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A brief owner's guide to our human
software
(a place to begin exploring content)
Guided Tour
(a place to explore to begin to understand the system)
Ask a Question
(a prototype for the not yet functional user interface)
e-mail your comments to us: feedback@wisdombase.org
Welcome to the construction site for the KnowSys project. The KnowSys vision is to use the new tools suddenly becoming available to us here in cyberspace to create a living, self-organizing gathering place for humankind's collective self-knowledge. At its heart is the knowledge-filter, a mechanism whereby material contributed or suggested by users is filtered by feedback from other users. The "Answer Machine" user interface will make the large body of knowledge and wisdom that the system collects and filters accessible to anyone through an easy to use query routing system.
The knowledge-filter software that will be used to build the wisdombase is a consensus building group expert system shell designed to use the internet as a vehicle for the large scale sharing, filtering and organization of knowledge. Our current intention is to commercially develop the filtering software as a means of financing the launch of the KnowSys wisdombase project.
The content of the KnowSys wisdombase will be contributed and edited by its users through a dynamic collaborative filtering process we are calling autocybergenesis. The content of the wisdombase re-organizing itself in response to user contributions and feedback. As a result, the perspectives that the most people find useful move toward the top of the "answers" hierarchy. User generated links and comments provide alternate perspectives, explanations, supporting contributions and additional resources on each subject.
Although the KnowSys Project will be open to content contributions
from anyone who would like to submit content or links for collaborative
filtering, we hope to secure sufficient start-up funding to enlist a staff
of experts to seed the project with interesting and useful content. Thus
the Wisdom-Base would begin as an interactive self-help encyclopedia or
encyclopedia of human self-knowledge drawing on knowledge and wisdom from
many traditions as well as from the cutting edge of science.This initial
body of content would be filtered and expanded by contributions and feedback
from other users, both "lay" and "professional". Users
will be able to access the content of the wisdombase by asking plain language
questions on any topic and then sorting the potential answers by a variety
of user-defined criteria such as level of interest, supporting experiences
or data or large scale subjectively perceived value. The number of topics
will grow and expand automatically like the discussion threads in a newsgroup
or discussion forum, with the key distinction that less valuable postings
will drop to the bottom of long lists of material on each topic, and the
most valued ones will rise to the top.
In addition to its goal of creating easy access to the rapidly emerging
picture of who we are and how we can reach our highest potential as human
beings, the KnowSys project aspires to provide a forum for the cross-fertilization
of ideas across scientific and philosophical boundaries. The ultimate goal
of the project is to create a collective knowledge crucible or WisdomBase providing interactive access to what we as
a species have come to know about ourselves since we began to share information.
The secondary goal is to help integrate all the major approaches to understanding
the human experience, from the perennial wisdom of the world's major spiritual
traditions to pioneering self-help technologies and the latest scientific
findings in fields ranging from brain chemistry to evolutionary psychology.
The KnowSys Project is an extrapolation backwards from what we see as an obvious and wonderful future where each of us has direct access to all of human knowledge. Ultimately, we envision a new type of resource that could eventually serve the much needed role of an electronic tribal elder for our new global village.
HOW KNOWSYS WORKS:
GO TO DISCUSSION FORUMS- EXPLORE: THE WISDOM
BROWSER
ASK KNOWSYS A QUESTION- GO TO: THE ANSWER MACHINE
HELP BUILD THE KNOWSYS PROJECT
HELP SHAPE THE KNOWLEDGE-BASE (submit
comments, rebuttals, WWW links, URL's)
HELP BUILD THE ANSWER MACHINE (contribute
new content/links)
$UPPORT KNOWSYS (make tax exempt donation, buy
books at the KnowSys Bookstore)
JOIN THE KNOWSYS TEAM (volunteers/staff needed)
KnowSys Home Page | A
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