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1. The Neohori Challenge

Technological Progress has improved our lives in many ways; yet, it seems the more we can manage details, the less we are able to manage the big picture of our life circumstance. We flee from the cities that we have created and try to recover in environments with less stress and pollution. We urge for undestroyed nature, for human community, for beauty and authenticity. And often enough we are just destroying what is left by our very urge. But what is left, is endangered anyway.  We might have to face some unexpected responsibilities if we are in search of those values.

The Neohori Challenge is about the new, unprecedented technological possibilities we are about to possess. Telecommunication, the Internet, Biotechnologies: they might cut deeper into our existence then any other technological change before. Somebody has said it is "like the invention of fire". So how are we going to use this fire? Will we be able to combine and design living environments that really reduce the stress of life or will we just undergo a new, deadly alienation, that cuts our body-mind-soul system apart? Might we be able to find ways to protect and bring to life again the environment that really talks to our souls?

Will the wheel of global competition with its ever-increasing speed continue to attract all the population to the urban agglomerations, where they have to deliver "just in time" whatever a global megamachinery wants, and then reject a growing number of unemployed with no grounds to live on? Or can we turn this wheel into a driving force for the recultivation of our rural heritage, full with abundant energies to free us from the stress and scarcity of the past? Can we manage to balance globalisation with productive localisation ? Can we manage to combine tradition with innovation? And how would this look like?

We do not know the path yet, but we know that we are just now in the beginning of the most powerful transformation that mankind has ever undergone: the information society. We know that every successful invention, every well-done design has paved the way for many new possibilities. The Neohori challenge is an attempt to reinvent and design the Village of the Future, because the Future is in the Village. Many visionary thinkers are on the same path, and Neohori offers them a virtual meeting ground and a real challenge.

 Click here to see a first overview picture of Neohori

So come with us to the island of Samos, let us travel to a beautiful mountain village in decay, where there is despair and abundant potential, like in innumerable other left-out and forgotten places in the world. Meet the people that were famous for their hospitality, their sense for beauty and for the essence of life. Explore the Neohori Circumstance.