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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.
Knowledge federation is a social process; whose function is to connect the dots.
And complement publishing and broadcasting; and add meaning or insights to overloads of data; and ensure that they are acted on.
Among various sorts of insights, of especial importance are gestalts; of which "Our house is on fire" is the canonical example: You may know all the room temperatures; but it is only when you know that your house is on fire that you are empowered to act as your situation demands. A gestalt can ignite an emotional response; it can inject adrenaline into your bloodstream.
We use the word gestalt to pinpoint what the word informed means.
Our traditions have instructed us how to handle situations and contingencies by providing us a repertoire of gestalt and action pairs. But what about those situations that have not happened before?
Knowledge federation uses ideograms to create and communicate gestalts. An ideogram can condense one thousand words into an image; and make the point of it all recognizable at a glance; and communicate know-what in ways that incite action.
The existing knowledge federation ideograms are only a placeholder—for a variety of techniques that will be developed through artful and judicious use of media technology.
Modernity ideogram
So what is the way to interpret the data and conceive of the situation we are in—which will empower us to act as this situation demands? And what is the process by which this all-important question is to be answered? My (proposal for the) answer to this latter question you already know—it is to federate what's been academically published or otherwise reported, which is of relevance. And in Guided Evolution of Society, in 2001, systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy did exactly that: He surveyed a broad range of sources, and reached this conclusion:
“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.”
By depicting our society as a bus and our information as its candle headlights, Modernity ideogram renders a gestalt of our contemporary situation that is exactly what Bánáthy told us—and just a tiny bit more.
Imagine us as passengers in a bus—which rushes at accelerating speed toward a disaster; because its headlights are flagrantly unsuitable for the function they need to fulfill—for showing us the way.
I am imagining that this bus is already off track; struggling to avoid trees and ravines, which is increasingly more difficult as new technologies make it run faster; and that it is this struggle and nothing more—that gives it direction.
Information must now intervene between us and the world.
And between us and our choices; and not just any sort of information—but information that's been conscientiously designed for that pivotal function (I qualify something as pivotal if it decisively influences our society's evolutionary course; and as correct if it corrects it).
Information ideogram
What should information be like—to empower us to see the world correctly? What is the process by which this question is to be answered?
I had the unusual fortune to spend almost three decades on a tenured academic position—working as well as I was able to federate a prototype answer to this all-important question. The knowledge federation prototype resulted, which I've been telling you about. The process that led to it is rather obvious—if you consider the knowledge federation axiom to be the cornerstone of it all: I've been federating whatever could be useful to give us a head start. Here the word "analogy" needs to be mentioned—since key ideas may have been developed, and proven their worth, in a different context; and only needed to be adapted to the task at hand.
In Chapter Two of the Liberation book, which has "Liberation of Mind" as title, I introduced the range of ideas the Information ideogram points to by talking about the Object Oriented Methodology that marked the history of computer programming. Ole-Johan Dahl (who later received the Turing Award—the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computing—for this work) wrote (with C.A.R. Hoare) in Structured Programming in 1972, in a chapter called “Hierarchical Program Structures”:
“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.”
If computer programming was not to result in chaos, but in code that's easily comprehensible, reusable and modifiable—the programs would need to be structured in a way that conforms to the limits of our intellect, Dahl and his colleagues found out; and created the Object Oriented Methodology which enabled the programmers to achieve exactly that—by structuring the programs in terms of "objects". Based on the same idea, I drafted the information holon; which is what the Information ideogram depicts. Arthur Koestler coined the keyword "holon" to denote something that is both a whole in itself and a piece in a larger whole; and I applied it to information.
The Information ideogram is an “i” (for "information"), composed as a circle or dot or point on top of a rectangle; inscribed in a triangle representing the metaphorical mountain. You may interpret the rectangle as a multitude of documents; and the point as the point of it all; and this ideogram as a way to say the obvious—that without a point, a myriad of printed pages are just point-less!
You'll comprehend the mountain if you think of knowledge federation as a collective climb to a mountain top; so that we may rise above the tree tops and see the roads and where they lead; and what is the one we need to follow.
And you'll comprehend knowledge federation more precisely if you imagine the mountain as a structure of viewpoints; which offer coherent views (you can bend down and inspect a flower; or climb up the mountain and see the valley below; but never see both at the same time).
The information holon is offered as a structuring template and principle; and the mountain, which is technically called information holarchy, is composed of information holons—so that the points of more detailed holons serve as dots to be connected to compose those more general or high-level ones.
The key to it all is abstraction.
It is by recourse to abstraction that "information glut" is transformed into meaningful scopes and views; and into guidelines for meaningful action. The Information ideogram illustrates three kinds of abstraction:
- Horizontal abstraction, represented by the rectangle—which you'll comprehend if you think of looking at an object from a specific side
- Vertical abstraction, represented by the point—which you'll comprehend if you think of going up the mountain; toward the top, where the whole terrain is visible and the choice of direction is easy
- Structural abstraction, represented by the triangle or the mountain—which you'll comprehend if you consider how important it is to be able to consciously choose the ways—several ways—to look at an object; if your task is to see it whole.
The structural abstraction is what enable us to categorize; and configure and access information accordingly; as Neil Postman said we should do.
Holotopia ideogram
The holotopia initiative is knowledge federation's proof of concept application; it is also the vision that resulted when we applied knowledge federation to five pivotal categories—(pointing to) factors that decisively influence our (society's) evolutionary course; and an initiative to manifest and realize this vision. Those five categories are:
- innovation—our technology-augmented capability to create, and induce change
- information—which by definition includes not only written documents, but all other forms of heritage or recorded human experience that may help us illuminate the course; and also the social processes by which information is created and put to use
- foundation—on which we develop knowledge; which decides what in our cultural heritage will continue to evolve—and what will be abandoned to decay
- method—by which we create knowledge; and distinguish knowledge from belief
- values—which direct "the pursuit of happiness" and our other pursuits.
The Holotopia ideogram comprises five pillars, each of which has a pivotal category as base and a point or insight as capital. Think of those pillars as elevating our comprehension of the corresponding category (by accounting for what's been academically published or otherwise reported) to a simple insight or point. In each case the resulting insight showed that the "conventional wisdom"—the way the category is ordinarily comprehended and handled—needs to be thoroughly revised or reversed.
The resulting five points or five insights elevate our comprehension of the world and our situation as a whole; so that when other similarly important themes such as creativity, religion and education are considered in the context of those five points—their comprehension and handling too ends up being revised and reversed; and we added ten themes to this ideogram—represented by the edges joining the five insights—to illustrate that.
Even more spectacular is the fact that—regarding each of those five pivotal categories—our overall situation, personal and societal or cultural, can be dramatically improved by reversing the way it's comprehended and handled; which distinguishes holotopia from other projects of this kind—namely that it includes both a vision of a comprehensively better human condition and an actionable strategy to achieve it; which is already in implementation.
The changes or courses of action invited by the five insights are so inter-dependent, that making any of them necessitates that we make them all. I use the word paradigm to point to the fact that the course of action that leads to comprehensive improvement is comprehensive change; the kind of thing that the candle headlights metaphor suggests: The lightbulb will not result by haphazard improvements of the candle—but by a vision of the result combined with planned and concerted action to achieve it.
The Modernity ideogram illustrates quite nicely also the way each of the insights is reached—which is by seeing things whole; and the course of action it demands—which is to make things whole. Indeed it is only when we see our society as a whole—that we see that that it has 'candle headlights'; and it is by making things whole—by changing the 'headlights'—that dramatic improvement in our condition is achieved.
And so it turned out that (neither "success" nor "profit" or any other form of self-interest but) making things whole—the principle that defines the holotopia—is everyone's enlightened interest.
The stars on Holotopia ideogram stand for "reaching for the stars"—i.e. for the sort of achievements and changes that may now be unthinkable; which will be normal in the informed order of things that holotopia initiative undertakes to foster.
My point
(Albert Einstein in an interview to The New York Times, 1946)
Whenever the way we think is not taken taken for granted but turned into the very theme of conversation—communication, which is always a challenge to be reckoned with, can quickly run amok. My point will most surely be miscomprehended—unless it's understood within the new way of thinking; which is my point itself. Years ago I coined a pair of keywords to pinpoint it—design and tradition. Where design is just synonym for make things whole, the principle that defines holotopia. By definition, tradition and design are two ways of being and acting and the corresponding two ways to wholeness; where tradition relies on things being tested and tried and adjusted to each other through generations of use—and design on conscious comprehension and accountability for the wholeness of the thing at hand, and for the wholeness of it all. Design is exactly what Banathy was calling "conscious evolution".
The point of the Modernity ideogram, which is also my main point, is that we are in the midst of a transition—which is still non-deliberate, still non-conscious—from the former to the latter; where our technological know-what, powered by science, has made the rate of change incomparably faster than our culture or 'software' including information—which remained traditional—is able to handle.
We have a new challenge.
Which is to transition from tradition to design; or to "guided" or "conscious" or informed evolution of society. At the core of this challenge is the fact that (just as we cannot create a lightbulb by improving the candle)—the very process by which this transition is to be effected is not part of our traditional or inherited repertoire of processes.
It needs to be designed.
And that's exactly what I'm doing here: I am not telling you about the world, or about information; I am designing and implementing a process by which the 'candle' can be transformed into the 'lightbulb'; I am acting and being within that process—and inviting you to join me; because communication is a social process and we can change it only if we work together.
To the best of my knowledge, the knowledge federation prototype my collaborators and I have developed may already be a good enough answer; but even then—my goal is not to create another dead body, another "final" solution—but a process by which we'll continuously improve the way we handle information and knowledge; which will empower us to evolve in a way that leads to "prosperity", or to wholeness as I prefer to call it—and not to a disaster.
The design of this process, and transition, is an academic challenge; it is also the challenge of our time—and the academic creative opportunity and challenge par excellence. At the universities we control the key or pivotal resource—the young people; our next generation; research and education are evolution; and how fortunate we are that this "systemic leverage point" par excellence in publicly sponsored; and in our hands—in the hands of publicly sponsored intellectuals.
My appeal is to liberate the next generation academics from re-constituting 'the candle'.
And to empower them to be creative in ways and degrees that their situation requires.
Enlightenment empowered the human mind to be in charge of evolution—but the way to use the mind has been laden with errors, which the scientists discovered later; and it's anyhow obsolete. My point, or appeal, is to design a process by which creative people—notably the young ones—will be empowered to make the sort of changes that the situation of our world now demands.