Blindness and cognitive panoramas_by Flemming Funch
The computerized information revolution is mostly amplifying the little part of our minds that we could call the analytical or logical mind. Left brain. You know, where we try to focus on some facts in order to deduce their logical consequences. The same part of our mind that is incapable of focusing on more than 5-7 different things at the same time.
But we’re not getting much help for the bigger part of our minds, the sub-conscious, the intuitive, the wholistic, the right brain. Which probably is atrophying rapidly.
Oh, the internet world has lots of raw material one could be creative and intuitive with. But it is not particularly wired to amplify our wholistic, intuitive way of seeing things.
I get back to dimensions again. The space of information we now live in has a great many dimensions to it, many more dimensions than we’ve lived in before, many more degrees of freedom. Yet all our tools have only a very small number of dimensions to them, and many limits and restrictions. You move around on the net and read documents, you can get lists of them, organize them on your desktop. You use an assortment of different applications that all have their own features, limitations and peculiarities. Much of that is cool. But all of it either has too few dimensions or not access to the data I’d want to see.
I’d want to not just have access to 100 billion articles, but more direct access to the actual information sources. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic channels, digital channels, all the raw numbers. And I’d want to be able to organize and visualize that as it suits me. Again, not as a catalog of articles, but as a mostly visual information space with many dimensions. And, since I can’t make sense of it all alone, I need ways of navigating in multi-dimensional information spaces shared with others, and model shared meaning within them.
I’d certainly need the semantic web along the way there, or something better. A universal way of storing information so that it can be cross-related with any other information at will.
As to how to look at it, I don’t know how exactly that will look, but I do know it has to be several quantum leap paradigm shift orders of magnitude above the collaborative newspaper interface we have to the net today.
It can happen in many small steps, of course. Google Earth and iPhone multi-touch interfaces go in that direction. Simple intuitive ways of accessing vast amounts of information quickly, without it ever getting complicated. More clever inventions like that might take us somewhere.
Anyway, back to Heiner’s article a bit. He references some concepts and terms that hint at some of the thinking needed. And envisioned solutions like:
COGNITIVE PANORAMA
A conceptual superstructure that defines and identifies topics as logical places, displays relations and connections within these topics or issues”
This concept has been introduced by H. BENKING. The following comments are BENKING’s explanations, plucked from a series of papers and lectures (see bibliography)
“The cognitive panorama is a metaparadigm to counteract cyberculture’s anticipated impact due to its: 1)open-ended universality, 2) loss of meaning’ 3) loss of context”
It is now obvious that we risk drowning in an ocean of incoherent data which could lead us to total conceptual anarchy.
According to Benking, the proposed cognitive panorama “allows us to embody and map concepts in their context and develop common frames of reference”
Such a conceptual superstructure ” helps us to locate and become aware of: 1) what we know or miss, 2) where we are and what we think, 3) where we miss, underuse or manipulate information. By avoiding a “flat” chaotic mess of data which leads to the known “lost-in space” syndrome, we actually define cognitive spaces.
Through reflection on conceptual positions, outlining and embodying situations or topics (logical places or containers) we can follow meaning into embodied context and semantic spaces, and also scrutinize abstract “realities” by exploring participatory and collaboratory approaches.
®Conceptual navigation; Convertilibilty of meanings; Ecocube; Harmonization; Knowledge map; Underconceptualization
Yeah, I’d like one of those.
I think humanity has the potential for a great evolutionary leap, or several. But just like software lags years behind the capabilities of hardware, our information structures lag years behind the actual information. I hope we somehow can catch up, so I can feel a little less blind.
source: Ming the Mechanic