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d:2022-08-06

previousconnecting useful knowledgenext

What knowledge is useful?

2022-08-06

Let's start with a sense of what useful knowledge we are considering.

To build a society and economy that is new and different from our current one, to create in the formation of an economy that is sustainable, equitable, as circular as possible; or one that is recovering from economic and social collapse, there will be a need to look at most of the know-how present in our current society and economy. When I just now thought over this, I came up with this list:

  • sustain and manage natural resources
  • tend and steward ecosystems (incl. soil)
  • look after human/animal/plant health
  • grow and store food
  • prepare/cook food and drink
  • obtain and process raw materials
  • build and maintain buildings
  • make and repair clothes
  • manage water
  • capture, store and use energy efficiently
  • move or transport people and things
  • make tools, machines, works of art
  • recycle waste ecosystemically
  • understand and organise systems
  • cooperate economically
  • create and govern commons
  • learn, grow, develop as people
  • help others to learn etc.
  • invent/find new ways of doing things
  • organise, store and communicate knowledge
  • enjoy life

This is just a guess, meant only to point to the range of knowledge that I am considering. There are other really useful websites with compilations of a wide spectrum of knowledge. Take, for example:

as just the first two that come to mind. There are several more. But these two serve to make the point that there is no agreed way of classifying this kind of diverse knowledge; and that there are no universal attempts to cross link different sites of this kind.

We can compare and contrast these to the current standards:

  • SIC for industries
  • SOC for occupations

which are intended to be fairly comprehensive of current economic activity, but include industries and occupations which may not necessarily feature in a new economy.

I'll deal with the questions of indexing these things later. Just to mention, though, the point that may be obvious: Wikipedia itself, though extremely useful in its own way, cannot provide a repository of all useful information. Though it can point to many useful resources, the editing rules mean that Wikipedia cannot be comprehensive.

d/2022-08-06.txt · Last modified: 2023-04-07 10:09 by simongrant