11 September 2007
Biography: Anthony Judge
Website: https://www.laetusinpraesens.org
E-mail: anthony.judge @ gmail.com
Summary: Anthony Judge (Australia) is the instigator of the Union of Imaginative Associations (www.un-imagine.org) -- following his retirement in May 2007 as Director of Communications and Research at the Union of International Associations (UIA) (www.uia.org). He had held this operational position since the 1970s in addition to his formal role as Assistant Secretary-General. Based in Brussels for the century since its founding in 1907, the UIA has been a self-financed, international, nonprofit, research clearinghouse for information on all international nonprofit organizations and their preoccupations.
His continuing responsibility, dating from 1972, had been the development of interlinked databases on: these international organizations, their meetings, their strategies, the problems on which these focus, and their values, together with associated databases on modes of human development, bibliographical data, and biographical profiles -- and on the networks linking these various kinds of entity. Over that period he was specifically responsible for publication of this information in a range of reference media -- including the Yearbook of International Organizations, the International Congress Calendar -- and on enabling web access to their hyperlinked content. In particular, with the financial assistance of Mankind 2000 (www.m2000.org) of which he became Executive Director, he developed the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential for the UIA from 1972 through to its current online integration with these other databases.
As a development of these knowledge management initiatives, and their associated learnings, he has authored a collection of over 1,600 documents on information and knowledge organization of relevance to governance and strategy-making -- including challenges to configuration, comprehension, credibility, communication, and related software possibilities, especially in conferencing dialogue contexts. Specific interests have included futures research and transdisciplinarity with particular interest in exploring user-controlled visual representations of complex knowledge networks over the web (see also Richer Metaphors for Our Future Survival: Narrative autobiography as a futurist, 1996). Other series of papers explore issues relating to governance through metaphor, electronic implications for organization network operation, and the future of dialogue and sustainable community.
These interests, whether professional or personal, have been enriched by involvement with a wide range of international bodies and meetings, whether as organizer, speaker, panelist, contributor or facilitator.
Within the new context of the Union of Imaginative Associations and its associated initiatives, he is continuing this research -- now more specifically focused on the challenges of eliciting new insights, and making more effective use of any relevant knowledge, in response to the urgent challenges of governance and meaningful lifestyles in an increasingly complex environment.
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Nationality: Australian. Resident: Belgium (since 1968). Born: 21 January 1940, Port Said (Egypt). Married to German national. Languages: English, French; some working knowledge of Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch.
Activities (current): Union of Imaginative Associations. Through this context and related initiatives, he is continuing to develop past research. Current work now focuses more specifically on the challenges of eliciting new insights, and making more effective use of any relevant knowledge, in response to the urgent challenges of governance and meaningful lifestyles in an increasingly complex environment. Examples of themes explored in 2007 (see complete list) include:
- Experimental Visualization of Networks: world problems, international organizations, global strategies and human values
- From Patent Rights to Patent Responsibilities: obligations incumbent on owners and licensors of intellectual property
- Potential Psychosocial Significance of Monstrous Moonshine: an exceptional form of symmetry as a Rosetta stone for cognitive frameworks
- Universal Declaration of Patent Responsibilities a draft proposal
- From Lateral Thinking to Voluminous Thinking: unexplored options for subterranean habitats in dense urban areas
- From ECHELON to NOLEHCE: enabling a strategic conversion to a faith-based global brain
- Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality-- including the sciences and other belief systems
- Conditions of Objective, Subjective and Embodied Cognition: mnemonic systems for memetic coding of complexity
- "Human Intercourse": "Intercourse with Nature" and "Intercourse with the Other"
- Universal Declaration of Responsibilities of Human Intercourse: a draft proposal
- Begetting: challenges and responsibilities of overpopulation
- Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined
- Dynamic Reframing of "Union": implications for the coherence of knowledge, social organization and personal identity
- Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations
- Psychosocial Energy from Polarization -- within a cyclic pattern of enantiodromia
- Governance through Patterning Language: creative cognitive engagement contrasted with abdication of responsibility
Activities (1961 to May 2007): Union of International Associations (Brussels, Belgium). Initially as Special Assistant to the Secretary-General, and from June 1969 as Assistant Secretary-General. In the period 2004-5, during a period of financial crisis, this role was extended to that of Secretary-General (ad interim).
- 1977 -- 2007 UIA Director of Communications and Research (computer systems and editorial development)
- 1972 - 1976 UIA Managing Editor, Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential
- 1968 - 1972 UIA Assistant Editor, Yearbook of International Organizations
- 1967 - 1968 Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town (thesis on possible use of computers by UIA)
- 1964 - 1965 Computer programmer, De La Rue Bull (London)
- 1961 - 1963 UIA Bibliographer (on an NSF-funded project)
Functions within UIA:
- Systems design and development: Responsibilities
have included (since 1970) design and implementation of several generations
of computer systems to facilitate processing of information received from
international organizations into forms suitable for various media, and general
responsibility for the operation of the systems and the associated publication
programmes. This has involved early investigation of a variety of technologies:
in-house computers 1972), computer typesetting (1974), email (1979), extension
of email access to developing countries (1981), meta-data structure (1984),
LAN database operation (1985), collaborative editing (1989), automatic translation
(1994), CD-ROM technology (1995), web technology (1996), hyperlink editing
(1997), VRML (1998), inter-institutional data integration (1999), distant
database editing (1999), online data services (2000), sonification of data
(2000), XML (2001), and SVG (2002). From 1997, efforts focused on further
adaptation of interactive web access, participative editing, and multimedia
representation (notably using third-party applications) building on achievements
under a contract with the European Commission (DG XIII) from 1997-2000. Continuing
experiments with generating user-controlled visual representations of the
above knowledge networks over the web, with mnemonic use of sound.
- Database development: Responsibility for the
continuing development of a variety of interlinked databases -- containing
over 61,000 international nonprofit bodies, 240,000 international
meetings (past and future), 56,000 world problems, and other types of
information: strategies (32,000), biographies (21,000), concepts of human
development (4,800), human values (3,300) and the networks of (ca
1,600,000 hyperlinks) between these various kinds of entity. Generated
an experimental online database of one million interlinked questions from
these resources (see Generating
a Million Questions from UIA Databases: Problems, Strategies, Values)
notably to evaluate analytical
mapping of them.
- Publications: Responsible, using the above
data, as editor or managing editor, for periodic reference books
(see UIA-related
Publication and Meeting Initiatives), notably including:
- Yearbook of International Organizations: Guide to global civil society networks, 5 vols annually (from 1983).
- Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (4th ed. 1994-5; online from 2000) (from 1972)
- International Congress Calendar (1960-2007)
46th edition, 2006, quarterly
- Research: Responsibility for research on current and future uses of the information held in the computer databases and on the implications of the development of the network of international organizations, especially in terms of the future challenges to knowledge dissemination, visualization of knowledge structures, and the design of organizational forms more appropriate to the complexity of the network of world problems. Some of this research has been conducted under contract as part of various programmes of the United Nations University (Tokyo) or the information division of the European Commission. Acted as reporter for two major United Nations inter-agency symposia on the challenges facing intergovernmental information systems.
Institutional, conference and group associations (see separately Conference-, Organization- and Publication-related Initiatives), notably including:
- Consulting and related activities: These have included:
UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); UN Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); UN Environment Programme (UNEP); UN
University (Tokyo); UNICEF; World Bank; Commonwealth Science Council.
- Memberships: These have included relationships with:
World Academy of Art and Science (Fellow), World Future Studies Federation,
Foundation for the Future, International Studies Association, International
Society for Knowledge Organization, Findhorn Foundation (Research Fellow),
Committee on Conceptual and Terminological Analysis (COCTA), Scientific
and Medical Network (member). Member of journal advisory
boards, including: Knowledge Organization, Libris, Journal
of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads
- Meetings: Involvement in a wide variety of international meetings, whether as organizer, rapporteur, speaker, consultant, contributor or participant. This included early responsibilities in connection with the International Congress on Congress Organization and subsequently with the annual meeting of UIA Associate Members (from the meetings industry). Many of the following papers were produced for these events, or as a result of them.
Papers and reports: Production of papers (whether commissioned or as a professional interest) relevant in various ways to the strategic position of international organizations and the organized response to world problems. This has included work on organization and community design, transformative conferencing and dialogue, information system design, relevance of metaphor for governance and communication, transdisciplinarity, and concepts of human development. A special interest is in issues of comprehension at the interface of problem networks, human development, appropriately organized response, information systems, and conceptual frameworks reflecting different "ways of knowing".
Checklists of some 1,600 papers are available via the following clusters on https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/
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| Distinguishing
Emergent Conceptual Polarities experimental ordering of the (above) collection of research papers (comment) |
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| Diversity -- Unity Agreement -- Disagreement Organization -- Chaos Configuration -- Relationships Strategy -- Lifestyle Static -- Dynamic Conventional -- Radical |
Future -- Present Global -- Personal Information systems -- Communication Comprehension -- Incomprehension Facts -- Aesthetics Balance -- Imbalance Problems -- Potential |
| Configuring Conceptual Polarities in Questing metaphoric pointers to self-reflexive coherence |
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A special concern in relation to the Encyclopedia strategic initiative, best framed as the Union of Intelligible Associations (www.un-intelligible.org), is the use of metaphor in reframing policy-making dilemmas in response to world problems, including the possibility of a "marriage" between policy-making and the arts, notably poetry-making, through which more organic, rhythm-based understanding could refresh the sterility of modern policies - especially for musically oriented developing countries. This has involved exploration of many new possibilities of visualization to catalyze new approaches to social organization. In the case of meetings, this has taken the form of an interest in transformative conferencing and new approaches to dialogue (notably as explored with colleagues in a School of Ignorance over a period of 7 years).
Many of the papers are also exploratory and speculative -- as part of a search for more creative ways to present complex arguments and challenges. Some are also highly controversial. Specific studies frequently explore complex relationships between the above themes. Many of those focusing specifically on international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were in the past published in the UIA journal Transnational Associations. Where appropriate, portions of other studies have also been reprinted in the extensive commentaries sections of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.
Projects: General responsibility for the articulation of research proposals submitted for funding by the UIA (often as lead agency) in the past decade:
- 2006: Complementary Knowledge Analysis / Mapping Process
- 2004: Global Knowledge Grid: A New Infrastructure for Understanding Globalization.
- CiviLynx: Gateway to Civil Society Organization Information
- 2003: Local Action Dynamics: Knowledge patterns for local, participatory implementation of the Lisbon Strategy
- 2001: Diversitas: UIA bid for management of the .ORG web domain registry
- 2000: Cultivating Knowledge Ecosystems: adapting visual arts and music to sustain new patterns of knowledge work in community
- 1999: Facilitating
inter-project coordination through templates of thematic relationships
- Interactive Conceptual Environmental Planning Tool for Developing Countries (approved for funding through the World Bank's InfoDev program)
- Intelli-Work: procedural framework for the interoperability of decentralized knowledge management processes based on a diversity of partners, commitments and competences.
- 1998: Developing an internet framework for creative dialogue on irreconcilable policy differences
- 1997: Building Networks of Concern on Rights of the Child (proposal to
Netherlands National committee for UNICEF)
- Ecolynx: Information Context for Biodiversity Conservation (major development of online databases with a multimedia emphasis through the EU Information Society programme, approved for funding through to 2000)
- 1996: Facilitating Community through Information: a suite of software-enabled participation tools
Educational background: Schooling in England, Australia and Zimbabwe; Imperial College of Science and Technology (University of London) 1958-1961: B.Sc Engineering (Chemical Engineering) programme at Imperial College, London (not completed); Graduate School of Business (University of Cape Town) 1967-1968: MBA programme.
| Overview of Initiatives | |
| Documents |
Simulating a Global Brain: using networks of international organizations, world problems, strategies, and values (contribution to workshop of Global Brain Group) (2001) Sharing a Documentary Pilgrimage: UIA -- Saur Relations 1982-2000 |
| Movie (2000) | Interactive database project overview for EU (QuickTime; RealPlayer) |
| Movie (1971) | Visualization of organization (RealPlayer) |
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