questing in the age of complex systems
TRANSCRIPT
Questing in the age of Complex
Issues
Jack Park Problem Solving Round Table
Cisco Systems
23 May, 2016
© 2016 TopicQuests Foundation CC by SA 4.0
Key Opportunity
• A planet-wide, collaborative quest for Global Thrivability*. – Issues include
• Sociological events – Health, epidemics, wars,…
• Geophysical events – Climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes, …
• Astrophysical events – Asteroids, our Sun. …
• A Global Knowledge Garden
* Let’s call the quest: EarthMoonshot
Problem Space • Too much information (info glut) • Missing information
– Proprietary and not available – Not proprietary, but hasn't been brought
to addressable space – Massive amounts of tacit knowledge – Native intuition not captured – Incomplete recording
• Trust • Heterogeneity
– Language (vernacular, dialects, etc.) – Different world views on same topic
Opportunity Space • Topic based information that is:
– Brought together through federation with relevance
– Freely available
– Recorded, easily found and built upon
– With tacit knowledge and native intuition captured
• Trustworthy – All sides of the story are covered
• Heterogeneity – Information is captured in a format
that takes into account vernacular, dialects, different world views, etc.
From the perspective of complexity theory, emergence arises from complex systems that create new properties from “autonomous unities coming together into larger, more powerful unities”*
Complex Systems Shared Stories Collaboration in the Garden
The emergence we seek is that of insight into the nature of and solutions to complex problems
Augmenting Social Sensemaking
1
2
3
Creating Ideas
Refining Connections
Connecting Ideas
Cancer patient
Garden Connections
Globally federated
topic gardens
enable wormhole-
like connections to
emerge in and
between topic
gardens.