"I am obsessed with the idea of helping to unfold the full range of human potential and self-knowledge. I want self-knowledge to be regarded as the highest possible form of knowledge. I want to help make it available to as many people as possible and I want a day to come when the study of self-knowledge becomes an integral part of the educational system as well as colleges, corporations and political institutions.
Then perhaps we may see a world of peace, harmony, laughter and love."
-Deepak Chopra
The aim of the KnowSys Project is to plant the seed for a massive,
collaboratively generated knowledge system using the powerful
new tools suddenly
available to us here in cyberspace. Our goal is to create a self-organizing
interactive mega-encyclopedia of human self-knowledge and self-help
technologies with easy to use query routing software and collaboratively
developed links to other information sources on the World Wide
Web. It is an attempt to gather our knowledge about ourselves
into a practical, friendly "wisdom-base" available to
all. The scope of the KnowSys project will be quite broad, integrating
what we as a species now know about ourselves. It will provide
practical access to the vast body of traditional wisdom, emerging
scientific knowledge and real world human experience that is potentially
available to us today.
We welcome content contributions from lay users and experts alike
and invite all users to participate in the collaborative process
of cybergenesis by voting and commenting on the content being
generated in the discussion forums.
Overview of KnowSys goals:
Imagine.... an internet for
the collective group mind of our species. A way to give each of
us access to the knowledge and wisdom that has been held in the
neuro-computers of other cultures and other human beings who have
confronted the eternal human issues we all face.
It is our genetic heritage to share information. Language and
culture are two of the uniquely human characteristics that distinguish
us from other species and have opened up vast possibilities for
us as individuals and as a species. The ability to communicate
with each other through language and the printed word has allowed
us to benefit from the lessons and insights of our fellow human
beings and to avoid learning the same things, or making the same
mistakes again and again. Unfortunately much of this power has
been transmitted as knowledge rather than wisdom, and has only
been widely available to the broadly educated few. The KnowSys
vision is to develop this communicative possibility of the human
mind to the point where we can more easily partake of the collective
wisdom of our extended human family.
The KnowSys Project could most accurately be described as a collaborately authored living knowledge resource providing interactive access to the frontiers of human self knowledge and the wisdom of the ages.
In most human cultures throughout time, the wisdom of the entire culture has been held in the oral traditions and the knowledge passed from one generation to the next. With the development of writing and the printing press, this knowledge became widely available, yet only accessible to the few who could read and knew where to look. The more recent explosion in electronic communications has increased our access to information, but the information overload has become overwhelming and has made it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Many of the formulas for living passed on to us from past generations are still quite useful when they become accessible across the barriers of cultural and historical context. Unfortunately the true meanings of many of these teachings are not always readily discernible to those outside of the culture from which they originate. There is also much debate about the interpretations and implications of many religious and scientific beliefs. KnowSys hopes to become a place where these various views can become sorted out and synthesized into a cohesive practical guide to understanding and optimizing the human experience.
Just as the elders of a tribe or culture are able to filter their knowledge in direct response to the needs of the less experienced, the interactive nature of the Answer Machine and the process of cybergenesis should be able to automatically filter thousands of contributions through the scrutiny of user feedback and organize it in a way that moves the most effective information to the top of the knowledge-base information structure. The result of a process of this kind becoming widely used is the logical next step the information revolution. The movement toward groupware and collaborative knowledge systems will inevitably lead to some sort of automated process of collaborative consensus building. Whether or not the KnowSys Project grows to such usable proportions or not, the internet itself with its vast access to information and its pervasive spirit of sharing information makes this kind of transformation inevitable.
The "Answer Machine" and the "Wisdom Browser"
components of KnowSys are designed to provide direct interactive
access to the vast body of wisdom and emerging scientific knowledge
that is the heritage and birthright of every member of our human
family.
We live in an age of information. As a species we are getting
closer and closer to having all the answers to the questions most
of us need to have fulfill our human potential. Yet the key answers
are always buried under vast amounts of useless information. In
the words of TS Eliot, "Where is the knowledge that is lost
in information and where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?"
Now more than ever, we need a way to separate the meaningful from
the useless in the vast sea of information that keeps expanding
with every new development in the digital revolution.
Collectively we humans know more about ourselves now than we
ever have before. Unfortunately the vast majority of our collective
self-knowledge is not accessible to most of us today. Even simple
cultures living close to nature have a more satisfying sense of
what life is really about for them than most of us in the "modern"
world.
Throughout history, every culture has had a central body of practical
wisdom which was passed from generation to generation, providing
guidance in making the most of the human journey. Unfortunately
we live in a world much more complex than the one for which many
of the ancient formulas for living were evolved, and many of the
teachings of the great religions and philosophies now seem outdated
or are hard to comprehend and apply to daily life in this confusing
and rapidly changing world.
In addition to the wisdom available to us from other times and
places, the scientific discoveries of the last hundred years or
so provide us with tremendous new resources for improving the
quality of our lives. Yet they are all but inaccessible to most
of us except as presented in the popular press.
Unfortunately, much of this valuable knowledge is encrypted in
scientific journals, religious texts, and the minds of the explorers
of the frontiers of human self-knowledge. Even if this valuable
library of information were available in a more accessible form,
no one human mind could ever contain all the details, or present
it in a way that would be understood by everyone. The ultimate
goal of this project is to provide such a resource, making use
of the powerful communication and information retrieval technologies
suddenly available to us here in cyberspace. The latest development
in this revolution, the technology to create collaboratively generated
"knowledge-bases" puts this dream within our grasp.
The first stage of the KnowSys project will be a database on this
web site and on CD rom which will be similar to an interactive
multi-media encyclopedia, but consisting entirely of information
from the many fields of knowledge pertaining to the human experience.
The discussion forums will address subjects people take up with
therapists, spiritual teachers, and their own inner guides. It
will differ from most "one way" databases in that it
will in large part be created in cyberspace by those interested
in seeing a resource like this develop. The only rule controlling
the content will be feedback from other users who will be asked
to click on various "truth resonance buttons" as they
navigate through the knowledge-base. These options might include
such reactions as, "this makes sense to me","this
is consistent with what I know from other sources",or "I
disagree with this because.....". The input from this feedback
system will be used to automatically generate a "reliability
meter" or "reality check" on each entry page and
will be used to automatically organize the vast number of opinions
and views into a hierarchy of levels of access. Because text storage
is relatively inexpensive, Know Sys will be able to store even
unpopular opinions that may just be ahead of their time. In effect,
users will vote on what information will be presented at the more
easily accessible higher levels of the knowledge hierarchy. Interactive
hyper-links to other resources on the web will be incorporated
to broaden the perspectives and allow the user to find his or
her own next step on the path from knowledge to wisdom. The "answer
machine" interface will incorporate expert system and intelligent
tutoring technology to navigate the knowledge system on our behalf
when we are seeking answers to questions