Imagine you are hiking in the dark, alone in the wilderness. The moon gives off a faint glimmer of light, just enough to reveal the path ahead of you. You hear a noise, and  your adrenaline spikes. When what at first sounds like a small animal rustling in a bush grows louder, you can no longer assume it is caused by a small animal.  Instead, you imagine that you have awoken a mountain lion in the darkness. Stoping dead in your tracks, you remember your pistol… and your single bullet in the chamber. The mountain lion, startled by your sudden presence in her previously uninterrupted and docile slumber, roars and charges in your direction.

In the blink of an eye, you quickly assess all the information you have available to you: type of animal, speed of animal, distance from the animal, accuracy of the pistol, amount of light, your proficiency in shooting your pistol with its single bullet – and finally, your odds of survival if attacked. With the lack of light, you know it will be a tough shot, but regardless you take aim. With your pistol drawn and the lion charging, you think “15 meters, do I take the shot?”  In the dim light, your eyes can’t fixate on the fast moving lion, and you can only discern the general direction of the lion’s harrowing lunge. “10 meters, do I take the shot?”  “5 meters, do I take the shot?” ”Wait for it to pounce, then take the shot?” What will you do?

Our dynamic knowledge revolution over the last 30 years is the roaring lion and we, as today’s scientists, are the ones taking shots in the dark. Our knowledge, information and technology are so disconnected and so disjointed that our ability to make knowledge-based decisions are, at best, limited. Even with the vast amounts of data and potential associates on the internet there are few trusted and well organized sources of information. Without a complete overhaul of how we assimilate, organize and distribute our knowledge, using available information and technology, we will continue to make our decisions based on the partial knowledge and the partial information available to us. If this is the best we can do, it is also the best that our leaders can do. A status quo such as this is wholly unacceptable.

The idea for forming a Global Knowledge Council originated with a paper written during my graduate studies. The topic was to assess human knowledge and identify problems with how we make decisions, use history for examples and examine how we come up with solutions to the problems presented to us. This site is built as an approach, a forum that will facilitate collaboration across disciplines and countries.  The ultimate goal is to form an interdisciplinary scientific knowledge Council to identify, bring together, harness, and provide the knowledge, information and technology necessary to our leaders to begin to solve many of the problems the world presents to us.

Many aspects of these ideas have already been created, implemented and put into operation, but the integration of knowledge across disparate disciplines remains a formidable struggle. Our objective to overcome many of the obstacles in accessing knowledge is based on the premise that many of the current knowledge-sharing organizations were founded and developed before the internet revolution. With the facilities offered by the internet, there is significant room for improvement for sharing ideas, data and knowledge across all disciplines. Such collaboration could enhance the assimilation of shared knowledge into society’s mores, and into its ethos. This site will promote those facilities and engender this collaborative culture.

There is no silver bullet for this monstrosity of a problem; but even if it is somewhat in the dark, this is a first shot. Knowing if it is in the right direction relies upon all of us.