Abstract

This article argues that harnessing social processes for the common good depends on creating a learning society which will innovate, learn, and evolve in the long-term public interest. In essence, this involves establishing more embedded, interconnected, and interacting, “organic” feedback loops which do not depend on long and distorting chains of “accountability” to distant “representative” assemblies of “decision takers”. Several important steps toward doing this are discussed. However, all depend on undertaking a great deal of adventurous, problem-driven research. By far the most important of these research programmes would be to develop a better understanding of the currently invisible network of social forces that have the future of our species and the planet in their grip … and then to find ways of intervening in that network. It is suggested that this is analogous to Newton first conceptualising physical forces and then showing how to measure, map, and harness them. Answering the question of how work like Newton’s could be funded and conducted in modern society – and especially under current research-funding arrangements – thus emerges as crucial to finding a way forward.