THE ROCKY PATH TO COMPLEX-SYSTEMS INDICATORS

Traditional economic and social indicators are briefly discussed and a number of deficiencies and misuses pointed out. Significantly, many e conomic indicators have lost their predictive capability, and most of the social indicators have been collected outside a theoretical framew ork. The importance of the current collection of ecological and large- scale natural environmental indicators is stressed. It is proposed tha t the world ecosystem or force-field can provide more immediately powe rful and convincing evidence of instability and structural change than can the intersecting world societal-field. The paper's main substanti ve emphasis is on the recognition of indicators within some spatiotemp oral context that are emergent at the level of the dynamics of complex systems. Such indicators are no mere aggregates. The author's theoret ical development of the Kondratiev cycle/structure as a macropsycholog ical order parameter is extended. Instabilities at both the beginnings and ends of the Kondratievs are discussed. A number of new kinds of i ndicators related to the evolutionary phases of the Kondratiev, some c onsidered to the ''surprising,'' are identified. The paper emphasizes that the US national and world economies are in the phase of depressio n of Kondratiev Number Four, and that the world natural environment is in a precariously metastable state. The paper concludes with an inter pretation of the research that suggests some perhaps radically differe nt directions for further study and practice.