Tomorrow’s Universities and the Seven Pillars of the Knowledge Revolution

IAU Horizons, the Association's news and information magazine is addressed primarily to IAU Member Institutions and Organizations, but is also sent to a selected audience beyond the IAU Membership such as Ministries of Higher Education, international organizations, national and regional associations of universities and others.
Tomorrow’s Universities and the Seven Pillars of the Knowledge Revolution (IAU Horizons Vol. 18, no.3 & Vol.19, no.1)
By Ismail Serageldin, Director, Library of Alexandria, Egypt. The Seven Pillars of the New Knowledge Revolution The ICT revolution and the globalization we are witnessing are also promoting what I call the “New Knowledge Revolution”. This knowledge revolution can be characterised by seven key “pillars”. These are:
Parsing, Life & Organization – Since the beginning of time, whether we were writing on scrolls or codexes, the accumulation of knowledge was based on parsed structures, with units put next to each other like bricks in a wall of an emerging structure. In addition each piece was “dead”, or fixed, once published. The Internet changed all that. The web page became the unit of parsing, and it is constantly updated. Today, we witness fluid merging of text and image, both still and video, and 3D virtual reality and augmented reality. The structure, organization and presentation of knowledge will become one large interconnected vibrant global living tissue of concepts, ideas and facts that is growing exponentially and which will require new modes of thinking to interact with it.
Image & Text – Throughout history, we transmitted information mostly as text. The human brain can process visual information with incredible rapidity, but images were difficult to produce and to reproduce. Today everybody can record images and we can expect far larger reliance on image – in addition to text – in the future.
Humans & Machines – With the exception of pure mathematics and some aspects of philosophy, it will no longer be possible for any human being to search for, find and retrieve, and then manipulate knowledge in any field, without the intermediation of machines.
Complexity and Chaos – The world we live in is remarkably complex. Ecosystems, biological functions and the socioeconomic transactions of a globalizing world are all exceedingly intricate and chaotic. Many of our models, based on the simple mathematics and analogies drawn from physics, are proving inadequate.
Computation & Research – Computing and information science will no longer be only for assisting in crunching large numbers. Today, Computational Science Concepts, tools and theorems will weave into the very fabric of science and scientific practice.
Convergence & Transformation – In simplest terms, once upon a time we had chemistry and biology as distinct and separate enterprises, now we also have biochemistry. Such moments of convergence, generating new sciences and insights, are extremely productive in the development of our knowledge and our technologies.
Pluri-Disciplinarity & Policy – The old academic “silos” of disciplines when functioning alone are counterproductive. Many of our real life problems, such as poverty, gender or the environment, are all multi-dimensional and complex and require a special way of organizing all the various disciplinary inputs. We need the wisdom of the humanities in addition to the knowledge of the natural sciences... Read more in IAU Horizons Vol. 18, no.3 & Vol.19, no.1.