Life-centered information under the light of 'geoidal' theories

With the development of information retrieval tools and Web 2.0 repositories on the Internet, it is becoming more and more easier to reach information. Users of the Internet may search online, join forums, post a question to their social networks, watch how-to videos, etc. and get enormous amounts of information about a subject of their interest. However, when asked about simple resources used in daily life that we depend on for living, such as, food, water or air, it may not be easy to find answers for the simplest questions. For example, in the domain of food labeling, information about foods are generally represented in a way that is not very easy for users to interpret. Some concerned information seekers may search online to find out the carcinogens and toxic chemicals that may be harmful for earth, which are contained in a given food product; however, it is neither practical to search with dozens of ingredients listed on the food product, nor is it easy to find reliable information about every ingredient. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulates food safety and assures that food products are sanitary and properly labeled but the problem is that the labels may be sometimes misleading. When it is written “No Dyes” on a food label, people can infer that “dyes” is not healthy, but they may not always remember to check this ingredient when shopping for other products. And even though people check everything online and find out information about the ingredients of a food substance, they may still not find out anything about the most simplest things such as where and in what conditions the food ingredients were grown or artificially produced and who in what conditions produced them. Therefore, instead of writing “No Dyes”, people would want to know what is really contained in their food, for example, if there are any genetically modified organisms or any carcinogens; or if the food production was fair, if the trade was based on equal exchange, if the production caused environmental pollution, i.e. basic information about life; not just human beings’ life but life in general: all living things, habitat, earth and even whole universe in order to aim at social and environmental sustainability.

So, here I propose using "life-centered" instead of sustainable. Since with sustainability, it is always understood as environmental sustainability, which I think is very important but sometimes may conceal all other issues, like life of workers, life of all living things other than the users. So I use life to mean the whole life including all living things, habitats, earth, and even universe/multiverse. Since now, we manage to pollute the space with our one-way satellites.

So, it is pretty obvious that these are all equally important and we, as human beings, are not the only species in the world. Our existence depend on other species as well as the environment in general. Knowing all these why do we still have governments not signing Kyoto??? Chomsky has given a seminal talk about this and you can find it here. I will try to elaborate on this subject.

People tend to ignore problems until they are affected by them. But when they are affected they are more willing to take action to solve the problem. But for environmental problem or for systemic problems, it is difficult to take action since we don't really see or feel the effects. Now, the important question we need to ask is what will people do if there is a problem that does not affect them directly, but either it affects them indirectly or its effects will be felt many years later? How are they going to start doing something for the solution of the problem? If people know the whole cycle of information are they going to take action? Are people going to be engaged if they become part of the solution seeking process and create this whole cycle together? These are all big problems that we have been facing for many years. However, in order to seek the solution to these problems, I argue that we need geoidal theories.

Why do we need geoidal theories? 
Scientists realized that the world’s shape is neither spheroid nor ellipsoid, it has its own shape, geoid; and it is neither smooth, nor regular due to the many natural or artificial happenstances, such as earthquakes, ground water consumption etc., and unobservables, such as comets, gravity anomaly, external forces, etc. Hence, the term geoidal was chosen as a metaphor to refer to theories that approach problems from a holistic perspective and also incorporates uncertainty and unobservability into their frameworks.

Think about a research that is trying to look at the role of information in persuasive technologies. Actually, I was thinking about such a research for myself. I was thinking that if we show the whole cycle of information to people they may change their behavior. I was thinking about my grandmother. She was living in a small mountain village and she knew the whole cycle of information about life. She knew where her water was coming from, where it goes. She knew how her food was produced, she knew where her waste ended up and how it affected the environment, she knew because she was producing/carrying/discarding/etc. and she was there to see. But now, living in the modern world cities, most of the time we don't know about these cycles. However, I am not sure if knowing the whole cycle would change people's behavior. And moreover, this will be a behaviorist approach that does not include the whole culture and social relations.

Most of the smokers nowadays know how smoking affects their health, they know the whole cycle and they know where they are going to end up. However, there is this whole culture, family, friends, TV, commercials, capitalism, etc. that are affective in smokers' lives. If we only focus on information, we cannot solve the problem.

This is a complex system and not a single variable can be effective solely, so studying the effects of X on Z, would be a reductionist approach when we have an equation with n variables, like:

a^2-b^5+c^6+.....+x^3+y^2=z^4

That's why, we need geoidal theories that takes into account more complex phenomena and that does not ignore the effects of unobservables.

And, for the environmental crisis we are facing, Wallerstein also wrote a commentary that I found seminal and wanted to share: "Climate Disasters: Three Obstacles to Doing Anything"