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<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Applications</h1> </div>
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<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Prototypes</h1></div>
 
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<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Prospecting a creative frontier</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><font size="+1">– Be the systems you want to see in the world!</font>
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Liberating academic creativity</h3>
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<br>
<p>Imagine an academic culture where research is not steered by the publish or perish <em>ecology</em> (which is so glaringly 'industrial age', isn't it?) but by the [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]]. What sort of work would result? What ideas might emerge?</p>
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(Alexander Laszlo, motto of the 57th yearly conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in Haiphong, Vietnam, in 2013)
 
 
<h3>Prototyping the socio-technical lightbulb</h3>
 
<p>From our portfolio of applications we select and show a representative sample. Our intention is not to survey or to inform, but to illustrate.</p>
 
<p>While illustrating a creative frontier (or technically a [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]) by showing a broad variety of creative acts it may foster, we also emphasize its coherence and unity. We must leave it to you, the reader, to discover that all our applications do point to a single insight – the difference we'll make by applying our creative powers in a [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic</em>]] way, instead of reinventing the past.</p>
 
<p>Another challenge to you is to see how our various design ideas synergize with one another and form a sketch of a harmonious whole – of an <em>academic</em> paradigm to begin with, and then also of a larger societal one.</p>
 
 
 
<h3>Next-generation inventions</h3>
 
<p>The last century gave us the airplane, the washing machine and the computer. We predict that the inventions that will characterize this century will be <em>socio</em>-technical. </p>
 
<p>We will invent new ways to educate people, better ways to implement a democracy, and new approaches to ethics and religion. What will they be like? What difference will they make?</p>
 
<p>These early [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are intended to call attention to possibilities, and pave the way to large-scale development.</p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>These applications are prototypes</h2></div>
 
 
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Prototypes are a knowledge federation technique</h3>
 
<p>Think about our core challenge – to bring relevant and transformative ideas from a multiplicity of fields together, and have them bear upon institutional and other <em>systemic</em> solutions, in real-life practice. How can this be achieved?</p>
 
<p>The [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are innovative systemic solutions implemented in practice, and strategically embedded in practice, aiming to change it.</p>
 
<p>By putting a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] in charge of a transdisciplinary community (which we call a [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]]) to create it and update it continuously, we secure that the state of the art knowledge from relevant fields has a way to impact the design of the prototype, and vice-versa – that the challenges encountered in this design have a way of becoming challenges to pertinent academic and other creative communities. </p>
 
<p>In the [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] we are presenting, the [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] play the role of (1) models (because they embody design ideas and solutions in a way that makes them easy to adapt to other creative tasks and situations), (2) interventions (they are embedded in real-life systems and situations) and (3) experiments (because they allow us to see what works and what needs to be improved).</p>
 
<p>The [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] considered together form a single overarching [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]], of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as an emerging academic field or [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] or [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]]. </p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Collective intelligence in practice</h2></div>
 
 
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Debategraph</h3>
 
<p>None of us can be as knowledgeable as all of us together!</p>
 
<p>Debategraph is an online platform that enables people and communities to combine together the knowledge and ideas that are relevant to an issue. And based on them, to create guiding insights and reach conclusions.</p>
 
<p>With 25000 maps covering a broad variety of topics including some of our society's most urgent and most interesting ones, and the user community that includes the CNN, the White House, the UK Prime Minister's Office, The Independent, and the Foreign Office among others, Debategraph is successfully changing the way in which core issues are debated and understood.</p>
 
<p>Peter Baldwin, Debategraph's co-founder, was a cabinet minister in a couple of Australian governments, until he got so tired of seeing the issues voted on without being understood – that he retired early, bought himself a home in Australian Highlands, and learned how to program the computer...  David Price, the other co-founder, has a doctorate in organizational learning and environmental policy from the University of Cambridge, and a similar passion as Baldwin for making knowledge count. Conveniently, the two men are on two opposite sides of the globe. Debategraph never sleeps!</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://Debategraph.org Debategraph's introduction to itself]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Induct Software</h3>
 
<p>Imagine a collectively intelligent business; or even better – an entire business ecosystem, where the employees and clients and suppliers are linked together, and can freely co-create improvements and solutions.</p>
 
<p>Henry Chesbrough of UC Berkeley observed that innovation can be made incomparably more effective and efficient if it can be shared or "opened". Norwegian entrepreneur Alf Martin Johansen heard his talk while visiting Berkeley, and another talk about Web 2.0, and saw that the two ideas can be naturally combined. Induct Software, the global business venture he created, has Chesbrough as the head of its advisory board – and the ambition "to interconnect the global innovation ecosystem".</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://www.inductsoftware.com Induct website] (make sure to watch the two-minute video)</li>
 
<li> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5cP3NFcmFw This Youtube video] where Chesbrough tells the story of Induct's beginning.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Enhancing the evolution of knowledge</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Meme Media and Webbles</h3>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>[[File:YandD.jpg]]<br><small><center>Professor Yuzuru Tanaka – a leader of knowledge media research in Japan, the founder of Knowledge Media Lab at the University of Hokkaido, and the author of Meme Media – visited Douglas Engelbart in his home in California in 2012. Decades earlier when it began, this friendship helped Engelbart heal his WW2 misgivings toward the Japanese.</center></small></p>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>Imagine if knowledge were not locked up in traditional documents – but made available in reconfigurable hypermedia, which one could cut and paste at will and produce <em>new</em> hypermedia and new knowledge.</p>
 
<p>Engelbart called the enabling technology "open hyperdocument system", and demoed a version of it in 1968. Meme Media and Webbles in effect turn the Web into an open hyperdocument system. <em>Both</em> hypermedia content <em>and</em> web services can be combined together – which opens a realm of opportunities for creating <em>smart</em> documents. A mission of meme media is to enhance the evolution of knowledge by allowing "cultural genes" or "memes" to cross-fertilize.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://cow.meme.hokudai.ac.jp/WebbleWorldPortal/ Webble World Portal]</li>
 
<li>M. Kuwahara and Y. Tanaka:  [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-822/MK.pdf Webbles: Programmable and Customizable Meme Media Objects in a Knowledge Federation Framework Environment on the Web] Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Knowledge Federation, CEUR-WS, Vol. 822, Dubrovnik, 2010.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
<h3>Knowledge Gardening and TopicQuests</h3>
 
<p>Imagine if instead of each of us working on our own project and article, we would be freely exchanging both questions and solution ideas continuously, as they emerge! Imagine if we could in effect think and create together, on a global scale, as if we were sitting in the same room. Or as if we were cells in a single creative mind!</p>
 
<p>Knowledge Gardening,  developed by Jack Park and his team, builds on Engelbart's core notion of Dynamic Knowledge Repository.</p>
 
<p>Park was an SRI researcher and system developer in artificial intelligence, until he met Engelbart, who promptly convinced him that the <em>collective</em> intelligence was our most urgent need.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>Jack Park: [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-552/Park-KF08.pdf Knowledge Gardening as Knowledge Federation]. Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Knowledge Federation, CEUR-WS, Vol. 552, Dubrovnik, 2008. </li>
 
<li>[[TQPortal|A technical overview of TopicQuests]]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Empowering the young to co-create their future</h2></div>
 
 
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The Game-Changing Game</h3>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>[[File:TheGCG.jpg]]<br><small><center>Choose an achievement or contribution! This image was shared as part of the announcement of our presentation of The Game-Changing Game at the Bay Area Future Salon in Palo Alto, in 2011.</center></small></p>
 
<p>Imagine you met a fairy... In our presentation at the San Francisco Bay Area Future Salon, we introduced The Game-Changing Game by asking the audience to make an as audacious wish for contribution or achievement as they were able to conceive of. After everyone shared their wishes we showed how such wishes may be made true through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. </p>
 
<p>The Game-Changing Game is a generic method for recreating and changing real-life socio-technical systems. There are two categories of 'players'. The Z-players are self-selected from among the people in power positions (professors, investors...); they 'play' by empowering the A-players (students, entrepreneurs...) to 'play' their life and career 'games' in a game-changing way – by <em>changing</em> rather than only learning and adopting their professions.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://www.futuresalon.org/2012/07/10th-trimbtab-qa-with-dino-karabeg.html Future Salon Q&A]</li>
 
  <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/2574/ Blog post The Game-Changing Game – A Practical Way to Craft the Future] with the link to the article with the same title.</li>
 
  <li>The blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/information-age-coming-of-age/ Information Age Coming of Age] is the history of the creation and presentation (at the Bay Area Future Salon) of The Game-Changing Game, which features Doug Engelbart and some of his closest friends and collaborators such as Bill and Roberta English and Mei Lin Fung.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>The Club of Zagreb</h3>
 
<p>The Club of Zagreb is a re-design of The Club of Rome based on The Game-Changing Game. This is essentially a club of Z-players – who decided to make a difference by empowering the A-players, the young ones, to "play their life and career games in a game-changing way". </p>
 
<p>This [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] is a result of Knowledge Federation's collaboration with two student excellence networks in Croatia: the eSTUDENT and the Creativity Centerexcellence network; And with The European Movement Croatia and the Zagreb business incubation hub.</p>
 
<p>In September 2012 (prior to our regular biennial workshop at the Inter University Center Dubrovnik) we gathered in Zagreb to initiate and inaugurate The Club of Zagreb. Mei Lin Fung (the founder of The Program for the Future – Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue and complete "Engelbart's unfinished revolution") and Jack Park flew in from California, Yuzuru Tanaka from Japan, David Price from England...</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/TheCoZinv.pdf The invitation letter] to the opening of The Club of Zagreb.</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
</div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><p>If you've followed me this far—or rather this <em>high up</em> the metaphorical <em><b>mountain</b></em>—then you've comprehended that it's a change of self-perception and self-identity I've been guiding you to; and that the all-important next step, <em>the</em> step that takes us into the emerging <em><b>paradigm</b></em> and from problems to solutions—is through the metaphorical <em><b>mirror</b></em>; by which (having seen ourselves in the world, and comprehended that we are <em>not</em> its "objective observers" but its inextricable part and accountable for it) we become empowered to turn information into <em>action</em>; and importantly—into <em><b>systemic</b></em> change. And that's exactly <em><b>bootstrapping</b></em> that  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdRSWDefgw Doug Engelbart was urging us to engage in]; and that's also what <em><b>prototypes</b></em> are about. A <em><b>prototype</b></em> is a new <em>kind of</em> academic result—which is not telling us how the world is, but <em><b>designed</b></em> to be <em>part of</em> the world and <em>interact</em> with it; and make a <em>real</em> difference.</p>
<div class="row">
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<h3><em>Knowledge federation</em> restores the severed tie between information and action by creating <em>prototypes</em>.</h3>
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Evangelizing prototypes for systemic innovation</h2></div>
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<p><em><b>Prototypes</b></em> are <em>the</em> characteristics products of <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>—as academic books and articles are the characteristic products of the <em><b>traditional</b></em> academic work.</p>  
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>The incredible history of Doug</h3>
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<p>A <em><b>prototype</b></em> is</p>  
<p>While there are a number of ways to see and admire the spectacular benefits that can be reached through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], the Doug Engelbart history might be our best window into this realm of opportunities, because the story is so extreme; and because all the familiar innovation icons are represented – the Silicon Valley, the new media technology... and in a beautifully paradoxical way. The story has been told in Federation through Stories.</p>
 
<p>Make sure not to miss the main point: When we use the new media technology to merely <em>broadcast</em> information (or in other words to make the old systems and ways of working with knowledge more efficient – those that have evolved based on the printing press as technology) – then the natural result is information glut, or 'collective insanity'. [[systemic innovation|<em>Systemic innovation</em>]] is what's needed to make a difference. Imagine your cells using your nervous system to only broadcast, and all will be clear.</p> 
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
<li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbnq6wau5at6904/1.%20DE%20Story.m4v?dl=0 Recording of the Engelbart springboard story] told to the Systemic Innovation Ph.D. class at Buenos Aires Institute of Technology </li>  
 
  <li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/tyf1705t4hvk05s/2.%20DE%20Vision.m4v?dl=0 Recording of an explanation of Engelbart's vision] shared in the same situation subsequently.</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
 
 
<h3>We may not be lacking the resources</h3>
 
<p>In the 1960s Buckminster Fuller predicted that by the end of the century the science and technology would have advanced so much that we would be able to put an end to "the age of scarcity" and all the competition it entails. Did history prove him wrong?</p>
 
<p>We show why Fuller may have been right – and that our key issue is that our systems <em>waste</em> resources – by composing a [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] of three [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], of which the one just mentioned is the last. </p>
 
<p>The [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] begins with a [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] about Charles Ferguson, mathematician - turned political scientist - turned IT entrepreneur – turned Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Ferguson chose to point out (by creating two documentary films) that two recent events – the war in Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis – were caused by internal or <em>systemic</em> defects. By connecting his insight with David McCandles' Billion-Dollar-o-Gram (which visually displays the costs of global issues), it is shown that cost of the two issues Ferguson pointed to was so high, that "saving the Amazon" and "Lifting one billion people out of extreme poverty" would cost practically nothing in comparison.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>Lecture recording [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2342lis6oqs4gg4/SI%20Positively.m4v?dl=0 Systemic Innovation Positively], where this thread begins at minute 9.</li>
 
  <li>[http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful2/billion_dollar_gram_2009.png The Billion-Dollar-o-Gram 2009]</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
<h3>A scientific approach to problems</h3>
 
<p>If you wake up with red spots all over our skin, you will not attempt to rub them off or paint them over. Scientific medicine relies on an understanding of anatomy and physiology to treat the underlying (i.e. systemic) causes. Why not treat our <em>societal</em> ills similarly?</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/toward-a-scientific-understanding-and-treatment-of-problems/ Toward a Scientific Understanding and Treatment of Problems] report of a workshop talk where an analogy between scientific medicine and contemporary issues is developed.</li></ul></p>
 
<h3>What happened with all that time we've saved?</h3>
 
  <p>Another good place to begin might be by asking – What happened with all the time we've saved since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Everyone appears to be just as busy as ever...</p>
 
<!-- ANCHOR -->
 
<span id="largest_contribution"></span>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li> [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/ode-to-self-organization-part-one/ This blog post], which is a fictional story about how we got sustainable by discovering the systemic understanding and handling of our realities. This story was written just before Knowledge Federation would begin to self-organize as a [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]].</li></ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Evangelizing prototypes for knowledge federation</h2></div>
 
 
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>The largest contribution to knowledge</h3>
 
<p>What is the largest contribution to human knowledge you can imagine?</p>
 
<p>We asked this question in an evangelizing talk that was given in several occasions at the point where [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] was just beginning to take shape. Our point was to show that the contributions to knowledge that are changes of 'the algorithm' or 'the mechanism' i.e. the changes of the social organization of knowledge work can be <em>incomparably</em> larger than the contributions of knowledge itself.</p>
 
<p>The [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] that brings this opportunity down to earth is about the evolution of post-war sociology, during which this field grew about five times in the number of researchers and publications. In the course of which the sociology divided itself into a number of factions that were losing contact with each other – and with the society whose malfunctions sociology is expected to reveal. The "largest contribution" observation is just a generalization of the claim made by [[Pierre Bourdieu]] about sociology – at the point where he and his overseas colleague James Coleman were attempting reorganization. </p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>"What is knowledge federation?" [http://folk.uio.no/dino/KF/KF.swf recording of our evangelizing talk at Trinity College Dublin], where the above argument is elaborated during the initial seven minutes</li>
 
  <li>"Knowledge Federation as a Principle of Knowledge Organization and Sharing" [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-552/Karabeg-Lachica-KF08.pdf article in the proceedings of the first Knowledge Federation workshop], where the case for [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is made by first telling about the post-war evolution of sociology as a springboard story.</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Wiener's paradox</h3>
 
<p>By describing a concrete instance (Norbert Wiener, in his seminal 1948 book Cybernetics, pointing out that our society's communication is dysfunctional), we point to a general issue – that the core issue Wiener was pointing to is not a problem (to be solved within the existing order of things) but a paradox (which requires "new thinking" and a new order of things). Wiener wrote this book at the point of inception of a new academic field (cybernetics, or the systems sciences), to explain why this field was needed (to enable us to bring disciplinary results together; to transcend disciplinary boundaries; to inform our society how to understand and handle its systems, notably the ones that provide for communication and control). But alas – cybernetics organized itself as a traditional discipline; and Wiener committed his own insight to a traditional book. In effect, Wiener's key insight was committed to that same system that Wiener diagnosed as dysfunctional! </p>
 
<p>We offer the Wiener's paradox as a generic name or [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] – pointing to all instances where a discipline has failed to communicate to the public <em>the</em> core insights of its founding father; where this insight is needed to make the public aware of the fields's purpose and relevance; and where massive publishing may have no better effect than to further obscure the field's core gift to humanity.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/WP.pdf Abstract of Wiener's paradox – we can dissolve it together] presented at ISSS59 Berlin</li>
 
  <li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmtbx95ujdu1hx9/WP.pdf?dl=0 Wiener's paradox presentation slides]]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Knowledge work has a flat tire</h3>
 
<p>Academic and media publishing is like trying to speed ahead by pressing the gas pedal, in a car that has a flat tire. Our knowledge work has a structural or systemic defect, which must be attended to first.</p>
 
<p>The concrete story, which demonstrates this issue, is about two high-profile scientists bringing contradicting views about the climate change to academic audiences and the media. Consider this story as a metaphor: First Lord Robert May of Oxford comes to us, with all imaginable academic credentials and accompanied by our Minister of Science and Education, to tell us that the academic consensus on the climate change has been reached; and that the question is no longer whether it's human-caused and what needs to be done, but whether we'll be able to mobilize the public, and the political leadership, to do what is obviously and urgently necessary. Then just a couple of months later we are visited by our Nobel Laureate physicist Ivan Gjaever, who tells us – and the media – that the whole climate change story is just nonsense; that the climate has never been more stable. The point is – isn't it – the only way the media can deal with the complex world is to give a voice to everyone, and let the public decide who's right; and that the public <em>can't</em> decide who's right, and that our knowledge work needs to be differently organized – if we are to be collectively able to see the road ahead and follow it.</p>
 
<p>We told this [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] as a springboard story at our workshop at Stanford University in 2011, to point to [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] as a necessary and emerging trend.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[[Knowledge Work Has a Flat Tire]]</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Education for an evolving society</h2></div>
 
 
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Collaborology</h3>
 
<p>What will education need to be like to support us in the transition to the next paradigm?</p>
 
<p>Education, even when it does not intend that, recreates the world with every new generation. But our present education is conceived to recreate <em>the same</em> world. Not only because of the age-old disciplinary content it delivers, but also by its traditional delivery where education that is received at a young age is expected to last a lifetime. <em>Naturally</em> the people will resist change – unless they too are empowered to change as well, by re-educating themselves accordingly.</p>
 
<p>Unlike the MOOCs, where information is broadcasted, in Collaborology a range of knowledge resources are co-created or federated through collaboration of leading international experts <em>and</em> students. In a knowledge-work ecosystem that results, the students play the role of bacteria <em>in the most positive sense of this word</em> – by composting the dead bodies of knowledge and extracting vital nutrients to be reused for a new purpose. Collaborology in this way also provides a practical way in which a new body of knowledge (media-enabled collaboration) can be created and disseminated (or in a word [[knowledge federation|<em>federated</em>]]). The economies of scale (where a single expert creates only a single module or lecture for global use) enable the use of immersive and other new technologies in education. Also these economies of scale enable everyone to contribute to higher organisation and quality of knowledge and knowledge work – instead of merely augmenting the speed and the quantity of production.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://www.iuc.hr/IucAdmin/Server/downloads/Collaborology2016.pdf Collaborology course flyer]</li>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.project.ifi.uio.no/Articles/DK.pdf Steps toward a Federated Course Model] article where Collaborology's design patterns are described</li>
 
<li>[http://www.worldacademy.org/conference-page/rome-2017-abstract-presentations#_Toc498360252 Systemic Innovation in Education – the Collaborology Prototype] abstract of our presentation of Collaborology at World Academy's Future Education conference in 2017 in Rome (Transition to a New Paradigm in Education section)</li>
 
<li>[https://soundcloud.com/dinokarabeg/collective-mind-eight-vignettes-to-evangelise-a-paradigm Audio recording] and [http://knowledgefederation.net/Articles/CMC.pdf slides] of a one-hour introduction to the Collective Mind paradigm – where the first half-hour is "Eight vignettes to evangelize a paradigm", and the second half explains the Collaborology [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] in terms of its design patterns (ways to remedy the anomalies pointed to in the first half, explained by using education as example application).</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Domain Maps</h3>
 
<p>If we should empower our students to choose what they want to learn freely, in accordance with their background and future plans – in what way shall we provide them guidance? In what way will the curriculum, and the exam, be organized?</p>
 
<p>Our [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] answer involves a new technology called [[domain maps|<em>domain maps</em>]] (which at an earlier stage of development we called Polyscopic Topic Maps)</p>
 
<p>The new [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] domain map is under development. It will help us walk our talk by organizing this presentation of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]  – which is, as you may have noticed, just a long, linear sequence of things, a stark violation of our principles.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/ID-flyer.pdf Course flyer] for the transdisciplinary University of Oslo course called Information Design, precursor to Collaborology, where this methodology was developed and applied and tested in actual practice.</li>
 
<li>Article [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/ICALT-Flexplearn.pdf Flexible and Exploratory Learning by PolyscopicTopic Maps] describes both the course model and the enabling technology.</li>
 
<li> Article [http://knowledgefederation.project.ifi.uio.no/Articles/BoundaryObjects.pdf Boundary Objects for Online Knowledge Management]</li>
 
<li>Improvised [https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=131614&vt=rgraph&dc=focus Knowledge Federation domain map] on Debategraph</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Leadership and Systemic Innovation</h3>
 
<p>"Many regions and economies have attempted, largely unsuccessfully, to transplant Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture. The anecdote we are about to share will show that <em>something much larger</em> may actually be possible and even easy – something the Silicon Valley was <em>unable</em> to achieve, owing to the idiosyncrasies of its culture." With these words we began our inauguration keynote – which (as you might have guessed) built upon the Incredible History of Doug [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] told in Federation through Stories.</p>
 
<p>This PhD program has been initiated and developed at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology by Alexander Laszlo, to educate the leaders capable of bringing [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] into actual practice.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
<ul>
 
<li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfek2vl99atz0am/DE%20Springboard%20Story.m4v?dl=0 Recording of a brief variant of the Doug Engelbart springboard story] presented to the 2018 generation of students</li>  
 
<li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/tyf1705t4hvk05s/2.%20DE%20Vision.m4v?dl=0 Recording of a brief lecture] that continues the above one by explaining the essence of Engelbart's vision and contributions.</li>
 
<li>[https://debategraph.org/Details.aspx?nid=435551 The presentation of this program on Debategraph]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
<h3>Doug Engelbart´s Unfinished Revolution – the Program for the Future</h3>
 
<p>"Can information technology help us solve global and other challenges by making human systems ‘collectively intelligent’?" Te stated objective of this PhD seminar was to point to an emerging frontier in computer science and IT innovation, by elaborating on Douglas Engelbart's vision and ideas.</p>
 
<p>The development of this seminar helped us thoroughly research and make acccessible Doug Engelbart´s core ideas.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
<ul>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/d8dtjfuwv5kd9ue/CSE%20intro%20to%20KF.m4v?dl=0 The recording of the final lecture] of this seminar, where it is explained how snuggly Engelbart's vision and the emerging creative frontier fit in as the next step in the development of computer science and engineering. </li>
 
<li>[https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF9119/ Course website]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Movement and Qi</h3>
 
<p>If you'll now recall Aurelio Peccei's prognosis – that our future will have to be a "an inspired product" of a <em>cultural</em> revival – then the challenge is open for making education more than just the mental know-how. In what way can we incorporate the work with the students' minds and bodies into the academic scheme of things?</p>
 
<p>[[polyscopy|<em>Polyscopy</em>]] comes to our rescue. The designed concept "movement" includes anything that is done with the body such as meditation and yoga. The designed concept "qi" – while resembling the corresponding oriental one – is really just a way to model and communicate the reported effects that the movement may have. </p>
 
<p>Included in this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] is a marketing strategy – an experiment in making this type of work accessible and <em>attractive</em> to students and academic workers.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
 
<ul>
 
<ul>
<li>[https://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/M&Qi-posters.pdf Movement and Qi posters] were used in this strategy by combining them randomly and exposing them pairwise on strategic spots around the campus.</li>
+
<li> a <em>model</em>, functioning in reality, exhibiting a collection of challenge–solution pairs, or <em><b>design patterns</b></em> as we are calling them; and showing how to combine those <em><b>design patterns</b></em> in a coherently functioning whole</li>
</ul></p></div>
+
<li>an intervention, strategically designed to alter certain conventional practice or <em><b>system</b></em></li>
 +
<li>an experiment, showing what in the proposed design works well, and what needs to be improved.</li>
 +
</ul> 
 +
<p>A <em><b>prototype</b></em> is not complete unless it has a clear and realistic impact model and a deployment plan. </p> 
 +
<p>Before I tell you about the <em><b>knowledge federation prototype</b></em>, and how we self-organized to become capable of creating <em><b>prototypes</b></em>, and before I share some examples of <em><b>pivotal</b></em> <em><b>prototypes</b></em> we've produced—let me take a moment and introduce a <em>human</em> <em><b>prototype</b></em>. I'll tell you why: That all-important first step, through the <em><b>mirror</b></em>, has proven to be <em>insurmountably</em> difficult even for the best of us. To be "objective observer", to stay put in whatever <em><b>systems</b></em> we've inherited, is so much part of our cultural and especially <em>academic</em> DNA that it takes a veritable leap of faith to pull oneself out of it (perhaps the metaphor of unswamping oneself by pulling one's bootstraps has profounder connotations than even Doug realized).</p>
 +
<p> It is therefore of utmost importance that <em>some</em> academic people <em>have</em> been able to engage in academic <em><b>bootstrapping</b></em>; Alexander Laszlo—my friend and <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> colleague and veteran—for instance; who as the President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, at this society's 57th yearly conference in Haiphong, Vietnam, initiated a self-organization toward "collective intelligence" in this academic community! A salient point (a jewel in my collection of people stories, which I use as breadcrumbs to mark the way to emerging <em><b>paradigm</b></em>) was that the event he organized took place less than two seeks after Engelbart died in 2013—feeling that he had failed! At ISSS57 in Haiphong "collective intelligence" and Engelbart's name were on everyone's lips.</p>
 +
<p>Why was it possible for Alexander to undertake what so many of our academic colleagues cannot even <em>think of</em>? Alexander had the rare fortune to be <em>born</em> on the right side of the street, so to speak; his father Ervin observed—already in the title of one of his books—that our collective options are "evolution" and "extinction". Ervin, who is now 91 years old, is a premier systems scientist and The Club of Rome veteran; who—having seen that the technical direction The Club had taken would not reach far enough—initiated The Club of Budapest as its update; to work on the cultural or ethical or "spiritual" ways to solution; Ervin Laszlo was the editor of The International Liberary of Systems Theory and Philosophy, where Erich Jantsch published some of his main works. Alexander's Ph.D. thesis advisor was Hasan Özbekhan, who (as member of Jantsch's 1968 expert team) wrote a 150-page theory of <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>; and also <em>The Predicament of Mankind</em>, The Club of Rome's original statement of purpose. Alexander later collaborated with Béla H. Bánáthy; and contributed to both of his volumes about the <em><b>dialog</b></em>. </p>
 
</div>
 
</div>
-----
+
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Laszlo.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Alexander Laszlo]]</center></small></div>
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Journalism for an informed society</h2></div>
 
 
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Barcelona 2011 Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism</h3>
 
<p>Journalism, or public informing, constitutes the very headlights which today illuminate the world for the majority of people. What should journalism be like to show the people the real or <em>systemic</em> causes to their problems? And to empower them to direct their <em>action</em> accordingly? It is clear that the journalists alone cannot produce the needed information, and that the academic domain experts, and also the citizens, need to be part of the news production. In what way will all those groups collaborate? What technologies might enable such collaboration?</p>
 
<p>A related challenge was the question <em>who</em> might be capable of producing a model of such journalism – and <em>in what way</em>? Our 2011 workshop in Barcelona, where this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] was created, was an opportunity to showcase and put to test the basic [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] approach, where a transdisciplinary community is formed to create and update a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]]. We asked Paddy Coulter – who <em>embodies</em> good journalism – to be the director of the project. David Price of Debategraph and Global Sensemaking was the leader of the "techies" team. Mei Lin Fung (who in 2008 initiated The Program for the Future to complete Engelbart's work) represented the Engelbartian point of view. A team of local journalist and journalism inovators, who were the creators of the Wikidiario citizenship journalism project, and Ramon Sangüesa, an academic collective intelligence expert, were our local hosts.</p>
 
<b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHp74p1ZXss Engelbart's keynote at Innovation Journalism 4] at Stanford University – where he posits with clarity and precision the challenge to which this project is providing a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] answer </li>
 
<li>Prototype description, [https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=132084&vt=rgraph&dc=focus An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism] on Debategraph</li>
 
<li>Presentation "Recreating Journalism – an Instance of a Paradigm" at the workshop New Media and EU (delivered online) – hear the [https://soundcloud.com/dinokarabeg/newmediaeutalk recording] while viewing the [https://prezi.com/b_2fircozq-p/recreating-journalism-an-instance-of-a-paradigm/ Prezi].</li>
 
</ul>
 
  </div>
 
</div>
 
----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Science to the people</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>[[File:ThePSposter.jpg]]<br><small><center>The Paradigm Strategy poster is a prototype roadmap to the emerging paradigm.</center></small></p>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>As a methodological [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]], the Paradigm Strategy poster shows how core insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] from a variety of fields can be combined together to illuminate a core issue in a widely accessible way – and to engage the public to evolve this vision further, and bring it to fruition. A collection of techniques are applied including [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] and [[ideograms|<em>ideograms</em>]]. </p>
 
<p>The issue here is strategy – how best to direct our efforts toward handling the large contemporary issues. We wrote the following in our abstract to the conference where the poster was presented:
 
<blockquote>
 
The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of people carrying buckets of water from their own flooded basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding.
 
</blockquote></p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The Paradigm Strategy poster]</li>
 
<li>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Abstracts/ThePS.pdf The Paradigm Strategy abstract]</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
 
<h3>Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015</h3>
 
<p>How to lift a key academic insight out of a technical jargon of a discipline?</p>
 
<p>Imagine that a scientist developed a result of very high general interest, and of high potential impact on several fields of science – and wrote an incomprehensible article about it, in the technical jargon of quantum physics. This situation presented itself in reality, and we took advantage of it to develop a complete federation prototype for this type of applications. </p>
 
<p>The prototype has three natural phases: (1) through collaboration with our communication design team, the article is turned into a multimedia object where the high-level module presents the result in an accessible language of metaphorical diagrams, equipped with recorded interviews with the author to explain the details, and links into the article and the technical details; (2) the second phase placed this result into public awareness, through a high-profile public event and the use of an orchestra of new media; (3) the main ideas are placed online into a Debategraph map, linked with other related ideas, and made available for further elaboration. </p>
 
<p>In addition to being a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] in academic communication, this is also a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] for scientific – and social – creation of truth and meaning. There are two natural ways to broaden the "narrow frame of concepts" that Heisenberg warned us about six decades ago (see Federation through Stories). One of them is what's been pursued here – to <em>create</em> a methodology and social processes etc. The other one is to include the findings of quantum physics into the modeling repertoire of conventional science. This project combines both of them – and in an academically interesting way (...).</p>
 
<p>No less important is, of course, the title theme of this project – creativity!</p>
 
<p> Imagine if – because of the mentioned "narrow foundation", we completely misunderstood the nature of creativity. And if we created a research culture, and education, accordingly (...).</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/TNC2015.pdf Scientific article transformed into a multimedia object] – you'll need to download this PDF file, because the audio recordings cannot be heard in the browser.
 
<li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/a-collective-mind-part-one/ The blog post with detailed description of this project]</li>
 
<li>[https://youtu.be/FMuXDqPdbKg?t=1h3m13s Video excerpt from an online talk], where this prototype was introduced to the Metaversity educational project in Moscow and St Petersburg.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>The Lighthouse</h3>
 
<p>Imagine that an entire discipline, or academic community, has a message to the world, which just hasn't been grasped yet. Imagine that this message is essential for understanding and applying in practice all other knowledge produced by the community. And most importantly that this message is exactly what we the people need to hear and digest to embark on the new evolutionary path (replace the reliance on "the invisible hand" by informed or [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]]).</p>
 
<p>This [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] has been developed for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences. The systems scientists constituted the first of its three modules. The second module was our communication design team – whose task was to transform the insights of the scientists into messages communicable to general public. The third module in the initial prototype, whose role was to place the created material into actual politics and policy, was played by the Green Party of Norway.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Articles/TL-abstract.pdf Abstract of The Lighthouse – Innovating the Systems Sciences System abstract] presented at ISSS60 at the Univ. of Colorado at Boulder.</li>
 
<li>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/WP.pdf Abstract of Wiener's paradox – we can dissolve it together] presented at ISSS59 Berlin</li>
 
<li>[https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=278436&vt=rgraph&dc=focus Hermes prototype], the predecessor of The Lighthouse, proposed at European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research in 2014 in Vienna. </li>
 
</ul></p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Lighthouse.jpg]]<br><small><center>The Lighthouse prototype logo</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7">
 
 
 
<h3>Value Matrix object</h3>
 
<p>How can we empower the academic knowledge workers to step beyond he conventional peer-review scheme of things – and contribute in a variety of ways? In what way can we keep record of and honor such contributions? How can we create an academic ecology that is conducive to the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]?</p>
 
<p>Our [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] answer is the [[value matrix object|<em>value matrix object</em>]] – a piece of technology associated with each knowledge resource (this includes both documents and people), whose task is to accumulate all information that may be of use for evaluating the value of the resource. This technology is a "matrix" because it stores value information with respect to a multiplicity of criteria, and multiple ways of assessing value.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li> Article [http://knowledgefederation.project.ifi.uio.no/Articles/BoundaryObjects.pdf Boundary Objects for Online Knowledge Management]</li>
 
<li>Article [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-822/JP.pdf Boundary Infrastructures for Conversational Knowledge Federation]</li>
 
<li>Improvised [https://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=131614&vt=rgraph&dc=focus Knowledge Federation domain map] on Debategraph</li>
 
</ul></p></div>
 
</div>
 
----
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Facilitating gestalt change in communities</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Instead of TV news broadcasting</h3>
 
<p>We've explained in Federation through Images why having a correct [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] (an interpretation of a situation or phenomenon that points to right action) is considered (in [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]) as tantamount to "being informed". It follows that [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] creation is really <em>the</em> core function of a [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]]. </p>
 
<p>Over the years we have developed a series of [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] to elaborate suitable technical ideas and practical skills and insights. Here are some examples.</p>
 
 
 
<h3>Holoscope</h3>
 
<p>The Holoscope is a platform and public dialog in development, whose goal is to help a community acquire the insight with which we started this presentation of our initiative – that we already own the knowledge needed to ignite a new Enlightenment-like change.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[https://youtu.be/40_C-n1jjVk Holoscope teaser trailer]</li>
 
<li>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Articles/ESTwP.pdf Holoscope description – research article]</li>
 
<li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/holoscope-for-the-buckminster-fuller-challenge/ Holoscope for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge blog post]</li> 
 
<li>[[CONVERSATIONS|Federation through Conversations]] where The Paradigm Strategy poster is explained as a step toward the Holoscope [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] </li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
 
 
<h3>The Key Point dialog</h3>
 
<p>In the Key Point dialog [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] David Bohm's dialog is energized and in effect turned into a cyclotron...</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[https://keypointdialog.wiki.ifi.uio.no/Main_Page Cultural Revival Dialog Zagreb 2008 website]</li>
 
<li>[https://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/Renaissance.pdf How to Begin the Next Renaissance – Preliminary Version article]</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
</div> </div> 
 
----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Books and publishing</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>The future of text</h3>
 
<p>When we learn to use the new media technology as it's meant to be used, i.e. when the [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]] paradigm becomes common – will the book as medium fall out of use?</p>
 
<p>We believe that the books are here to stay. But that they'll become part of a dialogical communication system involving multiple media. The books and the environments where they are created will become interactive and "fluid". </p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[https://thefutureoftext.org/symposium.html The website of The Future of Text The Future of Text symposium]; the symposium is organized yearly by Frode Hegland, the designer of Liquid and Author.</li>
 
<li>[http://liquid.info Liquid & Author website]</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Knowledge Federation trilogy</h3>
 
<p>Conceived to announce and explain [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to the general public, the Knowledge Federation trilogy is a sequence of three books with accompanying dialogs. The tentative titles are "Liberation" (with subtitle "Religion for the Third Millennium"), "Systemic Innovation" ("Democracy for the Third Millennium") and "Knowledge Federation" ("Science for the Third Millennium"). The books are designed to be highly thought-provoking or "controversial, in the conventional scheme of things – while being entirely <em>non</em>-controversial in the emerging one. Our treatment of religion, detailed below, will provide an illustration.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/Liberation.pdf The Introduction to book titled Liberation] and subtitled "Religion for the Third Millennium", which is intended to be the first book of Knowledge Federation Trilogy.</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
 
 
<h3>Information Must Be Designed</h3>
 
<p>This book manuscript introduces [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] – and then uses it to justify or 'prove' the claim made in its title, that the approach to knowledge represented in the book is <em>necessary</em> for both fundamental and pragmatic reasons. </p>
 
<b>See</b>
 
<ul>
 
<li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/IDBook/Introduction.pdf The introduction to Information Must Be Designed] manuscript</li>
 
</ul>
 
 
 
<h3>What's Going On?</h3>
 
<p>The unfinished manuscript titled "What's Going On?" and subtitled "A Cultural Revival" answers <em>the</em> most common question (posed in its title) in a highly uncommon way (pointed to by its subtitle). Instead of talking about a myriad specific events, the book describes a large over-all 'mountain event' that can give us meaning and direct our action; and in which the specific events acquire relevance and meaning. "Cultural revival" is defined as a <em>fundamental</em> change in culture – where the very foundations on which we create our worldviews and activities, and then naturally also those very worldviews and activities, undergo a thorough change. "Science", "art" and "tradition" are defined as three ways to consciously ground elements of culture. </p>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
</div></div>
 
----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Art</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Earth Lab Bergen prototype</h3>
 
<p> </p>
 
<p>[[File:EarthSharing.jpg]]<br><small><center>A snapshot of the Earth Lab Bergen installation, which was a designed space and situation for our first dialog. The objects represent [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]], and invite the corresponding interaction. </center></small></p>
 
<p> </p>
 
<p>Renaissance gave us Botticelli's iconic works and Michelangelo's David. What art might characterize the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]], and call it into existence?</p>
 
<p>Can art again play a transformative role in the <em>contemporary</em> cultural revival? Can it give expression to new ways of being, to vital new ideas? Can the artist be the human laboratory in which the new zeitgeist is conceived? Can art federate knowledge? Can it mobilize us in re-evolutionary change?</p>
 
<p>And if it can – what will this art be like? </p>
 
<p>We are developing [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] answers in collaboration with Norwegian artist Vibeke Jentsen (based in Berlin and New York).</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[https://earthsharing.info/EARTHlabBergen.htm Earth Lab, Bergen] report on Vibeke's website.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
<h3>Rumi in Oslo</h3>
 
<p>The goal of this project, which was sponsored by the Art Council of Norway, was to "express the eternal message of the classical Persian mystical poet Mevlana Jalaludin Rumi in the language of modern arts". Its purpose was "cultural cross-fertilization: between modern arts and oriental spirituality; between modern culture and love-inspired poetry".
 
</p> 
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/RumiFlyer.pdf The invitation flyer] for one of the events.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div>
 
</div>
 
-----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Caring for health</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Nature Culture Health – Information Design prototype</h3>
 
<p>Maintenance is so much more effective and so less costly than repair; why isn't our healthcare informed by this simple insight?</p>
 
<p>A related issue is that we've abandoned the creation of our lifestyle, and of basic culture, to commercial forces.</p>
 
<p>Already in 1958 Werner Kollath observed that the diseases that were becoming dominant were lifestyle-induced; and that to respond to these new challenges our very approach to healthcare will need to be different. The term he coined and championed – "political hygiene" – is roughly synonymous to [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. </p>
 
<p>This [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] and the smaller [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] that belong to it, all described in the documents linked below, are  results of our collaboration with University of Oslo Medical School Professor Gunnar Tellnes, the organization he initiated called Nature Culture Health, and the European Public Health Association of which he was the president.</p>
 
<p>The vision of Nature Culture Health is to work with public health by taking advantage of the toolkit that the nature and the culture can provide. The goal of our collaboration was to develop suitable communication design – notably physical and online dialogs that support value and lifestyle change in a community. </p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Kollath.jpg]]<br><small><center>Werner Kollath</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7">
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/ode-to-self-organization-–-part-two-2/#Vignette_4 This vignette] pointing to systemic issues in healthcare by highlighting some of the events in Werner Kollath's life and work</li>
 
<li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/NCH-IDinMichael.pdf The prospectus article of our collaboration / project]</li>
 
<li>Abstracts for our workshop and [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] presentation at EUPHA's 13th yearly conference in 2005 in Graz</li>
 
<li>Our [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/NaCuHealInt-STRATEGY.pdf strategy proposal for Nature Culture Health Internationa]l (which we initiated together) to become an international culture-building project</li>
 
<li>Article [https://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/Renaissance.pdf How to Begin the Next Renaissance - a preliminary version] describes the Key Point Dialog as a technique for [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] change in a community. On p. 11 of the article there is a brief description of  of Municipality Dialog or Kommunewiki project in Norway – which worked with public health issues in communities by bringing people in a community into a dialog about lifestyle change</li>
 
<li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/KPDintroduction.pdf This brief opening speech] at the Sigdal Municipality dialog in April 2008 will tell the whole story in a nutshell.</li>
 
  </ul></p></div>
 
</div>
 
-----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Travel (again) becomes authentic</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>UTEA franchise</h3>
 
<p>Since the beginning of time people traveled to become acquainted with other cultures, and on a deeper level with themselves. And on the supply side, tourism presents a way for world's endangered <em>cultural</em> species to stay alive. But mass tourism's superior economies of scale threaten to reverse that. Can [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] intervene in this domain and make a difference?</p>
 
<p>In the award-winning documentary and book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan described how the corporation, as the most powerful institution on our planet, first acquired the legal rights of a person, and then developed the behavior of a psychopath. This may be legal – but is it legitimate? (Bakan, a law professor, was in this notable way [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] a key insight from his profession).</p>
 
<p>Could there be a way to do a kind of a Judo trick on the power of corporations – and apply it toward sustaining those who are both culturally and economically endangered? </p>
 
<p>This line of our work was developed in collaboration with Karina Fürst and her company Authenticore, which developed a successful practice of authentic travel.</p>
 
<p>This [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] was designed to show how business interests, cultural interests and new technology may be combined in a synergistic relationshipo.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>UTEA [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Projects/ATI/UTEA-bp.pdf business plan] and [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Projects/ATI/UTEAportal.pdf technology annex] (prepared for a venture cup competition)</li>
 
  <li>Article [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Projects/ATI/ME.pdf Memetic Engineering], which describes a general or generic [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] method that this project illustrates ("memes" such as e-business, franchising and value-based marketing are combined to create a new corporation model)</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
<h3>Authentic Hercegovina</h3>
 
<p>The recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina may be seen as an attempt at cultural genocide. The architectural heritage has largely been rebuilt – but can we rebuild the culture?</p>
 
<p>The Authentic Hercegovina project was developed in collaboration with Professor Pasic Amir and his international team of architectural revitalization experts.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[[Authentic Hercegovina]] project documentation</li>
 
  <li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/AH-prospectus.pdf Article] describing the project and the methodology.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
------
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Democracy and governance</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Systemic innovation as a form of political action</h3>
 
<p>"Our theme now is the science behind democracy. We might also call it the science of sustainability. There are some facts, some proper academic results, which tend to be ignored even today, even though some of them are already fifty years old." This is how we began the brief talk that introduces this theme at the Leadership and Systemic Innovation doctoral program in Buenos Aires shared below. The point made is of course what we've been talking about all along – namely that the ability to choose our future crucially depends upon our ability to see and evolve our systems or institutions.</p>
 
<p>Already in the 1960s the political scientists knew that the conventional democratic mechanisms such as the elections had little or no impact on policy. Murray Edelman took this insight a step forward – by showing that those mechanisms <em>do</em> have a role – but that this role is [[symbolic action|<em>symbolic</em>]] (to legitimize the existing policies, and make the people <em>feel</em> that they were asked...).</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Edelman.jpg]]<br><small><center>Murray Edelman</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7">
 
<p>We use the keyword [[symbolic action|<em>symbolic action</em>]] as roughly an antonym to <em>systemic</em> action or [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] (which is, once again, what is needed to give ideas, and people, <em>real</em> power and impact).</p>
 
<p>While the Knowledge Federation has not yet made [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] that explicitly handle governance and democracy, we submit [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] as corresponding respectively to what the cyberneticians called "feedback" and "control" – two capabilities that an enlightened or informed or <em>real</em> democracy will obviously need to possess. </p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[https://www.dropbox.com/s/sirn5scutkgrm6w/Democracy%202.0.m4v?dl=0 Recording of Democracy 2.0/], the mentioned 15-minute lecture given in Argentina, which points to the vital link between democracy and [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. It may be worth mentioning that the entire argument is not based on the headlights of the metaphorical bus, but on its brakes. The story told is part of the second book in the Knowledge Federation Trilogy, titled "Systemic Innovation" and subtitled "Democracy for the Third Millennium".</li>
 
  <li>Our videotaped greeting [https://vimeo.com/78808800 Democracy for the 21st Century] to Community Boost_r Camp, Sarajevo 2013.</li>
 
  </ul></p></div>
 
</div>
 
----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Religion</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The Garden of Liberation</h3>
 
<p>It would be difficult to imagine a better theme than religion, for illustrating the advantages of the knowledge work [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] we have undertaken to propose.</p>
 
<p>In most people's minds "religion" means believing in something – that God exists; that Jesus was His son; or that Muhammad was His last prophet.</p>
 
<p>Modernity replaced the beliefs of traditional religions by another set of beliefs – in a purposeless clockwork-like universe, governed by natural laws.</p>
 
<p>Can you imagine the next dramatic turn in this development? What might the "religion for the third millennium" be like?</p>
 
<p>Our treatment of religion is entirely independent of beliefs of any kind. Its core goal is, indeed, the <em>liberation</em> from beliefs!</p>  </div>  
 
 
</div>  
 
</div>  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
<div class="col-md-6">
+
<font size="+1"><p>The <em><b>knowledge federation prototype</b></em> is conceived as society's evolutionary organ.</p> </font></div>
<p>We [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] the message of Thailand's enlightened monk Buddhadasa – that the point of inception of world's great religions was a rediscovery of a simple law of nature, of an invaluable insight about ourselves. This insight points to a latent possibility to develop a radically better human life, and society. We show how the belief systems (and the power structures on which they have been grounded, see Federation through Conversations) invariably turned this insight, and the institution that was created to disseminate it, into something quite different from what was originally intended.</p>  
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>In knowledge</h2>
</div>  
+
<p>I offer <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as (a <em><b>prototype</b></em> of) the <em><b>academia</b></em>'s and the society's missing evolutionary organ; and as the strategically first <em><b>system</b></em> our self-organization or <em><b>bootstrapping</b></em> efforts need to be focused on; which will organize us and empower us—and importantly, our next generation—to foster both the guiding-light <em><b>knowledge</b></em> and the <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> as <em><b>praxis</b></em>.</p>
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
+
<p>[[File:KFlogoC.jpg]] <br><small><center><em><b>Knowledge federation</b></em> creates meaning, and systems, by connecting the dots.</center></small></p> 
</div>
+
<p><em><b>Knowledge federation</b></em> was created in 2008, at the Inter University Center Dubrovnik, by a small group of knowledge media researchers and developers. We realized that the technologies we and our colleagues were developing had the potential to revolutionize society's <em><b>systems</b></em>; and that to realize this potential—we would need to self-organize differently. At our second, biennial workshop at the IUC Dubrovnik in 2010, whose title was "Self-Organizing Collective Mind", we invited a couple of dozen of hand-picked experts who would <em>together</em> represent a sufficiently complete combination of expertise; and we invited them to self-organize and form a <em><b>transdiscipline</b></em> together.</p>
 +
<p>[[File:RandBE.JPG]] <br><small><center>[[Roberta and Bill English]] participating in <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>'s 2011 workshop at Stanford University.</center></small></p>
 +
<p>At our first <em>international</em> workshop, at Stanford University in 2011, within the Triple Helix IX international conference, and in our contributed article, we announced <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> as an emerging and necessary trend in innovation; and (the systemic structure <em><b>prototyped</b></em> by) <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em> as its systemic <em>enabler</em>.</p>
 +
<p>Here is how we work: A <em><b>prototype</b></em> of a <em><b>system</b></em> is created, and a <em><b>transdiscipline</b></em> around it—to update it and give it real-life impact; according to the state-of-the-art disciplinary and other insights that everyone brings along. <em><b>Knowledge federation</b></em> creates the <em><b>transdiscipline</b></em> by creating itself.</p>
 +
<p>Today the <em><b>knowledge federation prototype</b></em> is a <em>complete</em> <em><b>prototype</b></em> of the <em><b>transdiscipline</b></em> conceived in terms of about forty smaller <em><b>prototypes</b></em>; which models new ways to implement all those various parts and functions that constitute a discipline—ranging from epistemology and methodology to a community of state-of-the-art experts and examples of application.</p></div></div>  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<font size="+1">Our public informing <em><b>prototype</b></em> showed how to restore vision to democracy.</font>
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
    <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/the-garden-of-liberation/ The Garden of Liberation] blog post tells the story behind The Garden of Liberation  [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] whose purpose is to [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] the mentioned [[memes|<em>meme</em>]], by focusing on an instance where it was recently rediscovered, in the context of Buddhism.</li>
 
  <li> [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/science-and-religion/ Science and Religion] blog post outlines some of the the scientific and phenomenological background for this project. </li>
 
<li>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/Liberation.pdf The Introduction to book titled Liberation] and subtitled "Religion for the Third Millennium".</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
</div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
-----
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>In information</h2>  
<div class="row">
+
<p>You may have noticed that I deliberately spare of you of links; because I want us to be on the same page, and <em>reflect</em> together. The reason why I'll share the link to the video recording of Doug Engelbart's keynote to the Innovation Journalism (a catch-all term that encompasses both journalism that reports on innovation and innovation <em>of</em> journalism) community's fourth conference (at Stanford University in 2007), is that it's a perfect introduction to our public informing <em><b>prototype</b></em>; and because it will give you a chance to witness how the <em><b>elephant</b></em> in the room remained invisible; and see how a creative mind works; and how the IT revolution <em>really</em> developed; and importantly—the IT revolution's still ignored <em>future</em>. In the video John Markoff (The New York Times technology columnist who authored a book about Engelbart's work and legacy) will introduce Doug; by first excusing himself for saying what everyone in the room knew—namely that while innovation is as a rule <em>incremental</em>, and Silicon Valley's innovation is no exception, "once in a great while there are innovations that change entire paradigms, create new industries and ultimately transform societies. Doug's work, beginning in the 1950s, falls into that category." After Markoff's five-minute introduction, Doug will use about fifteen to elaborate the <em><b>point</b></em> of it all. I tested this video on Noah, and he didn't <em><b>get it</b></em> (Engelbart was notorious for telling people "you just don't get it!"); even though Noah is skilled at <em><b>connecting dots</b></em> and versed in <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>. I had to interpose a translation; which, I feel, you too may benefit from. I am not condescending: I had the rare fortune to not only break bread with Engelbart and the circle of friends and collaborators around him—but to also teach a PhD course about Doug's ideas and legacy; so I can say that I researched him thoroughly.</p>
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Definitions of research fields and institutions</h2></div>
+
<p>Doug will open his talk with a warning: The motivations and perceptions that drove him along "all these years" were "large-scale and very conceptual"; Doug spent his life looking at the world from a <em><b>mountain</b></em> top—and that's where he's about to take us.</p>
  <div class="col-md-7"><p>In the traditional order of things, institutions and specifically research fields are what the people in them are doing. The way of defining concepts by [[design|<em>design</em>]] that is, by making conventions, allows us to define institutions by pointing to a role or roles they might have in a world where purpose, rather than habit, is the guiding principle; and where systemic re-organization to adjust to a purpose is how institutions evolve.</p>
+
<p>His creative journey began in 1951, when he pondered <em>the</em> basic question "How can I turn my life's career into something that would be most meaningful to mankind?"</p>  
<p>The following examples will illustrate this difference.</p>
+
<p>And after three months of intense reflection, Doug concluded that humanity's problems were becoming forbiddingly urgent and complex; and that we'll only be able to comprehend and handle them if we do that <em>collectively</em>; and so he made "augmenting" our collective "capability" to deal with complex and urgent problems the focus of his life-long pursuit. (But this was a brief and public story of the IT revolution's inception; a bit longer and private version is that Doug had a proper epiphany—exactly as Tesla did in that park in Budapest; when he saw in intuition the induction motor with rotating magnetic field.)</p>
 
+
<p>Don't miss the <em><b>point</b></em> of Doug's thought experiment; when he'll ask us to imagine that everyone in the room and the room too grows ten times in size—he'll be making a case for <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> in <em><b>information</b></em>; because when the amount of information increases by orders of magnitude, and the speed of events and the complexity of their interaction too—it's not enough to simply <em>grow</em> our old <em><b>systems</b></em> in size; "scaling" demands that their <em>structure</em> be thoroughly reconfigured!</p>  
<h3>Culture</h3>  
+
<p>When you hear Doug use the words "capability" and "augmentation", be aware that it's his own authentic <em><b>systemic innovation methodology</b></em> he'll be referring to; which he published in a SRI report in 1962—<em>six years before</em> Jantsch and others would meet in Bellagio for that purpose! This <em><b>methodology</b></em> guided Doug throughout his long and productive career; and led, among other things, to "the personal computing and the Internet" as Markoff pointed out. At some point Doug will flash a slide to explain it; in whose middle you'll see "Capability Infrastructure"; and "Human System" on its left; and "Tool System" on its right. Doug's <em><b>systemic innovation methodology</b></em> was conceived as a way to <em>augment</em> human <em>capabilities</em>—both individual and collective. But what <em>is</em> "capability infrastructure"? Consider any human capability, for instance to communicate in writing; clearly this capability depends on certain "tool system" components, such as the clay tablets or the printing press; and on some "human system" components such as literacy and education. But once you <em>do</em> have the capability to communicate in writing—other capabilities, including authoring books and scientific communication, can <em>also</em> be "augmented". All this was meant to introduce Doug's overall main <em><b>point</b></em>—which was to invite the journalism innovators to <em><b>see</b></em> <em>journalism</em> <em><b>as</b></em> part of society's "capability infrastructure"; and to ask—<em>What new capabilities</em> may journalism develop to contribute to society's capability to survive—by taking advantage of (the capabilities of) the new information technology? You'll hear Doug talk about two <em>kinds of</em> capabilities—one of which has to do with our collective "perception" (with spotting problems and contingencies early enough); and the other one with collective "interpretation" (how to collaboratively make sense of bothersome occurrences in a way that empowers us to take care of them effectively). Journalism is such a significant part of our society's 'headlights'; why not adapt it to the core <em>functions</em> it may need to perform in the larger whole? And what about the larger picture; Clearly the journalists cannot do all of this alone. We must collectively become aware "what are some of the social, political, religious [..] holdings that are <em>inhibiting</em> the kind of evolution that the whole organism needs to have for survival". Do journalists interact with sociologists, and anthropologists...</p>  
<p>The definition of [[culture|<em>culture</em>]] is a canonical instance of a [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]]-based definition.</p>  
+
<h3>But how does one communicate all this to an audience?</h3>
<p>What we are about to report might seem like a small and irrelevant detail, but indeed it's not, because because the big-picture story is reflected in a detail, in a fractal-like manner.</p>  
+
<p>Even when one has been invited as a keynoter; and introduced with a fanfare? You'll see Doug ponder this question aloud; it was clear to him—and it will be clear to you too if you watch this video attentively—that he was <em>not</em> communicating; Doug knew that he <em>never</em> did.</p>  
<p>A suitable motivation for this definition is provided by combining the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] introducing Aurelio Peccei and his insights that was given in Federation through Stories; and the basic insight shared in Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis". In the book Bauman surveys a large number of historical definitions of "culture", and concludes that they are so diverse that we cannot reconcile them and tell what "culture" really is. A shaky foundation to build on if we should not only develop culture as [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] (as Bauman hinted in his title), but even revive it and make a breakthrough in its evolution (which, Peccei claimed, is what we <em>must</em> do). </p>  
+
<p>And so went by, without being recognized, this so wondrous opportunity for innovation journalism to comprehend and communicate <em>the</em> <em><b>point</b></em> that we the people need to <em><b>know</b></em> about <em><b>innovation</b></em>; and the Silicon Valley IT innovators in particular—to be able to use the power of new information technology to (help) turn our downward evolutionary <em><b>course</b></em>.  And not surprisingly; did you notice the irony? The ability to create general <em><b>insights</b></em> and principles, and use them as <em><b>know-how</b></em>, about <em>any</em> theme including <em><b>innovation</b></em>—is <em>not</em> part of our cultural DNA; it is <em>the</em> <em><b>pivotal</b></em> "capability" that our "human system" is missing; which must urgently be augmented! Because as the things are now—everyone who lives in "the real world" knows that <em><b>innovation</b></em> is driven by the market; not by ideas and principles.</p>  
<p>[[polyscopy|<em>Polyscopy</em>]] defines [[culture|<em>culture</em>]] as "<em>cultivation</em> of wellbeing", where the keyword <em>cultivation</em> is defined by analogy with cultivation of land – concretely with planting and watering a seed.</p>  
+
<p>If you watch this entire video—you'll see that it concludes with Doug's recommendation to create a <em><b>dialog</b></em>; as a medium where isolated transformative voices like his may remain recorded—and <em>interact</em> and cross-fertilize with <em>other</em> transformative visions and ideas.</p>  
<p>Even when a seed is dissected and its anatomy studied, nothing in it will suggest that if planted into soil and watered, it will grow into a whole large tree. To have this culturally central insight, we depend entirely on the reported experience of others. And yet it was the cultivation of land that led our distant ancestors to the first revolutionary change in the development of culture, and even to the culture itself (the very word "culture" etymologically stems from the cultivation of land). </p>  
+
<p>So here it is—enjoy the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHp74p1ZXss Doug Engelbart show] at IJ4.</p>  
<p>We leave the longer story to be unwrapped in a conversation, and point to it with this pair of hints:
+
<p>Coming now to our public informing <em><b>prototype</b></em>, which we crafted at our 2011 workshop in Barcelona—this one too has a number of <em><b>design patterns</b></em> artfully woven together; so let me here zoom in on those two design challenges that Doug was pointing to—namely to augment our collective "perception" (of all that goes on) and "interpretation" (where we turn <em>things happening</em> into <em><b>mountain top</b></em> comprehension and action). We envisioned our public informing <em><b>prototype</b></em> as operating within two loops, adjoined together to form number 8 (Mei Lin visualized them as a butterfly's two wings; both necessary to end the society's cocoon stage and enable it to fly). In the <em><b>prototype</b></em> the people are empowered to do take part in the lower loop <em>directly</em>; we built this part of the <em><b>prototype</b></em> on the pre-existing Barcelona's WikiDiario citizen journalism project, whose creators were part of our team. No less important was to include academic and other experts in the upper loop—so that underlying deeper or <em><b>systemic</b></em> causes and remedies to problems don't remain on academic bookshelves, but have a way to impact public comprehension and action; How else shall we the people ever jointly <em><b>know</b></em>, I explained in the <em>Liberation</em> book, that for instance "corporate personhood" might be an issue? Here (in the upper loop), <em><b>knowledge federation</b></em>'s daringly innovative and artistically inspired expert communication design team had the key role of transforming academic insights into something <em>everyone</em> can comprehend (remember what I told you about <em><b>ideograms</b></em>). Isn't this how the immersive media technologies will be <em>truly</em> useful to humanity?</p>  
<ul>
+
<p>Our Barcelona prototype prototyped also a <em><b>system</b></em> by which a <em>functional</em> public informing could be created and perpetually re-created.</p>
<li>The definition of [[culture|<em>culture</em>]] <em>creates a way of looking</em> that brings back to life exactly those key aspects of culture that were all but destroyed owing to what Heisenberg called "the rigid and narrow frame of concepts" with which 19th century science branded modernity. And which were anyhow struggling to be seen and recognized throughout history, owing to the dynamics we'll point to in Federation through Conversations (The Paradigm Strategy prototype). The key insight here is that the [[memes|<em>memes</em>]] that are most relevant to this theme and truly transformative all represent the basic [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] associated with planting and watering the seed: (1) the effects are long-term, and invisible when we focus on instant gratification or apparent cause-effect relationships and (2) they are not amenable to "scientific explanation" (the mechanisms behind them are too complex to be amenable to scientific theories). The point made is that [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] is <em>exactly</em> what is needed to make a difference (...). Some of the key insights (transformative [[memes|<em>memes</em>]] that have been ignored) are [[knowledge federation|<em>federated</em>]] within The Garden of Liberation [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] (related to the phenomenology behind religion) and the Convenience Paradox [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] (related to the nature and "pursuit of happiness" or wholeness or wellbeing). Hence this definition points to the way in which "great cultural revival" can realistically develop.</li>  
+
<p>[[File:BCN2011.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Paddy Coulter]], [[Mei Lin Fung]] and [[David Price]]  speaking at our workshop "An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism" in 2011 in Barcelona.</center></small></p>
<li>This definition of [[culture|<em>culture</em>]] is functional – hence it <em>enables us to see what the culture may be like</em>. In the Information Must Be Designed book manuscript this is used to [[justification|<em>justify</em>]] or 'prove' the claim made in the title, which is the same as the basic message given by the Modernity ideogram. Hence we can 'prove' (we avoid this word) that [[design epistemology|<em>design epistemology</em>]] and [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] are <em>necessary</em> in the context of the (post-traditional, rapidly evolving, or ) modern culture. Hence this definition points to a general way of defining things that is a necessary prerequisite to [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. </li>
+
<p>We were fortunate to have with us Paddy Coulter (fellow of Green College Oxford and director of Oxford Global Media; who was formerly the director of Oxford University Reuters School of Journalism and premier British journalist); who had also been a keynoter at our formative 2010 workshop in Dubrovnik. In the manner of giving the good journalism tradition the reigns, we asked Paddy to chair the Barcelona event. </p>
</ul> </p>
+
<p>We techies should not allow ourselves to reinvent journalism.</p>
<p><b>See</b>  
+
<p>Our task was to facilitate its evolution—by <em><b>federating</b></em> transformative memes. In Barcelona workshop Mei Lin Fung (founder of Program for the Future, a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue the work on the still ignored parts of Doug Engelbart's vision) represented the Doug Engelbart legacy; David Price (co-founder of DebateGraph, which is <em>the</em> leading <em><b>collective mind</b></em> initiative, and of Global Sensemaking, the global community of <em><b>collective mind</b></em> researchers and developers) led the technology team. If you listened to Engelbart's talk a bit further, you heard him talk about "structured argumentation" and the challenge of structuring and organizing our collective discourse on society's important themes online; which is <em>exactly</em> what DebateGraph has been so successfully achieving. We used DebateGraph to both document our <em><b>prototype</b></em>—and as a core functional element of the <em><b>prototype</b></em>.</p></div> </div>  
  <ul>
 
    <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/IDBook/Ch2.pdf The second chapter of the manuscript Information Must Be Designed], where this idea is elaborated (the password is Dubrovnik)</li>
 
  <li>Blog posts [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/science-and-religion/ Science and Religion] and [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/the-garden-of-liberation/ The Garden of Liberation],  where it is shown (as another canonical example) how the described approach to knowledge can be instrumental in revitalizing the essential insights of the world religions </li>  
 
</ul> </p>
 
 
 
<h3>Design</h3>
 
<p>What is design as an <em>academic</em> field? What body of knowledge should it be based on? The departure point of this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] was our contribution to an online conference of the PhD Design community, whose task was to answer those questions. Since we are talking about the <em>philosophy</em> doctorate, the community's elders thought, then <em>philosophy</em> should be the answer. We submitted that classical philosophy's foundations have problems. and that we can <em>design</em> the foundations for design – and even for philosophy... </p>  
 
<p>Our proposal was, of course, a variant of what's been told in Federation through Images. "<em>Design</em> is an alternative to <em>tradition</em>" is a succinct definition of these two [[keywords|<em>keywords</em>]], according to which [[design|<em>design</em>]] is no longer "what the designers are doing" – but the approach to creative work that suits the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]], roughly synonymous to [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]!</p>
 
<p>The design community liked our answer presented at European Academy of Design's conference in Bremen, and our presentation was selected to be repeated as an opening keynote on the 10th anniversary of the Dannish Designers organization.</p>
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/PHD-letter.pdf Our contribution to the PhD Design online conference] </li>  
 
  <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/DIAT.pdf Our article presented at the European Academy of Design conference in 2005 in Bremen]</li>
 
  <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/DD-DD.pdf Danish Designers conference report]</li>
 
  <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/an-academic-foundation-for-design/ Blog post An Academic Foundation for Design and Design as an Academic Foundation]</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
 
 
<h3>Visual literacy</h3>
 
<p> </p>  
 
<p>[[File:WhoWins.png]]<br><small><center>Who wins? Cigarette advertising presents a situation where two ways of communicating meet one another in direct duel.</center></small></p>
 
<p></p>
 
<p>While our "official culture" (science, legislation, ethics...) has been focused on verbal, black-and-white factual messages (or on what [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] calls "the square"), our culture has been dominated, and is in effect being created, by commercial interests through judicious use of the cool, the visual and the immediate ("the circle"). </p>
 
<p>At the point where the International Visual Literacy Association was searching for a good definition for their subject of study, we contributed a generic way to make definitions so that they point to the core purpose that needs to be served – instead of trying to pinpoint what (in this concrete case) visual literacy "really is".</p>
 
<p>Once again the community's elders found our proposal to their liking.</p>  
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>Article [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/PVL.pdf Perspective of Visual Literacy] article with our proposal</li>
 
<li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Misc/Lida-letter.pdf Email from Lida Cochran] (then the only still living of the four IVLA founders) welcoming our proposal</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
-----
 
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Concept definitions</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>   </h2>
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Power structure</h3>
+
<font size="+1">The game-changing game prototype showed how to empower young people to make a difference. </font>
<p>While our political and ethical sensibilities have been tuned to dictators, bankers, political parties, terrorists and other <em>traditional</em> power holder – a whole new way of understanding the issues related to power can be reached by combining the insights of  21st century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. </p> </div></div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6">
 
<p>A consequence of [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]], this [[design|<em>designed</em>]] way of identifying our political enemies, is that the enemy is none else but – ourselves! The [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] is simply a devolutionary tendency of our systems, which turn us – without our awareness or intention – into our own enemies. The consequences are most interesting and complex – but the simple message is that the enemy is not out there; he is <em>us</em>!</p>
 
<p>This [[keywords|<em>keyword</em>]] federates some of the most basic insights across a spectrum of fields, ranging from combinatorial optimization and artificial intelligence to cognitive science and psychology. Its salient characteristic is that it (just as we saw above) points not to a thing but to an <em>aspect</em> of things</p>
 
<p>The theme here is in what way exactly our societal systems, and with them our society itself, have been evolving or <em>de</em>volving? We'll come back to this central theme in Federation through Conversations.</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Pogo.gif]]<br><small><center>Pogo, Walt Kelly's cartoon hero, gave an accessible explanation of the [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] definition.</center></small></div>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>In empowerment</h2>
 +
<p> As an experiment, the <em><b>prototype</b></em> we crafted in Barcelona gave us an invaluable insight: When the journalists who co-created it with us returned to their busy editorial desks—they were out of sight! Which led us to an all-important <em>general</em> insight; which merits a paragraph of its own.</p>
 +
<p>When we think about aligning sufficient power to tip the balance and incite <em>any</em> sort of change that will make a difference—we naturally think of the people in power positions; such as political and business leaders, or famed academics. But the people who hold power positions in the <em>existing</em> <em><b>system</b></em> don't have the power to <em>change</em> the <em><b>system</b></em>. What they, however, can and <em>need to</em> do is empower our next generation—the (normally) young people who are in a life phase where change is natural—to recreate the <em><b>systems</b></em> in which they'll live and work.</p>
 +
<h3>This empowerment is <em>the</em> duty we have as generation.</h3>
 +
<p>[[File:TheGCG.jpg]] <br><small><center>Part of <em><b>the game-changing game</b></em> event announcement at the Future Salon's website.</center></small></p>
 +
<p>And so the following year, at our 2012 workshop in Mei Lin's house in Palo Alto, we crafted a prototype of a <em><b>system</b></em> called <em><b>the game-changing game</b></em>; and presented it at the Bay Area Future Salon.</p>
 +
<p><em><b>The game-changing game</b></em> is not a game in ordinary sense, but a game-changing way to have a career; where instead of playing by the rules, instead of trying to fit in an existing profession or system—the players undertake to <em>change</em> a <em><b>system</b></em>. This initial <em><b>prototype</b></em> did have something akin to a game board, available online on DebateGraph; where the players would first be offered a spectrum of (personal and career) Goals (some of which are listed on the above figure); and then brought to the Game Start, from where one could either go to the Vision Quest or the Action Quest. The Vision Quest offered an explanation why the chosen goal—and <em>each</em> of the proposed goals—can indeed be achieved through <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>; the Action Quest offered a medium by which the players could self-organize and create <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em> initiatives.</p> 
 +
<p><em><b>The game-changing game</b></em> has two categories of players: The  <em><b>A-players</b></em> (who as graduate students, or entrepreneurs in search of a project) are in a career and life phase where change is natural and easy; and the <em><b>Z-players</b></em> (who as professors, or investors) are in positions of power.</p>
 +
<h3>The <em>Z-players</em> play <em>the game-changing game</em> by empowering the <em>A-players</em> to pursue their career goals by changing a <em>system</em>. </h3>
 +
<p>I published a description of this <em><b>prototype</b></em> in the proceedings of The European Academy of Design's yearly conference; which had "Crafting the Future" as title; my contribution had the title "The Game-Changing Game—a practical way to craft the future". Its <em><b>point</b></em> being that the natural and arguably <em>only</em> way to "craft the future" was by empowering our next generation to craft the <em><b>systems</b></em> in which they'll live and work.</p>
 +
<p>In 2012 in Zagreb we created The Club of Zagreb—a redesign of The Club of Rome based on <em><b>the game-changing game</b></em>; the <em><b>point</b></em> of which was similar. We had the Europe Club Zagreb as venue; whose windows opened to the Croatian capital’s main square. Yuzuru Tanaka joined us  from Japan; Mei Lin Fung, Jack Park and Sam Hahn flew in from California, David Price from England, Alf Johansen from Norway. The A-players were represented by two Croatian student organizations—e-Student (“e” is for “excellence”) and Creativity Club, and by several international ones; Croatian Venture Cup was represented by its director, and academic journalism by its Croatian leader.</p>
 +
<p>With a group of A-players we then took a cosy and bonding minibus tour (sponsored by my mother) through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Dubrovnik; with overnighting in Muslibegović House Mostar and a Sevdalinka garden concert that Ibrica Jusić so graciously gave us. In Dubrovnik we had our third biennial workshop at IUC; and began—with A-players—to co-create what is now the Collaborology education prototype; which is a <em><b>game-changing game</b></em> in education.</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>  </h2>
  <div class="col-md-7">
+
<font size="+1">Collaborology prototype showed how education can be turned into an instrument of change.</font>
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>[http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/idj.11.2.11kar Article Information for Conscious Choice], where the [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] concept was initially published (invited by IDJ's main editor, upon presentation at InfoDesign2000 conference)</li>
 
  <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/IDBook/Ch4.pdf Chapter 4 of the book manuscript Informing Must Be Designed] (use the password Dubrovnik to open it) describes this concept in detail – and uses it as part of the argument to (once again) make the need for the new paradigm transparent</li>
 
  <li>Our Abstract [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Projects/NaCuHeal/HAPS.pdf Helthcare as a Power Structure] presented at the yearly meeting of European Association for History of Medicine and Health) where the [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] concept has been applied.</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
<h3>Addiction</h3>
 
<p>While our legislation and our ethical sensibilities are focused on traditional addictions such as gambling and drugs, thousands of new ones may be created with the help of technology.</p>
 
<p>Here again we have a specific example that demonstrates the power of the overall approach. The key to handling this no small issue is in perceiving addiction as a [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] (ideal way of looking, revealing a tendency that can be present in small or large degree in a broad variety of situations and things), when we no longer <em>reify</em> it as specific addictive things or activities such as opiates and gambling.</p> 
 
<p><b>See</b>
 
  <ul>
 
  <li>Article [http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Articles/AddictionPattern.pdf Addiction Pattern]</li>
 
  </ul></p>
 
 
</div>
 
</div>
</div>
+
<div class="col-md-7"><h2>In education</h2>  
-----
+
<h3>A natural way to <em>change course</em> is by changing education.</h3>
<div class="row">
+
<p>Education recreates the world with every new generation; <em>unless</em> it is conceived in the <em><b>traditional</b></em> way—namely as a way to socialize or <em><b>condition</b></em> our next generation to fit into <em><b>the world</b></em>.</p>  
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Methodology</h2></div>
+
<h3>The <em>collaborology prototype</em> models the education we now need.</h3>  
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>All this is methodology</h3>
+
<p>By weaving together about half a dozen of transformative <em><b>design patterns</b></em>; of which I'll right away highlight this all-important one:</p>
<p>This website is a proposal for a new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in knowledge work, and in particular a new <em>academic</em> [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. One might say even more – that we are proposing a way to conscientiously yet freely <em>design</em> paradigms (or metaphorically lightbulbs).</p>
+
<h3>In the <em>collaborology prototype</em> education is by <em><b>pull</b></em>, not <em><b>push</b></em>.</h3>  
<blockquote>
+
<p>Which means that the student learns by following his own personal interests and goals—and learning trajectory; and translates into a whole spectrum of advantages, some of which are obvious: Education by <em><b>push</b></em> damages creativity and initiative, education by <em><b>pull</b></em> enhances them; <em><b>push</b></em> education is once in a lifetime, <em><b>pull</b></em> education can be life-long and flexible.</p>  
A century ago, a profound change was under way in the arts: An explosion of styles and techniques, and of creativity, resulted when the artists challenged the assumption that the purpose of art was to mirror reality, by emulating the techniques of Old Masters. A similar change is now possible—and, we submit, also called for—in knowledge work, and in particular in the sciences. The “modern science” that, we envision, may result from this transformation, will however not be an academic equivalent of l’art pour l’art-ism but on the contrary, a way to make the positive difference that knowledge and knowledge work can and need to make, in this age.
+
<p>The <em><b>collaborology prototype</b></em> is a result of almost two decades of evolution; most of which was through an earlier <em><b>prototype</b></em> of a <em><b>transdisciplinary</b></em> course called Information Design; which we were evolving and teaching at the University of Oslo; which in its developed form had about 100 students. The description of this course model and the enabling technical solutions were discussed and published in suitable international conferences and journals. The <em><b>domain map object</b></em>—the core enabling technology this <em><b>prototype</b></em> is based on—was a variation on Engelbart's "dynamic knowledge repository" theme.</p>  
</blockquote>
+
<p>[[File:Collaborology2016.gif]] <br><small><center>The front page of <em><b>collaborology</b></em> course flyer.</center></small></p>  
<p><b>See</b>  
+
<p>Both the <em><b>collaborology</b></em> course and its predecessor have been conceived as design labs; where the students self-organize in small  teams, and create the learning resources for the next-generation students; which has a number of advantages—one of which is that it stimulates collaborative creation for common good (and not studying for the grade).</p>  
  <ul>
+
<h3>The <em>collaborology</em> course is, in addition, internationally <em>federated</em>.</h3>  
    <li>The blog post [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/design-epistemology/ Design Epistemology] blog post and the research article that is introduced and linked there.</li>   </ul></p>
+
<p>Whereby the course becomes, in effect, <em><b>the game-changing game</b></em>—where international instructors act as <em><b>Z-players</b></em>, empowering teams of <em><b>A-players</b></em> to be creative in ways that are well beyond what the <em><b>traditional</b></em> education offers; <em>including</em> co-creation of <em><b>systems</b></em>.</p>
<h3>Polyscopic Modeling or polyscopy</h3>
+
<p>By enabling each instructor to focus on a single module and corresponding learning resources, <em>and</em> to create them through collaboration with international students including communication designers and media professionals—the <em><b>collaborology prototype</b></em> manifests the economies of scale and related advantages that are characteristic of <em><b>systemic innovation</b></em>.</p>  
<p>[[Polyscopic Modeling]] is, as we have seen, a prototype [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] – which may be thought of as "the scientific method" adapted to contemporary needs of people and society.</p>
+
<p>The <em><b>collaborology prototype</b></em> models a feasible or "sustainable" way to develop and disseminate a <em><b>transdisciplinary</b></em> body of knowledge about <em>any</em> theme.</p>  
<p><b>See</b>  
+
<p>I presented and discussed the <em><b>collaborology prototype</b></em> at the conference <em>Future Education</em>, which the World Academy of Art and Science organized in 2017 in Rome; in the session titled "Transition to a New Paradigm in Education", in a talk titled "Systemic Innovation in Education – the Collaborology Prototype". I explained in the abstract:</p>  
  <ul>
+
<p>"Already a half-century ago visionary thinkers observed that the global issues point to a key capability our civilization is lacking – to innovate on the scale of basic institutions and other systems. Think of systemic innovation as updating the gigantic socio-technical ‘machinery’ whose function is to take everyone’s daily work as input and produce socially and environmentally useful effects as output. Consider it the feedback-and-control needed to give our civilization a viable evolutionary course; the flexibility our institutions need to be able to transform under pressure, and not break down. The Collaborology prototype is an intervention to foster the systemic innovation capability through education."</p>
  <li>[http://dinokarabeg.info/IDBook/Introduction.pdf Introduction to Information Must Be Designed] book manuscript, where [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] and Polyscopic Modeling are described</li>
+
</div> </div>
    <li>[http://folk.uio.no/dino/ID/Abstracts/rip99-abstract.shtml Role of Ideograms in Polyscopic Modeling] abstract (presented at the International Visual Sociology Association's conference in Antwerp in 1999) where the methodology was publicly presented for the first time, after having been developed.</li>
 
</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
<h3>Knowledge federation</h3>  
 
<p>Knowledge federation – as introduced here, is a methodology for knowledge federation / systemic innovation. </p>
 
<blockquote>
 
Knowledge Federation is introduced as a missing piece that can enable IT innovation to expand to socio-technical system design.</blockquote>
 
<p><b>See</b>  
 
  <ul>
 
    <li>[https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/knowledge-federation-an-enabler-of-systemic-innovation/ Blog post Knowledge Federation – An Enabler of Systemic Innovation]; follow the link at the bottom to the contributed article.</li>
 
</ul></p>
 
</div></div>
 
-----
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Quixote stunts</h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>What these experiments showed</h3>  
 
<p>In keeping with our mission (to [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] systemic change in knowledge work), we reached out to communities and institutions offering [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]], dialogs and collaboration. The response has been so uniformly discouraging that we ended up coining a new [[keywords|<em>keyword</em>]] and calling those attempts [[Quixote stunt|<em>Quixote stunts</em>]].</p>  
 
<p>When what's been told about the benefits of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] and [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] is considered, this imperviousness to the imperative of change may seem simply unbelievable. In Federation through Conversations we shall show, however, that it is a natural consequence of the way in which we've been evolving culturally and socially.</p>  
 
<p>We offer the [[Quixote stunts|<em>Quixote stunt</em>]] examples below as further evidence that what we are facing is an <em>evolutionary</em> challenge – which presents difficulties to the best of us.</p>
 
<p>And as a prelude to Federation through Conversations, where this challenge will be our focus.</p></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Quixote.jpg]]<br><small><center>We call our attempts to [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrap</em>]] collaboration toward systemic change Quixote stunts.</center></small></div>
 
</div>
 
<div class="row">
 
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2></h2></div>
 
  <div class="col-md-7">
 
<h3>Our proposal to the International Society for the Systems Sciences</h3>
 
<p>A description will be provided</p>  
 
<!-- <p><b>See</b>  
 
<ul>
 
<li>Text</li>
 
</ul></p>  
 
-->
 
 
 
<h3>Our proposal to Stanford University and Google</h3>  
 
<p>A description will be provided</p>  
 
<!-- <p><b>See</b>  
 
<ul>
 
<li>Text</li>
 
</ul></p>  
 
-->
 
</div></div>
 

Latest revision as of 12:50, 4 January 2024

– Be the systems you want to see in the world!


(Alexander Laszlo, motto of the 57th yearly conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in Haiphong, Vietnam, in 2013)

If you've followed me this far—or rather this high up the metaphorical mountain—then you've comprehended that it's a change of self-perception and self-identity I've been guiding you to; and that the all-important next step, the step that takes us into the emerging paradigm and from problems to solutions—is through the metaphorical mirror; by which (having seen ourselves in the world, and comprehended that we are not its "objective observers" but its inextricable part and accountable for it) we become empowered to turn information into action; and importantly—into systemic change. And that's exactly bootstrapping that Doug Engelbart was urging us to engage in; and that's also what prototypes are about. A prototype is a new kind of academic result—which is not telling us how the world is, but designed to be part of the world and interact with it; and make a real difference.

Knowledge federation restores the severed tie between information and action by creating prototypes.

Prototypes are the characteristics products of knowledge federation—as academic books and articles are the characteristic products of the traditional academic work.

A prototype is

  • a model, functioning in reality, exhibiting a collection of challenge–solution pairs, or design patterns as we are calling them; and showing how to combine those design patterns in a coherently functioning whole
  • an intervention, strategically designed to alter certain conventional practice or system
  • an experiment, showing what in the proposed design works well, and what needs to be improved.

A prototype is not complete unless it has a clear and realistic impact model and a deployment plan.

Before I tell you about the knowledge federation prototype, and how we self-organized to become capable of creating prototypes, and before I share some examples of pivotal prototypes we've produced—let me take a moment and introduce a human prototype. I'll tell you why: That all-important first step, through the mirror, has proven to be insurmountably difficult even for the best of us. To be "objective observer", to stay put in whatever systems we've inherited, is so much part of our cultural and especially academic DNA that it takes a veritable leap of faith to pull oneself out of it (perhaps the metaphor of unswamping oneself by pulling one's bootstraps has profounder connotations than even Doug realized).

It is therefore of utmost importance that some academic people have been able to engage in academic bootstrapping; Alexander Laszlo—my friend and knowledge federation colleague and veteran—for instance; who as the President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, at this society's 57th yearly conference in Haiphong, Vietnam, initiated a self-organization toward "collective intelligence" in this academic community! A salient point (a jewel in my collection of people stories, which I use as breadcrumbs to mark the way to emerging paradigm) was that the event he organized took place less than two seeks after Engelbart died in 2013—feeling that he had failed! At ISSS57 in Haiphong "collective intelligence" and Engelbart's name were on everyone's lips.

Why was it possible for Alexander to undertake what so many of our academic colleagues cannot even think of? Alexander had the rare fortune to be born on the right side of the street, so to speak; his father Ervin observed—already in the title of one of his books—that our collective options are "evolution" and "extinction". Ervin, who is now 91 years old, is a premier systems scientist and The Club of Rome veteran; who—having seen that the technical direction The Club had taken would not reach far enough—initiated The Club of Budapest as its update; to work on the cultural or ethical or "spiritual" ways to solution; Ervin Laszlo was the editor of The International Liberary of Systems Theory and Philosophy, where Erich Jantsch published some of his main works. Alexander's Ph.D. thesis advisor was Hasan Özbekhan, who (as member of Jantsch's 1968 expert team) wrote a 150-page theory of systemic innovation; and also The Predicament of Mankind, The Club of Rome's original statement of purpose. Alexander later collaborated with Béla H. Bánáthy; and contributed to both of his volumes about the dialog.

The knowledge federation prototype is conceived as society's evolutionary organ.

In knowledge

I offer knowledge federation as (a prototype of) the academia's and the society's missing evolutionary organ; and as the strategically first system our self-organization or bootstrapping efforts need to be focused on; which will organize us and empower us—and importantly, our next generation—to foster both the guiding-light knowledge and the systemic innovation as praxis.

KFlogoC.jpg

Knowledge federation creates meaning, and systems, by connecting the dots.

Knowledge federation was created in 2008, at the Inter University Center Dubrovnik, by a small group of knowledge media researchers and developers. We realized that the technologies we and our colleagues were developing had the potential to revolutionize society's systems; and that to realize this potential—we would need to self-organize differently. At our second, biennial workshop at the IUC Dubrovnik in 2010, whose title was "Self-Organizing Collective Mind", we invited a couple of dozen of hand-picked experts who would together represent a sufficiently complete combination of expertise; and we invited them to self-organize and form a transdiscipline together.

RandBE.JPG

Roberta and Bill English participating in knowledge federation's 2011 workshop at Stanford University.

At our first international workshop, at Stanford University in 2011, within the Triple Helix IX international conference, and in our contributed article, we announced systemic innovation as an emerging and necessary trend in innovation; and (the systemic structure prototyped by) knowledge federation as its systemic enabler.

Here is how we work: A prototype of a system is created, and a transdiscipline around it—to update it and give it real-life impact; according to the state-of-the-art disciplinary and other insights that everyone brings along. Knowledge federation creates the transdiscipline by creating itself.

Today the knowledge federation prototype is a complete prototype of the transdiscipline conceived in terms of about forty smaller prototypes; which models new ways to implement all those various parts and functions that constitute a discipline—ranging from epistemology and methodology to a community of state-of-the-art experts and examples of application.

Our public informing prototype showed how to restore vision to democracy.

In information

You may have noticed that I deliberately spare of you of links; because I want us to be on the same page, and reflect together. The reason why I'll share the link to the video recording of Doug Engelbart's keynote to the Innovation Journalism (a catch-all term that encompasses both journalism that reports on innovation and innovation of journalism) community's fourth conference (at Stanford University in 2007), is that it's a perfect introduction to our public informing prototype; and because it will give you a chance to witness how the elephant in the room remained invisible; and see how a creative mind works; and how the IT revolution really developed; and importantly—the IT revolution's still ignored future. In the video John Markoff (The New York Times technology columnist who authored a book about Engelbart's work and legacy) will introduce Doug; by first excusing himself for saying what everyone in the room knew—namely that while innovation is as a rule incremental, and Silicon Valley's innovation is no exception, "once in a great while there are innovations that change entire paradigms, create new industries and ultimately transform societies. Doug's work, beginning in the 1950s, falls into that category." After Markoff's five-minute introduction, Doug will use about fifteen to elaborate the point of it all. I tested this video on Noah, and he didn't get it (Engelbart was notorious for telling people "you just don't get it!"); even though Noah is skilled at connecting dots and versed in systemic innovation. I had to interpose a translation; which, I feel, you too may benefit from. I am not condescending: I had the rare fortune to not only break bread with Engelbart and the circle of friends and collaborators around him—but to also teach a PhD course about Doug's ideas and legacy; so I can say that I researched him thoroughly.

Doug will open his talk with a warning: The motivations and perceptions that drove him along "all these years" were "large-scale and very conceptual"; Doug spent his life looking at the world from a mountain top—and that's where he's about to take us.

His creative journey began in 1951, when he pondered the basic question "How can I turn my life's career into something that would be most meaningful to mankind?"

And after three months of intense reflection, Doug concluded that humanity's problems were becoming forbiddingly urgent and complex; and that we'll only be able to comprehend and handle them if we do that collectively; and so he made "augmenting" our collective "capability" to deal with complex and urgent problems the focus of his life-long pursuit. (But this was a brief and public story of the IT revolution's inception; a bit longer and private version is that Doug had a proper epiphany—exactly as Tesla did in that park in Budapest; when he saw in intuition the induction motor with rotating magnetic field.)

Don't miss the point of Doug's thought experiment; when he'll ask us to imagine that everyone in the room and the room too grows ten times in size—he'll be making a case for systemic innovation in information; because when the amount of information increases by orders of magnitude, and the speed of events and the complexity of their interaction too—it's not enough to simply grow our old systems in size; "scaling" demands that their structure be thoroughly reconfigured!

When you hear Doug use the words "capability" and "augmentation", be aware that it's his own authentic systemic innovation methodology he'll be referring to; which he published in a SRI report in 1962—six years before Jantsch and others would meet in Bellagio for that purpose! This methodology guided Doug throughout his long and productive career; and led, among other things, to "the personal computing and the Internet" as Markoff pointed out. At some point Doug will flash a slide to explain it; in whose middle you'll see "Capability Infrastructure"; and "Human System" on its left; and "Tool System" on its right. Doug's systemic innovation methodology was conceived as a way to augment human capabilities—both individual and collective. But what is "capability infrastructure"? Consider any human capability, for instance to communicate in writing; clearly this capability depends on certain "tool system" components, such as the clay tablets or the printing press; and on some "human system" components such as literacy and education. But once you do have the capability to communicate in writing—other capabilities, including authoring books and scientific communication, can also be "augmented". All this was meant to introduce Doug's overall main point—which was to invite the journalism innovators to see journalism as part of society's "capability infrastructure"; and to ask—What new capabilities may journalism develop to contribute to society's capability to survive—by taking advantage of (the capabilities of) the new information technology? You'll hear Doug talk about two kinds of capabilities—one of which has to do with our collective "perception" (with spotting problems and contingencies early enough); and the other one with collective "interpretation" (how to collaboratively make sense of bothersome occurrences in a way that empowers us to take care of them effectively). Journalism is such a significant part of our society's 'headlights'; why not adapt it to the core functions it may need to perform in the larger whole? And what about the larger picture; Clearly the journalists cannot do all of this alone. We must collectively become aware "what are some of the social, political, religious [..] holdings that are inhibiting the kind of evolution that the whole organism needs to have for survival". Do journalists interact with sociologists, and anthropologists...

But how does one communicate all this to an audience?

Even when one has been invited as a keynoter; and introduced with a fanfare? You'll see Doug ponder this question aloud; it was clear to him—and it will be clear to you too if you watch this video attentively—that he was not communicating; Doug knew that he never did.

And so went by, without being recognized, this so wondrous opportunity for innovation journalism to comprehend and communicate the point that we the people need to know about innovation; and the Silicon Valley IT innovators in particular—to be able to use the power of new information technology to (help) turn our downward evolutionary course. And not surprisingly; did you notice the irony? The ability to create general insights and principles, and use them as know-how, about any theme including innovation—is not part of our cultural DNA; it is the pivotal "capability" that our "human system" is missing; which must urgently be augmented! Because as the things are now—everyone who lives in "the real world" knows that innovation is driven by the market; not by ideas and principles.

If you watch this entire video—you'll see that it concludes with Doug's recommendation to create a dialog; as a medium where isolated transformative voices like his may remain recorded—and interact and cross-fertilize with other transformative visions and ideas.

So here it is—enjoy the Doug Engelbart show at IJ4.

Coming now to our public informing prototype, which we crafted at our 2011 workshop in Barcelona—this one too has a number of design patterns artfully woven together; so let me here zoom in on those two design challenges that Doug was pointing to—namely to augment our collective "perception" (of all that goes on) and "interpretation" (where we turn things happening into mountain top comprehension and action). We envisioned our public informing prototype as operating within two loops, adjoined together to form number 8 (Mei Lin visualized them as a butterfly's two wings; both necessary to end the society's cocoon stage and enable it to fly). In the prototype the people are empowered to do take part in the lower loop directly; we built this part of the prototype on the pre-existing Barcelona's WikiDiario citizen journalism project, whose creators were part of our team. No less important was to include academic and other experts in the upper loop—so that underlying deeper or systemic causes and remedies to problems don't remain on academic bookshelves, but have a way to impact public comprehension and action; How else shall we the people ever jointly know, I explained in the Liberation book, that for instance "corporate personhood" might be an issue? Here (in the upper loop), knowledge federation's daringly innovative and artistically inspired expert communication design team had the key role of transforming academic insights into something everyone can comprehend (remember what I told you about ideograms). Isn't this how the immersive media technologies will be truly useful to humanity?

Our Barcelona prototype prototyped also a system by which a functional public informing could be created and perpetually re-created.

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Paddy Coulter, Mei Lin Fung and David Price speaking at our workshop "An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism" in 2011 in Barcelona.

We were fortunate to have with us Paddy Coulter (fellow of Green College Oxford and director of Oxford Global Media; who was formerly the director of Oxford University Reuters School of Journalism and premier British journalist); who had also been a keynoter at our formative 2010 workshop in Dubrovnik. In the manner of giving the good journalism tradition the reigns, we asked Paddy to chair the Barcelona event.

We techies should not allow ourselves to reinvent journalism.

Our task was to facilitate its evolution—by federating transformative memes. In Barcelona workshop Mei Lin Fung (founder of Program for the Future, a Silicon Valley-based initiative to continue the work on the still ignored parts of Doug Engelbart's vision) represented the Doug Engelbart legacy; David Price (co-founder of DebateGraph, which is the leading collective mind initiative, and of Global Sensemaking, the global community of collective mind researchers and developers) led the technology team. If you listened to Engelbart's talk a bit further, you heard him talk about "structured argumentation" and the challenge of structuring and organizing our collective discourse on society's important themes online; which is exactly what DebateGraph has been so successfully achieving. We used DebateGraph to both document our prototype—and as a core functional element of the prototype.

The game-changing game prototype showed how to empower young people to make a difference.

In empowerment

As an experiment, the prototype we crafted in Barcelona gave us an invaluable insight: When the journalists who co-created it with us returned to their busy editorial desks—they were out of sight! Which led us to an all-important general insight; which merits a paragraph of its own.

When we think about aligning sufficient power to tip the balance and incite any sort of change that will make a difference—we naturally think of the people in power positions; such as political and business leaders, or famed academics. But the people who hold power positions in the existing system don't have the power to change the system. What they, however, can and need to do is empower our next generation—the (normally) young people who are in a life phase where change is natural—to recreate the systems in which they'll live and work.

This empowerment is the duty we have as generation.

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Part of the game-changing game event announcement at the Future Salon's website.

And so the following year, at our 2012 workshop in Mei Lin's house in Palo Alto, we crafted a prototype of a system called the game-changing game; and presented it at the Bay Area Future Salon.

The game-changing game is not a game in ordinary sense, but a game-changing way to have a career; where instead of playing by the rules, instead of trying to fit in an existing profession or system—the players undertake to change a system. This initial prototype did have something akin to a game board, available online on DebateGraph; where the players would first be offered a spectrum of (personal and career) Goals (some of which are listed on the above figure); and then brought to the Game Start, from where one could either go to the Vision Quest or the Action Quest. The Vision Quest offered an explanation why the chosen goal—and each of the proposed goals—can indeed be achieved through systemic innovation; the Action Quest offered a medium by which the players could self-organize and create systemic innovation initiatives.

The game-changing game has two categories of players: The A-players (who as graduate students, or entrepreneurs in search of a project) are in a career and life phase where change is natural and easy; and the Z-players (who as professors, or investors) are in positions of power.

The Z-players play the game-changing game by empowering the A-players to pursue their career goals by changing a system.

I published a description of this prototype in the proceedings of The European Academy of Design's yearly conference; which had "Crafting the Future" as title; my contribution had the title "The Game-Changing Game—a practical way to craft the future". Its point being that the natural and arguably only way to "craft the future" was by empowering our next generation to craft the systems in which they'll live and work.

In 2012 in Zagreb we created The Club of Zagreb—a redesign of The Club of Rome based on the game-changing game; the point of which was similar. We had the Europe Club Zagreb as venue; whose windows opened to the Croatian capital’s main square. Yuzuru Tanaka joined us from Japan; Mei Lin Fung, Jack Park and Sam Hahn flew in from California, David Price from England, Alf Johansen from Norway. The A-players were represented by two Croatian student organizations—e-Student (“e” is for “excellence”) and Creativity Club, and by several international ones; Croatian Venture Cup was represented by its director, and academic journalism by its Croatian leader.

With a group of A-players we then took a cosy and bonding minibus tour (sponsored by my mother) through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Dubrovnik; with overnighting in Muslibegović House Mostar and a Sevdalinka garden concert that Ibrica Jusić so graciously gave us. In Dubrovnik we had our third biennial workshop at IUC; and began—with A-players—to co-create what is now the Collaborology education prototype; which is a game-changing game in education.

Collaborology prototype showed how education can be turned into an instrument of change.

In education

A natural way to change course is by changing education.

Education recreates the world with every new generation; unless it is conceived in the traditional way—namely as a way to socialize or condition our next generation to fit into the world.

The collaborology prototype models the education we now need.

By weaving together about half a dozen of transformative design patterns; of which I'll right away highlight this all-important one:

In the collaborology prototype education is by pull, not push.

Which means that the student learns by following his own personal interests and goals—and learning trajectory; and translates into a whole spectrum of advantages, some of which are obvious: Education by push damages creativity and initiative, education by pull enhances them; push education is once in a lifetime, pull education can be life-long and flexible.

The collaborology prototype is a result of almost two decades of evolution; most of which was through an earlier prototype of a transdisciplinary course called Information Design; which we were evolving and teaching at the University of Oslo; which in its developed form had about 100 students. The description of this course model and the enabling technical solutions were discussed and published in suitable international conferences and journals. The domain map object—the core enabling technology this prototype is based on—was a variation on Engelbart's "dynamic knowledge repository" theme.

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The front page of collaborology course flyer.

Both the collaborology course and its predecessor have been conceived as design labs; where the students self-organize in small teams, and create the learning resources for the next-generation students; which has a number of advantages—one of which is that it stimulates collaborative creation for common good (and not studying for the grade).

The collaborology course is, in addition, internationally federated.

Whereby the course becomes, in effect, the game-changing game—where international instructors act as Z-players, empowering teams of A-players to be creative in ways that are well beyond what the traditional education offers; including co-creation of systems.

By enabling each instructor to focus on a single module and corresponding learning resources, and to create them through collaboration with international students including communication designers and media professionals—the collaborology prototype manifests the economies of scale and related advantages that are characteristic of systemic innovation.

The collaborology prototype models a feasible or "sustainable" way to develop and disseminate a transdisciplinary body of knowledge about any theme.

I presented and discussed the collaborology prototype at the conference Future Education, which the World Academy of Art and Science organized in 2017 in Rome; in the session titled "Transition to a New Paradigm in Education", in a talk titled "Systemic Innovation in Education – the Collaborology Prototype". I explained in the abstract:

"Already a half-century ago visionary thinkers observed that the global issues point to a key capability our civilization is lacking – to innovate on the scale of basic institutions and other systems. Think of systemic innovation as updating the gigantic socio-technical ‘machinery’ whose function is to take everyone’s daily work as input and produce socially and environmentally useful effects as output. Consider it the feedback-and-control needed to give our civilization a viable evolutionary course; the flexibility our institutions need to be able to transform under pressure, and not break down. The Collaborology prototype is an intervention to foster the systemic innovation capability through education."