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The potential for computer technology to revolutionize knowledge systems is
of course not only well known, but also well underway. There are many
\cite{BUV45,END63,NET65} who have championed the above ideas into the idea
of constructing a "universal knowledge system" which would not only
dynamically represent the current state of knowledge, but also make it
accessible at multiple levels of resolution and in multiple orderings. Such
a system is envisioned to have: universal access to all individuals and
groups; universal content of all representable knowledge; unlimited
"collaborative granularity" to group people and groups of people into
other groups of people; a completely connected architecture, to ensure
accessibility of the whole system; complete flexibility of representational
form and modality; and a maximal interface through human sense organs and
effectors, perhaps to the point of neural interfacing.
Of course, such a goal is still quite remote, for those researchers or any
others in any field. Yet where else but in Cybernetics and Systems Science should this be
seriously attempted? Where else are the fundamental principles of
information systems so well understood and developed? Where else is this
intimate relation between people and machines more highly championed? And,
what other field could most benefit from the possibility of an easing of
the construction of a unified conceptual territory from a vast,
heterogeneous expanse?
