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(Margaret Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution, 1964)

I am proposing a practical way to correct a fundamental error.

Problems—including the unsustainability of global trends and the discontinuities in cultural evolution—need to be seen and treated as its consequences; and also the alarming fact that we have no guidelines to enable us to handle the power of technology beneficially and safely; and no principles to direct our efforts, and tell us how to be human.

I am proposing to institute a transdiscipline.

Which is a new kind of institution. And I make this proposal concrete by offering knowledge federation as a complete prototype of the transdiscipline; ready to be examined and put to use.

In his 1969 MIT report and call to action—to institute transdisciplinarity by anchoring it academically, as the necessary first step toward enabling the post-industrial democracy to comprehend and resolve its problems—Erich Jantsch quoted Norbert Wiener, the iconic progenitor of cybernetics:

“There is only one quality more important than ‘know-how’…… This is ‘know-what’ by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.”

Academic disciplines cannot provide us the know-what that will match and complement the know-how we've acquired through science and technology; and the media informing, such as it is, won't do it either. A system that will empower us to act knowledge-based must combine disciplinary and other evidence; it must transcend academic and cultural fragmentation; it must communicate to the public with authority of science—in ways that are well beyond the modalities of outreach that the sciences have been able to produce; or in a word—it must connect the dots.

This website is intended to complement my book called Liberation, which will soon be in print—and outline a vision of a post-Industrial order of things or paradigm called holotopia; which is in significant dimensions radically better than the one we live in. The Liberation book will render the requisite evidence as brief and entertaining real-life people-and-situation stories called vignettes; and ignite an initiative, also called holotopia, whose aim is to enable comprehensive change—of our social and cultural order of things as a whole. Here my aim is to set in motion a parallel academic initiative; by submitting an academic case for it to begin with.

On these pages I will submit my case for transdisciplinarity, or knowledge federation, by outlining its structure; and I'll let you reconstruct its details by browsing through the book and participating in the public dialog the book will ignite. You'll have comprehended it correctly when you see that all of it follows from a single simple principle called knowledge federation axiom; which states that knowledge must be federated; which means that we can only say that we know something when due evidence has been accounted for; and that we can only say that something is known when it's reflected in everyday awareness and action; and that the knowledge federation axiom is not assumed to be true but stated as a convention of language and my definition of knowledge. And anyhow what this all comes down to is building on what's been academically reported instead of ignoring it; which hardly any academic will dispute. And so in sum—you'll have comprehended this proposal when you've seen that it's just as solid as a call to revise academic work and information at large may need to be.

The knowledge federation prototype is a result of devoted labor of some excellent people. In the Liberation book I explained that I worked for nearly three decades (supported by a tenured academic position with uncommonly much freedom) with constellations of collaborators who were often creative leaders in their fields. The reason why I don't say "we" as I do in the book, but address you in first person, is that I want to make a clear and strong statement; and be personally accountable for what I say.

Historical attempts to institute transdisciplinarity remained ignored.

And when we took over the torch—or as the case may be this large boulder and began rolling it uphill—the same dynamic repeated itself. I'll invite you to break the spell of ignoring; and see instituting transdisciplinarity as our generation's and hence also your personal project and duty; and to act, incisively and without delay—because we have no more time to lose.

To plead the case for transdisciplinarity I will demonstrate that our comprehension and handling of the most basic or pivotal themes of our lives and times are at the level where the comprehension and handling of natural phenomena were before science; and that the nature of our information is such that knowledge is impossible; and that this is due to a fundamental error that has been uncovered and diagnosed by creative leaders of science; and that correcting this error will open up a vast and magnificent creative frontier—where the next-generation academic researchers will be empowered to be creative in ways and degrees the condition of their world will necessitate; and in this way ignite a comprehensive transformation of our existing order of things or paradigm; and achieve far more than solutions to problems.

In the remaining four main pages of this website I'll let knowledge federation speak for itself; and thereby also illustrate some of its techniques.

• Federation through Ideograms will explain the nature of the error I've been telling you about, and how I propose to correct it
• Federation through Keywords will help you comprehend both precisely
• Federation through Prototypes will illustrate knowledge federation by a few examples of application
• Federation through Action will make it clear exactly how I propose to go about correcting the error; and invite you to take part.

Dino Karabeg