A recent post on LinkedIn by Marco Tavora Ph.D. reminded me of a habit of that famous physicist Richard Feynman had as mentioned in a book “Genius” by James Gleik which is probably the same source for my first having read about it.
Richard had a notebook that he titled “Notebook Of Things I Don’t Know About.” where he kept a note of things he was not sure about. He was a bit of a genius so the list could fit in a single notebook.
I have a proposal for anyone who wants to improve the world. It will need a little networking skills to find the right people, it might need a bit of money to get it started and it would be useful to have an interest in education or Open Source or Public Domain projects.
Imagine a Application for smart phones, tablets, with web access and a desk top program that all do the same thing. Map out the web of human knowledge. Provide a practical (and) graphical user interface. Every topic would be a node and be connected to any and every node that it shares something with by an edge. The user would be able to easily add tags to any node or edge. The tags could include things like:, qualified, certified, licensed, competent, boring, wow, got that, to do, huh, N/A, magic, voodoo, and any other of a reasonably descriptive and multilingual set of descriptors In a number of orthogonal axis (skill, interest, qualification, etc.).
Add filters for display and analysis and you could probe the network for any topic and determine what is missing from your knowledge base or skill set to become proficient in that chosen topic.
This APP should be Open Source and sufficiently funded at the start to at least develop suitable APIs and data formats that would maintain interoperability with competitors and clones. Personal tag data could be shared with friends and colleagues if desired.
The basic nodes and edges could be mined from Wikipedia. Group edits and adjustments would be used to correct and grow the web. A means of revenue generation is possible to pay for hosting and development. Companies such as LinkedIn could provide links to the system to their recruiters. The system would be designed from the ground up (with I expect willing insight from the EFF or similar) to only serve the user and treat any recruiters, sponsors and corporate interests as the product and they would be able to send offers only and make no queries. Every time they place a staff wanted offer on a collection of skills or competence in certain arbitrarily narrow fields a match would trigger a notification to those who have the skills that a recruiter is looking for someone with their skill sets. The user could respond via outside channels or not as they like. If they respond via the Web of Knowledge then he recruiter would be charged a nominal EUR10 for the referral and that would be it.
This would provide a source of revenue for the web foundation.
The second benefit would be the ability to link sources of information such as Wikipedia pages or seminar transcripts and academic research papers that a user could study to increase their proficiency. Providers could advertise tutoring or curriculum opportunities that cover whichever edges they are prepared to educate the user on.
The start of a global FREE TO USE method of educating the world. The only requirement would be propaganda warnings on sources that do not conform to reality that users can simply hide completely (the sources, or the warnings) as well as any paid resources to enable private study on a zero budget. Spam must be opt in and propaganda must be the enemy.
The idea would be to create a system that would be decentralised enough in the grand scheme of things to prevent hijack, managed enough to provide income to content creators (eventually) and fund operations. It should be able to survive any kind of political interference and academic capture by industrial lobbies or political interests.
All comments welcome.
You suggest a utopian ideal; but Wikipedia is worthless as an ACTUAL source of information. Anyone can edit it and add nonsensical WOKE lies to virtually any subject. In fact, that is already being done.
The ResearchGate supercomputer in Germany does a very good job connecting keywords.
It helps connect publications by over 20 million users. Users with no uploaded papers can specify their field of interest. Every user can participate by asking and answering Questions and contribute to Discussions. Free to use.
It also creates pages for non-users (living and dead) by making pages listing their publications.
Here is one https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Richard-Feynman-2068286921
But the supercomputer, despite being AI trained, sometimes creates multiple pages, not recognizing it is the same person.
https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Richard-P-Feynman-49541112
Non-users can claim their page.