SECOND-IMAGES
Contents
Federation through Ideograms
(Neil Postman in a televised interview to Open Mind, 1990)
"[...] of people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful, where they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you", Postman continued.
Knowledge federation is a social process; whose function is to connect the dots.
And complement publishing and broadcasting; and add meaning or insights to overloads of data; and ensure that they are acted on.
Among various sorts of insights, of especial importance are gestalts; of which "Our house is on fire" is the canonical example: You may know all the room temperatures; but it is only when you know that your house is on fire that you are empowered to act as your situation demands. A gestalt can ignite an emotional response; it can inject adrenaline into your bloodstream.
We use the word gestalt to define the word informed.
Our traditions have instructed us how to handle situations and contingencies by providing us a repertoire of gestalt and action pairs. But what about those situations that have not happened before?
Knowledge federation uses ideograms to create and communicate insights. An ideogram can condense one thousand words into an image; and make the point of it all recognizable at a glance; and communicate know-what in ways that incite action.
The existing knowledge federation ideograms are only a placeholder—for a variety of techniques that will be developed through artful and judicious use of media technology.
Modernity ideogram
By depicting our society as a bus and our information as its candle headlights, Modernity ideogram renders our situation in a nutshell.
Imagine us as passengers in a bus—which rushes at accelerating speed toward a disaster; because its headlights are flagrantly unsuitable for the function they need to fulfill—for showing us the way.
I am not here to criticize—but to offer, and choreograph and streamline the development of a solution. In the remainder of this website and in the Liberation book I'll provide sufficient details to help you see how incredibly much our situation is as this ideogram describes it; and I'll share sufficient details of knowledge federation as prototype 'headlights'—to help you see that indeed radically better 'headlights' can and have to be created; this prototype is complete and comprehensive—it includes everything ranging from epistemology and methodology to a state-of-the-art community of researchers and examples of application—and even a deployment plan; and in the final page of this website I'll share a very concrete call to action—what exactly I am inviting you to do together; which is, just like all the rest in this proposal, carefully planned and already in implementation. But before we dive into all that—let's take a moment and contemplate this picture; and see what it's really saying, what it all really means.
I am imagining this bus already off track; navigating painstakingly amongst trees. Being a "democracy", nobody's really driving the bus, it is directed by the sum total of our own personal directions; but while we steer our life projects amongst trees, at high speed, we have no time to think of directions; all we can do is react to contingencies as they arise.
Or you may see this gestalt from the point of view of technology; and more generally from the point of view of innovation—by which I mean our ability to create and induce change; which has recently grown beyond measure because of technology: Surely technology can help us live better; but the bus suggest that what we've really created, with the help of technology—is a mass-suicide machine!
You may also see it from the point of view of information, and information technology; which we are so proud of that we even call our era "Age of Information"; but it's the "age of information glut" we've created—Neil postman diagnosed; and created "media ecology" as the research field that "looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival." We undertook to build further—and offer an academic field that will remedy this all-consuming defect.
So who's in charge? Who created this extravagant vehicle? Obviously nobody! The only way this uncanny error cold develop is if the people who created this bus never even considered the options; if they simply adopted the illumination source they already had—which was developed with an out of date technology; and for an entirely different function.
In Guided Evolution of Society, in 2001, systems scientist Béla H. Bánáthy surveyed a broad range of sources and reached this conclusion:
“We are the first generation of our species that has the privilege, the opportunity, and the burden of responsibility to engage in the process of our own evolution. We are indeed chosen people. We now have the knowledge available to us and we have the power of human and social potential that is required to initiate a new and historical social function: conscious evolution. But we can fulfill this function only if we develop evolutionary competence by evolutionary learning and acquire the will and determination to engage in conscious evolution. These are core requirements, because what evolution did for us up to now we have to learn to do for ourselves by guiding our own evolution.”
So yes—a different way to think, and act and be is what our situation is calling for; and it is before all the challenge to ignite this new way of thinking and being, to foster this all-important new awareness, that the Modernity ideogram points to—as gestalt. And then of course to the immense range of creative challenges—which range from fostering the awareness of this new opportunity and responsibility, to developing the information that can provide us “evolutionary competence”, and finally to engaging us in "conscious evolution". But let us first make sure that this main point of the Modernity ideogram is seen and digested:
Information must now intervene between us and the world.
And between us and our choices; not just any sort of information—but information that's been conscientiously designed for that pivotal function (I qualify something as pivotal if it decisively influences our society's evolutionary course; and as correct if it corrects it).
The answer to the next question in line—Who will supply us those new headlights?—seems obvious: The politicians won't do that; and for profit corporations won't do it either. In Chapter Two of the Liberation book, which has "Liberation of Mind" as title, I introduce this theme by drawing a parallel between information and computer programs; and sharing in a vignette how—when in the early days of computing ambitious software projects resulted in thousands of tangled up lines of code, which nobody could comprehend or correct—the solution was found in the creation of "software design methodologies"; whose creators considered themselves accountable for the (conceptual and technical) tools they gave to programmers.
We academic people too must become accountable.
For the (conceptual and technical) information tools we give to researchers and to society; in Chapter Two I ask you, the reader, to see the university system as taking—no, as selecting—gifted young people and society's resources as input; and producing creative people and ideas and solutions as output; the 'tools' (I am including here everything—from conceptual tools to social processes and institutions) we give to researchers determine whether information will result in just many thousands of printed pages—or in the kind of creativity on which our—and especially their (our next generation's) future will depend!
How immense is our responsibility!
I can now indulge you with some of that realistic optimism that distinguishes this proposal, and the holotopia initiative as a whole: To solve "the huge problems now confronting us"—we do not need to wrestle with "the 1%"; we do not need to convince the politicians; the key to solutions is in our hands—in the hands of publicly sponsored intellectuals! The people out there look up to us to tell them what information needs to be like; we only need to act in accord with the social role we already have.
Information ideogram
So what should information be like? Ole-Johan Dahl and C.A.R. Hoare wrote in Structured Programming in 1972, in a chapter called “Hierarchical Program Structures”:
“As the result of the large capacity of computing instruments, we have to deal with computing processes of such complexity that they can hardly be understood in terms of basic general purpose concepts. The limit is set by the nature of our intellect: precise thinking is possible only in terms of a small number of elements at a time. The only efficient way to deal with complicated systems is in a hierarchical fashion. The dynamic system is constructed and understood in terms of high level concepts, which are in turn constructed and understood in terms of lower level concepts, and so forth.”
You'll comprehend what I'm telling you here precisely enough if you think of knowledge federation as a collective climb to a mountain top; so that we may rise above "the information jungle" and see clearly the roads, and where they lead; and which one we need to follow.
And you'll comprehend me more precisely if you imagine the mountain as a structure of viewpoints; which offer you coherent views (you can look at a near-by tree, or at a far-away forest; you can bend down to inspect a flower, or climb up the mountain to see the whole terrain); and think of knowledge federation as the collective process by which we'll build this mountain; and thereby empower us the people, and our society, to engage in "conscious evolution" as Banathy called it; or to give our bus a sense of direction—if I should use our metaphor. Which brings us to the key question—of the basic conceptual and technical and systemic toolkit—by which we organize and structure information; and turn it into knowledge.
Dahl received the Turing Award (the computer science equivalent for the Nobel Prize) for co-authoring the Object Oriented Methodology; which empowers the programmers to deliver comprehensible, reusable, verifiable and modifiable programs by structuring them in terms of "objects". The answer I offered, which the Information ideogram illustrates, is a remake of the same idea; I call it information holon. Arthur Koestler coined the keyword "holon" to denote something that is both a whole in itself and a piece in a larger whole; and I applied it to information.
The Information ideogram is an “i” (for "information"), composed as a circle or dot or point on top of a rectangle; inscribed in a triangle representing the metaphorical mountain. You may interpret the rectangle as a multitude of documents; and the point as the point of it all; and this ideogram as a way to way the obvious—that without a point, a myriad of printed pages are just point-less!
Like "architecture" and "design", knowledge federation is both an activity or praxis (informed practice), and an academic field that develops it. Its function is to complement publishing or broadcasting, by organizing us in co-creating mountains; and in effect adding a third dimension to otherwise flat information; and enabling information to result in knowledge; which subsumes, you'll recall, knowledge-based action that constitutes "conscious evolution" as Bánáthy called it, or "changing the world" as it's more commonly known.
The information holon is offered as a structuring template and principle; and the mountain, which is technically called information holarchy, is composed of information holons—so that the points of more detailed holons serve as dots to be connected to compose those more general or high-level ones.
The key to it all is abstraction.
It is by recourse to abstraction that "information glut" is transformed into meaning, and meaningful action. The Information ideogram illustrates three kinds of abstraction:
- Horizontal abstraction, represented by the rectangle—which you'll comprehend if you think of looking at an object from a specific side
- Vertical abstraction, represented by the point—which you'll comprehend if you think of going up the mountain; toward the top, where the whole terrain is visible and the choice of direction is easy
- Structural abstraction, represented by the triangle or the mountain—which you'll comprehend if you consider how important it is to be able to consciously choose the ways—several ways—to look at an object; if your task is to see it whole.
This main point may already be obvious—but I feel I can never emphasize it too much:
Knowledge federation is a social process.
The time where a single mind is capable of putting it all together and even reorganizing it all is long gone (as I explained in the book, I was in a uniquely favorable situation to spend almost three decades doing that; but I am careful enough to call every single bit of this a prototype); the only way in which we can create meaning is by doing it together; which means that we must organize ourselves in an entirely new way. To choreograph this self-organization is really what the knowledge federation initiative is about.
Holotopia ideogram
The holotopia initiative is knowledge federation's proof of concept application; it is also the vision that resulted when we applied knowledge federation to five pivotal categories—(pointing to) factors that decisively influence our (society's) evolutionary course; and an initiative to manifest and realize this vision. Those five categories are:
- innovation—our technology-augmented capability to create, and induce change
- information—which by definition includes not only written documents, but all other forms of heritage or recorded human experience that may help us illuminate the course; and also the social processes by which information is created and put to use
- foundation—on which we develop knowledge; which decides what in our cultural heritage will continue to evolve—and what will be abandoned to decay
- method—by which we create knowledge; and distinguish knowledge from belief
- values—which direct "the pursuit of happiness" and our other pursuits.
The Holotopia ideogram comprises five pillars, each of which has a pivotal category as base and a point or insight as capital. Think of those pillars as elevating our comprehension of the corresponding category (by accounting for what's been academically published or otherwise reported) to a simple insight or point. In each case the resulting insight showed that the "conventional wisdom"—the way the category is ordinarily comprehended and handled—needs to be thoroughly revised or reversed.
The resulting five points or five insights elevate our comprehension of the world and our situation as a whole; so that when other similarly important themes such as creativity, religion and education are considered in the context of those five points—their comprehension and handling too ends up being revised and reversed; and we added ten themes to this ideogram—represented by the edges joining the five insights—to illustrate that.
Even more spectacular is the fact that—regarding each of those five pivotal categories—our overall situation, personal and societal or cultural, can be dramatically improved by reversing the way it's comprehended and handled; which distinguishes holotopia from other projects of this kind—namely that it includes both a vision of a comprehensively better human condition and an actionable strategy to achieve it; which is already in implementation.
The changes or courses of action invited by the five insights are so inter-dependent, that making any of them necessitates that we make them all. I use the word paradigm to point to the fact that the course of action that leads to comprehensive improvement is comprehensive change; the kind of thing that the candle headlights metaphor suggests: The lightbulb will not result by haphazard improvements of the candle—but by a vision of the result combined with planned and concerted action to achieve it.
The Modernity ideogram illustrates quite nicely also the way each of the insights is reached—which is by seeing things whole; and the course of action it demands—which is to make things whole. Indeed it is only when we see our society as a whole—that we see that that it has 'candle headlights'; and it is by making things whole—by changing the 'headlights'—that dramatic improvement in our condition is achieved.
And so it turned out that (neither "success" nor "profit" or any other form of self-interest but) making things whole—the principle that defines the holotopia—is everyone's enlightened interest.
The stars on Holotopia ideogram stand for "reaching for the stars"—i.e. for the sort of achievements and changes that may now be unthinkable; which will be normal in the informed order of things that holotopia initiative undertakes to foster.
My appeal
(Albert Einstein in an interview to The New York Times, 1946)
I think it's obvious—and the holotopia experiment made it transparent—that this "new type of thinking" will be informed—by general, abstract insights and principles; created with the authority and dexterity of science, evidence-based.
My appeal is to add an evolutionary organ to our society.
Which will enable us to transition to conscious or guided or informed evolution, and life itself; by instructing us—with the dexterity of science and the esteem that science enjoys—what information needs to be like; so that instead of just looking "something interesting"—we use it as its all-important pivotal function necessitates.
Which will first of all provide us the sort of vision that the Modernity ideogram illustrates—where we clearly see, in most general or abstract terms, what our situation is and what needs to be done; and where we have systemic affordances to also act as our situation demands—namely to design the core systems (in which we live and work), instead of taking them for granted and inheriting them from the past. Because to try to solve "the huge problems now confronting us" by working within the systems we used when we created them is obviously not going to work.
