Dino Karabeg's contribution to Workshop I

I highlight the way in which we create knowledge and communicate as a challenge. Shared truth can help us see what goes on and empower us to act. But assembling and digesting all the relevant fragments of knowledge is well beyond anyone's ability.

I also highlight a danger - that we may try to analyse the problems too much and ultimately get exhausted and drawn in their complexity. The paradox is that since the solutions may well need to involve new insights, new thinking, and ultimately a worldview or a gestalt change, excessive thinking in old terms may keep us away from solution. Our challenge is to facilitate the emergence of new insights and of simple new gestalts.

Another challenge is to bridge the gulf from our present reality (economy, values etc.) where the solutions that are usually advocated by environmentalists are by a large margin impossible to implement, to a reality where they may be possible.

Knowledge federation may be considered as a remedy by definition.

I offer three resources which may be helpful:

• My forthcoming book Information Must Be Designed presents a case for radical innovation in communication and proposes guidelines.
• Our Key Point Dialog project is developing and testing in practice communication schemes and tools that can facilitate emergence of new insights and gestalt and direction changes within a community.
• Allowing critical insights or the most useful knowledge to emerge from the jungle of information and become visible is crucial. Our TMRA 2008 article is a step in that direction.

• I propose that we develop and deploy a communication platform that can facilitate a collective gestalt change.
• I also propose that we add difference making to sense making. Involving researchers and others in a discovery game where we aim to discover and create the elements of (the bridge which can connect us to a) sustainable reality may be a necessary supplement to involving them in analyzing and understanding problems. It can also be more fun.