In an ever-changing and evolving world, how can we harness all available knowledge, information and technology for the sole purpose of positively benefiting the human race?

Knowledge based decisions in an ever changing world are essential to the success of human organizations. From history, we know that catastrophic events have occurred, such as meteor and asteroid strikes, climate shifts/changes and mass extinctions, wiping out an unknown number of living species. These catastrophic events could not be stopped or their effects prevented in part because of the lack of knowledge and lack of organization of the inhabiting species. Human society has evolved into a knowledge driven society. We must begin to better organize ourselves and cooperate with each other in order to harness our growing knowledge and sophisticated technologies to focus our efforts on preserving the human race from the effects of future catastrophic events, both natural and anthropogenic. Catastrophic events impacting our earth’s systems will occur in the future and the degree of their impact will largely depend on human organizations and cooperation of, and decisions made by, the leaders of the world. The question is, “How can we ensure that the information provided to our leaders and policy makers is based on the most accurate and up-to-date knowledge, information and technology available, so that the decisions made will have the highest probability for success?”

We are in much need of a global effort to organize, assimilate, maintain and promote all available knowledge, information and technology so that the decisions made will have the highest probability for success. The current structure and institutions in place lack this capability, and until we figure out a way to integrate our rapidly growing knowledge, information and technology into a structure that has the capability to use it all, we run the risk of making decisions based on partial knowledge and information, thus leading to a decision that does not have the highest probability for success.

Scott Sellars
Graduate Student
Columbia University

One comment

1. meteoscott says:

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   Some feedback would be great if disagree… Please enlighten me where I went wrong!

   Best,

   Scott