Social Construction – “Lively and continuous invention”

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

Against the “menace” of “a general ignorance,” the inability of scientists to communicate, and what he believed to be the “urgent failings of the teaching profession,” H. G. Wells holds up a vision which he considered “no utopian dream” but a forecast of a world community “to which I believe we are driving now,” enlightened by science and brought about by “lively and continuous invention.”

Wells regarded the formation of such a community as our “primary need in this age of imperative construction,” an age in which the theoretical and the practical would be “of equal importance.”

 

A culture of the book

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

Much as H. G. Wells argued for a “world encyclopedia” which would be created by means of social construction and knowledge invention, James Lovelock envisages a society organised around a book, much as European society used to be organised around the Bible; but the book would have “to acknowledge science”.
It is germane that the more advanced thinking in the field of information “science” conceives of knowledge management as primarily as a social, rather than a solitary mental activity, while corporate group knowledge working is increasingly construed as being a part of community and team building using techniques of constructive cooperation. Moral transformation is beginning to happen as people begin to value things, such as knowledge systems and ecological systems in more consciously qualitative ways. This revaluation, in which harmonious sustainability as highest value and mere survival as very much second best, will reorient the value of money towards being a means, rather than as an end, as it is in financial profit driven economies.

“Clear and simple words against ignorance”

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

James Lovelock echoes H. G. Wells in his plea for “a guidebook written in clear and simple words.” According to Lovelock, this book would counteract the influence of “books and television programmes that present, either the single minded view of the specialist or persuasion from a talented lobbyist”. He laments that the 1990s are “adversarial not thoughtful times,” hearing only the partial arguments of special interest groups.
They agree on the urgent do-or-die nature of the problem, as well as on the perils of ignorance. To quote Lovelock on this point: “We are so ignorant of those individual acts of genius [which] established civilisation that we now give equal place on our bookshelves to astrology, creationism and homeopathy. Imagine trying to cope with a cholera epidemic using knowledge gathered from a tattered book on alternative medicine.”
However, despite Lovelock’s misgivings, there is growing evidence that collaboration, as opposed to competition, is becoming increasingly part of 1990s rhetoric, and sometimes part of the practice in the spheres of management and

Information objects traded on a knowledge market

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

The components of what H. G. Wells advocated provide a picture of an omnipresent organ, consisting of an ever growing knowledge base fed by a global community of scholars and information professionals. Although H. G. Wells expected the operation of the World Brain to be funded publicly, he was worried about the dangers of a kind of intellectual monopoly. A component unforeseen by H. G. Wells, which may well take care of his doubts, is the emergence of a free market for knowledge. A huge number of “knowledge objects” already exist — as H. G. Wells well knew. The element most needed now is organizing and compiling them into an intuitively understandable framework that enables common access.

There is a controversial strain of thought among the Artificial Intelligence community which advocates the use of computer systems to carry out this knowledge processing. Even they admit, though, that the project will take many years before it becomes a practical proposition, assuming a true understanding of people’s intelligence and knowledge processes is reached. In the words of Tony Kent, software pioneer, “finding useful information is an intelligent process requiring intelligent people because at the end of the day only the intelligent can recognize what is useful.” Meanwhile, there is a huge abundance of human intelligence all over the world, most of it wasted, because of lack of knowledge. What are we waiting for?

James Lovelock hints at some important components of the intelligence process which must be present if any kind of human learning organization is to work. It must be fun and it must be rewarding. Although, as Lovelock says, durable hard copy versions of the World Encyclopedia must be widely available for use in case of emergency. In the meantime deploying multimedia computer networks in the service of a global learning enterprise must be desirable … and more fun and much cheaper than long-lasting print alone. d much cheaper than long-lasting print alone.

An omnipresent organ

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

H. G. Wells envisages a “new world organ” which would, “using the continually increasing facilities of photography,” render the world wide “reduplication of indexes of records continually easier.”  Wells even wrote that the World Brain “might have the form of a network” with its files and conferences at “the core of its being”. According to Wells, frequently reissued volumes of “the essential Encyclopaedia” would spawn “swarms of pamphlets.”

A perpetually growing knowledge base

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To H. G. Wells, the world encyclopaedia would not be “a row of volumes printed and published”, but would rather be a “mental clearing house for the mind … where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarised, digested, clarified and compared,” and trends, forecasts and alternative scenarios are considered. He believed that up-to-date selections, abstracts and quotations would be “carefully collated and edited” in such a way as to be “not a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification and a synthesis” written in “clear understandable language.” However, to overcome the problem of too much knowledge creating information overload, Wells thought that “wisdom” defined as “the ability to use understanding to mobilise and coordinate all resources into appropriate and timely action” would form an essential component of the World Brain. This “common backbone” linking theoretical and practical knowledge, Wells describes as “a perpetual digest and conference on the one hand and a system of publication and distribution on the other” which would become a “learning organism in its own right.”

Inventing the concept of hypertext

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H. G. Wells believed he was outlining “a scheme for the reorganisation and reorientation of information and education throughout the world.” He advocated “effective schemes for classification” and “extensive and comprehensive indexes”, the “construction” of which would be “closely coordinated”. According to Wells, these retrieval tools would be cross-referenced to assist users in viewing information from “various viewpoints and approaches.”

The key global resource

from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

In H. G. Wells view the World Encyclopaedia would be created by the “systematic collaborative effort” of a multidisciplinary worldwide group of scholars, scientists and intellectuals, who would be continuously communicating with a well-informed public feeling as if they were “really participating” in what Alan Mayne describes as networks of policy and decision makers, professinal advisers, generalists and holistic thinkers. He expected the new organ to develop a directorate and staff of “specialised editors and summarists” who would synthesise and abstract the content of existing sources, and that many of the professional activities within education would be replaced “by a new set of activities, the encyclopaedic work, the watching brief” aimed at broadening and enlightening both popular and specialist minds. Wells thought  education would be transformed in such a way as to bring back the “original university idea” of masters surrounded by freely formed groups of student helpers, although he warned against a “professor-ridden world” as being as dangerous as a “theologian-ridden world”. After finishing formal education, Wells wanted people to spend their lives in the process of self-managed learning, the results of which would be “distributed through the general information channels of the world”.

The advantages and dangers of a world monopoly

 
from “Global Learning – Constructing the World Mind”

H. G. Wells saw the World Encyclopeadia as being “in effect a world monopoly” with resources “on a scale quite beyond” any publisher which in Alan Mayne’s view could afford a “greatly improved system for providing appropriate rewards for the originators and publishers of intellectual property”. However, Wells warned of the dangers of “private mercenary exploitation” especially by early promoters seeking “proprietorship” and the influence of “opinionated cults and propaganda.”

“Grains of thought”

H. G. Wells’ vision of systematic, self-managed collaborative learning is echoed in Peter Russell’s “superorganism” composed of “cultural creatives” engaged in the pursuit of higher levels of consciousness in which “wisdom rather than knowledge would have become our goal.” In Hans Swegen’s “post-human” terms, “hominid brains will constitute the grains of thought where the self-reflexive minds are based. Besides these biological structures of matter, the global brain will include various technological equipment that man is constantly introducing and that improves and expands neural communication between self-reflexive minds.”

As bureaucratic hierarchies break down, what used to be called management is increasingly about how to promote self-managed collaborative learning which forms the core of the learning organization. Also, science is portrayed in the New Scientist as reviving the ideas of the superorganism and James Lovelock’s Gaia theory “in the light of the modern mathematical theory of complexity.”