STORIES
Contents
Federation through Stories
How does one lift up an insight of a giant out of undeserved anonymity?
Here we use vignettes – engaging, sticky... people and situation anecdotes. By combining them into threads, and threads into patterns, we condense the giants' key insights into a general idea that provides meaning and orientation.
– Digital technology could help make this a better world. But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
We like to begin by telling the story of Douglas Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution, because this story is emblematic of knowledge federation. The story is about how the Silicon Valley and the Stanford University failed to understand and even hear their genius in residence – even after having recognized him as such. Knowledge federation may be understood as an initiative to continue and complete this "unfinished revolution".
So here it is, in a nutshell: Having decided, in December of 1950, to direct his career so as to maximize its benefits to mankind, Doug Engelbart thought for three months about a career line that could achieve that. Then he had an epiphany...
here (TBA) is about how the Silicon Valley failed to understand or even hear its genius in residence – even after having recognized him as that. </p>
...
And then there's the invisible elephant!
Perhaps the main reason why the best ideas of our best minds are still waiting to be discovered by us others is – paradoxically – that they do truly make a difference! To make sense, an idea must fit in snuggly with our other ideas, or into our shared paradigm. But as we mentioned – the best ideas of our best minds compose together an altogether different paradigm! And hence our giants appear to us as those proverbial blind men touching an elephant, each speaking excitedly about its different part.
We undertake to make a difference by describing the whole thing – and then showing how the pieces fit in and compose its different parts. As the organs of an elephant will only be truly understood when seen as functional parts of the whole big animal, so can the visions and contributions of our giants only be understood when seen in the context of the new order of things to which they are intended to contribute.
By connecting the dots, we provide the context in which the best ideas of our best minds can be understood and appreciated. And what a sight it is!