Have – Want – Need

Just when the cold war finally ended  and we felt somewhat secure, things started to heat up again. The internet now echoes or amplifies our insecurity around the world in a matter of seconds, affecting everyone within global earshot. Our  new means of communication has now made everything more relevant to everyone else – everywhere – and instantly.

The mechanics of that web are also changing from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 and beyond. “We’re moving from documents to data, from pages to triples, from HTML to RDF, from keyword to context.”

I certainly am unqualified to build in or on that new technology.  My limited coding ability now qualifies for the computer museum of almost forgotten languages. But I would offer a reflection from past data management principles, and a minimalist framework for this new relevance. It is also a simple  ‘triple ‘, and while perhaps not worthy of a patent, it is patently obvious and will be useful to frame our ongoing discussion within the new technology.

Any situation we face can be considered through this ‘lens’ and processed through this logical framework. The simple way to frame our issues and create new shared opportunity is that we must:

• first examine what we HAVE (documents/information)
• then compare that against what we WANT (meaning/insight)
• and discover what we all truly NEED (relevance/sustainability)

As we move from the web of words (documents) to the web of meaning (relevance), the structure of information has also evolved to first become normalized toward each new structure and then become consistently conformed to that new structure. That evolution is expected and necessary for us to benefit from what each revision of technology has to offer and what we all desire as the eventual outcome. Unless we also amend to each new version, we would have no added capacity to move toward interpolation (between diverse languages and contexts) and toward needed interoperability (the cooperative results of our convergent collaboration).

The mechanics of our evolution toward this desired technical interoperability may offer a parallel insight into the human interaction layer that gets represented across this expanded neural network. We may have finally arrived at the threshold to a quantum leap in our ability to make sense of so much nonsense. Perhaps we can finally gain the mutual benefits so long desired by all humanity, but scarcely realized – until now.

If and when and however we get the technology to work for us, we must also all find a way to work in it, to our mutual benefit. That will only occur if we are able to:

• honestly complain about what we individually don’t want (or already have).
• have the equitable representation of our individual desires (what we really want).
• objectively and cooperatively discover sustainable solutions (what we truly need)

that can afford us all a win-win result.

Unless this new technology gives us the democratic access to expression and equitable access to benefits, it will have done us all a great dis-service. Unless we can use it to converge toward consensus, we will certainly digress toward insecurity, separatism, and even more conflict.

So as we layer in the operating elements of this new technology stack,  perhaps our first layer of context will reflect that socially-important “triple” (have-want-need) so that our search for solutions is always relevant (personally) and equally relevant to other seekers (globally).

Not only is the democratization of information important,

but so is the information of democracy.

The right of free speech, our representative shared governance,

and a sustainable peace are also at stake.

Perhaps the technology has finally evolved to the point that we can co-manage our path forward toward mutual success instead of abandoning the weakest of our human efforts as if our own accidental survival were a reason for independent celebration.

Perhaps our ability to reason has enabled us to create a reasoning technology by which we all can finally interact reasonably – cooperatively – and globally.

What’s NEXT – with YOU? – care to comment?

- dare to COOPERATE?

Let us know what part you want …to enjoy – with us!!

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NOTE: While this website is my personal initiative, the ASK4™ approach is a participant-managed collaboration platform and the U-Netted Nations™ is the result of our ‘Collaboration On Purpose’. My voice becomes one in a million – immediately.