2. While the Apollo Project Gave Us a
New Perspective on Our Planet and
Ourselves…
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned,
uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1939
Img: Otto Scharmer: MITx: 15.S23x U.Lab
3. A Universal Goal: Thrivability
http://www.triarchypress.net/thrivability.html
6. Our Problem Space Revisited
• Some Big Issues (no particular order)
– Climate change
– Public and individual health
– Education
– Unemployment
– Polarization in Politics
– Clean Water
– Any water at all…
7. Within that problem space
* Ted Nelson, 1974
Everything is deeply Intertwingled*
8. Limits of our Knowledge
• We can open a microbe to
study all the parts
• Opening the microbe kills it
• Why did opening a microbe
to count all the parts kill it?
– What is life?
• Did opening the microbe to
count its parts get us any
closer to an answer?
• Answers are bound to the
nature of Complex Systems
Img: Wikipedia
9. On Complex Systems
• What is a complex system?
– Keywords (from Wikipedia)
• Self-organizing
• Feedback
• Decay
• Sensitive to initial conditions
• Non-linear
• Relational
• We must pay as much attention to the
relations as we pay to the parts
11. Cognitive Computing: My View
• Cognitive Computing is:
– Far less about what a computer knows
– Far more about how computers can
augment human cognitive capabilities
– Based on the J.C.R Licklider and
Douglas Engelbart augmentation work
J.C.R. Licklider
Douglas Engelbart
Imgs: Wikipedia
12. Cognitive Computing Related Work
• Commercial
– IBM Watson
– Wolfram Alpha
– Viv
– Saffron 10
– Clueda
– Siri
– Google Now
– Cortana
– …
• Open Source
– OAQA
– DeepDive
– OpenCog
– OpenNARS
– Watsonsim
– YodaQA
– AKSW OpenQA
– AKSW QA
– AquaLog
– OpenSherlock
– OpenIRIS (CALO)
– Sirius
– …
• Research
– Project Aristo
– Project Halo
– FREyA
– CASIA
– NLP-Reduce
– EIS Sina
– WDAqua ITM
– Intui2
– …
13. The Engelbart Program
• Actors
– Humans
• Human knowledge
– Tools
• Process
– Human capabilities and tools co-evolve
– Continuous improvement of capabilities
– Form communities
• Improvement communities
– Network communities
• Networked Improvement Communities
• Goals
– Problem Solving
– Discovery
– Thrivability
Augmenting Human Capabilities
14. Why Do This?
• Augment human capabilities in problem
solving
– GlobalMoonshots
• Participate in Open Science as an instance of
collaborative problem solving and discovery
– LocalMoonshots
EarthMoonshot as federated LocalMoonshots
15. From the perspective of
complexity theory, emergence
arises from complex systems
that create new properties
from “autonomous unities
coming together into larger,
more powerful unities”
Augmenting Human Capabilities
Complex Systems
Shared Stories
Collaboration in a Knowledge Garden
Img: Olen Gunnlaugson (2011). A Complexity Perspective
on Presencing. Complicity, Vol 9, No 1 (2012). Online at:
http://ejournals.library
The emergence we seek is that of
insight into the nature of and
solutions to complex problems
Barn Raising
18. Joe is in Medical
School studying to be a
doctor
Joe is preparing for a
test on Bacterial
Infections
A Scenario—1
19. Immune Response
Bacterial Infection
Macrophage
Free Radical
Reactive Oxygen
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bookmark page with
these tags
Annotate page with
this idea Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
A Scenario—2
20. Sarah lives a healthy
lifestyle
Sarah read that
free radicals
can cause cancer
A Scenario—3
21. Antioxidant
Free Radical
Bookmark page with
these tags
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Annotate page with
this idea Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
A Scenario—4
22. Ben is a cancer patient
with recurring
bacterial infections
Ben visits a garden
condo to research
bacterial infections
A Scenario—5
Note: Ben is modeled after the author; while the author made the same
discovery, it occurred by different means. Still, this scenario supports the case
that important discoveries are available through federation of individual acts.
23. Ben makes a discovery
What’s this all
about?
Ben becomes curious
about free radicals—a
new concept to him
A Scenario—6
Free Radical
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
24. antioxidants
kill
free radicals
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Ben adds a new
Connection between
the two ideas
Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
Must Avoid
A Scenario—7
Ben makes a decision Sounds like I should
not take any more
antioxidant pills!
25. Olivia is a Medical
Doctor interested in
immune system
subjects
A Scenario—8
26. antioxidants
kill
free radicals
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Need to restate this
information
“Must Avoid”
doesn’t really
convey a proper
sense of reality
Must Avoid
A Scenario—9
Olivia visits the garden
27. antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Contraindicates
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bacterial Infection Antioxidants
Because
Create a new set of
representations by
connecting the two
core concepts and
explaining the
connection
Olivia gets bonus
points for justifying
her assertion.
Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
A Scenario—10
29. “Compromised host” as a new
concept to be represented in the
knowledge base
Use garden condo tools to
record discoveries
A Scenario—12
Structured conversation
responds
32. Cognitive Computing and an
EarthMoonshot
• A simple proposition:
– IBM’s Watson has shown the way forward
• Watson is already augmenting health, banking, and
other sectors
• Watson could engage in a much wider range of
activities related to global collaboration
– Open source Watson-like computers are on the
way
• They can work alone with groups
• Groups can federate to share knowledge assets
• Watson, itself, can be a part of that federation
33. What is an EarthMoonshot?
• For sake of conversation
– A definition of an EarthMoonshot should grow organically, but…
• It should entail a wide range of cultures
• It can follow patterns pioneered by Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and other leaders in
the field of augmentation of human intellect
– Human capabilities co-evolve together with tool system capabilities
– A suggested thought space for an EarthMoonshot:
• As a Global Conversation facilitated by on-line and recorded social meetings
• Entails Theory U as a guiding principle (understanding before deciding)
• Entails Bohmian (agenda-free) conversations in the beginning
• Engages tool systems (Cognitive Computing) to harvest, organize, and present
deliberations, topics, and relations among topics.
• Goal oriented to examine each global issue in the context of the largest possible picture.
– An EarthMoonshot must include:
• Governments
• Industry
• Academia
• Everyone else
34. Looking Ahead
• This meetup is really just the beginning of
what should be a very large conversation
– Options
• A Meetup.com venue which has chapters in cities
around the world
• TEDx meetings
• Online collaboration outside Meetup
– A global knowledge garden
– http://www.debategraph.org/
– A federation* of many different problem solving venues
– …
*http://www.knowledgefederation.org/
35. Some Options
• Co-evolution of collaboration systems
augmented by open source and commercial
cognitive systems
– Federation of open source and, for instance, IBM’s
Watson serving groups working to solve problems
and prevent those problems from recurring
– Industry, Academia, Open Source consortium
• MOOCs to engage many in learning
opportunities
36. A Related TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_pontin_can_technology_solve_our_big_problems?language=en
37. A Workshop Resource
• About international,
institutional
collaboration
– Talks about
disseminating research
results
• Why not include people
outside institutions?
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18970/building-infrastructure-for-international-
collaborative-research-in-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences
38. Completed Representation
antioxidants
kill
free radicals
Contraindicates
macrophages use
free radicals to
kill bacteria
Bacterial Infection Antioxidants
Because
Appropriate For
Compromised Host
Let us co-create an EarthMoonshot
jackpark@topicquests.org
Slides: http://slideshare.net/jackpark/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gardenfelder
GitHub: https://github.com/knowledgegarden &
https://github.com/opensherlock/
Blog: https://knowledgegardens.wordpress.com/
