Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice two flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed in the circular holes where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it? Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

By depicting our society as a bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world and try to comprehend it and handle it as a pair of candle headlights, the Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation.

Modernity ideogram

Our proposal

The core of our knowledge federation proposal is to change the relationship we have with information.

What is our relationship with information presently like? Here is how Neil Postman described it:

"The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."

Suppose we handled information as we handle other man-made things—by suiting it to the purposes that need to be served.

What consequences would this have? How would information be different? How would it be used? By what methods, what social processes, and by whom would it be created? What new information formats would emerge, and supplement or replace the traditional books and articles? How would information technology be adapted? What would public informing be like? And academic communication, and education?

Our knowledge federation proposal is a complete and academically coherent answer to those and other related questions; an answer that is not only described and explained, but also implemented—in a collection of real-life embedded prototypes.

The Information idogram, shown on the right, shows how the information resulting from knowledge federation is to be different.

The ideogram shows an "i", which stands for "information", as composed of a circle placed on top of a square. The square stands for the details; and also for looking at a theme of choice from all sides, by using diverse kinds of sources and resources. The circle stands for the function or the point of it all—which might be an insight into the nature of a situation; or a rule of thumb, pointing to a general way to handle situations of that kind; or a project, which implements such handling.

Information ideogram

By showing the circle as being founded on the square, the Information ideogram points to knowledge federation as a social process (the 'principle of operation' of the socio-technical 'lightbulb'), by which the insights, principles, strategic handling and whatever else may help us understand and take care of our increasingly complex world are kept consistent with each other, and with the information we own.

Knowledge federation is itself a result of knowledge federation: We draw core insights about handling information from the sciences, communication design, journalism... And we weave them into technical solutions. See, for instance, this excerpt from Richard Feynman's book "The Character of Phyhsical Law", where what we call knowledge federation is described and pointed to as the very essence of the scientific approach to knowledge.

An application

What difference will the holoscope make? The Holotopia prototype, which is currently under development, is a proof of concept application.

An assessment of the general condition we are in, which has been produced by The Club of Rome, provided us with a benchmark challenge to put the holoscope to test.

Already at its inception, The Club of Rome addopted the strategy that they wold not focus on any specific problem or issue, because they are all inextricably related with one another, but on our overall condition or "problematique" as a whole. And on understanding our civilization's condition's deeper causes, and their remedies.

Based on a decade of this global think tank's research into the future prospects of mankind, in a book summary titled "One Hundred Pages for the Future", Aurelio Peccei issued the following warning:

"It is absolutely essential to find a way to change course."

Aurelio Peccei

Peccei's diagnosis included also what needed to be done to "change course":

"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future."

This more detailed assessment, from Peccei's book "Human Quality", will also be relevant:

"Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world."

On the morning of the last day of his life (March 14, 1984), while working on "The Club of Rome: Agenda for the End of the Century", Peccei dictated to his secretary from a hospital bed

"Human development is the most important goal."

BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool for shifting positions

The BottomUp - TopDown intervention tool for shifting positions, which was part of our pilot project in Kunsthall 3.14, Bergen, suggests how this proposed information is to be used—by transcending fixed relations between top and bottom, and building awareness of the benefits of multiple points of view; and moving in-between.

We call the various practices that are needed for implementing this principle knowledge federation.

Political federation brings smaller units together, to give them higher visibility and impact. Knowledge federation does that to information. Its purpose is to restore knowledge to power by turning disparate "pieces of information" into effective information (the information that fulfills core purposes; which gives us the knowledge we need).

We here refer to the proposed 'lightbulb' by the pseudonym holoscope, to highlight its distinguishing characteristic— that it helps us see things whole.

Perspective ideogram

The holoscope uses suitable information in a suitable way, to illuminate what remained obscure or hidden, so that we may correctly see the shape and the dimensions of the whole (correct our perspective).

The holoscope complements the usual approach in the sciences:

Science gave us new ways to look at the world: The telescope and the microscope enabled us to see the things that are too distant or too small to be seen by the naked eye, and our vision expanded beyond bounds. But science had the tendency to keep us focused on things that were either too distant or too small to be relevant—compared to all those large things or issues nearby, which now demand our attention. The holoscope is conceived as a way to look at the world that helps us see any chosen thing or theme as a whole—from all sides; and in correct proportions.

A vision

As a vision of a possible future, the holotopia presents an affirmative answer to the question in this website's preamble:

Think about the world at the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance: devastating religious wars, terrifying epidemics… Think of the scholastics pondering about the angels dancing on a needlepoint; and Galilei in house arrest, whispering “and yet it moves” into his beard. Observe that the problems of the epoch were not resolved by focusing on those problems, but by a slow and steady development of an entirely new approach to knowledge. Several centuries of comprehensive evolution followed. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

By using the holoscope to illuminate our contemporary situation, we show that just as the case was in Galilei's time, a whole new order of things or paradigm is ready to emerge.

Like the familiar utopias, the holotopia is a vision of a highly desirable future. This future vision is indeed more desirable than what's been offered by most utopias—whose authors lived in times when the resources we have today were not available, or lacked the information to see what is humanly possible. But unlike the utopias, the holotopia is readily realizable—because we already own the information that is needed for its fulfillment.

Making things whole

What exactly do we need to do, to "change course" and 'travel' toward holotopia?

From all the detailed information that we carefully selected and considered, and organized and made available in the square so that this claim can be verified, we distilled a simple principle or rule of thumb: We need to see ourselves and what we do as parts in a larger whole or wholes; and act in ways that make those larger wholes more whole.

This is, of course, exactly the course of action that the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.

It is also, needless to say, a radical alternative to what is now common.

As our analysis has shown, this principle works, and it works surprisingly well. Hence we offer it (and render it here as a bit of a private joke) as an evidence-based substitute for similar formulas that have been offered in the past:

But seek ye first the systemic wholeness,
in all matters and on all levels of detail; 
and all these things shall be added unto you.