2007
Initiatives
within the framework of the Union of International Associations
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A schematic overview of some of the following information is provided in the Projects Overview, which also provides access to extensive commentaries on individual projects
Encyclopedia project initiated in collaboration with Mankind 2000 [see also Encyclopedia project page and succinct overview in Wikipedia]
- 1972-1976: Yearbook
of World Problems and Human Potential. Mankind
2000 collaborated from 1972 on a joint project with the Union
of International Associations and other organizations in the production
of this 1200-page publication (titled as the Encyclopedia
of World Problems and Human Potential in its subsequent hardcopy,
CD-ROM and online editions). Through the framework provided by the
periodic publication of this computer-assisted volume it was hoped
to initiate a process of continuing dialogue with a wide range of interested
groups, leading to improvement and clarification of the information
and interrelationships recorded in the interlinked sections of the
Yearbook, namely : world problems, international associations and agencies,
human values, multilateral treaties, human development concepts, intellectual
disciplines, occupations and jobs, multinational corporations, integrative
and transdisciplinary concepts, international periodicals, etc.
The first edition, published in 1976, contained some 12,000 entries (including descriptions of 2,600 world problems) interlinked by a network of 58,000 cross-references. Various innovative approaches to presenting this information as "relationship maps" or interactive audiovisual displays are envisaged (including the publication of a "problem atlas").
The publication was designed as a companion volume to the Yearbook of International Organizations of the Union of International Associations with which it was integrated at the computer level.
- 1983-1995: Encyclopedia
of World Problems and Human Potential.
Subsequent editions of the Yearbook of World Problems and Human
Potential, within the framework of collaboration with the Union
of Internations Associations took the form of an Encyclopedia
of World Problems and Human Potential. As an experiment
in knowledge management, this collaborative strategic initiative
was itself subsequrently named as the Union
of Intelligible Associations. The following editions within this
initiative were:
- 2nd edition: initiated in 1983, completed in 1986, as a single volume
- 3rd edition: initiated in 1988, completed in 1990, as two volumes.
- 4th edition: initiated in 1992, completed in 1995, as three volumes,
with the third on global
strategies and solutions, for which essential seed funding was
provided on behalf of Mankind 2000. A CD-Rom version was also prepared
- 1997-2000: Web-based development: With the advent of the world wide web, funding was provided on behalf of Mankind 2000 to enable the UIA to set up and participate in a cooperative providing internet services to international associations from 1995. This became the key for the very early development of the UIA's large website and the Encyclopedia databases it makes freely available thereon. This proven knowledge management capacity enabled the UIA to successfully head a consortium that obtained funding from the European Union for what amounted to a fifth web-based edition of the Encyclopedia: Ecolynx: Information Context for Biodiversity Conservation (major development of online databases with a multimedia emphasis through the EU Information Society programme, approved for funding through to 2000). The project started in 1997 and was completed in 2000 on the initiative of Nadia McLaren. This achievement further enabled the UIA to successfully lead another consortium proposal that was accepted for World Bank funding (although the funds unfortunately had to be reallocated to the crisis in Yugoslavia).
Articulation and implementation of web strategy and the dissemination of hyperlinked database information:
- 1996: launch of 1,400 page (non-interactive) website including comprehensive lists and extensive demos from its databases on organizations, world problems, action strategies, future international meeetings, the biographical profiles, approaches to human development, and human values. These included research papers produced within the UIA context.
- 2000: key organizations and meetings databases were first made available online in 2000
- 2001: presentation of "UIA" as being effectively a virtual organization (Union of International Associations -- Virtual Organization: Paul Otlet's 100-year Hypertext Conundrum ?).
- 2001-2002:
Systematic solicitation of institutional project funding (typically as lead agency in partnership with other bodies), notably the European Commission and the World Bank, primarily on the initiative of Nadia McLaren (with a minimum of formal support or understanding), to develop the online potential of databases, notably leading to the free online dissemination of the Encyclopedia databases from 1997:
- 1996: Facilitating Community through Information: a suite of software-enabled participation tools
- 1997: Building Networks of Concern on Rights of the Child (proposal
to Netherlands National committee for UNICEF)
- Ecolynx: Information Context for Biodiversity Conservation (major development of online databases with a multimedia emphasis through the EU Information Society programme, approved for funding through to 2000)
- 1998: Developing an internet framework for creative dialogue on irreconcilable policy differences
- 1999: Facilitating
inter-project coordination through templates of thematic relationships
- Interactive Conceptual Environmental Planning Tool for Developing Countries (approved for funding through the World Bank's InfoDev program)
- Intelli-Work: procedural framework for the interoperability of decentralized knowledge management processes based on a diversity of partners, commitments and competences.
- 2000: Cultivating Knowledge Ecosystems: adapting visual arts and music to sustain new patterns of knowledge work in community
- 2003: Local Action Dynamics: Knowledge patterns for local, participatory implementation of the Lisbon Strategy
- 2004: Global Knowledge Grid: A New Infrastructure for Understanding Globalization.
The limited response by funding institutions to these substantive proposals by viable coalitions, in comparison with the investment in preparing them, is a strong indication of the problematic nature of the assumptions regarding the utility and viability of knowledge management as exemplified by a Union of Intelligible Associations.
Cessation of the Union of Intelligible Associations as a strategic initiative
- 2005:
Reframing of the potential achievements, dating from 1972, as constituting
a "Union of Intelligible
Associations" (UIA2) in a presentation to the World
Academy of Art and Science (December 2005); confirmed by its
key role in a project of the German
Research Centre on Artifical Intelligence (DFKI)
- 2006:
- Continuing collaboration with DFKI to enable the international multimedia library project of dropping knowledge (Enabling a Living Library), effectively completing and superceding the early ambitions at the origin of UIA within the Mundaneum.
- Generation of a large database of questions (Generating a Million Questions from UIA Databases: Problems, Strategies, Values; Preliminary NetMap Studies of Databases on Questions, World Problems, Global Strategies, and Values), effectively achieving a different form of closure
