This is a quick start to prompt me to reflect more with others about the evolution of content and sensemaking.
I imagine something of a sequence where (some) material in the forum evolves into a more consolidated and structured form in some kind of wiki/knowledgebase.
In this is a forum you can just put things out – which is good. It doesn’t matter if you have the same topic again. There’s discussions and emojis. It’s a low stakes way in.
And then there’s a point where you want to consolidate material so that e.g. you have reference to kind of key ideas. Maybe that can just evolve in the forum. But maybe you want a way to have a place where you have consolidated versions.
In 1987, I asked my mentor, the late Doug Engelbart, how could a platform integrate online forums and knowledge bases. With a mischievous smile, Doug answered with a question: Why should they be integrated? Then, he added that they shouldn’t have been developed separately in the first place.
His comment was fully understandable from the perspective of his Dynamic Knowledge Repositiory, where conversations and knowledge bases were building on each other. However, starting with the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) of the '70s, the “granddaddy of forums” we already had a system that spawned a dozen or online forums by the mid-'80s but not linked to any knowledge base.
People who wanted to use those forums not just recreationally but for serious knowledge work over time (including myself) became frustrated because we got into discussing. the same issues again and again without realizing it. To remedy that situation, with the help of Doug, I dove into researching the conditions for computer-supported cultivation of collective intelligence.
Fast-forward to the present day. With my colleagues, we’re in the early phase of
architecting a prototype hub for AI-assisted, decentralized idea curation of “technology x wisdom” conversations (podcasts, forums, talks, papers) as a biomimetic Knowledge Garden, and revealing patterns of user-generated hypertrails (mycelia) that can inspire collaborative projects (fruiting bodies).
cc: @michaelgarfield
We are open to mutually beneficial, strategic collaboration.
This is something I’ve thought quite a lot about over the years – these particular notes were from 2022-2024 (published in Jan 2024) – and I’ve been building knowledge systems and “tools for sensemaking” for 20+ years (not quite as long as you!).
I’m very conscious for myself of the need to keep feet on the ground and actually build something – and the KISS mantra.
I’ve got some ideas for super-simple approaches that I could share.
Hi Rufus,
thanks for sharing this idea. I’ve explored similar concepts with my Master’s of Engineering, Sustainability, and Health community as they develop looooots of ideas and papers and large scale projects. I see a big need for this but also that it takes a lot of energy to constantly update something.
I am unsure what exactly you need at this stage in your work. I will share three ideas/concepts that have arisen on my end:
marbles as containers for ideas that people shape themselves, but can be taken from someone and put into your own pouch. So you have pouches of marbles for specific project, and someone can take marbles and place them into their own pouch. See my very recently developed project for this (but it’s only my marbles) My pouch of marbles for mostly.mutual studio
I see a huge need to give things that people share for others to digest a container that contextualizes the piece of knowledge. Particularly for wrapping up project work (i know this might be slightly different from you “knowledge” management piece but pretty much no knowledge arises without “knowledge constitutive interests” so it helps to understand why people care and how it came into being. See my ideas on containers here Envisioning containers for sharing media to communicate context, intentions, and needs
and i also think that the principles for movement media creation are very interesting. When we share these bits of knowledge and insights, we might want to try to wrap them up so it actually becomes a medium that empowers others: Movement building principles for media creation
(I wonder if this helps, sparks anything, or feels too unrelated. I am working on building a visual metaphors for systemic relationships engine right now as my dream project, so super excited about your ideas and work)
Great points. I think you have expanded beyond my more modest ambitions at the start about whether a “forum + wiki” patterns works (and has been well implemented in some existing tool).
This sounds a bit like zettels in zettelkasten but they are shareable (?)
this i think relates to the blog post evolution - often a wiki page on its own is not fully digestible without a bunch of context. Whereas a blog post does some of that contextualising …
← Yes exactly! They are interlinked zettels that I manage in Obsidian. I publish all of them online. It’s the same idea but tailored toward communicating insights with my academic / movement community.
← I agree!
Equally excited to continue this conversatio. Thanks for doing this work. I see a huge opportunity here.
This sounds a bit like zettels in zettelkasten but they are shareable (?)