AEDOK WELCOME

Welcome to AEDOKtm, the Archive for Education and Dissemination Of Knowledgetm.

First time visitors to AEDOK are automatically directed to this About Us page. Because the AEDOK Suitetm of Websites & Domains is so extensive and diverse, encompassing all three top-level domains, com, org & net, as well as ultimately hundreds of subdomains, we have taken great precautions to ensure uniformity, and implement user conveniences whenever possible.

Now, please read on thru our mission statement.

WHAT IS AEDOK

The Archive for Education and Dissemination Of Knowledge, (AEDOK) started out circa 1990 With thousands of books and printed materials in the age range of 100 to 300 years. The goal was to make available these not quite ancient but certainly old texts on the Internet. Considerable time has passed and there been numerous difficulties and impediments preventing any progress in that area. However the goal has actually grown.

The Mission:

To collect all useful knowledge regardless of form eg.,paper, electrons, , ^{or other}, assemble it, order it, study it, understand it, disseminated it, and teach it.

The Motivation:

An explanation as to the motivation for the mission can not be quite so concisely put. This anecdote, and it's attendant discussion, may provide some illumination.

Back To The Mission:

There is an interesting dichotomy, the first half of the dichotomy can best be revealed by quoting Sir Isaac Newton:

"When looking back on my life it is as though I had walked a beach and upon seeing an interesting pebble, picked it up to examine it."

[need exact quote]

His observation represents the first of the two contrasting ideas. And whereas on this one hand it appears that we have literally only scratched the surface of the massive nature of reality, on the other hand there is evidence to support the idea that mankind has discovered collected and recorded a sufficient understanding of nature (aka the elements) such that he need not live in fear or danger of most of those elements.

And there is further evidence to indicate that with proper care and diet, the natural life span of a human being is .

Indeed it appears he should be able to easily live to be a hundred by avoiding earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, lightning strikes, tornadoes, numerous types of diseases, ravenous animals, and self inflicted ailments and impediments, given the knowledge we already have.

Those things mentioned kill millions over decades but not because we don't know how to deal with them, but rather because we choose to live under volcanoes, in tornado alleys, and on flood plains, to mention just three examples pertaining to nature.

This is not a judgment on individual's choices or those who are trapped by financial and cultural constraints. This is an analysis of the facts that for example: if a the town is flooded, drys out, is rebuilt, and flooded again, one does not need to contact a witch doctor to determine the cause of this problem .

We have sufficient knowledge of the nature of nature to account for, deal with, and run from, if not insulate from, most of nature's dangers.

Naturally, humans seek to control, not run from those dangers, and that area of knowledge falls in the group Newton was referring to, of which (to use our words) he had only scratched the surface.

So, the reason for having introduced the above dichotomy is to point out that whereas the amount of knowledge yet to be acquired quite possibly is beyond comprehension, it is none the less time now for civilized man to stop throwing knowledge away, as though by some mysterious process of decay, old knowledge becomes untrue.

These processes of disposing of knowledge come in many forms but which can possibly be classified under four(4) broad headings: innocent, erroneous, stupid, and devious.

* An example of innocent is where there is simply so much knowledge that it gets buried under its own mass. That of course is where search engines come in.

* An example of stupid is search engines that cater to the most popular links which feeds upon itself and de facto burys the others anyway.

* An example of erroneous, which also has elements of arrogance and some stupidity, is the notion that old knowledge is no longer current, that it has become inapplicable. This notion comes in part no doubt due to the evolution of technology rendering eg., such things as techniques of horse and buggy driving inadequate for automobiles, and what appears to be a better understanding of this-or-that-and-the-other, rendering the old understanding, obsolete and disposable. However, the freezing point of water hasn't changed, though we may achieve a better understanding of the process, and the laws of nature don't change to suit our opinions, though again we may achieve a better understanding of the laws.

* An example of devious is a network segment which discusses at great length a less than common vegetable appearantly possessing exceptional health giving properties, but which .

So, now there arises a problem in what has been classified as objective presentation of fact.

If the fact itself is an assemblage of opinions and/or misrepresentations, then the mere echoing of this fact under the guise of objective presentation, is itself a misrepresentation of fact.

For a hypothetical example, a person of integrity would not teach a student from a textbook he knows to be flawed without pointing out those flaws. To assert to the contrary that such a person should present the textbook without additional commentary, critique or criticism, in order to allow the student to make his own judgement, is ridiculous.

And yet, in the name of objectivity, that is what is transpiring in society today. And this is an insult to truth itself.

So, to display a web page known to be flawed, without additional commentary, critique or criticism, raises a very complex question, or let us say brings to light numerous issues as follows:

* There is too much information to critique it all.

* It is not the obligation of the presenter to critique it per se.

* The presenter certainly does not have the right to modify the content.

* Yet, if the presenter purports to be (or implies he is thru various forms of self promotion even to include out right bragging) a disseminator of knowledge (such as we), he cannot in good conscience turn a blind eye.

Therefore in order to execute its goal of dissemination of knowledge, AEDOK will analyze and critique flaws as it sees fit. And some of these presentations may appear to be or contain opinions. But AEDOK is not concerned with pointing or leading society in opinionated directions, save the opinion that the truth is paramount.

Naturally then, this would include all those actions and aspects enumerated in AEDOK's one line mission statement above, regarding also such things as history and more controversial topics such as politics and religion. But to reiterate: not to point or lead society in a particular direction regarding those topics, only to understand what has transpired ^{the past}, including an understanding ^{the present} of mankind's analyses of those transpirations, and by attempting to understand each individual aspect , further attempt to understand possible consequences ^{the future}.

Therefore from this it could very well appear at one time that AEDOK has taken a supportive position on some issue, and then immediately thereafter, reversed said position. This is because the only position we have actually taken is that a truthful analysis of the facts is the only analysis that is worthy of existence and warrants publication, and as circumstances would have it, the facts in one circumstance pointed one direction whereas the facts in the other circumstance pointed another.

This also leads us therefore to such complex concepts as implied hypocrisy especially as pertains to the presentation of information itself.

If a website purports to be a leader in the presentation of information regarding some topic, and then proceeds to bungle the presentation, they are either incompetent or hypocritical.

Either way, the contrast between assertion and action is worthy of analysis and AEDOK will not strive to apologize for having made available that honest and truthful analysis.

Fortunately in the case of flawed presentations of readily obtainable factual information there is a practical solution. Create a new document (presumably of greater quality) and let the flawed ones die through attrition.

Much of AEDOK.org shall be devoted to this technique, with minimal expenditure of resources on the critique aspect.

This is fully explained in the

Now, following the AEDOK welcomes and encourages critical analyses of our own flaws and shortcomings, for if proper and valid logic is utilized both in those critical analyses and our response to them, the consequences can only be an improvement in our services.

And we intend to have forums for such things regarding both ourselves and others, but of a nature much more sophisticated than currently available which are primarily linear or, at best, tree structures, which because of the lack of interaction of the nodes, often diverged in a cumulative fashion leading to puzzling, if not undesirable, subsequent interchanges. (Forums are under development).

But we will not follow opinion polls or to comply with them, modify procedures, techniques, pages, reports, or presentations. For, whereas as little as just one(1) logical, valid, notification of a flaw is sufficient to warrant change, a million fuzzy opinions are collectively not, though the collection itself may warrant publication and analysis.

At any rate the proper assemblage of mankind's current knowledge, to say nothing of the knowledge which is continually acquired on a daily basis, is a worthy task.

But mark the words here, proper assemblage. The mere collection of facts, piled together into a mass so large and chaotic that no one can comprehend it, with barbaric techniques for probing it (aka modern search engines), is not proper assemblage.