2007
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This Questions and Answers file was put together originally in late 1998 by member Bill DesJardins who later became the webmaster of the Technocracy Inc. home page on the internet.
Technocracy is again an advancing movement.
This is in no small part due to the internet and the efforts of members and ex-members working alone against all odds. Bill will be well remembered for this questions and answers project in years to come. This file is the history of North Americans curiosity about Technocracy over the past 76 years. The answers are not dictates as to what will be done but rather merely informed speculation of what life may be like in a Technate.
Some history of this massive question and answer file.
As a new and enthusiastic member I mentioned Technocracy to those I spoke to and was often asked questions that I did not know how to answer, so the next time I was at the local Technocracy hall I would mention this and ask for a proper answer. I was instructed not to ask the other members as they may give their own personal answers. I was told to refer to official literature and or publications for the proper answers to questions. Arrggh! In addition to rooms full of the founder’s text there were eleven different official magazines some of which had published twelve issues per year for more than fifty years finding the proper answers to my questions by looking through the archives could have taken me half a life time. Naturally, countless others had gone through the same thing as what was happening to me. Then I found a 28 page issue of one of the official magazines that contained nothing but questions about Technocracy and had the official answers for them all in one booklet. I memorized the booklet and also found updated questions and answers booklets later on.
Much later, I was appointed as computer consultant by the Director of Publications and was heading up a team that was converting our literature from print to electronic format. My name can be found on the masthead of back issues of the Technocracy Digest. We were also beginning our move onto the World Wide Web and I was at a meeting for discussion of what we would need. Although an ASCII text file of questions and answers was close to the top of the list. The lack of members who were hip to using computers did not allow for such a time consuming job as the scanning in of the official questions and answers booklets so the project got postponed. Bill began the project by himself by scanning in the official questions and answerers. Then Bill began to survey the old time members some of whom knew founder Howard Scott and worked directly with him. He surveyed the most respected members he could contact for their answers as well. So, by now you understand how much time and effort he was putting into this project. Bill made an appeal to CHQ and the membership for some assistance, although I did offer to help with proofreading I was too busy constructing a web site for Canada and was of no help to Bill.
Behind the scenes an internal struggle was going on at the upper levels of our Organization one group was trying to go ahead as quickly as possible with getting onto the World Wide Web and the other side was saying that the internet should be ignored as it was "Superfluous." To call it a civil war would not be exaggerating. Those who controlled the purse strings saw no good reason to get Technocracy onto the internet and simply remained silent.
Somewhat later I received a letter from CHQ asking for my resignation. They reminded me that this is not a democratic Organization and that it appeared to them that I was exciting the membership into voting in favour of getting onto the internet. I refused to resign. Our internet projects stalled and faltered as we began to work independently. Bill could not even get anyone to view and comment on his finished questions and answers file which contained proper answers to most of the questions asked by the citizenry over the past seventy years. A mammoth project eh what?
As time passed Bill also added a few
questions and answers that were not covered in official literature. After
submitting the file for examination there was no response, or feedback from CHQ
so he put the file onto a website and sent me a copy. I asked him to remove my
name from the credits and also asked him to remove all names from the file he
declined; by this time he thought of it as his file. He had spent years on it
and that is normal human behavior. So, I removed a few paragraphs and put this
Q&A file onto my web site. As far as I am concerned getting this questions
and answers file onto the internet is a Technocracy project as important as
anything that had ever been done by anyone ever. This file is not the work of
any one person it was compiled by one person from official literature. Later on
the questions and answer file received official status from CHQ then later the
official stamp of approval was taken off, (The about face faction still has a
huge amount of control at CHQ Technocracy Inc .) I do not expect this
retrograde attitude will last much longer now that they have seen the results
of Technocracy being on the internet they are changing their tune.
>>See the file><