Meta:About
IdeaWaza is a wiki for learning, teaching, research, and the development of useful ideas.
The purpose of IdeaWaza is not only to collect information. It is also to help organize knowledge in ways that can be used to better understand and address problems in living.
IdeaWaza may include reference material, research, educational resources, tutorials, historical information, project documentation, essays, proposals, experiments, questions, and other forms of useful knowledge.
Learning, teaching, and research
IdeaWaza is intended to support three closely related activities:
- Learning: gaining knowledge, developing skills, asking questions, and improving understanding.
- Teaching: helping other people understand ideas, methods, subjects, and skills.
- Research: investigating questions, examining evidence, documenting findings, and developing new knowledge.
These activities often overlap.
Research produces material that can be taught. Teaching often reveals what people still need to learn. Learning can lead to new research questions.
IdeaWaza is intended to provide a place where these processes can continue over time.
Problems in living
A major focus of IdeaWaza is the study of problems in living.
Problems in living can affect individuals, families, organizations, communities, or humanity more broadly. They can involve health, economics, technology, education, relationships, institutions, aging, psychology, governance, infrastructure, or many other areas of life.
Some problems are temporary. Others persist for decades, centuries, or longer.
IdeaWaza is interested in understanding these problems and exploring practical ways to reduce, resolve, or prevent them.
This includes examining both centralized and decentralized approaches.
Some problems are best addressed through large institutions or coordinated systems. Others may benefit from distributed knowledge, local experimentation, open technology, independent research, voluntary cooperation, or decentralized systems.
The goal is not to assume that one structure is always better. The goal is to examine what works.
From information to application
Information has more value when it can be used.
IdeaWaza therefore includes both theoretical and practical material.
One page might examine a philosophical question. Another might document scientific research. Another might explain how to install software, organize a project, repair something, conduct an experiment, or learn a skill.
These different forms of knowledge can support one another.
A useful idea may eventually become a tool, project, service, business, research program, educational resource, or solution to a practical problem.
There is also a simple lesson associated with Aikido and other traditions: chop wood, carry water.
Ideas and theories matter, but practical work still has to be done.
Sharing and developing knowledge
Knowledge can be copied, adapted, criticized, expanded, and passed between people without necessarily being depleted.
IdeaWaza may include original material as well as material adapted or incorporated from appropriately licensed sources.
Content may be reorganized, expanded, updated, combined with other material, or placed into a different educational or research context.
The objective is not simply to accumulate pages.
The objective is to make information more understandable, useful, and capable of further development.
Economic value and mutual benefit
IdeaWaza is also open to the idea that learning, research, and useful knowledge can create economic value.
Projects developed from research or ideas may eventually become businesses, services, software, educational materials, partnerships, or other forms of productive activity.
Economic benefit and public benefit do not necessarily conflict.
A project can benefit the people who create it while also benefiting users, customers, collaborators, or society more broadly.
IdeaWaza is interested in models where people can create value for themselves while also creating value for others.
This may include traditional businesses, independent projects, open-source development, decentralized systems, new funding models, or other approaches.
There is no assumption that one economic model is appropriate for every situation.
Experimentation is encouraged.
Sincerity and love
Aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba frequently described Aikido in terms that extended beyond physical technique.
Among those ideas is the importance of sincerity, cooperation, and love.
These concepts can be understood philosophically, but they can also be understood practically.
Trust matters.
Good-faith cooperation matters.
Treating other people as human beings rather than simply as obstacles or resources matters.
Economic exchange is important, but human relationships are not reducible to economic exchange.
IdeaWaza can explore both.
An evolving resource
IdeaWaza is a work in progress.
Some pages may be highly developed. Others may contain early research, partial documentation, questions, or ideas that need additional work.
Information can become outdated. Research can change. Better evidence can become available.
Pages may therefore be revised, reorganized, expanded, or replaced over time.
This is part of the purpose of using a wiki.
A wiki can preserve older knowledge while allowing newer information and better explanations to develop.
Editing and participation
IdeaWaza uses MediaWiki software, but it is not currently intended to function as an unrestricted public wiki.
Editing access may be limited or selectively granted.
Participation does not have to mean directly editing the website.
People can contribute by conducting research, providing useful sources, developing projects, testing ideas, teaching, writing, programming, creating tools, identifying errors, or applying information in practical settings.
The structure of participation may change as IdeaWaza develops.
Purpose
The purpose of IdeaWaza can be summarized simply:
Learn. Teach. Research. Develop ideas. Solve problems.
The longer-term goal is to help create knowledge, tools, projects, and systems that can benefit individuals, groups, and humanity more broadly.
Some ideas will work.
Some will not.
Some may need years of development.
The important part is to keep learning, testing, improving, and doing the practical work necessary to turn useful ideas into something real.