1. Ecosymbiotics :
Integrating Economic Profitability with Environmental and Social Sustainability
Martin Dudziak
GEOST, Ltd. 1
March, 2002
Economics and a comprehensive global systems ecology that includes the balanced growth of
capital and wealth is a central aspect of building a sound approach to education and in general to
the growth and development of science and technology for present and future generations. For
most of human history education, even basic reading and writing, and certainly the natural
sciences and mathematics had been a guarded and sponsored special activity of an economically
defined and sanctioned minority. Only in the past half-millenium have things evolved differently,
and yet there are barriers that are not only economic but political, cultural, and generational.
While every national and international program strives to enhance and sustain increased learning
and education, there are growing gaps between nations and within even the most economically
developed countries. Furthermore, there have been for centuries diverging and competing trends
and forces relating to the growth of the sciences and what may be called the research and
development sphere in general, without restriction to only the classical sciences and engineering
disciplines. "R&D" has typically been driven by the spirit of inquiry and funded by an uneasy
and unstable mixture of the functional and the philanthropic, the former often being constrained
and funneled through filters governed by strict capital management and growth thinking and by
military and defensive postures and plans.
Within the past century and especially the last half of the twentieth century all of this has
effectively "come to a head" like a pot of water brought to the point of boiling. the world has
witnessed not only the most massive deployments of resources and funds in history for the
development of an armada of diverse weapons of mass and potentially complete destruction, but
also the development of consumer cultures that on the one side expend vast amounts of natural
resources and have created serious environmental damage and that on the other hand, in the
commonly-named Third World, consume less per capita but create in some cases more lasting
and threatening damage to the physical environment.
The historical processes involving industries, consumers, and nation states have led to a
proliferation of efforts, arguments, discussions, projects, and indeed progress on the fronts of
peace and disarmament, environmental protection and sustainability, and education. Still there
are barriers, rifts, and a non-optimality that calls for a greater sense of synergy and symbiosis
between peoples, organizations, fields of study and industry, and especially concerning the
growth of new and creative methods and problem-solving for issues that affect global health,
security, energy, food, and in short all the resources and structures for normal living. This
"boiling over" of the social pot has resulted in near-catastrophic and volatile conditions from time
to time. Of these the most dramatic and threatening at present may not (after all early signs and
despite expectations for the worse) be in the expected areas of ocean pollution, forest decline,
ozone pollution, or food chain destruction, due to efforts and cooperation among major players of
industry, government, and the public as a whole. However, the frailty of the global economic and
political situation, with the exacerbations of unrest that often explodes from frustration and
ignorance into terrorism and indiscriminate violence, offers a vision of what a world can become
1
prepared for the Conference on Global Sustainability, INCAE, San Jose, Costa Rica, March, 2002 while
the author was also employed by Intel Corporation; further edits 8/2002 and 1/2003

2. without a serious influx of attention upon education and the inculcation of thinking and reasoning
directed toward solving problems constructively and systematically.
Presently the world needs more education, more innovation, more creativity, and more minds that
are consumed and devoted with discovering, designing, building, and making rather than with
getting by, sitting back, or lashing out. Basic and fundamental scientific research is needed more
than ever to address the needs of a diverse world population and a diverse environment. Physics,
for instance, is a topic that saw tremendous support for basic research during the Cold War and
now has suffered in the two countries, USA and Russia, that most actively pursued fundamental
physics research for weapons development. The study and research should not stop because the
impetus to build more powerful weapons of mass destruction has dampened (or shifted to other
technologies). Software, informational technology, project management, investment planning
and business administration are important but not if the cost should be measured in terms of loss
of next-generational capacities for both scientific and humanities developments. The stabilization
that is perceived in terms of the environment, energy resources, pollution, and food supply is very
frail and temporary and this has provided a false sense of security perhaps to some people and an
opportunity for capitalizing on the weaknesses for others.
These issues and concerns are at the heart of what is lately being referred to as ecosymbiotics, a
new interdisciplinary field that is more a change in attitude and approach than an introduction of
new subject material. Ecosymbiotics is defined as follows: the integration and mutual sustenance
of scientific, economic, and social discoveries, methods, and relationships deriving from multiple
and interdependent origins for the purpose of developing commercializable, innovative, and
ecologically balanced materials, techniques, and industries. Ecology and economics are viewed
as inseparable and essential aspects for attention in any technological and educational process.
One implication of this view is that there are ways and means to move education, environmental
protection, and basic research away from the chronic dependency upon not-for-profit channels
and resources and directly into the "metabolic cycle" of business and capital growth. Keeping the
need for profit and return on investment in the foreground of thinking is a guaranteed path to
ensuring that a gulf does not grow and widen between the purposes and resources of those that
have and control the capital and those that would like to work towards building as safer, cleaner,
richer planet. Likewise, keeping the needs and activities of the next several generations in the
foreground of thinking about corporate and capital development is a guaranteed way to ensuring
that there is an energy supply adequate for the world in the year 2200 and that there are people on
the planet living in no lesser standards of life than at present.
Ecosymbiotics, then, is in the most broad terms a methodology for synthesis and interdisciplinary
discovery, innovation and engineering, applicable into many fields of science, engineering, and
business, while directly focused upon the educational advancement and inspiration of children in
elementary and high schools. This is where resources such as the INcyclopedia and Knowledge
Gateways enter into the picture. The very process of building and deploying the INcyclopedia
will help directly and indirectly (through what comes from others and the readers and students) in
developing a consort of informational and physical research tools that will produce and aid within
investigative and exploratory research worldwide. Certain of these tools, including works that
may evolve directly from distance-based and collaborative educational projects involving
students from many countries, will be progressively identified as having value within the
commercial and consumer sectors, for instance. The basic model is not dissimilar to that of Open
Source software technology, but now applied to a much broader sphere of knowledge and ideas
that will emerge from individuals and even groups that have formed through the context of the
INcyclopedia and some of the interactive, group-enabled models and exercises that will be
drawing people from around the world closer together.