We know that intelligence and cognition – the foundations of knowledge – can exist in far more forms than once thought.
Alongside the branching tree, we might also picture the swarm intelligence of insects or birds, the subterranean information exchange of the ‘wood wide web’, or slime molds that use techniques akin to machine learning to solve mazes.
Knowledge, too, is no longer bound to singular repositories like books, hard drives, or brains, but are increasingly created and shared in networks of technologies, and often float formlessly in the cloud.
So, what does the future of knowledge look like? In this issue, we take up that question.
We examine the limits of prediction, argue for the return of the polymath, and explore the future of learning and human-machine hybrid knowledge ecologies.
We consider the role of storytelling, alongside science, in making the world more futures literate. We trace the history (and future) of ‘stupidity’ (or rather: warnings of cognitive decline), explore what happens when technology increasingly mirrors biology, and make the case for why the mundane aspects of everyday life hold a missing key to understanding tomorrow.