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(Margaret Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution, 1964)

I am about to advance a radical proposal.

Radical both in the sense of going all the way to roots of the matter—and by being thoroughly game-changing.

I propose to institute and empower transdisciplinarity—and use it as Archimedean point to engender a comprehensive (academic, social and cultural) paradigm change.

As an incisive response to "the huge problems now confronting us"; and more generally—to the academic, social and cultural situation we are in; and more concretely—as a way to continue cultural evolution; which is presently standing still or worse.

This proposal is operationalized and made concrete by offering knowledge federation as a complete prototype of a transdiscipline; ready to be examined, tested and taken into production. A salient characteristics of it is that it has the holotopia vision and project as its proof-of-concept application; which is a realizable vision of a distinctly better order of things or paradigm or future.

Although the knowledge federation prototype is the result of work of many excellent people—after giving this matter some thought I decided to make a case for it in my own human voice; and instead of hiding behind academic colleagues and language—stand accountable in front of you for what I'm about to say.

I am by background a theoretical scientist, practically a mathematician; from an academic point of view my work is as rigorous as mathematical axioms and theorems are. I will, however, here only point to its rigorous side; and let you discover its details through the public dialog that will be the first step toward implementing this proposal. The only thing I ask of you you is to accept two ethical axioms: That we the people must not leave this mess to our children; and that wemust not ignore what academic giants told us in their writings.

I am prepared to show you that those two axioms compel us to take the steps I am proposing.

Both are pointed to by Margaret Mead's timely warning: We did not heed her call.

Transdisciplinarity has a long and spectacular history—comprising a breathtaking lineup of ignored attempts to be seen and heard. Including attempt by Erich Jantsch, 55 years ago, to begin it at the MIT, at the outset of the environmental movement; as a concerted attempt to do what was necessary to empower us the people to take care of the problems that were then still just being recognized. And when we took over the torch—the same dynamic reproduced itself with stupefying consistency. That's also why I'll speak to you in my natural voice: I want this to be an outcry.

Enough is enough!

Let's break the spell of academic routine business as usual; due to which it has become impossible to do or say anything that does not fit the routine. In the dialog we are about to begin, as the first step toward implementing this proposal—will be a public discourse where we'll come together and use our human voices and minds to contemplate and implement the further steps.

This website complements my Liberation book, which is about to come out in print; which will tell stories called vignettes; and through stories present a wealth of information and ideas as material for the dialog. Here I'll let knowledge federation introduce itself in its other manners of speaking.

• In Federation through Ideograms I'll use three simple metaphorical images
• In Federation through Keywords I'll define and use a handful of custom-defined terms, which are necessary for comprehending what goes on
• In Federation through Prototypes you'll see how information is taken into concerted action, empowered to make a difference
• And in Federation through Action I'll point out what exactly I propose as the next two steps—to make the sort of difference that must be made.

Dino Karabeg