Knowledge

Computer-aided Visualization of Psycho-social Structures (Part #16)

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A major theme of this paper is that it is not more knowledge of the same type that is needed, but new types of knowledge. Much of the complexity and information overload is due to excessive production of unintegrated knowledge. It is useful to think of researchers producing knowledge which decays rapidly into pellets of information unless revivified -- knowledge is integration of unrelated bits of information; documents represent fossilized knowledge, which can be reprocessed. What is required is knowledge which will help to reduce the decay rate dramatically and to "revivify" information. The remark of a Fortune editorial that "because our strength is derived from the fragmented mode of our knowledge and action, we are relatively helpless when we try to deal intelligently with such unities as a city, an estaury's ecology or "the quality of life"" (Fortune, February 1970, p. 92) is applicable to the psycho-social system as a whole.

The "hidden dimension" which must be faced is that of the degree of integration of the knowledge used across conventional discipline boundaries and across boundaries between various modes of thought and action (e.g. research, policy-making, education, etc.). Just as translations between natural languages is theoretically impossible but practically feasible to a satisfactory degree, so the attitude towards the interrelation of knowledge arising from different disciplinary perspectives should bo viewed as partially feasible in practice, even if no theoretical framework can legitimate it.

Clearly, the momentum of the knowledge producers and their organizational settings makes dramatic change almost impossible. The solution advocated here is therefore the provision of a device for them which is structured to facilitate integration of information and enhaces creativitiy and production of more integrative knowledge. In contrast, existing information systems encourage fragmentation and the generation of vast quantities of indigestible information.

With such a device, much vital existing information on isolated entities and processes in the psycho-social system can be "hooked together" in a manner which facilitates understanding by many disciplines simultaneously, and can highlight significant areas for research and action. Such an approach is vital to avoid clumsy spastic approaches to rectifying current problems. War and violence are the ultimate processes in a spastic society.

Our difficulty is that our mental models of psycho-social structure are based on patterns of relationships which are too intimately identified and associated with (visible) physical and behavioural structures which do not develop naturally and continually but can however (almost literally) be labelled. Means are required to increase reliance on more subtle and dynamic patterns of relationships for which more sophisticated methods of display are required.

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