May
I enlist your creativity with the first draft of a science fiction game
which might be discussed and expanded?
It
is July 6, 2022. Our planet is overwhelmed by inter-related crises: millions
are hungry; violence, terrorism and crime are rampant; a billion are seriously
ill from new diseases and a deteriorating environment: bad water and soil,
a sick ocean, polluted air; desertification and massive crop failures,
and other crises. Many think that the very survival of life on the planet
is at stake. Humanity
has powerful new technologies, such as the ability to link thousands, even
tens of thousands of supercomputers which make it possible to do things
that have never been done before--out pacing any human mind--yet this fantastic
machine intelligence cannot seem to cope with the moral,
ethical and political problems that underlie the crises.
The
leaders of the G13 nations call upon the world’s universities to mobilize
and coordinate their efforts to bring together hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions of human minds, together (collective intelligence) through the
powerful sequel to the Internet -- to cooperate with the machine intelligence
to find holistic solutions to the crises; for all of them are seen to be
inter-related: for example, food production is limited by farmer health,
weather, poverty, ignorance, environmental sickness - and it finally occurs
to key political leaders of major nations that no one of the crises can
be tackled alone, they all must be resolved together. So:
(1)
The effort to link and coordinate all human knowledge is enlarged. A global
electronic encyclopedia and dictionary become the primary gateway to all
human data and knowledge.
(2)
The encyclopedia includes essays that seek to become definitive drafts
of all that can be agreed upon and verified through a process of peer review
by scientists and scholars in each area of each discipline, with a careful
listing of all disagreements, of
all that needs to be researched..These areas of needed work
are expanded by dialog with all other disciplines in a quest for holistic
solutions. (As in the Yale Human Area files, these essays can be reduced
by the elimination of all duplication.) While as scholarly as possible,
the essays are enlivened by computed-assisted constructions of reality,
simulations of possibilities liked to the largest possible models of the
physical and social world, and of the universe.
(3)
Every word in the definitive essays is linked to a global dictionary--linking
and expanding the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary in every
language-- that defines every shade of meaning in every language and dialect,
with each word used in the essay coded to a specific use and meaning.(A
numerical part of the coding, for example, might attach a number to the
word “church” --church1, a building; church2, a congregation, church3,
a denomination, church4, a mystical universal church, and so forth wherever
the word “church” appears in an essay. (Note the Univ. Of Calif. OceanStore
system where each fragment of stored knowledge has a “globally unique identification
tag.”
(7)
To capture the imagination of children and to inspire the political will
of the public, every essay in the `global brain encyclopedia’ has attached
stories (with graphics and films) and case studies to show needs and what
is begin done about them; with links to action groups and their publications
and projects. Every individual in the world is invited to have a lifelong
hobby interest in one area of needed action...with inspiration from art,
music and so forth to empower and motivate responsible action in relation
to evil found in relation to each encyclopedia essay.
The
daily updated (from research and feedback) electronic online textbooks
in every subject--and at every level of learning -- is founded upon and
linked to all of the definitive (daily updated and linked) encyclopedia
essays, with tutorials adapted to the age and level of information of each
learner.
(8)
The 2022 university is a lifelong learning and research institution, with
seamless relationships to educational activities of each individual from
birth to death. Essential learning is available on the Internet when needed
by each individual for each profession, job, individual task.Lifetime
learning is related to a continually enlarging profile
of each individual’s gifts, talents, limitations, handicaps,
opportunities, and so forth. Each is empowered with an electronic memory
(a lifetime of learning can now be recorded on one disk), instantly accessible,
indexed by job and personal and professional interests.Each
of these personal electronic memories can be plugged into the universal
encyclopedic memory for corrections and to meet specific needs, and can
also belinked to the electronic
memories of others in a work team research project or whatever.
My
web page above is by the fall of 2001 intended as an experiment to create
the beginnings of a regularly updated textbook -- free to everyone on the
planet -- in this case a textbook on the future of higher education --
which hopefully can reveal some of the problems and possibilities of a
`global brain definitive encyclopedia’ gateway to all the data and information
on the Internet.I solicit the help
of all who read this `science fiction’ paper, by calling attention to errors
and providing web page addresses to be included as the best method for
continual updating..
QUESTIONS
TO BE ADDED INCLUDE:
Is
this encyclopedia, which organizes and systemizes the Internet and Web
the global brain? Perhaps it is only a major step in that direction?