Spherical knowledge grid: discontinuity and emptiness

From Information Highways to Songlines of the Noosphere: Global configuration of hypertext pathways (Part #9)

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One approach to configuring tangents is to focus on spherical geometry and the nature of a spherical grid -- since these are at least accessible to the imagination (even though other forms of greater complexity may be more appropriate in mathematical terms). Unlike use of latitude and longitude, in this case the emphasis is on the user's choice of preferred grid pattern -- unless some standard pattern is acceptable. There are many ways to carve up a spherical surface and the user can effectively "delink" from efforts to impose universally accepted patterns. People do not need to resonate to the frenetic urgencies and rhythmns of "power users" for whom month-old information is already long obsolete? Future privacy may lie in other orderings of space and time.

Laying down a grid: But to be commensurate with the challenge to comprehension, it is beneficial to recognize the limitations of the rational ("urban planning") mentality associated with "laying down a grid", even on a sphere. The use of a rational pattern is indeed possible and may be preferred by many. It however precludes many possibilities of holding insights into incommensurable features -- other than through the horizon effect mentioned above.

A choice of reference points must be made around the sphere by the user -- although it is effectively this choice which defines the sphere. The user is not obliged to do this through a geometric metaphor. The reference points could even be a palette of colours or a pantheon of gods. It is the fundamental act of distinction and separation that is important (***) -- and the configuration of those distinctions into a pattern on a sphere (although other surfaces with such finite but unbounded properties could be used).

Embodying discontinuity: The links between the points so chosen could indeed be represented by continuous lines. But this would fail to capture the conceptual discontinuity that characterizes the relationships between domains of knowledge. The lines might be better understood as discontinuous or broken by "operators" such as are found on a circuit board (condensers, resistances, etc). It might also be useful to allow the lines to periodically switch polarity to reflect the ways in which initiative or priority can switch from one domain of knowledge to another in response to changing circumstances. Web pages could be designed with such properties.

Travelling from one domain of knowledge to another around the sphere thus becomes as fraught with uncertainty as in any adventure game. It is essentially a learning exercise, a journey in the personal development sense, or even a process of initiation. There are conditions to be met -- puzzles and paradoxes to be mastered, doors to be unlocked -- as partly reflected in transiting through password-controlled databases. Unless this is done, any movement around the sphere is purely formal and of minimal significance. Electronic access to a document, or possessing it, does not indicate comprehension of its content or its significance in a wider pattern.

This approach offers the possibity of reflecting the ways in which the parts are effectively protected from the whole, and the whole from the parts. Simplistic globalization is a reductionist illusion whatever it is hyped up to be by vested interests and enthusiasts. Ultimately the reality of what can be meaningfully expressed becomes a matter of the moment -- as acknowledged in various mystical traditions.

Honouring emptiness: A danger of grid systems is the implied enclosure of the domain of knowledge. From any longer term perspective, this can only be premature and presumptuous. It suggests a colonization of the future against which the next generation must necessarily revolt -- and a "generation" on the Web may be a matter of months. It denies any sense of mystery by giving no place to the unknown or the possibly unknowable. The advantage of any centro-symmetric system (Judge ***), especially a sphere, is that the grid runs on the surface leaving the centre empty, both as an unreified point of reference, around which current understandings and explorations can be configured as tangents, and as a form of openness. Such features respect future creativity and any sense of implicate order from which new patterns emerge. They reflect the cited concern of Lao Tse.

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