Proliferation of Knowledge
A Global Perspective
A KEYNOTE LECTURE
Presented at the Intersymp’98
The 10th International Conference
on Systems Research, Informatics, and Cybernetics
August 17-21, 1998
Baden-Baden, Germany.
by
Winfried K. Rudloff
Governors State University, USA
Published in “Advances in Socio-Cybernetics and Human Development”,
Volume VII, pp. 17-23, 1999
Ed. George E. Lasker, IIAS Publication, Windsor.
Proliferation of Knowledge
A Global Perspective
by
Winfried K. Rudloff
Governors State University
Prologue
By definition, data is the raw material that we collect in pursuit of our business, in
support of our professions, as proof of our existence in a bureaucratic society. Data by
itself is meaningless. However, when it is interpreted in a meaningful way, it becomes
information that helps us to understand the performance of business, the relationships
within our societies; the problems that are subject to scientific inquiry.
Knowledge is “Information that men and machines can think about”; that broadens our horizons in an evermore complex environment; that leads us from the dark ages
into the age of human enlightenment. Knowledge is an attribute of intelligence; it is the
essence of survival. Knowledge is relative and is always in context with our current perception of the world.
Based on profound knowledge is know-how that applies it to problem solving; the
problems of everyday living and the more esoteric problems of our complex world and
beyond. The acquisition of knowledge and know-how is dependent on our ability to
communicate and learn through interaction with our physical and social environment.
Knowledge and know-how are the dynamics that drive the intellectual evolution of mankind. Beyond knowledge is wisdom that arises from a profound understanding of the
world.
We are in the middle of the knowledge revolution, where new technologies have
given us the tools for instant communication around the world. In this lecture, we will
develop ideas on how the rapid knowledge proliferation that is taking place can, perhaps,
help us to understand better the intricate mechanisms that govern global interactions. We
will attempt to show that the Internet can contribute to a more peaceful global society
where diversity of cultures could be accepted as assets of a global community and not as
incentives to global wars.
We generally speak of technology transfer but overlook that such transfer can frequently lead to social unrest since cultural values are profoundly affected. In contrast,
knowledge transfer in coordination with transfer of new technologies may, perhaps, lead
to a better understanding of diversity of cultures that are borne out of different traditional
backgrounds and could guide humanity to more tolerance towards other cultures.
Memory: The Storage of Knowledge
Memory is the imprint of the past; the storage bin of knowledge. Without memory
there would be no knowledge of what was, no perception of what is, no extrapolation of
what will be in the future. Memory is all over the universe. We find it in the annual rings
of our trees that provide us with information of past climates; in the rock formations of
our planets that tells the story of their genesis; in the petrifaction of life forms long extinct.
Memory of human action is found in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt (Figure 1)
and their pyramids, in the pictographs of the Chinese, the inscriptions on Mayan temples. There is memory in rust. In rust?
Indeed, the ferro-magnetic domains of iron or similar metallic
oxides in our recording tapes carry the memory of our songs
and our thoughts; on our computer disks these oxides provide
us with the capacity to store our data and the programs that
manipulate and interpret them. We extrapolate knowledge
from the electromagnetic waves that carry the memory of galaxies billions of light years away. Memory seems to be "burnt"
into the genes of all living species which determine a priori the
Figure 1: Hieroglyphics.
(Ref. Compton’s Encyclopedia )
colors of our eyes, the features of our faces, and the characters
of our selves. Without our memory, we would not have the
perception of this instance in time.
Memory in the human brain is still not completely understood. We can extrapolate to some degree what effect memory has on our behavior and our being, but we can
only speculate about the physical structure and dynamics of it. We can visualize our brain
as a complex structure with different
levels of intelligence where memory is
interacting with our envi-ronment
(Figure 2).
At the lowest level, our senses
are the receptors of signals from the
environment. A sensory analysis takes
place and the signals are coordinated
with some goal selection where internal states (or memory) have an active
part in the process. At this level, inFigure 2. The Brain Model and Memory
(Adapted from Kent, 1981)
stinctive motion is activated and corresponding signals are sent to the muscles, perhaps, in response to immediate danger.
At a higher level, synthesis and integration leads to abstraction of ideas in words
and mental images. Finally, at the highest level of intelligence, there is extrapolation into
space and into time.
We can speculate that memory is, perhaps, some dynamic switching mechanism
as we find it in the random access memory of the computers (W. K. Rudloff, 1995). Perhaps, memory is a static imprint of abstracted signals that we experience in the ferromagnetic domains of a recording tape. In recent time, we have begun to understand more
and more that the chemistry of our brain controls our intellectual behavior and our learning capacity and memory is profoundly affected by it. The analogy of human memory
with the random access memory of a computer is quite appropriate, since both the random access memory of a computer as well as the human memory disappears as the machine is turned off or as the brain dies or becomes diseased. Also, the experience of amnesia or dementia indicates that memory loss means often that access to our memory is
blocked or damaged or, in computers, that the table of contents is wiped out: The contents of memory are still there, yet hidden and inaccessible. Thus, memory as well as access to it, both, are essential to recall.
Without memory, there would be no knowledge, without knowledge, no knowhow. A knowledge-based system then evolves from simple data processing to information storage to knowledge which is defined as "information that men or machines can
think about.” Thus, intelligence is a product of memory that is capable of storing vast
amounts of knowledge which is continuously modified through interaction with our environment, and that of our know-how as it is rooted in stored knowledge, to perform our
tasks.
Communication: The Pathways to Knowledge
Knowledge without means of communication would be non-existent. At the dawn
of humankind, communication was through sound and gestures. The capacity of our
voice to modulate sound waves provided us with the tools for intelligent communication.
The memories of what had been, was passed on from generation to generation by “word
of mouth” as is reflected in our sagas and mythologies, and modified in this process or
soon forgotten.
When language was abstracted into written symbols, communication spanned the
millenia and human memory became more permanent; as permanent as papyri or stone
inscriptions lasted in an hostile environment. The origin of printing in China in the 2nd
Century AD and the invention of the printing press with movable print characters by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany (around 1450) allowed multiple copies of books, specifically the bible, and other writings thus leading to proliferation and democratization of
knowledge.
The electronic age of recent decades has completely changed how humans communicate. There was first the telephone, the Morse code, and the quartz radio that could
span our communication over long distances in real time. Telephone, television, and radio in combination with satellite technology has now made it possible to instantly communicate around the globe and beyond our galaxy where signals are riding on the waves
of the electromagnetic spectrum.
It is, however, the Internet that has totally revolutionized our ways of dealing with
each other. It has become the vehicle of learning beyond the confines of our classrooms,
of instant contact with other cultures, of home-bound commerce and shopping. Knowledge, through the medium of the Internet is literally at our fingertips; it is no longer the
exclusive domain of the elite; it is completely democratized. While in the past knowledge
was organized in volumes and volumes of an expensive encyclopedia, it is now compressed in its totality on the 5 ½ inch compact disks and is instantly accessible through
links and hyperlinks of the electronic medium.
Belief, Hypothesis, Theory, and Knowledge
At the beginning of knowledge there is belief; the belief in what we call the truth;
the truth as it is reflected in our perception of the world. A belief is the assumption of
how it should be, not necessarily how it is in reality. But then, what is reality anyway?
Perhaps, reality is the reflection of the world in our minds as it interacts with the model of
that world that we have formed in our memory. Belief is generally connected to the concept of abstractions. Thus, God is an abstraction as is the atom; the first one a religious
idea, the latter one derived from scientific experiment and mathematical derivation.
In Science, we begin with a belief of what could be; we call it hypothesis, an a
priori assumption that has to be proven right or wrong. Mathematics then expands on the
hypothesis and a theory is evolving that is to formalize its validity. We collect data to
verify our assumptions. When the data is interpreted within the framework of our premises, it becomes information. Finally, a truth is derived as it becomes part of our knowledge.
The truth, however, is relative since knowledge by its very nature is always relative; relative to our current understanding of the world. It changes like a chameleon depending on the background of current beliefs. Knowledge is dynamic and is expandable,
modifiable, or replaceable by more recent knowledge.
An attribute of knowledge is, by assumption, that it is objective. This is, of course
an illusion since it is often editorialized and thus changed to subjective opinion. History
is seen mostly within the framework of current doctrine. Even in democratic societies is
historic information tainted by the writers.
Knowledge Representation
Representation of knowledge is reflected in our daily interactions with each other.
It is abstracted in our speech, our written statements, and in our intellectual behavior.
Knowledge is represented in the diversity and richness of human language; the spoken
and the written. Unfortunately, there are more than 3000 languages on earth not counting
numerous dialects. It is beyond our brain’s capacity to learn them all in a single lifetime.
Thus, by default or mutual agreement, we have learned a unifying language that covers
the globe. Although the idealists are still around who learned Esperanto, a mixture of
many languages and are desperately clinging to it, the de facto global language has become English with large pockets of French and Spanish still surviving from colonial
days. By their sheer numbers, most people speak, however, Chinese. During the cold war
it was said, “if an optimist, you learn Russian; if you are a pessimist, you learn Chinese”,
thus, reflecting our anxiety towards potential modern imperialism. Today, we may add to
this phrase, “if you are a realist, you study English” on account of its proliferation in
technology and commerce.
Knowledge representation is the focal purpose of research in Artificial Intelligence. Essentially, procedures are developed that can intelligently manipulate data structures (G. L. Simons, 1984).
Simons defines two broad categories of knowledge; to know that is a statement of
factual matters; to know how relates to procedures and plans for action. These two categories are connected: Facts can be used to facilitate knowledgeable behavior. The type of
knowledge depends on the subject domain and the required behavior, e.g.:
•
•
Knowledge of objects (to know that..), where facts about objects are stored
knowledge of actions and events (knowing that..), where actions or events
are stored
•
•
knowledge about performance (knowing how to..), where skills and expertise are stored
meta-knowledge (knowledge about what one knows-limitations of knowledge)
A rule-base expert system is divided into a general-reasoning program (rule interpreter)
and a file of judgmental rules derived from an expert (rule base or
knowledge base) The rule interpreter loads the rule base into an
internal representation and uses the
rule base to guide an interactive
consultation with the user
Representation of know-ledge can be considered a combi-nation of data structures
and inter-pretive procedures which can enable a program to exhibit 'knowledgeable' behavior. Structures such as frames and Associative or Semantic networks are used to visualize knowledge as it is associated to related knowledge (Figure 3).
An AI system may be required to think about its knowledge. It should be able to
reason from acquired (given) facts to derive new knowledge. There are different types of
reasoning (G. L. Simons, 1984):
•
•
•
•
•
•
formal reasoning (e.g. in mathematical logic) involves manipulation of data
structures complying with the rules of inference
procedural reasoning such as applying a procedural model of arithmetic to
solve an arithmetic problem
reasoning by analogy implies the use of established (stored) knowledge to arrive at conclusions about new information
reasoning by generalization involves generation of broad facts of particular
circumstances
common-sense reasoning uses common-sense (whatever that means) to derive conclusions from heuristic knowledge (to handle 'fuzzy' information)
meta-level reasoning where knowledge is used about what one knows: one
knows that one knows and what one knows (staking out the boundaries)
The Fuzziness in Language and the Proliferation of Knowledge
Language is the carrier of knowledge. Language by its very nature is often imprecise and fuzzy. Such fuzziness seems to be a consequence of the statistical behavior of
our neurons and neural networks where connection weights determine if a neuron fires or
not. The same words can have different meaning in different contexts. Also, the meaning
of words is often distorted or even completely switched around. For example, the German
word Weib in its origin was an honorable attribute as the English equivalent wife is still
today. However, its meaning has become somewhat derogatory in recent decades.
The fuzziness in our language can lead to misunderstandings, to quarrels, and
even to wars. Such fuzziness is reflected in political discourse that frequently distorts
facts (“the truth”) for purposes of manipulation; manipulation of the electorate, of nations
and the global populus. For eons humans have distorted religious knowledge for power
and for glory. This has been well documented in a recent 5-volume book by Deschner (K.
H Deschner, 1997).
Orwell in his famous novel, 1984, has long ago recognized that those who govern
us are manipulating language for their own goals and gains. Our politicians speak of “political correctness” and mean that theirs is the only “truth”. What was the War Department is now called the Department of Defense. War is now a Police Action.
It is not surprising that there is proliferation of knowledge that consists of truth,
half-truth and outright lies.
Epilogue: From Knowledge and Know-how to Wisdom
As the proverb goes: Knowledge is power how wrongly conceived, knowledge is
little, know-how is king. But wisdom is godly and possessed only by a few. Unfortunately, in our information or better misinformation age, truth in knowledge is often distorted for the purpose of political expedience. The abbreviated sound bytes of our news
services are but a vague abstraction of true knowledge. Through our instant communication technology, information - right or wrong - becomes the playball of the mighty and
the powerful.
Wisdom is born from knowledge that transcends the ordinary. There were the old
sages of the antique, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus who brought
wisdom to humanity. In our times there was Albert Einstein whose deep insight into matter and energy has changed our view of the microscopic as well as the macroscopic
world. And there is Steven Hawking whose ideas have profoundly influenced our understanding of the cosmos.
In recent years, technology transfer has rapidly catapulted many developing nations into modern times. Such transfer has permitted global expansion of commerce
where multinational companies are exploiting the ignorance of other people for vast material gains. They are nations beyond nations. Yet it is the transfer of knowledge of human interaction that is lagging behind. We see it in the phenomenon of terrorism where
our motives of sharing such technology are misunderstood (or maybe not?). Our political
and diplomatic representatives often lack the appreciation of other cultures and vice
versa. We see the face of the ugly American rising again.
The Internet has the potential to proliferate knowledge as never before if only correct knowledge were promoted. Unfortunately, we have to resign ourselves to the fact
that we are all too human and the good comes always with the bad. Here again arise the
two faces of Janus (W. K. Rudloff, 1997).
Acknowledgement
This project was sponsored by a generous travel grant from GSU's Alumni Association under the Directorship of Ms. Rosemarie Hulett. We also appreciate the support
that we always receive from Dr. Edwin Cehelnik, Chairman of the Science Division,
Dean Roger Oden, and the Provost's office.
References
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NH, 1981
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