About a year ago, we wrote about Dropping Knowledge, a self-described "educational resource and online network that connects people around the globe seeking to exchange ideas and solutions to the most pressing issues of our day." The plan was to aggregate the collective wisdom and insight of leading thinkers in an online public archive. At the time, Jamais asked the sensible question: all this is great, but why only ask the famous people for their opinion? What about the collective wisdom of the voices who don't often have a platform to be heard?
Apparently the question was heard and considered. In just a few weeks, Dropping Knowledge will host Table of Free Voices, an event that will catalyze the launch of their new "dialog platform." The event will springboard off of the chosen group of 112 leading thinkers, who will come together (around the world's largest table in Berlin) to discuss 100 questions, distilled down from thousands submitted by the international public; but it will grow through wider engagement. The next day:
Dropping Knowledge will launch a freely accessible Copyleft knowledge portal and dialog forum, seeded with audiovisual content from the first Table of Free Voices. Founded on a catalog of 23,000 interconnected problem classes, the platform will empower the global public to ask and answer questions, exchange viewpoints and ideas, and join in dialog around the most comprehensive hierarachy of social topics ever compiled.
Navigating by natural language search and an intuitive visual browser, users till come to 'inhabit' shared themes of concern, setting up camp around the topics that matter to them most. By igniting global discussion and covering the most pressing questions of our time, dropping knowledge will foster new thoughts, reflections and sustainable solutions to inspire communities of action within the emerging global society.
Now the conversation will have a chance to live and evolve through the ongoing exchange of ideas, and the possibility of having questions answered by people around the world with varying viewpoints and expertise. It will be interesting to see how quickly the dialogs ignite and what emerges from them.
