PROPOSED AS PROTOTYPE RESEARCH PROJECT IN KNOWLEDGE FEDERATION
Dino Karabeg, Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo, Dino.Karabeg@ifi.uio.no
Hendrik Thomas, …
…?
THE EIGHTH CONTINENT PROJECT
Rough draf t #1
When proposing The Eighth Continent Project, abbreviated as The 8C, we have two goals in
mind. The first goal is pragmatic – to facilitate positive global change. The second goal is academic
– to develop a new direction in research. In what follows we describe The Eighth Continent
Project and explain in what ways this project will further the mentioned goals.
The Eighth Continent as a virtual culture
The Eighth Continent is a virtual culture. Until recently, communities and cultures were locality
based. While the local communities are now declining [1], new global communities are on the rise.
The global communities are based on shared interests and values.
Metaphorically, TheEighthContinent.net (or The8C.net) Internet portal may be imagined as an
island with a lighthouse. The purpose of the ‘lighthouse’ is to point at a meaningful, safe, innovative
and inspiring direction of development in the risk-laden and arguably misdirected world, the
PROPOSED AS PROTOTYPE RESEARCH PROJECT IN KNOWLEDGE FEDERATION
‘stormy sea’. The ‘island’ will offer a safe space for communication, cooperation, reorientation and
rebuilding. On the ‘island’, The8C members (individuals, businesses, municipalities, projects,
institutions...) will meet like-minded partners, and co-develop and share guidelines and resources
that will help them re-create their patterns of operation according to the project’s visionary
orientation, which is graphically represented by the lighthouse. Companies will be able to meet
like-minded customers and clients and develop new patterns of work, commerce and cooperation.
Municipalities, schools,... will share guidelines and support for re-organization.
To see what this will mean in practice, imagine a prospective member, who may be a
municipality or a business leader. We name Mr. Takeo Fukui, the CEO of Honda Motor Co, to
make our example concrete. Imagine that Mr. Fukui has just realized that competing based on
profit margins is destructive for people, natural environment and culture, and also for his family and
for himself personally. As Aurelio Peccei once did, Mr. Fukui realizes that the modern world needs
radical change, and he wants to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. What can he
do? If he would simply come to his Board of Directors and say: “I believe that we are serving
wrong values!” they might think that he had gone out of his mind. In the proposed scenario, all Mr.
Fukui needs to do is register Honda Motor Co as a corporate member in The Eighth Continent.
This registration symbolizes the move to the new virtual continent, where the values and the rules
of conduct are different. Even if his Board of Directors may operate on a different set of values
than Mr. Fukui, the membership in The 8C will still seem to them as a perfectly justifiable marketing
and branding move, which identifies Honda Motor Co. as a new-thinking and socially and
environmentally responsible company, and which affords new business opportunities. The gradual
transformation of Honda Motor Co will subsequently be taken care of by the strength of the
guiding light provided by our ‘lighthouse’ on the one side, and by the dynamics of the interaction
on our virtual continent on the other. The effect will be like moving to a new continent, where
new values and habits rule.
The good neighborhood metaphor will further elucidate the economic logic behind The 8C. In a
typical metropolitan area such as Los Angeles, it is now common that a house in what is
considered ‘a good neighborhood’ costs an order of magnitude more than a comparable house in
‘a bad neighborhood’. People are willing to pay higher rents to secure that their children and
themselves will be safe when they walk out of the house. The point here is that the global
economy is becoming a bad neighborhood [2].
We may also compare our project to the Second Life. The difference is, of course, that The 8C
is not an escape from the real world, but its re-creation.
The Eighth Continent Project as a strategy for positive global change
During the past several decades we have become aware that economic growth may have limits
[3], that environmental pollution may endanger our bio-physical environment [4] and that
economic globalization may endanger our social democracy [5]. We are gradually realizing that the
competitive global business has become a power of its own, and that it is unlikely that we will be
able to control it through inter-governmental negotiations and treaties. When around the turn of
the Millennium the BBC asked Anthony Giddens where the world was going, he answered with a
series of lectures and a book titled “Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives”
[6].
PROPOSED AS PROTOTYPE RESEARCH PROJECT IN KNOWLEDGE FEDERATION
The question is, What can we do? We consider this a central practical question.
It seems obvious that if any global actor should begin to operate under a different set of rules,
that would need to be in an environment which supports and re-enforces the new behavior both
ethically and economically.
Our central question then translates into “How can we create an environment which supports
remedial new directions in business, consumption, communal life etc., and which at the same time
functions well within the present global socio-economic conditions?” The purpose of The Eighth
Continent Project is to develop an answer to this question.
The Eighth Continent Project in an academic context
In this first sketch we only point at another, academic, and we dare say fundamental side of the
Eighth Continent Project. The fundamental question here is the one of designing an approach to
academic work which is in the proper sense academic, and at the same time responds to the key
socio-cultural functions that academic research needs to fulfill in these times of change.
Key epistemological insights reached in physics and cognitive science provide us with academic
reasons for re-evaluating what is considered as ‘fundamental research’.
How can we academic people avoid being part of the problem and become part of the
solution, while at the same time operating under the ethical and professional code which is
properly speaking academic? We consider this a central academic question.
The answer has been proposed in terms of information design, a new academic space where
the rules and the values are different [7,8]. Very roughly, instead of aiming to discover a new piece
in our description of reality in order to make that description more complete, the aim of
information design research is to create a new piece in reality which makes that reality (global
culture, economy, ecosystem…) more whole. The Eighth Continent Project may be understood as
a fundamental research project (because it endeavors to create one of the key pieces) within the
information design value matrix.
The Eighth Continent as a prototype project in knowledge federation
We propose The Eighth Continent Project also as a prototype project in the emerging field of
knowledge federation.
In this context, the project may be understood as a ‘sand box’ for creating technical solutions
for co-creation of knowledge. The research question here is to develop a series of tools which will
allow The 8C members to co-create and share knowledge.
The research question for the ‘sand box’: What sort of virtual objects do we need in order to
complete a virtual space where a new socio-economy, or a new culture, may be co-created? How
can those objects be implemented.
For illustration, consider a prospective member, Nature Culture Health (NaCuHeal)
International [9] an NGO which has served as direct motivating force for our project. The
PROPOSED AS PROTOTYPE RESEARCH PROJECT IN KNOWLEDGE FEDERATION
fundamental values of this organization stem from a deeper (also academic) understanding of
Nature-Culture-Health co-dependencies, including the profound influence of nature and culture on
human health or well-being. In Norway this organization has created a series of centers, and now it
is developing a daycare center, a youth center, the KommuneWiki project for supporting grassroots democratic value and lifestyle change in the municipalities, and an educational institution (The
Academy of Nature Culture Health). The task of the Nature Culture Health International is to
export the acquired know-how, and to internationalize the project. The 8C project has been
developed in part as a strategy for NaCuHeal International.
You may now imagine a daycare center in Australia wanting to benefit from the experiences
from the NaCuHeal Daycare Center in Asker [10], and offer their own experiences in exchange.
The sister project of The 8C, which may also be integrated within our project, is the Key Point
Dialog project [11, 12]. The mission of the Key Point Dialog is to use the knowledge federation
techniques to co-develop the ‘lighthouse’.
References
[1] Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone. (…)
[2] Joel Bakan, The Corporation . (…)
[3]
…
[7] Dino Karabeg and Fredrik Eive Refsli,
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Misc/ID_bluntly.pdf
[8]
Dino
Karabeg:
Through
The
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~dino/ID/Abstracts/TTM-abstract.pdf
[9] http://www.NaCuHeal.org/
[10] http://www.nakuhelbarnehagen.no/
…
Bluntly
about
Mirror,
Information
lecture
Design,
abstract.