Slides from my Keynote at the First World Summit on the Knowledge Society, Athens, 24 September, 2008

1. Keynote at the 1st World Summit on the Knowledge Society,
Athens, September 24, 2008
Collaborative Survival
through Open Research and
Asynchronous Public Service
Increasing the global organizational performance
of Humanity Inc.
Ambjörn Naeve
Knowledge Management Research Group
Royal Institute of Technology,
and Uppsala University
Sweden
http:// kmr.nada.kth.se/wiki/Amb

2. The KMR group - what do we do?
• We work with Asynchronous Public Service
in the form of infrastructures, architectures, frameworks
and tools that contribute towards the creation of a Public
Knowledge and Learning Management Environment.
• This PKLME should enable a global, (synchronous and)
asynchronous public discourse that aims to enhance the
learning of all participants.
• Our main information architecture for this PKLME
is the Knowledge Manifold (explained below).
• All our software is Open Source and based on Semantic
Web technology.

3. We work to enable a fundamental shift
• From: Teacher-centric, curricular-oriented “knowledge push”
• To: Learner-centric, interest-oriented “knowledge pull”

4. A Major Aim of Knowledge Management
Performance Organizational Increased
is to support the process of integrating
people-, process-, and technology functions Continous
in order to create a knowledge sharing culture Learning
that supports continous learning
aiming for increased organizational performance.
Culture
People
Sharing
Integrating
Process
Knowledge
Technology
Functions Management
Knowledge

5. KMR contributions to a PKLME
Tools (Public Knowledge and Learning Management Environment)
Frameworks
End-
Application
Architecture
Users
Developers
Infrastructure
Conceptual Conzilla (concept browser)
Knowledge
Interface Confolio (concept portfolio)
Manifold
VWE (component composer)
Semantic Meditor (metadata editor)
SHAME
Web Formulator (formulet editor)
SCAM
SHAME consumer
Edutella
SCAM provider

6. The Globally Annotated Information Age
Age
Information
Cuneiform Physically Archiving
writing mediated libraries
Recorded Transmitted Annotated
Semantic
Gutenberg Electronically
Web
printing mediated
Globally

7. Challenges for a global knowledge community
• From knowledge philosophy to knowledge economy.
• The knowledge emulation society.
• The western self-image transformation.
• Ever decreasing attention span.
• Medial mass hysteria (”I am seen, therefore I exist”).
• Globally relevant content (sustainable development).
• Increasing ethical awareness.
• Informed beggars (a TV set on top of each garbage dump).
• Anti-terrorism (”hunt ʼem down and smoke ʼem out”).
• New technical possibilities (semantic web, p2p, …).

8. Three questions:
1) Given the pace of automatization
in todayʼs knowledge economy,
where is the place of the average student
in the workplace of tomorrow?
2) How can we counteract knowledge emulation
and encourage intellectual curiosity
and joy of exploration
within the educational systems?
3) How can we make visible and encourage
the crucial work of “curating the knowledge volume”
within higher educational institutions, where presently
only “penetrating the knowledge surface” counts?

9. Three more questions:
4) How can we counteract “edutainment” (= “easy fun”)
and promote the “hard fun” that leads to stories
(= knowledge) with higher redundancy?
5) How can we counteract the increasing tendency
to regard the students as “customers” of the educational
systems, which builds a pressure to adjust the “product”
to optimize customer satisfaction?
6) How can we foster “double-loop learning for sustainability”
within our higher educational institutions, i.e.,
how can we transform them into learning organizations
that help to re-orient our “global educational culture”
towards building a sustainable future together?

10. The Specialist / Generalist dilemma
Specialist
learning more & more learning less & less
about less & less about more & more
a problem
knowing nothing
Generalist Generalist
looking for
about everything
a solution
a solution
knowing everything
looking for Specialist
about nothing
a problem

11. The Sphere of Knowledge
Research ~ R2
Culture ~ R3
R

12. Fundamental problems
within the educational systems
”Curricular-oriented knowledge push” leads to :
• lack of student interest.
• life long teaching instead of life long learning.
• lack of motivation to kno why (Whitehead).
• decreasing interest in the natural sciences.
Our high-tech society is showing
clear signs of beginning instability !

13. Technology Enhanced Learning
is not a solution in itself, but:
• it enables non-traditional communication forms
• it can support global content sharing
• it allows the formation of
distributed learning communities

14. The Semantic Web information architecture
enables a shift from knowledge push to knowledge pull:
• from teacher-centric to learner-centric education.
• from doctor-centric to patient-centric health care.
• from bureaucrat-centric to citizen-centric administration.
• from government-centric to citizen-centric democracy.
• from producer-centric to consumer-centric business models.

15. Gloconomy: The Big Switch
Glocommunity and Glocality
Scale
Large Small
Society
Global production Local production
Production
process design process design
Inter-publishing Intra-publishing
Information Open research Closed research
Electronically mediated global experts

16. Open Source : Development process
Re-factor
Take Write Pub- Check
Create
what the lish for
a
?
you can rest your others’
modular
from your- own improve-
design
others self code ments
Are there