Month: April 2002

Synchronicity, Jung and I Ching – start a new thread.
I Ching Edition & translation by Hellmut Wilhelm & Carey Baynes.
On-line copy of the Foreword to I Ching by Carl Gustav Jung.
Synchronicity – the principle of Meaningful Coincidences. This is a somewhat mystic / psychobabble source, but a readable summary of Jung and Synchronicity, and relationship to “new physics” of the early 20th century.
Chris Lofting’s web-site on Meaning from a Semiotic Perspective also includes Jungian Typology and the I Ching as applied to psychometric profiling (a la Myers-Briggs) etc.

Meanwhile picked-up the Synergetics thread, prompted by Brian Josephson
Hermann Haken at Stuttgart Uni
Bob Ulanowicz at Chesapeake Bio Lab

Spooky synchronicity developing between non-locality, paranormal, quantum computing & information. Stapp and Josephson would clearly appear to be onto something.

Catch 22 or The Ultimate Cop-Out ?
I am clearly proceeding in an unashamedly unscientific way.
Effectively, I already know I am right and am seeking not so much supporting evidence, as meaningful, useful, implementable ways of expressing what is needed. I’d like to think I’d notice if I came across significant counter evidence. What was that about western arrogance ? I have to say, however, that every experience (new or existing) re-inforces the central hypothesis, neatly summarised in the Nonaka / Chun Wei Choo quotation below. Interestingly, even staunch defenders of the scientific method, and the preservation of doubt (such as Feynman), leave us the escape route that such method is not necessarily applicable to human / social sciences (sic). Knowledge Modelling appears to be one such subjective subject. Ethnographic / behavioural studies are much closer to the truth. (Walsham / Myers et al.)

Another Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning Link
Clive Holtham’s KM links page. Also Clive’s home page at CUBS.
Broad and varied range of links included – though no links to original material. Interesting Creativity stuff in addition to usual KM. Can find no reference to his earlier Warp & Weft concepts of Data / Info / Knowledge / Wisdom.
Interesting link to Intelligent Learning Organisation by Chun Wei Choo. The link from Holtham is an old one – to a draft of what is now a book in its third edition. Worth following-up Negative Entropy = Information also Information Processes / Organisational Behaviour / Organisational Learning / Decision Making and the Meaning of Life ! I think this guy has got it. All the right ingredients and a sense of humour – unbeatable. Quote from Nonaka, quoted by Chun Wei Choo in his Digital Libraries Singapore Conference paper based on Chapter 8 of his Intelligent Learning Organisation book.

Quote
The centerpiece …. is the recognition that creating new knowledge is not simply a matter of “processing” objective information. Rather, it depends on tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees and making those insights available for testing and use by the company as a whole. The key to this process is personal commitment, the employees’ sense of identity with the enterprise and its mission. Mobilizing that commitment and embodying tacit knowledge in actual technologies and products require ….. A company is not a machine but a living organism. Much like an individual, it can have a collective sense of identity and fundamental purpose. This is the organizational equivalent of self-knowledge – a shared understanding of what the company stands for, where it is going, what kind of world it wants to live in, and, most important, how to make that world a reality. … In the knowledge-creating [learning organisation] company, inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity – the province of the R&D department or marketing or strategic planning. It is a way of behaving, indeed a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker …..
(Nonaka) UnQuote [my bold emphasis]

In other words it reinforces the fact that Enterprise Information Models need a subjective / non-classical basis if they are to be any use.

[Historical Note – Spotted and introduced myself to Clive Holtham at a “PRIMA” conference in London 5 or 6 years ago, where the import of his “soft” paper appeared to go unrecognised in an alien “hard” engineering field in the Process Industries. Looks like he’s moved on to bigger and better things.]

Early AI History according to RobotWisdom
These are Jorn’s memoirs from the Institute of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, from which he was fired in 1992. For “AI” in RobotWisdom read Knowledge Modelling, with a human / behavioural slant. Reminded to re-read by the Arthur Andersen / Roger Schank Virtual Learning reference in the New York Metro on the Andersen / Enron fallout. (The story, by JJCramer of TheStreet.com, also for the Auditor / Consultant scam content.)

Interesting too, ironic actually, given my empathy for Jorn’s line of thinking, and his falling-out with Schank / ILS, that Schank’s company should be called “Socratic Arts“. It’s yet another classical vs non-classical reasoning battle. No problem with Schank’s Virtual Learning approach – Heuristic, with low-risk “space to fail” simulator environment – basic common sense as used for decades in high-health-and-safety-risk industries. His success stories in selling simulator packages is like any application software success – Provided the application domain is reasonably clearly defined, a classical-rational information model will suffice. This appears to be more a matter of (engagingly / efficiently / effectively) “teaching” something that is already known, rather than learning new knowledge. Excellent training strategy, but pretty limited for “learning organisation” aspirations. (Interesting independant summary / commentary on Virtual Learing from JJJKasvi, Helsinki University of Technology – interesting source of other KM material.)

Same issue with Chris Gray’s stuff (JIMS Cambridge) on organisational learning ?
Same confusion between “education” and “knowledge” ?