From BCNGroup Founding Committee 12/19/2003 8:16 PM
The appreciative field works best if there is a shared vision.
Several institutions have a sophisticated maturation process model, that is flexible and which treats the needs of students and faculty as the most important concern. They have maintained a level of integrity over a period of decades.
We must continue to ask about the relationship between the BCNGroup and Knowledge Management (KM) organizations. We continue to hope that the KM community will more fully appreciate what the science, mathematics and correct computer science may bring to the KM community and to society as a whole.
A significant part of the funding for universities comes from patrons. Even in the case of the government, often times the universities rely on the tradition of patronage to ask the Congress for direct funding. This tradition goes back into European history. Other cultural histories reflect a similar philanthropic tradition.
Many of the top universities derive a great deal of wealth from patents.
The BCNGroup Charter (1997) re-structures the foundation of the relationship between pure scholarship and the rest of society, while realizing that scholarship should be an integral part of social values. But we go directly at the issue of the current impoverishment of ALL knowledge scientists, everywhere. The revolution in information technology will be the sudden introduction of simple and very powerful information tools that do not work without the human in the loop. The patents related to these tools will be optimal and thus, like the Primentia Hilbert engine, will be rejected as having “ownership” validity by the US courts, see the Microsoft verse Apple suit over the windows patent. In any case, algorithms and mathematical formula should be owned in common by the society because these things to not string form one mind.
Basic, less perfect, inventions still need to be placed into context and some economic value provided to those who create incremental innovation, not business innovations like Microsoft, but real innovations like what I, or Don Mitchell or Bjorn Gruenwald, etc have. The Charter provides a means by which the scholarly community itself vets patent applications before they are filed so that the PTO is not put in the impossible position of actually understanding the deep theory that will ground the knowledge sciences and be thus reflected in the knowledge technologies.
On the notion that the virtual univeristy is under competition from all quarters, I do not think so. If there is any increased sense of urgency on the Union’s part it is because they wish to re-vitalize the founding vision of serving the student and the faculty, something that most – but not all – universities have simply forgotten. It would be mean spirited to cite examples. But one only has to ask the question “is a university a business of something other than a business”.
The BCNGroup Founders have identified several regional “ignition points” related to the knowledge technology sector. Physical location does not mean a while lot to me. But in Vermont, I understand that a small college was acquired by Union and that this acquisition has gone quite well.
The problem our logical positivist traditions have lead to is a profound and deep cultural resistance to establishing the knowledge sciences. Religious fundamentalism influences politics and politics has influenced government organizations like the National Science Foundation. And this is why we are making the argument that a National Manhattan – like Project to establish the knowledge sciences as an academic discipline should move forward.
The knowledge technology cannot be (1) understood, (2) developed and sold, (3) used as a commodity; unless children are provided a solid foundation in stratified theory and other essential elements. The Python/Mandrake CD, “Knowledge Technology Toolkit for Kids”, will address this educational need.