The renaissance of global knowledge

A common sight these days is of people flashing their mobile phones in various shapes and sizes and in practically all the colors in the spectrum. The now ubiquitous gadget has emerged as the new equalizer in our society today. Having a cell phone cuts across social strata. The young and the old, the advantaged and the disadvantaged, have taken to this now-a-necessary-communication-tool to link up with one another.

In fact, the technological attraction can be alarming. It is common to see two or more people seated on one table having lunch or dinner in a restaurant not talking to each other. They are rather engrossed with their individual cell phones to do actual calls, send text messages, e-mail, browse the Internet, or simply play games. Everyone seems to have been taken by what Benson Puah of Singapore’s Esplanade calls the "sexiness of technology," that relating to people on a more personal basis has indeed become a chore, or worst, a bore.

The present era is marked by a convergence of technology, media, culture and people. In such a milieu, the aim should be to rise above technology, for technology is nothing new. If we are mesmerized by the razzle-dazzle of technology, there is imminent danger looming, particularly when all that is old is being replaced by the illusionary new.

This is the sentiment that pervaded the three-day World Library Summit (WLS) held recently at Suntec Singapore. The summit’s theme, "Global Knowledge Renaissance," focused on knowledge augmentation, knowledge governance, people connectivity and cultural entrepreneurship as key foundations for new knowledge societies. It converged traditional strengths of libraries and archives with modern-day implementations of knowledge tools and applications in the IT arena.

National Library Board Assistant Chief Executive R Ramachandran said, "We started the Summit with the idea of a ‘Global Knowledge Renaissance.’ The old ‘Renaissance’… was a period of great achievements in the arts and sciences in Europe. Today, 500 years later, a new wave of renaissance is emerging. It is no longer confined to Europe. It is global. With the phenomenal advancement of computer and Internet, and the convergence of IT, telecommunications and media, the speed of change in a connected world is really unprecedented… Just as the old ‘Renaissance’ which took over 200 years to unfold, the new Renaissance will take at least some decades to play out."

The summit gathered more than 1,000 professionals in the information and knowledge- related fields from all over the world, which included policy-makers, industry players, knowledge managers, information specialists and providers, academics, curators, chief information officers and other library scientists.

Leading these visionaries are two luminaries in the field, Dr. Douglas Carl Engelbart, the acknowledged inventor of computer applications, and Dr. Charles Goldfarb, the father of markup languages.

Engelbart, is arguably one of the most celebrated authorities in computer-supported collaborative work today. He is a pioneer in predicting, designing and implementing the future of organizational computing. His research in team-support technologies (in particular, the on-line System NLS, and its evolutionary successor, Augment) benefited many knowledge workers in industry and government.

Presenting his paper "Knowledge Augmentation for the 21st Century," Engelbart observed that technology innovation threatens to tear the social fabric. He examined the new developments that strain the ability of governments, libraries and other social institutions to bridge the digital divide. To reestablish the balance, Engelbart offers, a rich human-centric evolutionary framework, which harnesses innovative use of new technology to augment human capability. He outlines the "Bootstrapping" methodology and proposes a role for world library organizations as leaders in knowledge augmentation for the 21st century.

Goldfarb, for his part, opts to expound on the relationship between markup languages and knowledge retention. He is known worldwide as the inventor of the original SGML language in 1974, one that underpins both the HTML and XML languages. The worldwide deployment of markup languages revolutionized many organizations whose systems and products require massive and complex documentation.

In his paper "Markup Languages and Knowledge Retention," Goldfarb observes that the library has historically been a repository of physical things – books, recordings, and other media – and only indirectly a repository of ideas. Our approaches to automating knowledge management have to a large degree reflected this history.

Goldfarb commented on the current and popular shift from purely things-based to knowledge-based, from physical to electronic. The real challenge is to optimize computer technology for knowledge processing and not only for data processing. There should be a shift of focus from rendered information to abstract knowledge that is real knowledge.

We can automate card catalogs, but can do little to interconnect the objects they describe. Thanks to markup languages such as XML, however, we now have the means to capture, store and interconnect abstract ideas without first rendering them. Instead of just storing things we can truly retain collective knowledge – integrated, interconnected, reusable and renderable as needed.

Of the more than 30 speakers invited to present their papers in the three-day conference, only one comes from the Philippines. Tina P. Colayco, managing director, ArtPostAsia Pte. Ltd. presented "The Power of Innovative and Integrated Collaboration."

Colayco, a professor teaching graduate courses and digital art and design courses at the UP College of Fine Arts, focused on the new communities on the Internet that are evolving as specialized distribution channels of information. The delivery of diverse but useful information, services and resources peculiar to the needs of these domains requires the creation and development of new information structures, customized access and compatible systems. Advances in creating these "new knowledge environments" call for innovative and integrated collaborations that cross geographical borders and disciplines.

Colayco said the audiences in a community that shares interest in Southeast Asia’s art and culture consist of the artists, art collectors, academics, researchers for the arts, art writers, art students, art professionals and art enthusiasts.

Internet users from these groups turn to the web for either retrieving or sharing information relating to their aligned spheres of interest (research, promotion, sales, discussions, and networking).

The information available may also be contained in varied formats that users may or may not prefer. Some will want old text from the seminal book of a particular artist (off-line text), while others will want the visual of the artist’s work (visuals from a catalog or a museum).

One format may not be as useful to one group, but may be effective for another sector. An interactive on-line gallery presentation of an artist like "Fernando Amorsolo" (one of Philippine art’s pre-war master painters) may not be the preferred format of a serious researcher. It will, however, definitely appeal hands down to a group of high school students who will take notice, not only of the presentation but the subject itself.

There is a need to produce new information structures in real domains of use like art and science communities. Audiences in these communities know what information they need but find themselves in a maze of scattered and jumbled lists and links, ending up exhausting resources (time, skill) to find what they want.

With new information structures for the Internet, new technology-based systems and formats need to be explored for maximum responsiveness. Under this category also falls the challenge of regional connectivity and making available new infrastructures to make on-line access more affordable in Southeast Asia.

Information will have to be aggregated, selected and delivered in an easy-to-understand structure for channels or communities to use.

On the whole, the conference is a start to the knowledge revolution at a global scale. Libraries, museums, archives and other knowledge institutions are really better positioned for the future than many other organizations and institutions. As rightly pointed out by some speakers, there is a need to adapt, adopt, converge or innovate to be relevant and be the prime movers in this fast- changing world.

Ramachandran, in his closing remarks, hoped that we are able to connect our human systems with the tools that are at our disposal.

WLS was organized by the National Library Board of Singapore, and co-organized by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, and the National Heritage Board of Singapore, together with 20 other public and private institutions and international organizations like the Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL) and Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP).

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For comments, send e-mail to ruben_david.defeo@up.edu.ph.