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<div class="col-md-6"><p>"[...] of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you", Postman continued.</p> | <div class="col-md-6"><p>"[...] of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you", Postman continued.</p> | ||
<h3>The function of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to connect the dots.</h3> | <h3>The function of <em>knowledge federation</em> is to connect the dots.</h3> | ||
− | <p>To turn overloads of | + | <p>To turn overloads of data into shared and acted on <em>meaning</em>; and not <em>any</em> sort of meaning—but the kind that provides us <em><b>know-what</b></em>; which points to <em><b>correct</b></em> action; or to use our <em><b>keyword—which provides us a <em>correct</em> <em>gestalt</em>. Of which "Our house is on fire" is an example: You may know all the room temperatures and even the CO2 levels; but it is only when you know that your house is on fire that you also know <em>what to do</em>. A <em><b>gestalt</b></em> can ignite an <em>emotional</em> response; it can even change the level of adrenaline in your bloodstream.</p> |
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<p>Our traditions have instructed us how to handle situations and contingencies by providing us a repertoire of <em><b>gestalt</b></em>-action pairs. But what about the situations that have <em>not</em> happened before?</p> | <p>Our traditions have instructed us how to handle situations and contingencies by providing us a repertoire of <em><b>gestalt</b></em>-action pairs. But what about the situations that have <em>not</em> happened before?</p> | ||
Revision as of 15:25, 17 November 2023
Contents
- 1 Federation through Ideograms
- 1.1 The function of knowledge federation is to connect the dots.
- 1.2 Modernity ideogram
- 1.3 Information ideogram
- 1.3.1 The Information ideogram explains what knowledge federation means as an activity.
- 1.3.2 The Information ideogram shows how to respond to the creative challenge the Modernity ideogram points to.
- 1.3.3 We academic people too must become accountable.
- 1.3.4 The Information ideogram shows how information needs to be structured.
- 1.4 Holotopia ideogram
Federation through Ideograms
(Neil Postman in a televised interview to Open Mind, 1990)
"[...] of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you", Postman continued.
The function of knowledge federation is to connect the dots.
To turn overloads of data into shared and acted on meaning; and not any sort of meaning—but the kind that provides us know-what; which points to correct action; or to use our keyword—which provides us a correct gestalt. Of which "Our house is on fire" is an example: You may know all the room temperatures and even the CO2 levels; but it is only when you know that your house is on fire that you also know what to do. A <b>gestalt</b> can ignite an emotional response; it can even change the level of adrenaline in your bloodstream.</p>
<p>Our traditions have instructed us how to handle situations and contingencies by providing us a repertoire of <b>gestalt</b>-action pairs. But what about the situations that have not happened before?</p>
<b>Gestalt</b> is (the <b>keyword</b> we use to define) what the word <b>informed</b> means.
</div>
</div>
<p>By depicting our society as a bus and our <b>information</b> as its candle headlights, the Modernity ideogram renders the <b>gestalt</b> of our contemporary global situation in a nutshell.</p>
<p>Imagine us as passengers in a bus—which rushes at accelerating speed through dark and uncharted terrain; toward a destination that's cannot be anything but a disaster; because the headlights of our bus are too dim to illuminate even the very road it is following.</p>
<p>In Guided Evolution of Society, in 2001, systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy surveyed a broad range of sources and reached this conclusion:</p>
<p>“We are the first generation of our species that has the privilege, the opportunity, and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed chosen people. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These are core requirements, because what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.”</p>
<p>To foster the awareness of this new opportunity and responsibility, and develop the <b>information</b> that can provide us “evolutionary guidance”—is the challenge the Modernity ideogram is pointing to.</p>
<p>Certainly not by people who considered the options; but by simply inheriting an illumination source—which had been created with an out-of-date technology for an entirely different purpose.</p>
<p>I coined a pair of <b>keywords</b> to make the nature of this error precise; and defined <b>design</b> and <b>tradition</b> as a pair of antonyms pointing to two ways in which society-and-culture can evolve; and to two alternative ways to <b>wholeness</b>; and to two distinct ways of being in the world: We are <b>traditional</b> when we rely on what's been inherited; and <b>designing</b> when we consider ourselves accountable for the <b>wholeness</b> of it all. You'll now easily comprehend the <b>gestalt</b> of our situation the Modernity ideogram points to:</p>
<p>Our situation is a (still unenlightened and half-hazard, and increasingly dangerous) transition from one stable order of things (or way of evolving or <b>paradigm</b>, which is no longer functional) to another (which is not yet in place).</p>
<p>The way(s) we see the world can no longer be inherited from the past; it (they) must be conscientiously <b>designed</b> to serve its (their) function. Different information must stand between us and the world; and our very relationship with information must be changed thoroughly and accordingly. I use <b>information</b> as <b>keyword</b> to signify both the material artifacts that (can) serve for communication, and the processes and even the very values that determine how those artifacts are created and used. My call to action is to reconfigure <b>information</b> thoroughly—in the manner and the degree that the change from the candle to the lightbulb metaphor points to.</p>
<p>The Information ideogram is an “i” (for "information"), composed as a circle or a <b>point</b> on top of a <b>rectangle</b>; and inscribed in a triangle representing the metaphorical <b>mountain</b>. The <b>rectangle</b> stands for a myriad of documents; and for looking at a theme from all sides; the circle stands for the <b>point</b> of it all; while the triangle or the <b>mountain</b> symbolizes a different way to conceive and structure <b>information</b>; and the resulting different way to see the world. Albert Einstein warned in an interview to The New York Times, in the aftermath of Hiroshima: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. The Information ideogram points to (the quest for) the requisite "new type of thinking" and the <b>information</b> that will make it possible.</p>
<p>Which is to complement document broadcasting by structuring and abstraction; which you'll comprehend easily if you imagine us in "information jungle"; and think of <b>knowledge federation</b> as a collective walk up the metaphorical <b>mountain</b>—so that we may see where the roads are leading to; and which one we need to follow.</p>
<p>The Information ideogram points to three kinds of abstraction:</p>
<p> Ole-Johan Dahl and C.A.R. Hoare wrote in Structured Programming in 1972, in a chapter called “Hierarchical Program Structures”:</p>
<p>“As the result of the large capacity of computing instruments, we have to deal with computing processes of such complexity that they can hardly be understood in terms of basic general purpose concepts. The limit is set by the nature of our intellect: precise thinking is possible only in terms of a small number of elements at a time. The only efficient way to deal with complicated systems is in a hierarchical fashion. The dynamic system is constructed and understood in terms of high level concepts, which are in turn constructed and understood in terms of lower level concepts, and so forth.”</p>
<p>In Chapter Two of the Liberation book I introduce this new accountability through the analogy with computer programming: When in the early days of computing ambitious software projects resulted in chaos—composed of thousands of tangled up lines of code, which nobody could comprehend or correct—the solution was found in the creation of "software design methodologies"; whose creators considered themselves accountable for the (conceptual and technical) tools they gave to programmers.</p>
<p>For the (conceptual and technical) <b>information</b> tools we give to researchers and to society; because it is those tools that now determine whether <b>information</b> will result in chaos—or in a new order.</p>
<p>By depicting the <b>information holon</b>; which is <b>designed</b> to serve as a document template; as a new basic unit or "piece" of information. A <b>holon</b> is both a whole in itself and a piece in a larger whole. When a myriad of documents are <b>federated</b> to produce the <b>point</b>—this <b>point</b> can be used to compose a higher-order <b>holon</b>; so that <b>holons</b> can be combined into a <b>holarchy</b>—which is what the <b>mountain</b> stands for.</p>
<p>Last not least—be sure not to miss the main <b>point</b> of this <b>ideogram</b>: Without the <b>point</b>, all the rest (thousands of pages of academic books and articles) is <b>point</b>-less!</p>
<p>The Holotopia ideogram comprises five pillars, each of which has a <b>pivotal</b> category at its base and an insight—which resulted by applying <b>knowledge federation</b> to that category—at its capital. The <b>ten themes</b>—represented by the edges joining the <b>five insights</b>—point to the fact that when other themes (including creativity, religion, education, happiness and politics) are considered in the context of <b>five insights</b>—their comprehension and handling too ends up revised and reversed. </p>
<p>This overarching insight resulted from this experiment; which I propose for consideration in our <b>dialog</b>:</p>
<p>Regarding the elementary <b>know-what</b>, when it comes to the themes that determine our society's evolutionary course—we do not have <b>knowledge</b>; all we have to work with is <b>belief</b>. Our comprehension and handling of the core themes of our lives and times are at the level where our comprehension of natural phenomena was in pre-scientific times.</p>
<p>The stars in Holotopia ideogram represent <b>prototypes</b>; and point to the <b>informed</b> course of action the <b>holotopia</b> initiative will orchestrate.</p>
Modernity ideogram
How could this uncanny error be made?
We are no longer traditional; and we are not yet designing.
The Modernity ideogram points to remedial action.
Information ideogram
The Information ideogram explains what knowledge federation means as an activity.
The Information ideogram shows how to respond to the creative challenge the Modernity ideogram points to.
We academic people too must become accountable.
The Information ideogram shows how information needs to be structured.
Holotopia ideogram
We are not informed.