About Place4Us and the Virtual Community Centers

The Ethos Committee of Place4Us

The Place4Us Ethos Committee (PEC) has the important responsibility to ensure that the activities of the VCCs hosted by Place4Us are within the mission of Place4Us and compliant with the ethos of Place4us. Requests for new VCCs are decided upon by the Ethos Committee based on comments and ratings from the global user community. The Ethos Committee also monitors the VCCs to some extent to ensure that activities in VCCs are consistent with established ethical requirements and rooted in the value system of Place4Us as defined by the Plenary. The Ethos Committee also considers requests from VCC members for reviews of activities in specific VCCs.

In accordance with the principle of supporting those who are working towards the joint vision and not worrying too much about catching all those who are misusing Place4Us, Place4Us has established a variant of what Beer (1979, 1981) called the algedonic channel. Algedonic stands for pain or pleasure signal. The algedonic channel is designed to send signals up the recursion levels if there is a problem that cannot be resolved at the level where the problem originates. Examples of signals for the algedonic channel of Place4Us include:

• A whistleblower sends a message that the group or some powerful individual is abusing the platform or their position,
• A VCC may be floundering and may be too proud or whatever to ask for help,
• Someone in a VCC may simply want Place4Us to look over what this VCC is doing for whatever reason, including to get an assessment of the activities in the VCC and/or getting advice on how to increase collaboration with other VCC.

The algedonic channel is directly linked to the Ethos Committee and the Ethos Committee assess messages that it receives on this channel and decides on how and by whom potential incidences of misuse should be addressed.

The Place4Us Ethos Committee

Dr Hans-Peter Plag, Chair After some years as carpenter, Hans-Peter Plag studied mathematics and geophysics in Berlin and obtained his PhD in Natural Sciences in 1988 from the Free University of Berlin. Subsequently, he worked at universities in Germany, Norway, the U.S. and South Africa, worked in government agencies and run his own companies. He was also active in environmental movements and engaged in political parties. In his teaching and research, focus has always been on science that serves modern society with a focus on making progress towards sustainability and maintaining the viability of the Earth's life-support system. Read more ...
Barry Clemson, Member Barry Clemson grew up in rural Alaska in Anchor Point and Moose Pass. He was engaged in political activism in the U.S. and India. After he discovered Stafford Beer’s management cybernetics in 1967 he spent a whole year doing little other than studying Stafford and Ross Ashby. After that, he became very active in both systems theory and the cybernetics societies. He served as president of the American Society for Cybernetics for two years. He has a varied work career including custom manufacturing, automated software development, university teaching and research, and owner of a construction company. Read more ...
Dr Jon Walker, Member Jon Walker has over thirty five years experience working in the co-operative business sector. He has established and co-managed a range of businesses including retail outlets, a small-scale manufacturing plant, a warehouse and a chain of supermarkets dealing mainly with whole-food, organic and fairly-traded products. Concurrently, Jon has lectured, published, consulted and provided training courses in both private and public sectors, on complexity theory and organisational structures. Read more ...