THE INTEGRITY PAPERS Genre  -  H Benking   US Website ceptualinstitute.com

"Ekoligian lokerot paikoilleen salaperäison kuution avulla.
Futurologi Heiner Benking esitelli multimediaansa nuorille."

"Ecological Niches Find Their Places With the Help of the Magic Cube.
Futurist Heiner Benking introduced his multimedia to the youth."
 
WORLD FUTURES STUDIES FEDERATION

Tietotuutti, Knowledge Spiral. 26.8.1993 page 7
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Heiner Benking presenting pictures
of the Rubik's Cube of Ecology.

Our view of the world is too flat

says dipl.ing. Heiner Benking and asks if we can change our views-of-life? He has designed the three-dimensional the Rubik's Cube of Ecology. He presented the concept at the Communications Camp to the youngsters and adults, who were listening this well-prepared lecture very carefully. Mr. Benking' presentation main idea was that people should be very curious and interested in many different topics, should try to find connections and similarities in different areas, should know many topics before specialising in some area.

The campers felt very familiar with the idea of the Rubik's Cube even if the cube was concentrated on the ecology. Campers have used the same methods in many camps during the years: every one has learned to know both cooking, interviewing, editing, broadcasting, writing the computers, acting and telecommunicating with all possible equipments, networks and services. It was very interesting pres-.ntation, thank you Heiner Benking and Walter Spielmann from International Futures Library.

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"Visualisation of complexity in one simple, comprehensive concept of indefinite Dimension"
Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest daily in Finland, Aug. 28th, 1993   /  Science and Environment Section

 

Finn to chair futurists’ organisation

The futurists' world meeting was organised by one of the futures researchers' world organisations, WFSF. Theme of the Turku meeting is Coherence and Chaos, but in practice the themes vary a lot. As an example of this one Swedish futurist had a lecture on avoiding human errors while planning aeroplanes' steering systems.,

Finnish input in WFSF became more Important as Finlands the most famous futurist, member of Club of Rome, Pentti Malaska was elected 105-1 to be the next President of the WFSF.

At least for the next three years the federation will be run from the Finland Futures Research Centre which operates wihin the Turku School of Economics. The centre has operated from the beginning of the 1900’s but it officially starting January 1, 1993.

The most famous guest speakers of the Turku meeting were Benoit Mandelbrot, who has been called as the father of the chaos theory and Norwegian peace activist Johan Galtung. Almost four hundred futures reseachers gathered to Turku last week. Communication camp took part to the Turku meeting by making bilingual newsletters, Tietotuutti, "Knowledge Spiral". Communication comp participants used every possible means of communication from telephones to videos.

(Following is the text as translated from Pentti Malaska’s office)

"Ecological Niches Find Their Places With the Help of the Magic Cube
Futurist Heiner Benking introduced his multimedia to the youth"

Parainen/Turku

"Jump bravely over the scientific boundaries and you’ll meet many opportunities in your life –  and many difficulties, blusters Heiner Benking to the youths - in a cowshed. They are listening to him at the communication comp on the fields of Parainen, close to Turku.

At least the site of the lecture moves our thoughts from old to new and from farming to futurology. Heiner Benking introduced a new means of teaching - The Ecological Cube of Rubic.  The cube may not be an epochal means of teaching but it gives us lots of thoughts.  Moving the blocks and pictures helps us to move between sciences, centuries and ecological niches. The "Ecorubic" also helps us to perceive the size differenties in the nature.

The Cube Helps with a Multitude of Things

The faces of the 'Ecorubic' provides not only different colours but pictures, ecological cells and niches, too. The niches are like bricks; none of them, whether it is an insect, notion or historic detail – can’t be taker) away if we want to keep the cube in balance, says Benking, a professional of information management.

The Ecocube of Rubic makes us to investigate the connections between time, size and the groups. Benking proposes 3 optional cubes with 3, 5 or 7 faces and different classification basis and pictures.

In the 3-face cube one face represents post-present-future, another represents unanimated nature-animated nature-culture. The life of a butterfly takes maybe some days meanwhile the life on the Earth altogether takes billions of years on the same segment of a line.

Benking came to Parainen from the world conference of futures research to give a rapid lecture to the youths. He is a multi-scientifical futurist who contributes to the conference theme Coherence and Chaos with his Ecocube.

Benking's lecture and invention sound embarrassing but so they should. The futurists, as Benking, are highly educated but they ore also brave and original at the same time. It is typical to a futurist that he makes invasions to a multitude of sciences and that he brings together common themes in new ways.

Benkings cube is meant to help us in dealing with a multitude of things, but it also includes many parts well known especially for children. The magic cube of Rubic conquered the world in the 1980's, when it became a toy. Having this in mind, Benking developed his cube into an audio-visual aid.

Benking creates information graphics to the grown-ups at the UNEP-environment project of the United Nations as a consultant. His main job is to develop audio-visual aids for information management.

A frame like Rubic's Ecocube in the only way to "cheat" the brain, says Benking. You can see connections across times and fields of knowledge.

It is Fashionable to Visualize

The connections in ecology are similar to those in the Ecocube of Rubic, claims Benking. The ecology is still a complex field of science, and it's niches (the bricks) are hard to bring into a strict order. The ecology is where we should combine different fields of science, sizes time periods and dimensions. A researcher who crosses his own Cube of Rubic and jumps into other fields of science sees many opportunities. However he mainly meets difficulties. The community of researchers don't want him, he is being pressed and he is classified as a lunatic. However, the most important inventions of these times have been created through combining wildly the different fields of science. "it is the chaos theory and the view of complexity which try to gather the present sciences together, states Benking.

Benking calls the crossing of the scientifical boundaries to be bridging. It succeeds best by pictures or words. That’s why visualising is so fashionable In all fields of science these times, thanks to the computers.

The aim to create clear and illustrative pictures in well known from the history of sciences. Even the ancient Greek geometric-s aimed at that.

The advanced version of multimedia

Astronomist Johannes Kepler presented his view of the world with clear, harmonic and simple images. That’s what we are aiming at too, says Benking. Benking, who believes in visualisation would like the Ecological Cube to be a connection between multimedia and hypertext.

The Cube has been seen in various exhibitions in Germany. The Ecological Cube is so big that it is passable to walk around it and it's cells and lockers con been examined both from top and bottom, from all sides. The mini version of the Cube has not been done yet but Benking is thinking about the idea.

Benking"s idea itself is an old idea in a new package.   Ecorubic is actually so called multimedia, which was fashionable in the 1960's and in the 1970's. That time every self respecting company offered a big slide exhibition in exhibition stands and world exhibitions and they were not even the first visualisers: "The Chinese said already hundreds of years ogo that one word says more than thousand words."

 

 

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