Questing in the age of Complex

Issues

Jack Park Problem Solving Round Table

Cisco Systems

23 May, 2016

© 2016 TopicQuests Foundation CC by SA 4.0

Key Opportunity

• A planet-wide, collaborative quest for Global Thrivability*. – Issues include

• Sociological events – Health, epidemics, wars,…

• Geophysical events – Climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes, …

• Astrophysical events – Asteroids, our Sun. …

• A Global Knowledge Garden

* Let’s call the quest: EarthMoonshot

Problem Space • Too much information (info glut) • Missing information

– Proprietary and not available – Not proprietary, but hasn't been brought

to addressable space – Massive amounts of tacit knowledge – Native intuition not captured – Incomplete recording

• Trust • Heterogeneity

– Language (vernacular, dialects, etc.) – Different world views on same topic

Opportunity Space • Topic based information that is:

– Brought together through federation with relevance

– Freely available

– Recorded, easily found and built upon

– With tacit knowledge and native intuition captured

• Trustworthy – All sides of the story are covered

• Heterogeneity – Information is captured in a format

that takes into account vernacular, dialects, different world views, etc.

From the perspective of complexity theory, emergence arises from complex systems that create new properties from “autonomous unities coming together into larger, more powerful unities”*

Complex Systems Shared Stories Collaboration in the Garden

The emergence we seek is that of insight into the nature of and solutions to complex problems

Augmenting Social Sensemaking

1

2

3

Creating Ideas

Refining Connections

Connecting Ideas

Cancer patient

Core Garden Architecture

AI Harvest & Study

AI Assistants

Conversation

Garden Connections

Globally federated

topic gardens

enable wormhole-

like connections to

emerge in and

between topic

gardens.

Why Quest?

37

Completed Representation

antioxidants kill

free radicals

Contraindicates

macrophages use free radicals to

kill bacteria

Bacterial Infection Antioxidants

Because

Appropriate For

Compromised Host

Let us co-create our future