IMAGES
Contents
Federation through Images
Ideograms
Not all images are worth one thousand words
But the ideograms are! They play a similar role in knowledge federation as mathematical formulas do in traditional science. An ideogram can condense a wealth of insights and many pages of text into an image whose message can be recognized at a glance. Recall the Newton's formula, or Einstein's ubiquitous E=mc² – those too are ideograms! But the possibilities behind the ideographic approach are endless, and they vastly surpass the conventional maths.
The creative possibilities of ideograms also surpass our illustrations – and are yet to be developed through creative use of new media.
A better way to be creative
Knowledge federation
By representing our civilization as a bus, and our handling of information as its candle headlights, the Modernity ideogram points to the essence of knowledge federation in a nutshell.
Imagine us all riding in a bus with candle headlights, through dark and uncharted terrain, at an accelerating speed... To be sustainable, posits the Modernity ideogram, our way into the future needs to be suitably informed. The information we have, and the we way create it and use it, will not do the job. An entirely new approach to information is needed, which combines entirely different principles and new technology.
To raise the banner on the creative frontier where the quest for this entirely new paradigm in knowledge work will take place, we have given it the name knowledge federation. So think of knowledge federation as a socio-technical 'light bulb' of a completely new kind – which can fulfill this pivotal new role that information, and knowledge, now need to perform in our society.
Systemic innovation
The Modernity ideogram has also another, more subtle and more general message.