4. Conclusion The above section
attempts to give an understanding of the special characteristics of the
knowledge- handling environment which will be increasingly accessible, if only to those in
privileged institutions. For whilst there are few technical and economic constraints to prevent
such an environment becoming widely accessible, it is probable that this will be obstructed by
socio-political factors, including recognition of vulnerability to abuse and government control.
On the other hand, there is some probability that government agencies will come to favour and
promote the widespread existence of such a system as permitting a sophisticated improvement
over telephone surveillance of intellectuals and social change agents.
Whatever the general
outcome, it is highly probable that such environments will be developed
for creative thinkers in key research disciplines and policy environments and for the
conferences and institutions in which they interact. The key to the attractiveness for them of
such (micro)environments is the manner in which the processes of thinking and communication
are blended with those of storage, retrieval, classification and reclassification. In fact it is the
intimate relationship between shared creative thinking and exploratory integrative
reclassification in the light of new insights that is the chief feature of such environments. Of
special interest is the manner in which the processes of:
-
analysis,
- conceptual innovation (and its verbal representation),
- explanatory comment,
- linkage to related initiatives,
- abstracting,
- classification,
- dissemination, and
- peer-group assessment
effectively blur
together into a new and more dynamic process whose nature remains to be
explored and for which the current division of labour is inadequate.
It is unlikely
that any encyclopedic system based on large amounts of textual information will be
as practical or significant as the dynamic, multi-perspective, participative system outlined
here—although there may be points of contact between the two approaches.
It is interesting
that the right note was sounded by the US National Academy of Sciences
Committee on Scientific and Technical Communication (SATCOM) in 1969 when it was
stated that: "More exciting than retrieval of information from a static store is evolutionary
indexing, in which user's modifications, restructuring and critical commentaries steadily improve
the initial indexing. . ."
The challenge for
those active in the field of classification will be to provide their proposed
schemes or amendments as computer program packages or optional modules which can be
easily employed in such environments in order for the user to be able to restructure (possibly
only temporarily) the data base with which he is working to perceive it in an alternative light.
Hopefully this would lead to improvements in the ability to classify and enhance comprehension
of inter- and trans-disciplinary concepts (21, 22, 23).
1. Constraints
