2019-07-24 to 2019-12-10
Ideally, there should be an on-going dialogue between cliology and cultural evolution, whereby the academics use the tools and data to assess their theories, and the practitioners attempt to apply the theories for beneficial ends. While cliology embraces theory, its focus is on application, not primarily of understanding, but of instrumentation, of social and cultural intervention, of building a better world – or more prosaically, selling more widgets. More will be said on this, but to provide an outline here, typical users could range from on-line marketing to government policymaking. Amazon, Netflix and others, are well known for their data collection and precision targeting of their sales communications: they have become quite adept at understanding consumer preferences and influencing purchasing decisions.
Cliology as a tool, is neutral, but can be applied preferably in eusocial ways. Understanding such uses can be derived from considering what intentions, what market sectors, what users, and what technologies cliology covers. Certain specific examples will be given in the cliological frameworks.
By intention
Strategic business tools such as PEST (or PESTEL) are often used to assess environmental factors that influence business decision making.
- P – Political
- E – Economic
- S – Social
- T – Technological
- E – Environmental
- L – Legal
These factors are, of course, a product of culture. As cliology is about understanding, forecasting, and fabricating culture then PESTEL gives some insight into the areas that cliology can be applied to. For example, a social trend comes to light and it becomes possible to predict where that trend is heading. Depending on the relative merits of the forecasted trajectory, then cliological measures can be put in place to guide its direction. Similarly, technological trajectories can be steered in a more eco-friendly direction.
By market sector
Numerous industrial and market sectors already apply methods that have some similarities to cliology, hence as an emerging technology, cliology could adapted for the following purposes:
- Product design
- PR and influence
- Military, civil defence, counter-terrorism
- Political: lobbying, protest and campaign
The market sector and intention form a grid. For example, PR might be applied to the political domain (ie lobbying) or Military might want to encourage the development of a type of technology, as in a defence research call.
By user
Every member of society is influenced and in return influences culture, whether they know it or like it or otherwise. Certain professionals, however, make it their business to know what is going on, and do make deliberate and systematic attempts to shape the environments they are in. These individuals and organisations can be viewed as sitting somewhere in the grid described above.
- Academics, creatives
- innovators, pioneers, dreamers, investors, corporate strategists,
- PR councils, ad-men, marketeers, sales forces, branding agencies,
- fashionistas, forecasters and pundits, influencers,
- strategic communicators, propagandists, psy-ops agents, thought shapers,
- priests, proseletists, evangelists, educators, disseminators,
- policy and decision-makers, town planners, activists, promoters, change agents, politicians
- and of course, megalomaniacs.
The last group, megalomaniacs, is included as a blanket term to serve as a reminder that cliology, in itself, is an ethically agnostic toolkit. Other users with some conflict of interest might use cliology, or something similar, to affect their own agenda.
By technology
The anticipated technologies can be thought of as those which analyse cliomes (memes) and those that synthesise novel varients. Of course, each influences the other.
Clioanalysis
- Historical analysis: a reconstruction of the evolutionary path depicting how some cultural aspect emerged
- Contemporary mapping: a snapshot of the present state of culture
- Tripwireing: tracking the spread of some cultural item through society
- Forecasting: some indication of the trajectory of culture and likely future states
- Finding gaps in the map: identifying holes in culture and suggesting what could be there
- Technology Roadmapping: charting a cultural development course from a present to the desired state
Cliosynthesis
- Fragment scooping: identifying elements of culture that can be recombined
- Editing suite: experimental recombination of cultural elements
- Simlacrarium: a virtual environment for assessing the viability of various recombinations
- Bernaysian Cliostat: a means of measuring the adoption of cultural elements so as to promote their uptake.
A roadmap for cliotechnology
The essence of cliology is that of a cybernetic system of input, process, output, and feedback. This systems view is applicable to both theoretical and applicative sides. Again, cliology is not just an academic study that discovers the laws of cultural dynamics, it is intended also as an engineering discipline that exploits those dynamics for practical purposes. Digital information technology, information systems, and the web are facilitators for capturing, processing, producing, disseminating, and monitoring the influence of designer memes: an umbrella term would suitably call this cliotechnology. A cliotechnology roadmap is needed to chart out the course of development needed to move out of unicorn-and-rainbows superstition, and towards a rigorous methodology of cultural engineering. The deliverables will mostly be presented in software form.