What You Will Find Here

On this page, and throughout these writings, I propose, and summarize an argument for, what is foremost intended as an approach to the world, and a way to best confront the problems we are all trying to solve. Due to the complexity of the questions this approach would face, the most productive form it could take is of a novel academic discipline. The field would be called "sophology"- the study of information. It is not communication, or epistemology, or library science, but a comprehensive and ongoing examination of where we get all of the information on which we base our actions- not only in a general or theoretical sense, but in a personal way that has immediacy to our individual, and eventually collective, lives. It starts with the acknowledgment that an immensely influential source is our personal interactions with other people. The urgent need for this field is a conclusion reached over the course of several years of research, conducted across forty existing academic fields, in which too many serious problems persisted because of simple, easily rectifiable ignorance, and no more complicated things than the length, type, number, and variety of personal interactions could be seen to have profound repercussions throughout politics, education, economics, and an uncountable number of other areas. Information as its own quantity must, and can be, given the same level and care of constant attention with which we now treat any of these things.

In the documents below are first a stand-alone more heartfelt introduction and argument, and then a more detailed summary in five parts, which follows closely the structure and logic of the book now being completed that lays out the argument in full, supported extensively by existing scholarship. The individual pieces of writing can all be reached by the links above- The Story, In Anticipation, Information, Learning, Searching, Sophology.

I want you to know about sophology, because I believe that you and the rest of the world will benefit deeply from it. I have done the work, because I believe that you and the rest of the world will benefit deeply from it. I want those who are young and eager and going out to shape the world to know about it, and I want those who have been shaping it for years, and know the most about it, to know about it.

Read it when you have time. If you see value in it- please- PLEASE- tell others about it. Your friends. Your colleagues. The people with whom you fall unexpectedly into pleasant conversation. The ideas will take millions- millions of people- before they will begin to approach their full potential. I, am only one.