Collaborative Survival through Open Research and Asynchronous Public Service.
Increasing the global organizational performance of Humanity Inc.
Keynote by Ambjörn Naeve (The Knowledge Management Research Group, The Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden; mathematical background: Ph.D. on classical differential geometry) at the 1st World Summit of the Open Knowledge Society, Athens, 24-26 September 2008. Track: Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Mini-Conference.
Open source initiative to create new ways of knowledge management towards a Public Knowledge and Learning Management Environment (PKLME). In particular, aiming at an open learning environment that from teacher-centric, curricular-oriented “knowledge-push” aims towards learner-centric, interest-oriented “knowledge-pull”.
The research group very much likes to communicate via diagrams and drawings. For example, they have invented an Unified Language Modeling (ULM), an approach that supports the modeling of our way of talking. Or see the illustration of the specialist/ generalist dilemma.
Naeve pointed towards fundamental problems within educational systems: lack of student interest, live long teaching instead of life long learning, lack of motivation to know why (Whitehead), and decreasing interest in the natural sciences (and mathematics which is considered dull and difficult. This has a lot to do with the way mathematics is taught. BTW: the idea of a nerd did not use to be there several years ago – back then engineers/ mathematicians were seen as “social heroes”). Technology enhanced learning is not a solution itself: it can support learning, but people have not yet learned how to interact with it. The semantic web information architecture supports the shift from knowledge push to knowledge pull: e.g. from producer-centric to consumer-centric business models. But “semantic web” is an unfortunately name, it indicates that machines can understand information, what they will never do. But machines can understand wether we talk about the same thing, whether we agree or disagree, and express these difference/ common traits on a global scale (and with this they can support the shift).
Presented challenges for a global “knowledge market”: such as the decreasing attention span, students used to be the products but now become the customer (which is a thread as well as the customer is always right; while you refine a product until it is “good”) or the medial mass hysteria (“I am seen, therefore I exists”), etc.
Download their conzilla, and check out their concept-browsing: content is encapsulated inside concepts, which may appear in different context: “content of concepts in different context”. In the talk: demonstration of concepts that illustrate the principles of today’s society. The vision is that the concept-browsing and creating will facilitate the international knowledge exchange on concept-level and allow society to move towards an open knowledge society.
Two days later Ambjörn Naeve, math teachers for 40 years, presented his interactive math gimmicks and games as well as made a call to improve mathematical collaboration between pure and dirty (applied) math. Both sides do not interact, but for students it is extremely important to provide this loop and alternative interpretation of a symbol.