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The nature of our initiative
A new approach to knowledge
To understand the nature of our initiative, think about the world at the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance. Recall the devastating religious wars, terrifying epidemics... Think of the scholastics discussing "how many angels can dance on a needle point?" Bring to mind the iconic image of Galilei in house prison, a century after Copernicus, whispering eppur si muove into his beard.
The problems of the epoch were not resolved by focusing on those problems, but by a slow and steady development of a whole new approach to knowledge. Several centuries of unprecedented progress followed. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?
Our discovery
"If I have seen further," Isaac Newton famously declared, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." What motivates our initiative is a discovery. We did not discover that the best ideas of our best minds were drowning in an ocean of glut. Vannevar Bush, a giant, diagnosed that more than a half-century ago. He urged the scientists to focus on this disturbing trend and find a remedy. But needless to say, this too drowned in the ocean of glut.
What we did find out, when we began to develop and apply knowledge federation as a remedial praxis, was that now just as in Newton's time, the insights of giants add up to a whole new approach to knowledge. And that this new approach to knowledge, just as the case was then, naturally leads to a sweeping change of the ways in which the core issues are understood, and handled.
Our proposal
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality", Buckminster Fuller observed. "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” So we built knowledge federation as a model or a prototype of a new way to work with knowledge. Knowledge federation is both a way of handling knowledge, or technically a paradigm, and an academic institution that develops it as a praxis (informed practice), or technically a transdiscipline.
The issue that is being proactively problematized on these pages is the way we handle a most precious resource – human creativity (or insight, ingenuity, capacity to envision and induce change...) and its fruits accumulated through the ages. And at the point in our history where we may need to depend on it more than we ever did! Considering the importance of this issue, we spared no effort in developing and describing a complete proof of concept; and setting the stage for its academic and real-life deployment and scaling.
By constructing this model, we do not aim to give conclusive answers. Our goal is indeed much higher – it is to open up a creative frontier where the way knowledge is created and used is brought into focus, and continuously recreated and improved.
Introducing knowledge federation
Knowledge federation is just knowledge creation
As our logo might suggest, the purpose of knowledge federation is to 'connect the dots' – combine disparate pieces of information and other knowledge resources into higher-order units of meaning. The meaning we assign to this keyword is similar as in political and instuitutional federation, where smaller entities unite to achieve a shared purpose, such as greater visibility and impact.
One might say that what we are calling knowledge federation is just what we normally do with information to turn it into knowledge. You may have an idea in mind – but can you say that you really know it, before you have checked if it's consistent with your other ideas? And with the ideas of others? And even then – can you say that your idea is known before other people have integrated it with their ideas?
Science too federates knowledge; citations and peer reviews are there to secure that. But science does that in an idiosyncratic way – by describing the mechanisms of nature, and explaining the phenomena as their consequences.
Why are we developing an initiative around such an everyday human activity?
A natural approach to knowledge
What we have undertaken to put in place is what one might call the natural way to federate knowledge. Think on the one side of all the knowledge we own – in academic articles and also broader; include the heritage of the world traditions, and the insights being produced by creative people daily. Think on the other side of all the questions we need to have answered. Think about the insights that could inform our lives, the rules of thumb that could direct our action. You may imagine that these latter ones occupy distinct levels of generality or abstraction. Then you may imagine knowledge federation as whatever we the people may need to do to maintain, organize, update – and keep up to date – the core elements of this hierarchy. Put simply, knowledge federation is the creation and use of the kind of knowledge we the people need – in order to understand the world around us; and in order to be able to live and act in it in a suitable, functional or "good" way.
Introducing systemic innovation
Revisioning modernity
While we shall see, in the course of this presentation, a broad variety of direction-setting insights and principles, we need to point to a single general and overarching one, which may be perceived as the mother of them all. We offer it here as the guiding image of a better way to use our creative capacity; and as a signature theme of an Enlightenment-like change that is likely to result from it. We use the following metaphorical image, or technically ideogram, to explain the nature of this insight.
By depicting modernity as a bus with candle headlights, the Modernity ideogram points to a paradox: In the overall modernity project, there is something essential we've forgotten to modernize.
If you'd prefer us to be concrete, you may interpret the light of those headlights as information; and the headlights themselves as the way in which we create it and use it. You might then enjoy the sense of irony: Aren't we living in the age of information? Isn't our handling of information indeed the most modern part of modernity?
And if you might have a taste for drama, you may think of this ideogram as depicting the way in which we presently ride into the future. Modernity is unsustainable by design! But there's a natural remedy! We can turn our risky ride into the future into a safe and sane one by doing no more than just completing modernization.
It is best, however, if you can consider this image as simply an invitation to stop and think; or as something like the Zen koan – which by disrupting our conventional patterns of thought invites us to rethink our very thinking. If you can do that, you'll keep discovering new nuances of meaning in the course of our conversations. You'll find out in that process that this image has a multiplicity of meanings, which all point to an entirely new direction.
We use four distinct keywords to point to different meanings. And we propose to adopt one of them, systemic innovation, as the brand name for the new direction, which is of course a new way of using our creative capabilities, and hence a new way to travel into the future. And for the general insight that motivates and informs and empowers this new direction, which all four keywords, and the Modernity ideogram, are pointing to.
Design epistemology
As an epistemology should, the design epistemology assigns meaning and purpose, what information is or should be all about, and hence value, to information and knowledge. Recall the historical parallel – Galilei was not tried for claiming that the Earth was moving, that's a minor technical detail. The real issue was his "heresy", i.e. his epistemological credo – namely "that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture." Galilei was required to "abjure, curse and detest" this belief.
We let design epistemology point to the next fundamental change, of the way in which the very meaning, and purpose, and value, of information and of knowledge, and of our institutions that create and handle knowledge, and our institutions in general – are conceived. We practice under design epistemology when we consider information, or knowledge, or any institution or activity – as a system within a system. And when we handle them them and create them and update them accordingly.
Knowledge federation
Now we can understand knowledge federation as simply (a prototype of) the new 'headlights'; and as the institution, academic and also beyond, whose task is to create and to continue to maintain and update the 'headlights'.
Knowledge federation can be understood as the knowledge work paradigm that follows from the design epistemology. The task of knowledge federation as academic institution is then to conduct the basic research that follows from design epistemology – the task of which is to create or design the 'headlights'.
Systemic innovation
As long as we limit our most human and most modern of capabilities – to create and induce change – by conforming to
- age-old institutions and patterns of work, which evolved based on old technology and old societal needs and reality conceptions
- "market needs"
Here the Modernity ideogram is pointing to the value of systemic innovation as an evolutionary new direction: The dollar value of information is of course large, and yet it's nothing compared to "the whole thing" (the value of our civilization, and our future...). It is a profound way of looking at the world, and values, and the ways in which our creative potentials are engaged, that the above image invites us to consider. By innovating in a systemic way, we can increase the positive effects of our creative work, and of all our work, in an as dramatic way, as might be suggested by the difference the nature and quality of those headlights might make (turning what is potentially a mass suicide machine into a vehicle capable of taking us to wherever we may reasonably want to be).
Systemic innovation means both innovation at the level of basic institutions – and the innovation that takes the whole system or systems into account (our knowledge work, our civilization, our bio-physical environment...), and innovates so as the improve the functioning of those systems.
Guided evolution of society
We use the keyword guided evolution of society to point to a whole new evolutionary direction, which is really what the emerging paradigm is about. While our conversation so far has been technical – focused largely on information and technology and innovation – our evolution is really far more that. It is the evolution of our values, and institutions, and worldview. The guided evolution of society is the next Renaissance-like change. The rationale is that when use suitable information, or knowledge-based guiding principles instead of age-old prejudices to orient our action, our entire 'ride into the future' is bound to change quite radically. The key, however – which is our main theme here – is to federate knowledge in such a way, that it can provide us what's been called "evolutionary guidance" – and hence enable this change.
Knowledge federation and systemic innovation
<p>Knowledge federation and systemic innovation are so close in meaning, that at the high level of generality where we are now they may well be considered synonymous. When we do knowledge federation right, when we "stand on the shoulders of giants", then systemic innovation is seen as just an informed or effective or safe or (as Erich Jantsch wrote, from whom we've adopted this keyword) rational way to be creative. And when systemic innovation is applied to our work with knowledge and information, the knowledge federation is the result.Like the Yin and the Yang in Oriental cosmologies, knowledge federation and systemic innovation are two alternative principles and ways of working that continuously recreate one another.
See
Federation through Images
Our ideas of what constitutes "good" information have been evolving since antiquity, and they now find their foremost expression in science and philosophy. The developments in 20th century's science and philosophy brought us to the brink of a disruptive change. In Federation through Images we show how the insights of last century's giants empower a whole new standard of excellence – where the explicit purpose is to inform. We show how new methods and processes, and new ways to collaborate, most naturally follow.
We render the gist of our initiative, as well as core insights of leading thinkers, as metaphorical and often paradoxical images called ideograms. The result is a cartoon-like introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of a refreshingly novel approach to knowledge.
Federation through Stories
In Federation through Stories our focus is on another disruptive change that invites similar changes in the way knowledge is created and handled – the change of information technology. Perhaps you'll consider this... XXX TBA XXX on innovation, and specifically on the way information technology has been and specifically information-tecwe trace the historical roots of a development analogous to Industrial Revolution – of a way to radically increase the effectiveness of human work.
We use vignettes – short, lively, catchy, sticky... real-life people and situation stories – to explain and empower some of the core ideas of daring thinkers. A vignette liberates an insight from the language of a discipline and enables a non-expert to 'step into the shoes' of a leading thinker and 'look through his eye glasses'. By combining vignettes into threads, and by weaving threads into patterns and patterns into gestalts, we create a hierarchy of insights that can inform the handling of core practical issues including lifestyle, values, religion, innovation and governance.
Federation through Applications
In Federation through Applications we present a complete prototype of an emerging academic and societal paradigm, rendered as a portfolio of prototypes.
Federation through Conversations
In Federation through Conversations we focus on a development analogous to the Humanism and the Renaissance – of new views and values that can bring our societal and cultural evolution into sync with our technological one. By positing unconventional views on issues that matter, we ignite public dialogs. And by developing those dialogs, we evolve a collective mind capable of weaving threads of thought into surprising conclusions.