Is there a need for the modern world to embrace the spread of knowledge for the future by looking at our forefathers?
By acting in the spirit of the people who came before us, we can draw inspiration in defining and spreading knowledge around an ever changing world.
We can look back on the Linnaeus Apostles, seventeen 18th century Swedish scientists – who sought out to discover and catalog the worlds flora and fauna and cultures. A bold act in a world where life was bound by regional constraints in a very rural landscape. The founding of knowledge was brought home on a systematic basis as the blank spots on the map were slowly beginning to fade.
Today we face similar challenges as the world faces the constant changes of globalisation and commercialisation. The aim now isn’t to fill in the blank spots on the map but to fill in the spots of knowledge.
We now have the power to instigate the spread of knowledge through the communication of ideas across a digital sphere. A platform which can act as a global medium for the spread of ideas. This basis for this already exists, the world wide web, yet its something which is very much in its infancy.
These where some of the questions and ideas put forward at an ideas seminar held in the Swedish Parliament last week. A meeting place for journalists and researchers primarily based in Sweden, the focus being on maintaining a balance between the new and old in an ever digitizing world.
If we look back on the last decade, we can see the virulent acceleration of social media, the popularisation of music on demand with Spotify online, knowledge banks such as Wikipedia and fund raising initiatives such as Kickstarter. This is only the beginning of an ongoing digital revolution.
We have the power to create a bastion of knowledge and to spread the understanding of our planet, branching initiatives which offer free resources for anyone wherever you are in the world.
“Knowledge isn’t always placed in the hands of those who have the power to uphold it” says Jennie Erin Smith, freelance journalist for The Wall Street Journal who was one of the lecturers present at the seminar.
Today we need new apostles to instigate the spread of knowledge, to create online institutions and academies in the spirit of those who came before. From this we can begin to link science, technology and democracy in the spreading of “unlimited freedom, the written word” says Mathias Klang, lecturer at Gothenburg University.
Yet we have to walk the line between technology and digital liberty in the search of ascertaining a consensus on how we should go about all this. These are the first tentative steps toward such a future.
