What happened to Kolzene? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The solving of mankind’s problems and abolition of government via technological solutions alone.

Moderator: Kolzene

Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14817953
If you didn't know, Kolzene was a great contributor and moderator on this forum who took the time to write detailed responses to people's questions about Technocracy. However now all his posts are deleted and gone. What happened? If any of the moderators on this forum are here, could you please explain the situation?
#14817955
This is a good question, and I don't remember him making any public/semi-public requests to have his posts wiped out of the database. I recall someone harassing him by name on occasion, but I also recall Kolzene had a very calm temperament and was civil.
#14818050
For a time, unpersoned accounts were merged into comrade Ogilvy. Perhaps his posts are there.
#14818053
I'm still here. A mistake was made somewhere during a maintenance or something that resulted in all my posts disappearing and I'm still waiting for it to be fixed, which I am assured that it can be, but have been waiting for months now. I guess I need to go prod someone about it.
#14819598
@Kolzene

BTW Kolzene, I have another question for you. Why don't you post on other forums other than Technocracy? It seems you did so in the beginning. I would love to hear your well-articulated and in-depth posts about other topics other than Technocracy.
#14819952
Thanks Oxymandias, but there are a few reasons.

One is that there is just so much. Occasionally I do wander around the other forums, but there's already like a billion things just to read, so I hardly ever get through an entire conversation so I can post a reply. Second is time. I have so many things that I am trying to do in my life that it doesn't really leave time for doing a lot on forums. Third is that I don't consider myself as having any kind of expertise on anything other than Technocracy, so on most topics I don't really have anything significant to add. I know that I don't need to be an expert a lot of the time, but it does cut down on what I could say. Plus many of the things I do want to say are often already said, I find. Lastly, many, if not most, discussions on politics are just plain messy, with people shouting opinions on what are often subjective topics. That's one of the reasons I like Technocracy, is that it's pretty much completely objective, which frames the discussion in a way that makes it easier to talk about. We can debate forever about whether people are basically good or evil, smart or stupid, but when it comes to energy consumption patterns, or the like, is easier to concentrate on facts. Not that there's anything wrong with the other kinds of discussions, and I would like to participate more, it's just that they are a lower priority for me, and like I said, I'm already swamped. But Technocracy is very important to me, and there is just too little good places to go on the net for information about it, so I take responding here far more seriously.
#14820127
@Kolzene

You've all the things you wanted to say? If it is possible, could you please show me where you posted such things if not link to the posts directly please. If this isn't possible, please answer the follow questions. Not all of them if you want to. I just want to know some of your opinions on certain things:

1. What are your thoughts on America?

2. What are your thoughts on Europe?

3. What are your thoughts on Asia?

4. What are your thoughts on Southwest Asia?

5. What are your thoughts on Africa?

6. What are your thoughts on religion?

7. What are your thoughts on Christianity and Islam?

8. What is answer to life, the universe, and everything (mandatory. The answer is obvious)

9. What are your thoughts on the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

10. Is there any plausible way for Japan to become a Technate?

And that's it. Just answer as many questions as you can. I find that you would be an interesting person to talk to.
User avatar
By MB.
#14820382
I'd like to know if the Kolzene account posts still exist, and where they are. This was the first news I heard that something had gone awry with the account.
#14820388
Oxymandias wrote:You've all the things you wanted to say?

I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by that.
Oxymandias wrote:If it is possible, could you please show me where you posted such things if not link to the posts directly please.

I'm afraid not. All my posts are no longer on the site.
Oxymandias wrote:If this isn't possible, please answer the follow questions. Not all of them if you want to. I just want to know some of your opinions on certain things:

I appreciate your interest, but that's quite a tall order! Some of those things are very broad topics (like "America"), and some I could write entire essays (or more than one even) about. I'll see what I can do later though, and it's probably best done in another forum.

MB. wrote:I'd like to know if the Kolzene account posts still exist, and where they are. This was the first news I heard that something had gone awry with the account.

I am told that there is a backup, but there is no one with the technical skills to import just my posts from the backup back into the site, so the only other solution is to manually copy and paste them one at a time back into the forum. Right now we're trying to figure out who has time to do this.
#14820390
Kolzene reported a spam user and an administrator by accident banned Kolzene instead of the reported & also deleted all the posts made by Kolzene instead of the spam user.
This was during one of these spamathons.

A backup does exist and while it is simple enough to restore the whole site to a backup, it is not as simple to import the posts of a user. I personally do not have the skills. I was thinking to do the job and all the experiments with it in a replica site in order not to break this one. But I think manually inputting all the posts might be the better & easier solution. Posts can be made and then given their original times and dates to slot back into place.
#14820408
Yikes, talk about a risky click!

I've found some of Kolzene's posts on the internet archieve. Maybe someone can check google cache as well. I can't figure out how to check previous versions and can only access the most recent cache.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111216205 ... 7&t=109110

PS- Is it possible to get the internet archive to do more frequent backups?
Last edited by AFAIK on 03 Jul 2017 01:40, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By MB.
#14820410
I've been moving some posts, but yes this will clearly take days. One possibility is some kind of group effort to repost stuff, of which I can then just change the poster/info. It would be a project requiring some degree of technocratic coordination, however. Users would need to retain the formatting of the original posts as best they could, likewise adding details about time of post to increase ease of conversion.

Anyway, something to think about.

I've restored the following threads completely.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=157996

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=144985

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=93135

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=170232
#14820788
@Kolzene

Ah, I meant "You've said all the things you wanted to say?". I am such a dunderhead.

That is unfortunate...

You have to at least answer 8th one. That one is easy and mandatory.

BTW I have an idea that I think you should take into consideration, maybe you should write a blog! Not a blog that explains what Technocracy is, but a blog that describes what a Technocracy would be like going into the details and filling in the blanks left out by Technocracy Inc. Here you can let the science fiction writer in you go wild with creativity while creating realistic and applicable ideas and blueprints for a modern Technocracy. Based on your views and ideas, I think that you are a "hard" science fiction writer in which case you would have no problem writing realistic descriptions of a Technocracy. This blog will also not be based around stories but articles that describe what Technocracy is through a milleu-esque writing style. The most well-known example of what I mean is the descriptions of a communist society from the works of Karl Marx except much less aggressive and alot more friendly. Although communism absolutely isn't Technocracy at all in anyway possible what I want you to copy is the writing style, a style of writing that not many people outside of hardcore communists associate with Marx.

Now you may say that you can't do this because Technocracy Inc left out those blanks in order for Technocracy to be timeless and that filling in those blanks would remove that element from Technocracy. I think you will say this because you are devoted to Technocracy however you are not devoted enough that I cannot potentially convince otherwise. The main reason for doing this blog is not to explain what Technocracy is or educate people on Technocracy, but to generate interest in Technocracy. In other words, the point of this blog is to entertain by providing intellectual stimulation through realistic and achievable blueprints for society. Afterward you can provide links for people who want to explore the general idea further or let the people who enjoyed the stimulation to go tell their friends about it. By doing so you greatly expand the audience for Technocracy.

And this is also beneficial for people who lost interest in Technocracy. A big problem I find with Technocracy is that, after you understand it, there's not that much left to do other than educate others on it which seems like a boring experience. Heck, for me personally I shifted from an obsession with Technocracy to an obsession with reaching Technocracy. This is intellectually stimulating for me because I live in the Middle East which poses lots of problems for the development of Technocracy there. However that's what makes it so fun, because I get to think deeply about how to reach it and consider numerous different ideas. People who live in North America and arguably Euroep don't have these circumstances and therefore are just stuck with the boring and hard mission. The reason why political ideologies get lots of traction is because they are open to expansions of their ideas and open to derivatives of their ideology. However this cannot be done with Technocracy which is completely objective; but Technocracy Inc did leave out lots and lots of ideas on how every single piece could work out and this is where Technocracy can get that same traction.

Therefore the blog would be overall a great contribution to the Technocratic community.

*Note: I think another good idea is a forum to discuss your articles and Technocracy that is open to everyone is well-overdue

**Note: Although you will disagree with this, I recommend that you don't mention the word "Technocracy" anywhere in your articles. Don't even mention words like Meritocracy and Noocracy either. These words have bad stigma among Westerners due to their association with elitism. Please use "Post-Scarcity" as the identifier for the society the blog describes or a made-up word like afthocracy (comes from the greek word "afthonía" which means "abundance").
#14820825
Oxymandias wrote:@Kolzene

Ah, I meant "You've said all the things you wanted to say?". I am such a dunderhead.

Not at all, we all make mistakes, even online. :)
As for your question, the answer is no. What I meant was that many times I find in long conversations what I want to say has already been said by others. That's all. There's plenty I'd like to say, I only wish I had the time.

Oxymandias wrote:You have to at least answer 8th one. That one is easy and mandatory.

42. Happy? ;)
Actually I've already written answers to several of them. I'm thinking on the others and also have to find an appropriate place for them on the forum here.

Oxymandias wrote:BTW I have an idea that I think you should take into consideration, maybe you should write a blog! Not a blog that explains what Technocracy is, but a blog that describes what a Technocracy would be like going into the details and filling in the blanks left out by Technocracy Inc. Here you can let the science fiction writer in you go wild with creativity while creating realistic and applicable ideas and blueprints for a modern Technocracy. Based on your views and ideas, I think that you are a "hard" science fiction writer in which case you would have no problem writing realistic descriptions of a Technocracy. This blog will also not be based around stories but articles that describe what Technocracy is through a milleu-esque writing style. The most well-known example of what I mean is the descriptions of a communist society from the works of Karl Marx except much less aggressive and alot more friendly. Although communism absolutely isn't Technocracy at all in anyway possible what I want you to copy is the writing style, a style of writing that not many people outside of hardcore communists associate with Marx.

Actually I am already "letting the science fiction writer in me go wild" by working on a similar idea; not a blog, but a novel (and hopefully a series of novels if the first one does well enough). It takes place in an alternate history were Technocracy was adopted during the 1950s (the actual break-point from our history is the beginning of WWII).
In the meantime, have you read my article The Benefits of Urbanates? It does some of this speculation.

Oxymandias wrote:Now you may say that you can't do this because Technocracy Inc left out those blanks in order for Technocracy to be timeless and that filling in those blanks would remove that element from Technocracy. I think you will say this because you are devoted to Technocracy however you are not devoted enough that I cannot potentially convince otherwise.

I think that you misunderstand a little here. The details I wanted to leave out before were for people who wanted a detailed plan on how to enact Technocracy, and I would have to tell them that such details were impossible because they would be dependent on too many factors that change over time, so without knowing those, you can't make too detailed of a plan. I have no problem with myself or anyone else speculating on what might be possible in a Technate now or in the future, for as long as people understand that it is just speculation, not a "plan forward". Now given that, I have filled in many of the blanks and given a path forwards on my website. It may not be quite as detailed as some people might like, but I have yet to see someone point to a more detailed plan that has been used (preferably successfully) for something similar in the past. It is certainly an "actionable" plan.

Oxymandias wrote:The main reason for doing this blog is not to explain what Technocracy is or educate people on Technocracy, but to generate interest in Technocracy. In other words, the point of this blog is to entertain by providing intellectual stimulation through realistic and achievable blueprints for society. Afterward you can provide links for people who want to explore the general idea further or let the people who enjoyed the stimulation to go tell their friends about it. By doing so you greatly expand the audience for Technocracy.

I know. For a long time I was an advocate in the movement for the application of the arts (fiction, pictures, music, even movies if we could) as a means of generating interest. I'd point to things like the Venus Project which were excellent at generating interest (but that one was poor on the details of how it would actually work). I used to say that if Technocracy was the substance, TVP was the style, and what we needed was both. Unfortunately my words largely fell on deaf ears.

Oxymandias wrote:And this is also beneficial for people who lost interest in Technocracy. A big problem I find with Technocracy is that, after you understand it, there's not that much left to do other than educate others on it which seems like a boring experience. Heck, for me personally I shifted from an obsession with Technocracy to an obsession with reaching Technocracy. This is intellectually stimulating for me because I live in the Middle East which poses lots of problems for the development of Technocracy there. However that's what makes it so fun, because I get to think deeply about how to reach it and consider numerous different ideas. People who live in North America and arguably Euroep don't have these circumstances and therefore are just stuck with the boring and hard mission. The reason why political ideologies get lots of traction is because they are open to expansions of their ideas and open to derivatives of their ideology. However this cannot be done with Technocracy which is completely objective; but Technocracy Inc did leave out lots and lots of ideas on how every single piece could work out and this is where Technocracy can get that same traction.

Actually Technocracy Inc. was excellent at getting people involved back in the 1930s. However what they were not good at was adapting, and their model only worked well for an organization of a certain size. Once its size fell below that point, they no longer had the manpower and infrastructure to pull it off. That's why I came up with the Technocracy Katascopic Project as a means to get people more involved in the overall plan towards Technocracy. You can read about that in the above link, with its own links for more information.

Oxymandias wrote:Therefore the blog would be overall a great contribution to the Technocratic community.

*Note: I think another good idea is a forum to discuss your articles and Technocracy that is open to everyone is well-overdue

Actually I had run my own forum on my website for quite a while. I had to shut it down eventually though due to a combination of lack of use and one troublemaker. When my novel becomes available I fully plan to have a full website and forum for it and anyone who wants to talk about it and related topics. (Yes, I'm being optimistic.)

Oxymandias wrote:**Note: Although you will disagree with this, I recommend that you don't mention the word "Technocracy" anywhere in your articles. Don't even mention words like Meritocracy and Noocracy either. These words have bad stigma among Westerners due to their association with elitism. Please use "Post-Scarcity" as the identifier for the society the blog describes or a made-up word like afthocracy (comes from the greek word "afthonía" which means "abundance").

Actually I don't mention "technocracy" in my novel, because I'm already aware of the baggage it has. Instead I use the word "Technate", which I figure virtually no one as heard of and sounds appropriately science-fictiony.

So overall, good ideas!
#14820827
MB. wrote:I've been moving some posts, but yes this will clearly take days. One possibility is some kind of group effort to repost stuff, of which I can then just change the poster/info. It would be a project requiring some degree of technocratic coordination, however. Users would need to retain the formatting of the original posts as best they could, likewise adding details about time of post to increase ease of conversion.

Anyway, something to think about.

I've restored the following threads completely.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=157996

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=144985

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=93135

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=170232

Thanks for the help MB!
#14820843
@Kolzene

Maybe Political Circus or Gorkiy Park. Political Circus in particular facilitates many topics that branched out from other topics from other forums. If your topic does not fit the criteria, the topic will be moved to Gorkiy Park. At least, this was the case for my topic.

Interesting. I will be looking forward to it! Hope it's massively successful! However the reason why I prefer blogs over novels is that blogs are, how should I put it, alot more approachable. Not only that, but science fiction, particularly the hard science fiction I think you would write can range from somewhat approachable to highly unapproachable. I think a novel on Technocracy in particular would be in between this and even then it is still hard for the general population to get into.

Not only that, but I think the novels would be good as their own thing. The blog could serve as a sort of starting point, a launchpad if you will. From there, readers can explore some of your science fiction novels, explore Technocracy as a general concept, and participate in forums and the community. The blog is the hook while the novels and Technocracy.ca are the meat of it. That is not to say that the blog articles should be shallow, the blog articles should be able to stand on their own without the back up of the novels or Technocracy.ca to help.

I think you're Benefits of Urbanates article is a fantastic example of this speculation and the potential it has. Out of all the articles in Technocracy.ca, this is the one I still go back to, the one I remember the most. This could be due to other factors, but when I talked to other people who have read your website a long time ago, the answer was the same. The people who knew about Technocracy a long time ago understand the general concept but the article they remember the most is the Urbanate one. If you had an entire blog exploring this using this speculation it can have a profound impact on the popularity of Technocracy.

And you did exactly what I predicted you to do. Yes, I understand why you don't want to fill in the blanks Technocracy Inc left and I understand why you don't want to make a detailed plan, because Technocracy needs to be timeless and applicable everywhere. You are just as devoted to Technocracy as I thought you were. And based on your last sentence it seems that I did somewhat convince you towards my view.

I was talking about more of a description of a fully-fledged Technate society rather than a plan to reach Technocracy. The descriptions of the blog should be "ideals" backed by the writings of Technocracy Inc and Technocracy.ca. The novels are even more "idealistic" than the blog (note that I do not be idealistic as in fictional or unrealistic but idealistic in terms of how a Technocratic society should be like and what Technocrats should work towards and hope for.

Get a blog and a forum for your novel. Afterward, with the money you have, hire two types of artist and an architect. First, hire an artist that draws lots of mechanical drawings and architecture and team him up with the architect who will try to make the architecture realistic while applying artistic architectural principles to the drawings. The other artist will take the architecture and mechanical drawings of the team and use them as environments for scenes. These scenes will include humans interacting with the environment shown in the team's drawings. The reason for this is that a majority of the drawings in your blog and novels will be technical ones that describe how buildings and certain systems work so it makes sense to hire a specific artist and an architect for it. The other artist is only needed to create promotional material, book covers, and provide imagery of how a Technocracy would be like and how humans will interact with the buildings and systems of Technocracy.

Also make sure to supervise everything and be constantly involved with the artist's and the architect's projects and make sure to correct them whenever they make a mistake or misunderstand something. However, do not be overbearing. Make sure to be authoritative, not authoritarian. If there is something you are inexperienced about, then do not question the experts knowledge, simply attempt to reconcile with them. It is absolutely essential that you develop a good relationship with these people. Good artists are expensive but good friends cost less.

I think this is because Technocracy Inc created a sense of community and hope at the time. In order for Technocracy to succeed again, we need to foster that same sort of community once more. It got to the point in which Technocrats had their own culture and shared identities. Technocrats found each other homes, jobs, invested in each others businesses, found each other wives, etc. The Technocracy Katascopic Project isn't enough of a motivation to get involved into spreading Technocracy because there is no sense of community. Communities desire to spread and if Technocrats believe that their community is good and that it's goal is good then they will feel compelled to spread it. They will feel that they are not alone and that they are backed up by their community.

Right now, Technocrats feel very, very alone in spreading Technocracy. They feel as if they're the only ones ringing the bell and screaming at an unresponsive audience. To them, spreading Technocracy is a waste of time. However if a community is there to back them up, people feel alot more confident and stronger in their ability to persuade. So where do you start this community? It certainly can't be online. I think in the place where the most Technocrats are concentrated is the best place to go. Then, the goal would be to spread the idea of Technocracy throughout the local areas and communities.

The biggest targets are the rationalist communities of the Bay Area by forming a sort of "allegiance" with as many of them as possible. As in, say either implicitly or explicitly positive things about these rationalist communities (quickly and quietly mentioning that you agree with a certain principle present in a rationalist community is implicit, writing an article in agreement to another rationalist community's article is explicit). This is possible to do while not leading into any situations in which two of the groups you support are against each other because these are rationalist communities who share alot in common with one another. Next, you invite the leaders of these communities to your events. Take pictures of them shaking hands with you or some other significant figure in the Technocratic community, become friends with some of them, try to convince them to take some sort of Technocratic views, that sort of thing.

If you do this, although these communities won't suddenly become technocratic they would certainly be under the Technocratic community's influence and could agree with Technocracy and even be ok with it.

I can continue if you wish. These ideas need a post all to themselves.

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