Evaluation of Knowledge Integration through Knowledge Structures and Conceptual Networks

Conceptual network as: a) passive network of concepts evolving through scientific inquiry and communication; b) network of interacting agents (scientists who have their own conceptual network {K} evolving through scientific communication).

By: José María Díaz-Nafría (BITrum Research Group, Spain; Madrid Open University, Spain), Mark Burgin (University of California, Los Angeles, USA), Blanca Rodriguez-Bravo (Universidad de León, Spain)

Published in: G. Dodig-Crnkovic, M. Burgin (eds.), Philosophy and Methodology of Information, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/9789813277526_0021

Abstract: The chapter addresses the general problem of assessing the integration of knowledge from different scientific disciplines joined in interdisciplinary settings and its specific application to the study of information. The method is based in the development of Interdisciplinary-Glossaries as tools for the elucidation of the network of concepts involved which also serve as proxies of the corresponding knowledge integration. We show the results obtained from the application of the network approach to a specific interdisciplinary-glossary devoted to the study of information. These results show the capacity of the methodology depicted to guide the future development of knowledge integration by the corresponding interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary teams, as well as to assess their integration achievements. However, the results described are rather qualitative with respect to the knowledge integration attainments. In order to offer a quantitative assessment, we propose an enhanced methodology in which each contribution and participant in the elucidation process is identified by the knowledge domains involved using a set of domains adapted from the higher categories of the Universal Decimal Classification. Such identification allows assessing the integration through a multidimensional perspective based on: (i) the diversity of the disciplines involved, measured in terms of Shannon Diversity Index, and (ii) The effective integration achieved through the meeting of different perspectives, measured through the analysis of both the semantic network of elucidated concepts and the network of participant researchers, in terms of the average minimal distance between any two nodes and the clustering coefficient, which are combined through the small-world-coefficient, σ.

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Is the structure of our digital world suited for a fair intercultural life?

Digital communication flow in 2016 for Latin America, whose digital communications are practically spinning around a unique hub outside Latin America. It therefore exhibits an structural lack of self-organisation capacity.

By: José María Díaz-Nafría (Universidad de León, Spain | Munich University of Applied Sciences), Teresa Guarda (Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena, Ecuador)

Published in: K. Von Helmolt, D. Ittstein (eds.), Interkulturalität digital – Digitalisierung interkulturell?!, Hannover: Ibidem Verlag.

Abstract:

Intercultural life requires, first of all, a dense net of connections among people belonging to the same culture and with the components of the context in which this culture exists; secondly, a weaker but nevertheless effective network where interactions among different cultures take place. The former is a necessary condition for the very existence of cultural life and its capacity to evolve; the latter is necessary for communication and cooperation between different cultures, therefore, it creates the intercultural space where intercultural life properly exists.

The current digital networks, backed up by big-data technologies, connect people, processes, data, and things, turning information into actions, creating new capabilities and extraordinary opportunities. These digital networks allegedly enable a perfect symbiosis in the interaction between people and machines anywhere, at any time, using any device. In principle, as it is commonly stated, they seem to provide linkage between virtually everybody and everything, thus far exceeding the aforementioned basic requirements for intercultural life. Yet, what is the actual control we really have regarding this connectedness for individuals and cultures? How pervasive is this connectedness really? Is it accessible for everybody and every culture in the same way? What are the filtering mechanisms that make the signalling effective at different levels, and particularly among cultural and intercultural levels? …

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Cyber-Subsidiarity: Toward a Global Sustainable Information Society

Network topology similar to Internet.

By: J.M. Díaz-Nafría (Faculty of Systems & Telecommunications, Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena, La Libertad, Santa Elena, Ecuador | Universidad de León, Leon, Spain | Department of General and Interdisciplinary Studies, Munich University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany)

Published in: Elias G. CARAYANNIS, David F. J. CAMPBELL and Marios P. EFTHYMIOPOULOS (eds.) (2018). Handbook of Cyber‐Development, Cyber‐Democracy and Cyber‐Defense, Berlin: Springer.

Abstract: Most attempts to use the potentials of information technologies in benefit of the fulfillment of the democratic requirements from the local to the global levels are
based on the power of social networks and the utilization of big-data approaches.
However, both the network itself and the portliness of data processing have fundamental limitations that need to be overcome when the size of the population is larger than a reduced group. As to cope with the related complexity, the network provides in certain conditions a characteristic structure which facilitates the emergence of new functional features and consequently a system. It is this structure – the fibers of the systemic relations – and new functionalities concerning the circulation of data what change the portliness of data processing into an appropriate percolation and management of relevant information. By these means, complexity and the corresponding information flow are managed at the lowest possible level, while cooperation and higher-level management is ready to cope just with the excess of complexity the lower level cannot manage properly by itself. But this is the very idea of subsidiarity whose application to the organization of heterogeneous societies has been a foundation of decentralized government since the sixteenth century in many different contexts.

At the age of the global information society, the necessary management of global issues (environment, geopolitics, inequality, etc.) requires both proper levelism and information management from the peoples to communities, to national authorities, and to international institutions. Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model provides a suitable approach to deploy subsidiarity with the backbone of an information and communication infrastructure based on the acquisition, circulation, and processing of relevant information to enable decentralized, democratic decision-making.

Acknowledgement: This work was carried out in 2016-2017 within the framework of Prometeo project supported by Senescyt, Ecuador.

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Information: A Multidimensional Reality

By: José María Díaz Nafría (Universidad de León, Spain; Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany)

Published in: Emilia CURRÁS & Nuria LLORET (eds.) (2012), Systems Science and Collaborative Information Systems: Theories, Practices and New Research, pp. 37-70, Hershey PA: IGI Global publication.

Abstract: Making an incursion in the forest of problems and theories of information, beyond observing a lack of mutual understanding among information theorists, we find out that information can be understood as a multifaceted reality. The variety of theories is in itself a reflection of the complex nature of information. A systematic approach to these theories, looking for common and divergent understandings render– so to speak – a cubist picture of what information really is, showing for instance its multidimensionality. In other words, when we say there is information in cables and organisms, in antennas and societies, in robots and mental states, we do not have to be mistaken: information is considered in each case in different aspects.
Delving into the nature of observation, we will find a solid ground to pose information as a bridge between objects and subjects, therefore providing the possibility to overcome the inveterate segregation of the objectivist and subjectivist understandings. As we will see, such vision also provides the possibility to articulate an understanding of information in its multifaceted reality.

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eSubsidiarity: An Ethical Approach for living in complexity

Haeckel’s 1874 version of vertebrate embryonic development

By: José M. Díaz Nafría (Universidad de León, Spain;  University of Santa Elena (UPSE), Ecuador; Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany)

Chapter published as: DÍAZ-NAFRÍA, J.M. (2017). eSubsidiarity: An Ethical Approach for Living in Complexity. En W. Hofkirchner, M. Burgin (eds.), The Future Information Society: Social and Technological Problems, Singapour: World Scientific Publishing. DOI: 10.1142/9789813108974_0004.

Abstract: It is needless to insist on the significant increase of the complexity we are living in. Whereas the social order arisen with modernity encompassed – at the level of the nation-states – a reduction of social complexity through cultural normalization, the new social and political order is nowadays, as a consequence of globalization, to be intercultural, multilingual and even multi-national. We may encounter a different way of diminishing the complexity at the level of the human agency, but we have to do it in a different way as modernity did it. The management of information and complexity in biology provides some clues to this endeavor. As we see, living beings through its management of complexity enact the subsidiarity principle that can equally be applied to the organization of decentralized political systems. It enables the decrease of complexity at the level of the heterarchical organized agents, while preserving the complexity at the global level. eSubsidiarity was essayed in Allende’s Chile following Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model and in many other human organizations. Could it become a new ethical paradigm at the information age?

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Messages in an Open Universe

By José María Díaz Nafría (University of León, Spain).

Published in: Rafael Capurro, John Holgate (eds.), Messages and Messengers – as an Approach to the Phenomenology of Communication, pp.197-229, Munich: Wilhelm Fink. DOI: 10.30965/9783846750476

Abstract: Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory of Communication and also Kotelnikov’s Theory of Optimal Reception consider that communication is best described by the well-known model of transmission, corruption and recognition of messages known as Information Theory. However, the essential significance of the semantics and pragmatics in communication is omitted from this interpretation. Whereas Weaver considers that the same model of communication can simply be expanded, reproducing its schema in nested levels, research into culture, language and semiotics shows that the reality of communication has further requirements José María Díaz Nafría proceeds to compare this ‘transparent channel’ approach to communication to George Orwell’s Newspeak, a dystopian model of communication from the novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ and to the theories of the French criminologist and early theoretician of public opinion, Gabriel Tarde (1901). Furthermore, he shows the connection between the related theory of optimal reception and the “truthful” recognition of forms in the Platonic tradition. Such ‘closed universes’ (of either messages or forms) are contrasted. For Diaz Nafría ‘understanding’ a message originally means the very fact of being able to provide correct answers to the possibilities offered by this message in a given situation. This ability evolves ‘over time’ from rudimentarily responding to messages, to a more complexly interpreting them.

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