Turning Point 2000, by Alison Pritchard & James Robertson, The Old Bakehouse, Cholsey, England, is about shifting to a new path of progress, enabling for people and conserving for the Earth. New models of development, new economics, consumption, consumerism, life styles, children, Citizens Income, Tax Reform, poverty, work, Globalisation, stakeholder, citizen, community, society, dematerialization, eco-efficiency, environmental management, public/private partnerships, recycling, stewardship, sustainable development, sustainability. With Eric Britton, The Commons, EcoPlan International, Paris, France.

Welcome

How Does It Work
Update & Next Steps
To Subscribe to the Turning Point Discussion Forum
Is @Turning Point For You?
The End of TP2000?
Enquiries and Communications

@Turning Point on the Web is a free standing Web site created in cooperation with The Commons as a cooperative "knowledge building" or "learning and communications" space, making best use of leading edge communications technologies and organization to advance the Turning Point agenda. In the words of its founder:

TURNING POINT 2000 is about shifting to a new path of progress, enabling for people and conserving for the Earth. For more than twenty years these twice-yearly newsletters have been suggesting links and synergies between different aspects of this transformation, and encouraging readers to contact each other.
In the January 1997 newsletter we noted that large numbers of newsletters and journals, networks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), had now come into existence, covering many different aspects of the need to shift to a people-centred, ecological path of progress. The mainstream was paying more attention. And more and more of our contacts were now communicating by e-mail and the Internet. We were wondering about the future of TP 2000.
Thank you to the many who responded. You understood our wish to rethink the function of TP 2000. But many of you pressed us to continue with a hard-copy newsletter circulated by mail. We have decided to continue to send the twice-yearly newsletters to all on our mailing list.
But, as you will see from what is right before your eyes here, we have also decided not to stop there. This attempt to move some aspects of TP2000 onto the World Wide Web represents a probing first step in that direction. Let us know what you think about it. (We invite people who find it useful to access @TP 2000 via The Commons website to consider sending us a donation. This will help us to continue sending hard copies to people, especially in Third World countries, who are not on the Internet.)

How Does It Work

This site -- ever under development -- is being developed for the Turning Point teamin a joint effort by and within The Commons on a friendly basis, because we at The Commons believe that the work of James Robertson, Alison Pritchard, and their network of thoughtful and productive international associates and contacts can make good use of the exposure and conveniences that the Web has to offer.

@Turning Point on the Web gains its power as a group work tool through quite an impressive array of carefully linked information and communications tools, with the Menu bar just to your left providing a first set of indications and means of access to the site's contents. How all this works may appear to be reasonably clear at first glance; however we suggest that before going into the site and its various specialized programs, you first take a moment to familiarize yourself with the terrain. Probably as good a way to start as any is to work your way right down through the first set of links on the opening menu to your left.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the tools and contents of the site, you may next want to consult the Library and the Links/Media sections which contain both the results of earlier collaborative projects as well as a growing body of useful current materials and links. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much @Turning Point has to offer.

Site Update & Next Steps

You may have noticed that we have of late begun to put more time and effort into the electronic edition of the newsletter, and hope that you find it easier to use and generally more agreeable to work with. It is still very much work in progress and we certainly are interested in hearing from you with your complaints, ideas and suggestions. We intend to keep improving the site in the coming months, and as we wait to hear from all of you several points come to mind.

In the first place, if you have sites and programs to which you think we should be providing direct links (just over to your left under Links/Media), please do let us know. We don't want to let this get out of hand, as it can all too easily on the Net, but we think that with your help and a bit of judgment the various links can greatly improve the usefulness of the information that the TP2000 team so painfully pulls together for all of you. And when you do send along materials, to the extent that there are email addresses for the key authors and institutions involved, it would be kind if you would share these with us all as well.
If your program and site have a major overlap with TP2000 main themes and interests, it may be more appropriate for us to introduce yet more direct links, as we have done with several by way of demonstration in the section to your left labeled, Common Ground.
Please review the several new communications links and utilities that are now available here. They may be useful for you in several ways. Perhaps we can talk about this?
Another possibly useful innovation (this one a trial only for now) is the monthly essay, which the first is now available here. Do you have a suggestion for us?
Audio and Other media: Wouldn't it be a good idea if we could encourage James Robertson to record one or two of his essays or talks for us to place on the site? The technology is there, and I think that many of us would like to hear his voice. Now that shrinks distance!

You complaints and ideas on all these matters electronic can be addressed to our ever-diligent WebMistress whom you can easily reach at webmistress@EcoPlan.org, with more detailed contact information available under the main Commons site if you wish. Remember: this cooperative enterprise will be as good as you make it!

To Subscribe to the @TP2000 Forum

Care to join the @Forum. Right below you will find the front door. Sign in, click and your subscription details are on the way.

If this topic might be of interest to those who access your own Web pages, you may wish to consider inserting it (which you can of course tailor for your own taste and needs) on your site to give them easiest access to this discussion and exchange space. Contact us if you do not manage to find the routines for doing this easily here.

Is @Turning Point For You?

Hard as we have tried to make it an easy place to be and to get around in, this bit of assembled 1999 content and electronics that we call The Commons is not for everyone (at least not yet, but give technology a few years and...). On the one hand, it is only going to be potentially useful for people who care about the issues that we have set up to broach -- which can more or less be summarized as the management of technology and its impacts as they effect people in their day to day lives. Since this is such a very wide brief, we have tightened the focus with the various programs and projects, each of which has its selected area of competence and concentration.

There are however three other non-trivial practical constraints that serve to keep this from being a tool set which is equally useful to everyone, and which you may wish to consider before taking this further. Thus..

Having the right equipment and technical competence is critical.
High speed communications links are important if you are to be a comfortable and efficient user (56k or faster).
Patience and a certain turn of mind are also important. If you are not patient with technology, this is surely not going to be an agreeable place for you).

A quick visit to the @Toolkit section, as well as those pages of the Help Desk which set out the technology, software and skill requirements for full and easy participation may help you make up your mind on this. No sense on climbing on board if you are going to be unhappy and unproductive. On the other hand, if you have been waiting for an excuse to make the break into these new technologies and work methods, this may be about as good a way as you can find to negotiate the transformation. And of course if we can help... well, that's precisely what we are here for.

The End of TP2000?

It has been announced that the final issue of the Turning Point 2000 Newsletter will appear in January 2000.

The Commons is inviting public discussion of this, and at the same time providing an opportunity for those who have made good use of these excellent materials and all that hard work by Alison Pritchard and James Robertson over all these years, to express their thanks and share their ideas about what might perhaps be done next -- now that that year 2000 is upon us and with the knowledge that there are a few remaining problems of society, economy and technology that still need our attention. For more on this, please go to Whence TP2000?.

Enquiries and Communications:

Let us close out this welcome note by saying that if this beginning is a modest affair, there is no reason that it need remain as such. The World Wide Web lends itself very well indeed to the sorts of communications, exchanges and cooperative knowledge building which are indeed the main concerns of both Turning Point 2000 and The Commons more generally. So stay tuned. You may be pleasantly surprised.

For matters of substance:

Alison Pritchard or James Robertson
The Old Bakehouse, Cholsey, Oxon OX10 9NU, England.
Tel: +44 (0)1491 652346; Fax: +44 (0)1491 651804
e-mail: pritchard@tp2000.demon.co.uk or
robertson@tp2000.demon.co.uk

And if the electronics somehow fail to perform....

Eric Britton, EcoPlan International
Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara
F-75006 Paris, France
Tel.+33 (01) 4326 1323 or +33 (01)4441.6340
Fax +33 (01) 4441 6341 or +33 (01) 4326 1323
Email: postmaster@ecoplan.org

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