Description
This eBook by Bogdan Albina was commissioned by Science Walden at the Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology in Ulsan, S. Korea. It is a direct outgrowth from Richard Povall’s role as Visiting Professor from 2018-22.
BF Skinner wrote his novel Walden Two just after World War II in order to deal with some problems whose nature was more social and local rather than technological and global. The end of the war brought hope for a bright future, and the human collective mind was already aligned with dreams of utopia. In Walden Two, Skinner decided to apply his behavioural engineering skills in order to demonstrate how a small imagined collective would deal with the production of goods and personal issues in a sustain- able environment. He argued that human behaviour is not prone to random acts of fate, but instead, is a system aligned with certain rules and habits, and there- fore can be trained.
This book re-examines Walden Two fictional society through the lens of the 21st Century and asks how utopias and intentional communities might function in the digital age.