APPLICATIONS

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Federation through Applications


A roadmap of an emerging frontier

Our task here is to create a map of systemic innovation / knowledge federation as an emerging creative frontier. Think about the emergence of science – and the development of experiments, theories, research labs... What essential new building blocks, what creative challenges, what sort of achievements may compose this new paradigm?

Domain Map.jpg

Knowledge federation domain map – under construction

The above above old map is just a placeholder for a missing piece in our puzzle, which we'll replace shortly. A reason why we begin with it is to suggest that we are embarking on an adventure. We are in a similar spot with materializing the vision of the emerging cultural paradigm, as the global explorers were when the map was drafted. What you'll see is a rough sketch. Its purpose is not to tell how the world really is, but to invite and orient an exploration – of a new frontier which is at least as promising and exciting as the exploration of the globe was back then.

Or think about the reality on the other side of the metaphorical mirror – where we are being creative by creating a better world. Or more technically – where we practice systemic innovation / knowledge federation. Or even more technically – where Design epistemology defines the underlying values and direction. What might be possible? While we show a variety of projects, each of them is intended to be a prototype illustration of what might be done in a given domain of interest.

How to read this page

We are about to showcase a broad variety of creative opportunities, ways to make a difference. You'll see a whole new public informing being drafted. And a science that is far broader and more impactful and engaged in everyday reality than the present-day sciences are. And still more, a lot more. Yet the most central thing will be missing – the whole thing! We are talking about the insight that all these pieces really make up a whole new consistent order of things. sufficiently complete to make it obvious that it can function together. A complete functioning 'light bulb', a whole living and breathing 'elephant'. For the moment we'll have to rely on you to discover it yourself.

This metaphor might also be useful: Imagine that we are in 1848 in California, and that we've discovered that there's gold to be mined. But we are here and now, and the 'gold' to be mined is something that can benefit the humanity in an unordinarily large way. And so instead of digging a hole in the ground and beginning to excavate gold, we created a (prototype) railroad, and a school and a hospital... so that lots of people can join us for contribution and benefit.

There are subtle interconnections between the presented prototypes. Think, for example, about systemic innovation as an urgent capability that we the people need to develop, to be able to "change the world" (continue to evolve culturally and socially). Notice how much this will depend on suitable education. First of all, people don't yet know how to change systems. And even if they did know – our education today is such that one receives it at a certain period in life, and then (professionally) lives or dies with it. Systemic change will make lots of conventional know-how obsolete (while also creating the need for new kinds of knowledge). So in the present order of things people will resist the change of their professions with all their might – because if not their lives then at least their livelihoods may depend on things remaining as they are. But what if we enable people to re-educate themselves? How would education need to be different to enable life-long re-education? But this is of course only an example of innumerably many questions of this kind – which for the moment are answered by our prototypes, without even being asked. But you can ask them – and then discover answers!

While waiting for our domain map

While waiting for our domain map to be completed (it is currently a theme of a research project) we list our prototypes linearly, beginning from the more technical or "hard", and ending with the most conceptual or "soft". (A domain map is one of the key tools of knowledge federation, a variant of Engelbart's DKR (or "dynamic knowledge repository"). The idea is that a community in charge of a domain should display its domain using a system of maps, that (similarly as the geographical maps) reflect distinct purposes, levels of detail etc.

The nature of our applications

How can we give knowledge real-life impact? How can we change real-life systems? How can we create institutions that are capable of evolving to reflect the present state of our knowledge, and our needs?

We create prototypes – real-life systems embedded in reality, acting upon reality and aiming to change it. The prototypes serve as

  • models – because they embody design ideas and solutions in a manner that makes them applicable and adaptable to other situations
  • experiments – because being embedded in reality they allow us to see what works and what doesn't
  • interventions – strategically deployed to transform systems, and to point to a new direction

By putting a prototype in charge of a transdisciplinary community, to update it continuously, the prototypes are at the same time conceived as a core tool of knowledge federation.

Knowledge media

By "knowledge media" we mean tools and processes that enable knowledge federation. Knowledge Federation originated as a community of knowledge media researchers, as a place where we can exchange ideas and develop a body of knowledge, analogous to physics and chemistry. And where we may also team up with other people and communities, for real-world knowledge-work system development and impact.

This line of our work perhaps most directly continues the line of work that Doug Engelbart initiated.

The following are some examples of knowledge media systems developed by the members of our community.

Meme Media and Webbles

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YandD.jpg

Yuzuru Tanaka and Douglas Engelbart in Engelbart's home in California in 2012, a year before Engelbart passed away. Decades earlier, when their collaboration and friendship began, meeting Tanaka helped Doug heal his WW2 prejudices toward the Japanese.

How to best manifest the Web's potential to vastly enhance the evolution of knowledge, by combining the already existing pieces (or memes)? The Meme Media and the Webbles are envisioned as a prototype answer, including both a methodology and a toolkit. Both have been developed at the Knowledge Media Laboratory of the University of Hokkaido, Japan, under the leadership of Professor Yuzuru Tanaka. Tanaka was the first to use the term "knowledge federation" in the way in which we are using it.

See

Debategraph

How to enable a global community of interest to organize together the documents and points of view relevant to their domain – and reach insights and conclusions? Debategraph is a premier system for online knowledge federation, with 25000 maps covering a broad variety of issues, created by CNN, the White House, the UK Prime Minister's Office, The Independent, and the Foreign Office among others. Co-founded by Peter Baldwin and David Price, who have been collaborating on DebateGraph's development on opposites sides of the world for over a decade, Debategraph is evolving continuously towards the fulfilment of its long term vision "for a new medium of public deliberation, communication and conflict resolution".

See

Knowledge Gardening and TopicQuests

Engelbart's core idea (what he called CoDIAK and what we are calling the collective mind) is that when people are able to directly interact with the computers, and when the computers are linked into a network, then the people around the globe can think and work together in entirely new ways, well beyond even what sitting in the same room could make possible (he developed the familiar technology to enable that development). Developed by Jack Park and his team, and building on Doug's idea of the DKR, the Knowledge Gardening and TopicQuests are again a combination of a suitable methodology and enabling set of technologies. In 2007 Jack Park initiated the development of the Knowledge Federation community.

See

Induct

Henry Chesbrough of UC Berkeley observed that innovation can be made incomparably more effective and efficient if it can become "open". Norwegian entrepreneur Alf Martin Johansen undertook to make this opportunity real. The stated goal of Induct Software (the global business that he initiated) is to "interconnect the global innovation ecosystem".

See

  • Induct website (make sure to watch the two-minute video)
  • See this brief Youtube video where Henry Chesbrough tells the story of Induct's beginning. (Chesbrough is now the leader of Induct's Advisory Board.)

Liquid and Author

A systematic application of Engelbart's ideas to text authoring (...) Developed by Norwegian-British designer Frode Hegland. See

CollaboFramework

Imagine people sitting around a table. Their task is to co-create a system, their own system, in an entirely new way. They want to be creative in a new way. Imagine a collection of Lego blocks? What are the pieces? CollaboScience is a research prototype of this most timely knowledge media technology. Developed by Sasha and Siniša Rudan.

See

  • CollaboFramework description. This description was created for a specific application – a workshop where the participants of the first Digital Humanities in the North conference were invited to re-create their own collaboration or system, according to the collective mind paradigm.
  • This blog post report of the Digital Humanities in the North event.

Evangelizing prototypes for knowledge federation

Evangelizing prototypes

The evangelizing prototypes are mostly real-life and sometimes fictional stories, whose purpose is to illuminate the larger-than-life opportunities that a new paradigm in knowledge work and in creative work at large may bring. The histories about Doug Engelbart and Erich Jantsch, which were shared in Federation through Stories, belong to this category – and also these others, mentioned below.

Wiener's paradox

The concrete story here points to an anomaly in academic knowledge work at large – that published insights may not have any impact on the public opinion and policy whatsoever; and that further publishing may only obscure those core insights that are the discipline's true gifts to humanity.

The concrete insight in the concrete story is one of the key memes in the emerging paradigm – that we cannot rely on "the market" or "free competition" to guide our society's evolution (by orienting knowledge work, technological innovation, governmental policy, ethics...); and that systemic thinking and insights must be used. A salient subtlety is that without this insight, the very purpose and relevance of the systems sciences remain obscure.

The concrete story is about Norbert Wiener's final chapter of 1948 Cybernetics, where this insight was made – and yet committed to that same system that Wiener diagnosed as defective! The case is hereby made for using our creative powers to recreate the very system by which knowledge is created and shared – which is of course what knowledge federation is about. <p>See

  • Wiener's Paradox – We Can Dissolve it Together abstract – which was an offer to the International Society for the Systems Sciences, made at the society's 59th yearly conference in 2015 in Berlin, to collaborate with us on co-creating a real-life system, for that community, that would dissolve the paradox. A more concrete prototype and offer was made the subsequent year as The Lighthouse – Innovating the Systems Sciences System, see the abstract.
  • Wiener's paradox – we can dissolve it together lecture slides.

The largest contribution to human knowledge

What is the largest contribution to human knowledge you may imagine? We asked this question in an evangelizing talk that was given in several occasions at the point where knowledge federation was just beginning to take shape. Our point was to demonstrate that the largest contributions are likely to be the results of changes in social organization of knowledge work. The concrete story here was about the evolution of post-war sociology, during which this field grew about five times in the number of researchers, publications etc; and at the same time divided itself into a number of sociologies that were losing contact with each other – and of course also with the society they were expected to inform. The "largest contribution" observation is here just a generalization of a similar claim that Pierre Bourdieu, a sociology giant, made about his field, at the point where he and some of his colleagues were attempting a re-organization.

See

  • "What is knowledge federation?" lecture recording, where the above argument is elaborated during the initial seven minutes
  • "Knowledge Federation as a Principle of Knowledge Organization and Sharing" article, which begins with an account of the post-war evolution of sociology as a springboard story.

Knowledge work has a flat tire

The point here is that just continuing with the business as usual (publishing) is like trying to speed ahead by pressing the gas pedal, in a car that has a flat tire. The 'car' has a systemic problem, which needs to be attended to before our "rushing ahead" will have effect.

The concrete story – which demonstrates this larger issue in unequivocal terms – is about two high-profile scientists advocating contradicting views about the climate change to an academic audience and the media.

We told this vignette as a springboard story at our workshop at Stanford University in 2011, which was organized within the Triple Helix IX International Conference. We announced systemic innovation as the next trend in (IT and other) innovation; and (the way of working developed within) knowledge federation as "enabler" of systemic innovation.

See

Eight vignettes to evangelize a paradigm

This one-hour lecture, given in several more recent evangelizing instances, gives (1) a half-hour summary of eight core vignettes that have been used to evangelize the collective mind paradigm (which is roughly a synonym for knowledge federation), followed by (2) a half-hour account of the Collaborology design patterns, pointing to the differences that can be made within the new paradigm, by discussing our Collaborology educational prototype.

See

Evangelizing prototypes for systemic innovation

What happened with all the time we saved?

A good place to begin comprehending systemic innovation might be by asking what happened with all the time we've saved since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; everyone appears to be just as busy as ever!

See

Make a career wish

Imagine you met a fairy... In our presentation to the San Francisco Bay Area Future Salon, we introduced The Game-Changing Game (a method for changing real-world systems) by asking the audience to make an as audacious contribution or achievement wish as they might imagine. After everyone shared their wishes we showed how such feats may be realized through systemic innovation.

TheGCG.jpg

Choose an achievement or contribution! This image was shared as part of our evangelizing talk at the SF Bay Area Future Salon in Palo Alto, in 2011.

See

A scientific approach to problems

See

  • Toward a Scientific Understanding and Treatment of Problems is an argument for the systemic approach that uses the metaphor of scientific medicine (which cures the unpleasant symptoms by relying on its understanding of the underlying anatomy and physiology) to point to an analogous approach to our societal ills.

Systemic innovation's benefits

See

Science

The traditional science has a record of successes in its traditional pursuits. Our prototypes below will show that substantial improvements are possible in all the rest – and above all in the federation (interpretation, aggregation, interconnection...) of the results in science, and their use to inform people's understanding of core issues.

Knowledge Federation

The core function of this prototype is to add to the academic repertoire a core capability – to evolve its own systems. Knowledge Federation defines itself as the transdiscipline for knowledge federation – which means, among other things, that Knowledge Federation develops the transdiscipline model by developing itself.

See

Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015

Imagine that a scientist developed a result of very high general interest, and of high potential impact in several fields of science – and wrote an article about it in the technical language of quantum physics. This situation presented itself in reality, and we took advantage of it to develop a complete federation prototype for this type of applications. The prototype has three phases: (1) through collaboration with our communication design team, the article is turned into a multimedia object where the high-level module presents the result in an accessible language of metaphorical diagrams, equipped with recorded interviews with the author to explain the details, and links into the article and the technical details; (2) the second phase placed this result into public awareness, through a high-profile public event and the use of an orchestra of new media; (3) the main ideas are placed online into a Debategraph map, linked with other related ideas, and made available for further elaboration.

By adding "Part One" to the title of the long blog post that explains this project as a technical knowledge federation prototype (see the link below) we created a private joke, which requires explanation. What might the other two parts be (we will probably never write them as blog posts)? They both have to do with the emerging larger paradigm. One of them is about the foundations for truth and meaning. If you recall Heisenberg from Federation through Images, then you are aware of the challenge – our foundation is too narrow... It turns out that there are two ways to broaden it. One of them is what's been pursued here – to create a methodology and social processes etc. The other one is to include the findings of quantum physics into the modeling repertoire of conventional science. This project combines both of them – and in an academically interesting way (...). And now the the other, third part. It's about creativity. Imagine if – because of the mentioned "narrow foundation", we completely misunderstood the nature of creativity. And if we created a research culture, and education, accordingly (...).

See

The Paradigm Strategy poster

How can we connect scientific findings from a variety of fields (in the particular case mostly in the humanities) – and bring them to bear upon our understanding of our condition; and to show the origins and the way to the paradigm that wants to emerge? We'll discuss this poster in more detail in Federation through Conversation, where it will be introduced as a conversation starter. So for now we'll just show it to you and let you explore it for a moment on your own.

See

Leadership and Systemic Innovation ISSS SIG

We are here talking about a core challenge – establishing systemic innovation academically and in real life, in such a way that it is rooted in the indispensable heritage of the systems sciences. Please notice why Knowledge Federation could not call itself "the transdiscipline for systemic innovation" – the best use of our expertise and professional ethos is to federate the knowledge of the systems scientists properly... Notice why could not, and did not, ignore this heritage. And so Alexander (Laszlo, as the board member of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, the largest global organization of systems scientists) asked the ISSS board to authorize this collaboration between our two communities (the purpose of which would be to co-evolve their own system). They answered "We are not interested", but "you have your SIG and you can do in it whatever you want." And so this SIG became an embryo of a most timely academic enterprise (...).

This SIG, which evolved over the years under the leadership of Alexander Laszlo, is conceived as a systems lab where new systemic solutions are developed with and for the systems community.

See

The Lighthouse

With The Lighthouse prototype comes with another really basic academic use case scenario: Imagine that an entire discipline, or academic community, has a message to the world, which we the people somehow just haven't grasped yet. Imagine that this message is, furthermore, essential for understanding and applying in practice all the other knowledge produced by the community. Imagine, furthermore – and most importantly – that this message is exactly what we the people need to hear and digest to embark on the new evolutionary path (replace the reliance on "the invisible hand" by informed or guided evolution of society.

The community we are talking about is the systems (academic) community (or formally, the International Society for the Systems Sciences). It is common knowledge in this community that the people haven't grasped why and for what purposes the knowledge they produce should be used.

Just a note about the name of this prototype. Imagine the systems science and community as an island or a continent. Imagine the stray ships sailing the rough seas of modernity, trying to resolve global issues, make the world work for all... Then you may imagine Lighthouse as way to show those ships the way to the safety of a harbor, on a continent where directional insights and solutions, and new and safer 'boat designes' are forged in a solidly academic way.

Technically, this prototype shows how an academic community may federate its core insight or insights into the larger community

See

Lighthouse.jpg
The Lighthouse prototype logo

ITBA Systemic Innovation Labotatory

In 1969 Erich Jantsch tried, without success, to initiate "systems design laboratories" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as a way to implement the key role the university would need to have in the future. Now Jantsch's dream is being fulfilled at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology. This visionary project, with Daniel Ryan as director, was recently initiated by Alexander Laszlo.

See

  • Erich Jantsch's article [https://www.dropbox.com/s/tyuie3yuirtax1n/Jantsch-TransdisciplinaryUniversity.pdf?dl=0 Inter- and Transdisciplinary University: A Systems Approach to Education and Innowation]. Starting from the insight that "the university will have to adopt a new purpose which may be recognized as a means of increasing the capability of society for continuous self-renewal", Jantsch draws logical conclusions about how the university may need to restructure itself for this new role. The systems design laboratories are identified as the key element of this transformation.

Polyscopy

This prototype is of course a model of a very large field of application. What we are talking about here is a new-paradigm notion of fundamental or "basic" research – where the goal is to recreate the very methods by which research is performed.

Polyscopy extends or 'extrapolates' science to the key domain of application where it has found itself (as Benjamin Lee Whorf insightfully observed) "without intending to" (science was neither created nor did it evolve for that purpose) – informing people, and orienting our basic choices. Polyscopy is a prototype methodology – hence it also introduces the methodological approach to knowledge work.

See

Education

What might education need to be to support our transition into the emerging paradigm? How might we best intervene into education, to facilitate that change? Then think about education in the context of knowledge federation and systemic innovation – think about all the work that needs to be done to federate global knowledge resources; think of all the work that is being done by students... Can we combine those two – and have students do actually useful work, can we integrate learning and knowledge work, so that they are in synergy with one another? Think, finally, about facilitating the development of knowledge federation and systemic innovation globally, through education – physics has its education, and so does chemistry and mathematics... But what about us? Or more generally – what might education need to be like for any new body of knowledge? How can we create this body of knowledge? How can we teach it?

Collaborology

Education is our natural opportunity to recreate the world, with every new generation, and in that way make our society "alive" (capable of adapting and evolving). How might education need to be different to truly honor this opportunity? Unlike the MOOCs where information is broadcasted, in Collaborology a range of knowledge resources are co-created or federated by leading international experts, and offered to learners worldwide. In this way Collaborology implements the economies of scale that are characteristic of knowledge federation – which enable everyone to contribute to higher organisation and quality of knowledge and knowledge work, instead of merely augmenting the speed and the quantity of production. Collaborology is intended to serve as another showcase prototype of knowledge federation, in education.

See

  • Collaborology course flyer
  • Article Steps toward a Federated Course Model where design ideas are described
  • [karabeg WAAS rome 2017 Collaborology Abstract Systemic Innovation in Education – the Collaborology Prototype] of our lecture at World Academy's Future Education conference in 2017 in Rome]
  • Audio recording and slides of our presentation Collective Mind – may be worth an hour. The first half is "Eight vignettes to evangelize a paradigm" – stories pointing to anomalies in knowledge work. The second half explains the Collaborology prototype in terms of its design patterns – as a way to remedy those anomalies through education.

Leadership and Systemic Innovation

We (the world) may have managers, lots and lots of skilled people capable of keeping the boat afloat for yet another mile. But as this website may amply demonstrate – to be a leader in the present-day global conditions, one must both think in terms of systems (to make meaningful decisions) and know how to transform systems (to really make them viable or sustainable). What education might be suitable? Obviously, this education will need to be developed. A pivotal educational PhD program has been initiated and developed at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology by Alexander Laszlo. The majority of the hand picked twenty students who enroll in this program each year are already leaders in Argentine business, government and education. Hence the program is already making a systemic impact in Argentina.

See

Doug Engelbart´s Unfinished Revolution – the Program for the Future

The PhD seminar "Doug Engelbart´s Unfinished Revolution – the Program for the Future", offered through the Institute of Informatics of the University of Oslo, makes the creative frontier that Engelbart envisioned and developed accessible to buddying CSE researchers. "We look into the future of IT research, development and entrepreneurship through the eyes of Doug Engelbart, the famous inventor; we survey and explore his not yet widely understood and implemented ideas. Can information technology help us solve global and other challenges by making human systems ‘collectively intelligent’?"

Two points or value propositions seem worth highlighting:

  • During the five years of its existence, this graduate seminar enabled us to research, understand, organize, present... Doug Engelbart's ideas and contributions. As explained in Federation through Stories, while Engelbart is still largely seen and praised as a technology inventor, his contributions need to be seen as fundamental-academic (reason suggests, and the logic of the emerging paradigm confirms, that creating how knowledge work works should be considered as academically fundamental).
  • This seminar anchors the creative frontier that has been the theme of these pages seamlessly into the scheme of things of computer science and engineering as traditional academic field; and frames our results as contributions to this field. The rationale combines some core ideas of several giants in an interesting way: (1) In 1992 a high-profile academic committee (led by Juris Hartmanis who got the Turing award – the CS equivalent to Nobel Prize – the following year) was organized by the US NSF to give recommendations for the future of CSE. The committee's "first and foremost judgment" was that this field has matured by establishing "a unique paradigm of scientific inquiry that is applicable to a wide variety of problems." The main recommendation was that the field should be broadened to take advantage of this potential. Doug Engelbart's work, as well as the work described on these pages – as presented in the seminar that is the theme of our discussion – can now be seen as an interesting contribution to the CSE field, which show howthe paradigm developed in that field can be extended to knowledge work at large.

See

Information Design

"In the age of the Internet academic communication will not remain restricted to textbooks and research articles. Information design means recreating what we do with information. We have developed a course in which UiO students can learn information design in a flexible way, by following personal needs and interests."

See

Algorithms and Complexity

The principles of knowledge federation and polyscopy can of course be applied in conventional courses as well – for example to make an abstract subject accessible to students, and also easier to apply in practice, by providing suitable aspects (or side views) and high-level views.

See

Movement and Qi

A systemic approach to education cannot be restricted to book knowledge alone. What about working with the student's mind and body as a system? And developing that work as a part of the larger system, education? If we would allow "movement" (body work of all various kinds) to be included in the academic repertoire – what sorts of knowledge might become accessible? What sort of courses might be suitable? This prototype also shows how some essential human potential development techniques and insights may be made part of the academic repertoire.

How to make this line of work appealing and accessible to contemporary students? Included in this prototype was a marketing strategy. We created six posters, covering entirely different aspects of this work; and we placed a randomly chosen pair of them on various spots at the university. Our intention was to generate interest, and convey the basic idea that there is a lot (how much?) more to learn and to explore than what meets the eye. "Movement" here means anything one may do with the body (it includes yoga, meditation, massage, various forms of therpay...). "Qi" is a designed keyword (a bit of applied polyscopy) to (put very briefly) help the students see that while those techniques represent a very broad variety, in all of them there is really just a single principle at work.

See

Journalism (public informing)

Journalism as headlights

For the majority of people (or more precisely of those people who still try to inform themselves) journalism, or public informing, is the trusted source, or the 'headlights'. How does journalism perform in this pivotal role? How is it evolving to suit this role? Our friends who are journalists and journalism innovators told us about the difficulty good journalism has to find a viable business model in competition with the Web and the overload of free information. There appears to be only one business model that still works. They call it "attention economy". It's not what you might think, treating our attention as a valuable resource and directing it where it's most needed. On the contrary! The attention economy works by attracting people's attention in whatever way may still work – and selling it to advertisers. (Let us note in passing the analogy with what we've done to our next generation – by creating this complex world they' need to cope with; and by giving them immersive high-tech games that keep their attention away not only from the new kind of themes they would need to be able to understand, but also from the good old school subjects such as philosophy and maths. But this is of course a whole other issue. Or is it?)

An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism prototype

This prototype was the first one we created (aside from knowledge federation), in Barcelona in 2011, a year after we self-organized as a transdiscipline in 2010. What should journalism / public informing be to suit our time? And in particular – to empower the people to see systems as the causes of their problems. What role will the people play in this new information ecosystem? What role is reserved for scientists, or communication designers?

Another set of questions posed and answered by this prototype is how can knowledge federation / technology people collaborate with field experts (here journalists) on re-creating their own system. The project was a meeting of Spanish experts in journalism and journalism innovation, e-governance and collective intelligence. The Barcelona Wikidiario citizen journalism project was the local host. The project directors were Paddy Coulter (he was also the workshop Chair), who as a person and as the former director of Reuter's Oxford University School of Journalism embodies 'good journalism'; and David Price (co-founder and co-leader of Debategraph and Global Sensemaking), representing the new technical opportunities.

See
  • Engelbart's keynote at Innovation Journalism 4 at Stanford University – where he posits with clarity and precision the challenge to which this project provided a prototype answer. (You may watch this video also as a testimonial of another phenomenon which is of our central interest here; see how quickly Engelbart's proposal was ignored in favor of other themes, which were of immediate interest to the organizers.)
  • Prototype description, An Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism on Debategraph
  • Presentation "Recreating Journalism – an Instance of a Paradigm" at the workshop New Media and EU (delivered online) – hear the recording while viewing the Prezi.

Democracy (governance)

Symbolic democracy

In the traditional paradigm democracy is what it is – the electoral debate and the elections, the free press, representative bodies etc. When we have that, it is assumed, we have democracy.

This aspect of our initiative may have its icon giant in political scientist Murray Edelman. Already in the 1960s the political scientists knew that the conventional democratic mechanisms such as the elections had little or no impact on policy. It was indeed straight-forward to show through field studies that the electorate was not informed on issues, that the promises the candidates made had little to do with what they actually did when they were elected etc. Edelman, however, took this insight a step forward. This does not mean that those mechanisms don't play a role. Their role is indeed most significant, but it's not what is usually believed. They serve as (and we are adopting this keyword from him) symbolic action. By making the people feel that they were asked, that they are in power... those mechanisms are essential for legitimizing governments and policies. It is worth emphasizing that Edelman made this observation as a scientist, not as a social critic.

The question how to make the democracy real is covered in much of Federation through Stories. We use the keyword symbolic action as roughly an antonym to systemic action. Long story made short, the point here is that when we are socialized to accept the systems as reality, and yet feel that we must do something to make the world just or sustainable (or whatever else our goal may be) – then we act out our natural impulses symbolically. We organize a conference...

Edelman.jpg
Murray Edelman

Real democracy

For democracy to be real, and indeed for anyone to have control, our society must be equipped with suitable information, and a way to bring this information to bear upon control – and if the need be also design of our systems. But isn't that what we've been talking all along? Indeed, already making the social creation of truth and meaning part of the "social contract", by developing a (written, prototype) methodology, may be recognized as a significant piece in that puzzle (in the emerging paradigm, the socialization into a single "narrative" or "paradigm" is seen as the source of power of the power structure). Our development of systemic innovation and knowledge federation may here be seen as necessary steps toward empowering the people to evolve, democratically, a true democracy.

See

Health and healthcare

Political hygiene

The icon giant may here be Werner Kollath, a pioneer of research in hygiene (for Kollath this concept includes all of our lifestyle and environment, not only washing the hands...). Most importantly, however, Kollath observed that the typical diseases of our time were lifestyle induced, and ultimately a result of new power relationships between our consumes and our industries. He argued that this new type of disease requires a whole new approach or paradigm in healthcare (in contrast to the traditional one, which evolved based on successes in combat with infectious diseases). The title "Political Hygiene as Science" of a chapter in his book "Civilization-Induced Diseases and Death Causes" points to his core message – Kollath attempted to initiate "political hygiene" as a scientific field (a science that would give people a more reliable ground for lifestyle choices than the conventional advertising...).

Nature Culture Health – Information Design prototype

This prototype and the smaller prototypes that belong to it, all described in the documents linked below, are results of our collaboration with University of Oslo Medical School Professor Gunnar Tellnes and the organization he initiated called Nature Culture Health. At the time of this collaboration Tellnes was also the leader of the European Public Health Association.

See

Kollath.jpg
Werner Kollath

Tourism, corporation

In the award-winning documentary and book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan described how the corporation, as the most powerful institution on our planet, first acquired the legal rights of a person, and then developed the behavior of a psychopath (Bakan, a professor of Law, did an excellent job federating an essential piece in our puzzle – reflecting the pathological evolution of our systems).

But with a bit of systemic innovation, we can use the power of international corporations to do something good in the world – for example empower good cultural evolution, by empowering good tourism or travel.

Through out the centuries people traveled to get to know other culture, and also themselves. Tourism is of course on the one side a way to economically empower authentic cultures and memes, often on the verge of extinction; and on the other side a medium of inter-cultural exchange, understanding and cross-fertilization. But mass tourism developed as a conveyor-belt shortcut... The key observation here is that the same technology-enabled mechanisms that globalized the modern corporation (the so-called "value chains") can be

UTEA corporation

This prototype was designed to show how business interests, cultural interests and new technology may be combined in a synergistic relationshipo.

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Post-war revitalization

The objects can be rebuilt – but can we bring back to life the culture that once lived there?

Authentic Hercegovina

The real use-case presented itself in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the war may be seen as an attempt at cultural genocide. The Authentic Hercegovina project was developed as a general prototype or showcase – in collaboration with an international team of architectural revitalization (academic) experts (who rebuilt Mostar after its desctruction).

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Global issues

The concept world problematique is a term coined by The Club of Rome at their first meeting in 1968, to point to their subject of focus – which is the world condition, which includes all the problems together. The point is that they are all related. We turn this strategy into the development of solutionatique – by practicing systemic change!

The Game-Changing Game

There is a paradox involved in systemic change: The people in power positions (professors, investors) are often not in the position to change the system themselves – because their power comes from their position in the system (and also for other obvious reasons). But they can still be part of the systemic change – by acting as Z-players, and empowering the young ones (in age or in spirit of life phase) to change the system.

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The Club of Zagreb

The Club of Rome was initiated by Aurelio Peccei and Alex King and others, in 1968, as a think tank to study the future prospects of mankind. Their purpose was to inform, alert and avert – but the Wiener's paradox was at play there too!

The Club of Zagreb is a re-design of The Club of Rome based on The Game-Changing Game. This is essentially a club of Z-players – who decided to make a difference by empowering the A-players, the young ones, to "play their life and career games in a game-changing way".

This prototype is a result of collaboration with several organizations in Croatia: The European Movement Croatia, the eSTUDENT student excellence network, and the Zagreb business incubation hub.

In September 2012 (prior to our regular biennial workshop in Dubrovnik) we gathered in Zagreb to initiate and inaugurate this undertaking. Mei Lin Fung flew in from California, Yuzuru Tanaka from Japan, David Price from England...

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Boundary objects

Imagine systemic innovation / knowledge federation as an emerging profession. It has of course many sides and tasks, as illustrated here – but the core task is to facilitate systemic re-organization in various institutions, professions or generally 'systems', with the help of new technology. This obviously has two domains of work that need to interoperate – the technology people, and the co-creating or re-creating real-life systems. The boundary object are the interface between the two domains. To the designers of real-world systems, they are the basic building blocks, the tool kit. To the technology designers, they are the new 'hammer', 'computer mouse'... basic objects to be created, and design challenges.

A question here is – what is the basic toolkit that is sufficient to create 'good' systems – in particular the ones capable of federating knowledge – what basic tools may be needed? The same question may be asked if we take the evolutionary point of view, and ask what will enable the systems to evolve in a good way, i.e. avoid the pathological evolution that has been part of our theme. We have developed two examples, which illustrate the concept.

Domain map

This boundary object represents a domain of interest, both to the corresponding community of interest (such as a discipline, or a transdiscipline), and to the people outside (journalists, to pick up what is of interest and show further, people from other domains, just people...). To the insiders, this serves (to use Engelbart's keyword) as "dynamic knowledge repository" – it organizes the knowledge, shows the domains where work is needed, orchestrates collaborative work (one person can ask a question and another answer it) etc. To the people outside it presents a high-level view of the domain, so that they may benefit from its results.

Value matrix

This boundary object is a prototype answer to another key question – how to valuate knowledge resources (both people and documents). If we want to support the transition to systems that federate knowledge (and not only article publishing or more generally knowledge broadcasting) then new kinds of contribution need to be recognized and rewarded. The value matrix object can provide what is needed for good system ecology (evolution).

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Design

Communication design

WhoWins.png

Lecture slide describing our main point

As the above image might illustrate – while our "official culture" (science, legislation, ethical sensibilities...) have been focused on verbal, black-and-white factual messages (i.e. on what polyscopy called "the square"), our culture has been dominated, and in effect created, by commercial interests through judicious use of the cool, the visual and the immediate. A significant part of our mission has been to create a new path for information design – where it will be providing 'the circle' and communicating culturally and scientifically relevant messages.

All communication design here is the result of this collaboration

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  • The research article turned into a multimedia object which was prepared for the Tesla and the Nature of Creativity 2015 prototype. Download it and experiment (wont't play in the browser). Clicking on the loudspeaker icons in the visual models will open up explanatory interviews with the author.

Foundations for academic design

<p>This line of work began as a conversation / part of an online symposium/ in the PhD Design online community. The mission of this community is to discuss and decide – what might be the (epistemological, methodological...) foundation for awarding PhD degrees in design (i.e. for embedding design academically). The leaders thought, reasonably of course – well, it's a philosophy doctorate, so we'd better build the foundation by studying and putting together some good philosophy insights. We submitted that classical philosophy as foundation has its problems (see Federation through Images). But we can design a foundation – on completely new premises. And perhaps (why not) design philosophy too...

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  • Our contribution to PhD Design online conference
  • At the European Academy of Design conference in 2005 in Bremen we presented a designed (new-paradigm) definition of design – see the article
  • The leaders of Danish Designers liked it, and invited us to present it as an opening keynote at their 10th anniversary – see this report

Art

Earth Sharing prototype

EarthSharing.jpg

A piece in Earth Sharing installation, representing (in a possible interpretation) what's been told here – there are two ways to build the knowledge pyramid – the other one being on the other side of the metaphorical mirror...

What has just been said about design may be applied to art too. Why not federate art as well? Why not develop a synthesis where art and science are united to move the minds and hearts in a vital and vibrant new direction?

We have just recently begun – with the installation in Kunsthall314 art gallery in Bergen, Norway. This project is the mind child of – and a product of collaboration with – Norwegian artist Vibeke Jentsen (based in Berlin and New York). A proper report is in preparation.

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Rumi in Oslo

The goal of this project, which was sponsored by the Art Council of Norway, was to "express the eternal message of the classical Persian mystical poet Mevlana Jalaludin Rumi in the language of modern arts". Its purpose was "cultural cross-fertilization: between modern arts and oriental spirituality; between modern culture and love-inspired poetry".

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Community gestalt change

The keyword gestalt points to a central issue in this line of work – the creation of a shared vision in a community, which can lead to a change of direction or orientation.

The Paradigm Strategy poster and dialog

The intention is.... of course... ok, let's wait with this one. It's too large to spell it out in one breath...

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The Key Point Dialog

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Books and publishing

The book is, we believe, here to stay. It's a great physical thing to put into a backpack and have on a mountain hike, for example. Books invite reflection. We anticipate, however, that the book will no longer be the container of information. So what will be its role – in an overall knowledge ecosystem? And most interesting for us – in what might be the role of the book as medium synergize with other media to facilitate the larger, societal paradigm shift?

Liberation

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Systemic Innovation

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Religion

Definition of religion

Here too it is of interest to define this word, "religion", by convention. So many modern people associate this word with a strong and passionate belief in something, without having any rational ground for this belief. But in traditional societies the religion was what connected each person with his or her own earthly purpose, and the people together into a community or a society. Also etymologically, this word is derived from latin religare whose meaning is "to bind". So why not define religion accordingly?

This has two interesting consequences. The first is that the belief in narrowly conceived self-interest, combined with the belief that "the invisible hand" will turn them into common good, might qualify as modernity's new religion. The second is that – when we liberate ourselves from rigidly held beliefs of any kind (which, as you surely know by now, is precisely what we've undertaken to do) – then we can liberate ourselves not only from traditional religions, but also from this modern one! The reason is that there is something akin to a natural law, which may be modeled perhaps even as a collection of causal principles, that underlies the phenomenon of religion.

The Garden of Liberation prototype

This point to a most interesting and valuable piece in the puzzle of the emerging pattern: When we begin to properly federate knowledge about the matters that matter, that we may end up binding ourselves to our life's purpose, and to each other in a society, in an entirely different way than we presently do. This is really good news – because, as you may have noticed, the religion of selfishness will not easily lead us to the kind of changes that we have been talking about.

The Garden of Liberation prototype has as its goal to set some of these processes into motion, by federating the core insight of the Buddha – as it was interpreted by Thailand's enlightened monk Buddhadasa. The first book in Knowledge Federation trilogy, titled "Liberation" and subtitled "Religion for the Third Millennium" is a piece and an intervention in that prototype.

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Methodology

All this is methodology

From an academic or fundamental point of view, this website is a proposal for a new paradigm in knowledge work, and in particular a new academic paradigm – and an intervention to help the emergence of this new paradigm and the corresponding larger societal paradigm. So all of this is methodology, including the very idea to propose a paradigm and a methodology, to begin with.

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  • The blog post Design Epistemology and the research article that is introduced and linked there. The point that interests us the most here is the possibility to liberate our creativity – and then redirect it to socially urgent or necessary purposes. This possibility is introduced by analogy with the explosion of creativity that marked the development of modern art. In this analogy the methodologies may correspond to styles such as impressionism, cubism and others.

Polyscopy

Polyscopy has been designed as a prototype methodology. Here are some references for illustration, and a couple of examples of real-life early applications.

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  • The abstract of our contribution Role of Ideograms in Polyscopic Modeling, which was presented at the International Visual Sociology Association's conference in Antwerp in 1999 was our first intervention of this kind. The question asked by the organizers was "If visual techniques are introduced into science – does science become any larger?" – and they invited contributions from across disciplines. We showed, by describing a combination of methodology development and ideograms, how new kinds of results mayh be developed in traditionally "soft" sciences like sociology, and presented visually. This was also our first Quixotte stunt – see the three vignettes starting from this one] in Ode to Self-Organization – Part Two.
  • Our Abstract Helthcare as a Power Structure (presented at the yearly meating of European Association for History of Medicine and Health) offered a diagnosis ("Can healthcare develop cancer?") – and at the same time offered a methodological contribution to this field (polyscopy as a way to step beyond historiography and develop "law of change" type of results)
  • Further examples of application are provided under "Concept definition" below.

Concept definitions

The last - but not in the least the least – of our application is a seemingly exotic collection of definitions – which may alone be sufficient to make a case for the new paradigm in knowledge work (as a natural and necessary first step toward the larger paradigm change).

The rationale is as follows: In the traditional order of things, all things – ranging from basic institutions to basic concepts in the language – are what they are. A traditional definition then attempts to reconcile what contemporary people and the people historically have associated with the concept, How can anything (culture, democracy, science...) – when defined in this way – be adapted to its purpose? If you'll allow us to jump to a conclusion – the definition by convention making is to the new paradigm as the definition by tradition is to the old one.

We present a small collection of examples that can illustrate what this may mean in actual practice – and what difference it may make.

Design

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Visual literacy

The International Visual Literacy movement is indeed, just as design, an essential piece in the puzzle of the emerging paradigm.

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  • Article Perspective of Visual Literacy, which both introduces the definition of visual literacy and a new way of defining concepts (so that the essence is captured, not the details).
  • Lida Cochran – the only (then) surviving of the four people who started this visionary movement and community, liked the idea – see her letter

Addiction

While our legislation and our ethical sensibilities are tuned to traditional addictions such as gambling and drugs, thousands of new ones may be created by new technologies. How can we create the word 'addiction' as a way of looking at things, and be able to perceive and identify whole new addictions?

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Power structure

This completely central keyword federates some of the most basic insights across a spectrum of fields (ranging from combinatorial optimization and artificial intelligence to cognitive science and psychology), to pinpoint a negative trend in our societal and cultural evolution. A salient characteristic of this prototype is that it (just as the one just mentioned) involves polyscopy in an essential way. A power structure is an aspect of things, not a thing itself. And yet we must be able to take care of this aspect ('crack') if our society / culture ('cup') is to be whole...

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Culture

Another textbook example. Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis" is in essence a survey of about very many historical definitions of culture, with the conclusion "we don't really know what culture means". Not a good start if we should indeed develop culture as praxis (i.e. as an informed practice). But the point is more general – the traditional way of defining things (when we try to reconcile the stated definitions and say what the concept "really means") no longer work in practice. We need to be able to define concepts by convention – in order to give our institution a (clear, agile, new...) purpose and direction, and then be able to adapt them to the chosen purpose/direction through systemic innovation.

What is really "culture" (or "consciousness" or "god" or ...)? In the book manuscript Informing Must Be Designed the definition "by design" or "by convention" is introduced as a sword that can cut the Gordian knot of so many traditional dilemmas and ill-posed questions.

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