How does one lift up an insight of a giant out of undeserved anonymity?

We tell vignettes – engaging, lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories, to distill core ideas of daring thinkers and make them accessible. They let the reader 'step into the shoes' of a leading thinker, 'look through his eyeglasses'... They make ideas simple, palpable, understandable by anyone. They give those ideas passion, the ability to move and incite action.

No time for stories?

Recalling what our theme is will help you find the necessary time and patience for these stories, to digest them and take them in properly. So before we begin, bring to mind the image of Galilei in house prison... Who might be the still unknown heros of an emerging approach to knowledge? What are their yet untold histories?

We'll here approach the theme of the genesis of a new approach to knowledge and creative work in general from an entirely different angle – from the point of view of social re-organization of the institutional and other structures; and by looking at the technology that may enable a radical change.

Innovation and democracy are here inextricably woven together.

We are here taking up the theme of the second book of Knowledge Federation Trilogy (with title "Systemic Innovation", and subtitle "Democracy for the Third Millennium". Our theme of focus will be the invention and innovation side of the emerging paradigm. Here we are talking about this other side of using human creativity. So think about the printing press. Or about the steam engine. Those inventions initiated whole streams of development that made the human work wonderfully more efficient and effective.

Can you imagine a similar development taking place today? What might be the ideas, and who might be the people carrying them? What new forms might invention be able to take?

So what might be the next-paradigm counterpart to the printing press?

Well, you'll be inclined to say, the answer is obvious, of course, it's the Web. And if the Web truly is the answer, then we already have it, and there is not much more that can happen. But there's a catch – and that's what we're about to point to. It is exactly by focusing on the difference of the Web that is, and of "the Web that wasn't" (as Alex Wright put it), that the future of not only the Web but also of innovation will be understood.

The Internet has.. But we also need to think in a new way.

The hero we want to begin with is an icon of KF. Silicon Valley's genius in residence - not understood!

The story we want to tell is also iconic. The slides are of Doug's presentation at Google – Call to Action. NOT shown!

So here it is, in a nutshell: In 1951 Doug decided. Then he had an epiphany.

What is it that he saw?

Many years ago I dreamed that...

Doug was celebrated as a brilliant creator of TECHNOLOGY. But really we'll introduce him here as a brilliant creator of IDEAS – which so much didn't fit into the existing academic and entrepreneurial paradigm that they not only failed to find their place at the university, but they are STILL TODAY ignored. We'll talk here about only two. The first one is what Doug called CoDIAK. The point is – this technology is a QUANTUM LEAP!!! The printing press wasn't – it's just an effectivization of what the scribes were doing in monasteries, while copying manuscripts!

But what Doug foresaw (already in 1951 - and then immediately dedicated his career to fulfilling that vision) was that when digital computer technology is interconnected into a network – COMPLETELY NEW PATTERNS OF INTERACTION and SYSTEMIC SOLUTIONS become possible! We can in effect THINK TOGETHER – like cells collected together into a collective mind.

Now the second idea. We'll call it systemic innovation. To properly understand it (in our NARROWER context, of innovating in knowledge work), start from Doug's approach to SI which he called "augmentation". It's all about improving the human capabilities. The CoDIAK is a capability. But to really take advantage of it, still another one needs to be in place. Doug tried his best to point to it by his keyword BOOTSTRAPPING, and we'll come back to that.

The point is that we haven't yet learned to update our systems. Indeed our systems are not CONSTRUCTED to have the capability to update themselves!

On the contrary – as we shall see, our systems ARE our reality! And therein resides our main challenge!

And the steam engine – what might play that role?

This one might be a bit harder to guess. The reason why we begin this part of our conversation by pointing to the steam engine is because it started the creation of machines that either made the human labor dramatically more efficient, or made it unnecessary altogether. But since then we have invented just about every gadget that can save human labor or make it more effective or efficient. So what else can happen? And especially – what can be a dramatic news on that frontier?

Our next task is to learn to innovate the systems in which we live and work.

We asked our communication design team to create an ideogram that would show the people that they are part of a system. And that the structure of that system, or systems, determines both the quality of their life and the value .The ideogram shown on the right is what they came up with. So imagine a system as a large machine, comprising technology and people. Think of its role as taking everyone's daily work as input, and producing socially useful results as output. How well is it performing in this all-important task? How well is it suitable for that task? How much would its function improve by changing it?

Consider these questions for a moment, and the systemic innovation proposal will begin to emerge in full clarity before your eyes.

What should systems be like?

Academically speaking... Well, there are several academic disciplines, which have practically merged into one – the systems sciences. So our account might well begin with Norbert Wiener, the giant who...

But there are good reasons why we represent systemic innovation by Erich Jantsch instead.

– The university should...

Two reasons: (1) linked with contemporary issue (2) WORKED to establish the SI as praxis (details follow)

See

While this page is being edited...

Explore the Google doc Completing Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution, where you'll find quite a bit of what is being told here. And if you can read it between the lines, yet another interesting story will reveal itself!