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Contents
Imagine...
Introducing knowledge federation
To understand the meaning and purpose of our initiative, it may be best to recall the humanity's condition at the eve of the Middle Ages: devastating wars, horrifying epidemics, infamous inquisition trials... Bring to mind the iconic image of Galilei in house prison, a century after Copernicus, whispering "eppur si muove" into his beard. The problems of the day were not resolved by focusing on those problems, but by a slow development of a whole new approach to knowledge. Several centuries of unprecedented progress followed. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?
Our purpose is to connect the dots
"If I have seen further," Sir Isaac Newton famously declared, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Imagine if we would lose this all-important ability, to take advantage of the best ideas of our best minds: What sort of problems, and what situation would result? Imagine if we would then regain it: What opportunities would that open up?
In Knowledge Federation we have made a discovery. We did not discover that the best insights of our best minds were drowning in an ocean of glut. It was the 20th century's giants who reached that conclusion, and they urged their fellow scientists to find a remedy. But needless to say, this too drowned in an ocean of glut.
... a whole new approach to knowledge!
Our discovery
What we did find out, when we began to put together the insights of giants, was that just as the case was in Newton's time, a new approach to knowledge is ready to be born. We also found out that this new approach to knowledge leads to completely new answers to some of the most interesting and most relevant questions – about the nature of truth and meaning; in what way might happiness be successfully pursued; what still impedes our freedom and democracy; what technological innovation may need to be like to benefit us incomparably more than it presently does.
Our initiative
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality", observed Buckminster Fuller. "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The issue that is being proactively problematized on these pages is the way we handle a most precious resource – human creativity (or insight, ingenuity, capacity to envision and induce change...) and its fruits accumulated through the ages – at the moment in our history where we may need to depend on it more than we ever did.
We have undertaken to make a difference by igniting or as we call it bootstrapping a whole new course of action. What you'll find on these pages is a complete "new model", or as we like to call it a prototype, of a whole new approach to knowledge – which touches upon a spectrum of relevant issues ranging from epistemology and methods to social organization of knowledge work and technology. Our prototype includes even a deployment strategy – which is already being put into use, as you are reading these pages.
See
Federation through Images
In Federation through Images we revisit our ideas about what constitutes "good" knowledge and "good" information. We show that the state of the art in science and philosophy requires change. We render the core insights of the giants in this traditionally abstract field as metaphorical and often paradoxical images called ideograms. The result is a cartoon-like introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of a refreshingly new approach to knowledge.
Federation through Stories
<p>In Federation through Stories ...