We as humans generally tend to organise everything we find in chaos - Ourselves, relationships, files, papers, data, or knowledge. It’s in our nature to ask questions, and file them away for use later on. The way we organise, the sheer creative energy we spent into classifying, and creating branches out of the unmeasurable chaos is nothing short of art. Today’s video is all about that art, and a short history lesson.
Understanding Knowledge, And It’s Organisation.
What is knowledge? Dictionary entries define the word as facts, information, skills, literature, classification, and so on. And also awareness, gained via experiencing life. It’s much more than that though. It’s understanding all that information, facts, their interrelations, and interactions within the each other.
Manuel Lima: A Visual History Of Human Knowledge
In the TED video embedded below, Manuel Lima talks about knowledge, and presents a visual history of human knowledge. He has spent ten years researching how knowledge was, and is organised. The video demonstrates how classification, and organisation of knowledge, and knowledge based domains has changed from a “knowledge tree”, and branches of knowledge to “networks”. He demonstrates how the Internet has had a significant affect in how we organise knowledge. He also talks about how this networked based organisation of knowledge is used in real life scenarios. The video is very informative, and visual.
Manuel Lima talks you through beautiful illustrations revived from history, and transitions them into networks. He shows you how creatives around the world today perceive knowledge. There’s a start contrast between how we classified knowledge then vs. how we classify it now. Some of the art work, and diagrams are awe inspiringly beautiful.
If you have 15 minutes to spare today, watch this video. It’s quite interesting.
