Doctoral
Application Draft
The effective
use of technology does not lie in the automation of the past.
Therefore, the
value of computer systems will not be determined by how well they can be used in
the applications they were designed for, but how easily they can be fit to cases that were never
thought of.
Thus a key question
is whether valuable insights into complexity, vital to governance and self-
governance of social processes, may only be representable and comprehensible through
presentations of an essentially artistic nature. It is then their aesthetic properties that have
valuable ordering and integrative functions. Given the well- demonstrated weaknesses of current
international policy- making, it would be unwise to assume that this is not the case.
I hope in part
to demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing comprehension, and navigating
complexity, using features uniquely dependent upon the riches and subtleties of artistic insight.
The concern here is with the design of a flexible architecture to demonstrate how the power of
both "scientific" and "artistic" approaches may be integrated to enhance comprehension
and
navigation of complexity -- as well as offering new forms of creativity in response to complex
conditions. I hope to develop the software (iMap) and process necessary to the new disciplines
implied above.
These complementary
tools involve a variety of overlapping research challenges. The proposal
focuses on developing application of tools rather than on the tools themselves.
Pressing problems
in knowledge handling policy
At a time when
we are exposed to:
The complexity
of the knowledge handling system is such that conceptual ambiguity is the rule
rather than the exception. At the same time we are running short of the paper which permits us
the luxury of our incredibly ineffective, document-oriented system.
"An increase
in accessibility without a corresponding increase in human assimilation rate will be
self- defeating... Often one needs to know only a central idea, result, theorem, or the methods
employed, with bibliographical information for later reference, but finds that a short course in
unneeded detail is required to get to it."
1. McKinsey Research
