Publication: The effect of globalization on the organization of knowledge
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2005
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International Institute of Informatics and Systemics
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Abstract
The globalization of electronic information does not
seek out a more democratic and egalitarian society.
Information is articulated within a set of gears that
entail the social exclusion of those who lack electronic
information. Different ways of accessing electronic
information also create specific and different forms of
development among different countries. There are
established and implanted historical ways of organizing,
and now technology can be used as a way to subjugate
or emancipate. The technological present restricts
thought, whereas the dominant ideology imposes a
certain form of organization. This is why it is necessary
to subvert this trend through different logical-semantic
and ethical-political tools. The complex network of
knowledge, symbolic representations, cultural networks
of knowledge and symbolism make up the backbone of
this integrated instrumentalization of our knowledge.
Traditional classifications of knowledge are limited like
Western epistemology, given that the demarcationism
which makes them up exacerbates difference, because
demarcating is a form of recognition and representation
of classifying structures, which wall off, delimit and
fortify. However, as with any form of power, there are
no discourses without counter-discourses, so a deconstruction
of this demarcationism is indispensable.
Classification is performed by creating always invented
borders with separating objectives, and the scientific
policy of memory and the organization of knowledge is
based on dominant ideas. Knowledge is reduced to a
structured, hierarchical wisdom which, however, takes
on the appearance of including others.
Coherence of meaning is sought out. All cultures are
organized around a closed discourse constructed using
explicative fragments. Power sets up the symbolic
order, and symbols are established as self-defense
mechanisms for meaning. Labeling the real is carried
out from a perspective of coherence. Naming and
conceptualizing means classifying. Reality is a
reproduction of meaning, and there is no reality outside
of the conscience, which is why the reality which has
not been named is intact. As for the Organization of
knowledge, reality is equivalent to representation, or in
other words, there is no other reality than the one which
is represented. In this way, everything that has not fit
into the electronic context is gradually left out of
reality.
The idea is to reduce the plurality of the real to the unit,
by way of concepts or ideas, and the process is
completed in the opposite direction when attempting to
re-construct or recover reality. The nullification of
plurality is thereby made complete. Moreover, identitybased
multi-culturalism attempts to construct otherness
on the basis of self. Culture lies in how things are
ordered. Demarcating means building imaginary
barriers, but there may also be transversal languages for
communication, all within the context of the community
of meaning. The human mind processes things using
programmed mechanisms, in a programming which
may be referred to as Theory, Culture or Religion.
Meaning is shared within a delimited conceptual
framework. Within one specific community, it need not
be inter-culturally shared, and therefore it lacks shared
trans-cultural categories. However, subverting this
order would be an act of rebellion against meaning and
its mindset.
The Revolution of Lights, otherwise known as the
Enlightenment or Modernity, made a commitment to
reason as the most powerful tool for facing the darkness
of the Middle Ages, and it also proposed alphabetical
organization to create order for knowledge in the
Encyclopedia. For the construction of electronic
knowledge, it will be necessary to crate a more humane
rationale and ethics, which must include many other
perspectives and even that which they forget.
Therefore, a new way of organizing knowledge is
necessary.
Within the methodology that sets up the Organization
and representation of knowledge, classification is the
most perishable, even more so that interpretation. Deconstruction
implies thinking about de-classification, or
in other words, the search for other organizational
orders in the universe of knowledge. The tree as an
organizational structure conveys power structures, and
conveys an order of a chaos, like the claim that says the
chaos that order imposes upon us. In the origin of
language lies an externalization of power. On the basis
of this pathos of distance is built the right to create
values and establish rules. In all, the theory of
classifying knowledge implies that all classification is
based on an ethics or set of values. And the very
gestation of language, of the hierarchy and
classification, may lie within the struggle for primitive
forms of control or imposition. It is within these parameters that knowledge organization Systems have
been created.
Description
Proceedings of: 9th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2005, july 10 - 13, 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA
Keywords
Globalization, Knowledge organization, Writing, Oral forms, Visual forms, Demarcationism
Bibliographic citation
The 9th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics : WMSCI 2005 (July 10-13, 2005, Orlando, Florida, USA), Vol. IV, p. 327-332