wave conflict has been softened by massive spending, which made it possible, in effect, to buy off different sectors of the economy. For Japan, however, this game is approaching an end. It faces a weakened yen, higher energy prices, increasingly powerful competition from China and India. If China faces a “volcano,” Japan faces a serious crisis of its own. Fortunately, Japan is beginning to recognize the need for profoundly rethinking the system that served it so well for nearly half a century after World War II. One indication is the growing discussion about changing its constitution. The most immediately controversial issue—whether and how to redefine the role of military—has been on the agenda for decades. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

However, the constitutional discussion now goes far beyond this. Some proposed provisions that could affect the future of wealth would deal with the environment, bioethics and—clearly central to a knowledge-based economy—intellectual property. Perhaps also needed is a clause that calls for periodic review of the power, role and structure of the bureaucracy. A clause advancing the rights of women. And a clause that reconsiders the roles and rights of immigrants and ethnic groups who are underrepresented—not merely for the bodies they add to the labor force but for the diversity of ideas and cultures they can bring to fuel innovation and enrich Japan. Finally, Japan is painfully rethinking its entire role in the World economy in a light of the rise of China. Japanese investment in China now equals that in the United States of America, and China in 2002 bypassed the United States of America in the export of goods to Japan, and to this day, approximately 30 percent, the United States of American 12 percent, and Australia 7 percent. The main imports to Japan include mineral fuels, machinery, and food. This is not the place for a discourse on Asian geopolitics or the rising nationalism in both China and Japan. However, decisions Japan must make in the decade to come will have a powerful effect on the economy and security of the United States of America and the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

On the one hand, Japan is racing to take advantage of low-cost production in China and access to its internal market. At the same time, it is strengthening its military ties with the United States of America. The economic significance of the existing United States of America-Japanese security arrangement is often overlooked. Yet much of Asia’s spectacular rise might never have happened without it. Their bilateral Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security has played a key role in stabilizing the Asia Pacific region during its recent decades of rapid and widespread economic growth. Without this stability factor, Asia—including even China—would have had a much harder time attracting investment from Europe and the United States of America, not to mention Taiwan and South Korea. It is part of the reason companies such as GM, Intel and Anheuser-Busch from the United States of America as well as BMW, Siemens and BASF from Europe have risked dotting the region with factories, call centers, research laboratories and other investments. Today, as Japan simultaneously tightens its security links with the United States and its economic links with China, it could make Japan an even more pivotal force in a region with a high potential for military conflict, pandemics, environmental damage, religious collision and terrorism. However, it could, alternatively, reduce its bargaining power with both. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

While many Japanese companies are rushing to put their plants in China, the very same companies may find themselves losing global markets to low-cost Chinese goods. In the period ahead, Japan, too, needs a twin-track policy. It must reduce its reliance on exports—especially of mass-produced, low-end, impersonal consumer products. At the same time it must rapidly complete its transition to a knowledge-based economy and society—even if that requires drastic changes at home. Either that or its new generation, busy with anime, manga and games, will see Japan’s affluence and influence shrink in an increasingly unstable Asia. It is sometimes said that Japan like bamboo grows in long, straight sections of green truck periodically marked by a narrow gray-brown ring. The straight sections, we are told, symbolize Japan’s long resistance to change. The rings, by contrast, represent sudden, revolutionary upheaval. The future of wealth everywhere—from the United States and Europe to China and East Asia—will in considerable measures depend on whether Japan is approaching its next bamboo ring. Our social “scientists” have from the beginning been less tender of conscience, or less rigorous in their views of science, or perhaps just more confused about the questions their procedures can answer and those they cannot. In any case, the have not been squeamish about imputing to their “discoveries” and the rigor of their procedures the power to direct us in how we ought rightly behave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

That is why social “scientists” are so often to be found on our television screens, and on our best-seller lists, and in the “self-help” sections of airport bookstands: not because they can tell us how some humans sometimes behave but because they purport to tells us how we should; not because they speak to us as fellow humans who have lived longer, or experienced more of human suffering, or thought more deeply and reasoned more carefully about some set of problems, but because they consent to maintain the illusion that it is their data, their procedures, their science, and not themselves, that speak. We welcome them gladly, and the claim explicitly made or implied, because we need so desperately to find some source outside the frail and shaky judgments of mortals like ourselves to authorize our moral decisions and behavior. And outside of the authority of brute force, which can scarcely be called moral, we seem to have little left but the authority of procedures. Now when we consider procedures and science, we should also think about things like smart furniture. Smart furniture are adaptive structures that will be useful in furniture with technological functionalities. For example, a drawer with a speaker nestled inside, or a lamp you can dim from your phone. Intelligent furniture pieces tend to be controlled through your phone, or through voice command. Today, we have the smart mirror features like built-Bluetooth speakers, so you can save yourself a waterproof radio and blast your shower tunes from the mirror. This bathroom gadget is backlit too. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

For a contemporary speak that is as decorative as it is functional, audio specialist brand Bang & Olufsen has nailed it. The wall-mounted speaker is made up of hexagonal tiles and while this smart technology looks more like a piece of modern art, you can stream and play music as usual. Another remarkable piece of furniture is the smart 4K TV bed frame. This tempting bead features a 40 inch Sharp ultra high-definition smartTV which rolls up from the end. With YouTube and Netflix pre-installed, it is the ultimately lazy Susan for a lazy Sunday setup. Just use the remote to bring up the TV, and our are ready for a Blockbuster night. As well as a TV, the bed features surround sound speakers. You can plug in your headphones into the side of the bed and binge your series well into the night without keeping your partner up. The USB port is a handy addition, great for charging your phone overnight. And another example of smart furniture is the Smart Desk. Thanks to a motorized height adjustment system, this smart desk lets you work as you wish, whether that is balancing on a yoga ball, or standing. You can save up to four different positions allowing you to mix it up throughout the working day. A nice alternative to a cluttered kitchen table, this piece of smart technology is great for working from home. Power has to come from somewhere and in the future your smart furniture could be powered by stored chemical energy, and lights. If nanomachines or smart materials are dunked in liquids, chemical energy can come from dissolved molecules; if they are in the open, energy can come from light; if they are moving around in the dark, they can run on batteries for a while, then run down and quit. Within these limits, much can be accomplished. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

“Smart” is a relative term. Unless you want to assume that people learn a lot more about intelligence and programming, it is best to assume that these materials will follow simple rules, like those followed by parts of drawings on computer screens. In these drawings, a picture of a rectangle can be commanded to sprout handles at its corners; pulling a handle stretches or shrinks the rectangle without distorting its right-angle corners. An object made of smart matter could do likewise in the real World: a box could be stretched to a different size, then made rigid again; a door in a smart-material wall could have its position unlocked, its frame moved a pace to the left, and then be returned to normal use. There seems little reason to make bits of smart matter independent, self-replicating, or toxic. With care, smart matter should be safer than what it replaces because it will be better controlled. Spray paint gets all over things and contain noxious solvents; the paperpaint we have talked about recently does not. This will be a characteristic difference, if we exercise our usual vigilance to encourage the production of things that are safe and environmentally sound. It may be fun to discuss wondrous new products, but they will not make much difference in the World if they are too expensive. Besides, many people today do not have decent food, clothes, and a roof over their heads, to say nothing of fancy “nanostuff.” Costs matter. There is more to life than material goods, but without material goods life is miserable and narrow. If goods are expensive people strive for them; if goods are abundant, people can turn their attention elsewhere. Some of us like to think that we ar above a concern for material goods, but this seems more common in the wealth countries. Lowering manufacturing costs is a mundane concern, but so are feeding people, housing them, and building sewage systems to keep them from dying of cholera, COVID-19 and hepatitis. For all these reasons, finding ways to bring down production costs is a worthy goal. For the less affluent, the environment, and for the freeing of human potential, costs matter deeply. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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he European-inspired, boutique community offers homes with two-story foyers, gormet kitchens, open-concept living, master retreats, large backywars, and best of all, friendly neighbours.

Picture yourself here – sleeping, 😴 of course – then book your tour to see our whole community in person. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/quick-move-homesite-23/

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