</a>Future possibilities?

Transforming Static Websites into Mobile "Wizdomes": enabling change through intertwining dynamic and configurative metaphors (Part #20)

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In the light of the above it could be argued that the future challenge for content management systems (CMS), knowledge management systems, open directory projects (such as Wikipedia), and search engines (such as Google) is how they allow their environments to be reconfigured into wizdomes or in support of wizdomes. As matters stand, such facilities enable knowledge organization by ordered categories or topics -- loosely ordered within ontologies, if at all -- with virtually no sense of the functional and systemic relationships between categories so vital to any integrative comprehension of system operation (cf Functional Classification in an Integrative Matrix of Human Preoccupations, 1982).

A degree of coherence may be provided through hyperlinks, although this pattern does not purport to offer an integrating perspective as argued elsewhere (Sacralization of Hyperlink Geometry, Computer-Mediated Communications Magazine, March 1997).

In the increasing relation of these services to access to content via mobile (phone) device, the challenge is how to enable such devices as focal points for wizdomes -- rather than through an array of menus as at present. How does significance, valued by a particular user, get drawn to the attention, and appropriately positioned, within the wizdome configuration so that the user is "transported" there? This is a step beyond personalized monitoring and tagging facilities that currently point in this direction. This development of mobile devices suggests a process of confluence with those of "websites". Not only are such devices carrying information (addresses, schedules, etc), they are also serving as information gathering devices. In their increasing use as image gathering devices for the broadcast media, for example, they imply a progressive integration into an emergent "global brain". To some degree they may themselves then acquire the function nd role of wizdomes -- a complexification of the "personal organizer". In this process the address of a website may become that of the mobile phone (or vice versa) -- as the concrete embodiment of the wizdome. It remains to be seen to what degree they then reflect the cognitive embodiment of a wizdome.

Particularly intriguing, given the role that such devices now have as vehicles of an electronic identity within a social network, is the role that they will come to play in the future. This highlights the complex interplay between the sense of identity, such devices, and cognitive embodiment of a wizdome. How then is the embodiment of wisdom by the "individual" (possibly with multiple "identities") to be considered in this context? To a greater degree than with the automobile, or the "wallet", these devices will be vitually a locus of identity -- as with the "magically empowered" instruments of a shaman (as a dynamic focus of traditional wisdom) permitting communication with the unseen spirits of an animist world. It accords with the suggestion made by Stephen Mueke (Ancient and Modern: time, culture and Indigenous philosophy, 2004) regarding Aboriginal nomads for whom a "site" travels with them, namely is part of story and identity. This suggests the curious possibility of an analogy to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle -- regarding the locus and dynamic of identity (cf Garrison Sposito. Does a generalized Heisenberg Principle operate in the social siences? 1969)

Also of interest is how the interface with the wizdome takes account of cultural and personal preferences for the presentation of information -- beyond the current approach to "skins". Given the range of epistemological preferences (cf Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993), how are other metaphors to be used as interfaces -- and notably those of non-western cultures as noted by Susantha Goonatilake (Toward a Global Science: mining civilizational knowledge, 1999).

However, of great concern, is the manner in which services such as Google may seek to enclose the open system from which they themselves have so admirably emerged -- thereby replicating the historical process of "enclosure of the commons", recognized as the "tragedy of the commons". Google might indeed be already understood as an archetypal whizdome par excellence -- with great aspirations to being the ultimate wizdome. However, as noted by Google Watch and by Josh McHugh (Google vs. Evil, 2003), through its totally non-transparent relations with security services, the undeclared pressures from the self-righteous "moral majority" (imposing interpretations of Google's "Don't be evil" principle), and its unknown susceptibility to commercial pressures in practice, its most admirable features may already be falling prey to distorting forces. Its role as a "knowledge shepherd", working through amiable protective "sheepdogs", in support of wizdome emergence, may already be deteriorating into that of a "wolf in sheep's clothing", possibly in full alliance with knowledge predators of the most dubious kind. Whether aware of the process or not, it may become a front for forces over which it has no control -- an ideal device for subverting global security in the interests of the national security of a particular country.

An earlier paper (From ECHELON to NOLEHCE: enabling a strategic conversion to a faith-based global brain, 2007) argued for a transformation of ECHELON into a form to which Google might have aspired as a global wizdome. However, as described by Mark Baard (Sentient World: war games on the grandest scale, 2007), the US Department of Defense (DOD) is intending to simulate every individual on the planet in a virtual Planet Earth. This Sentient World Simulation (SWS) will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information". This is intended as an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP) so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners". Such initiatives might be seen as the dark side of wizdome.

Such possibilities raise the interesting question of the stage in the evolution of current "global" civilization at which it will engender wizdomes as contexts for global governance. How far are the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Economic Forum ("Davos"), the Club of Rome, or the World Social Forum ("Porto Alegre"), from recognizing the need for such dynamic reconfiguration of the manner in which they engage with, and embody, an emergent knowledge-based society? To what extent are the metaphors explored here fundamental to the operation of an emergent "global brain"? (cf Simulating a Global Brain using networks of international organizations, world problems, strategies, and values, 2001)

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