Meta University

Meta University(MU), is an abstract specification of actual universities. This specification is intended to be applicable to all learning organizations universally. It is an ideologically neutral device that states the essence about universal properties, in other words, knowledge content that are generally applicable to all spaces and times in their application contexts.

Context

Due to the ongoing advancements and dissemination in data processing technologies, the process of knowledge presentation and human skill acquisition have been significantly impacted by them. Since that many people already have access to mobile personal computing devices, and highly configurable human interfaces such as browsers on smart phones are becoming performant enough for complex tasks to be done on site. It only recently become possible to start talking about a data centric curriculum that orient people's attention from being used by their personal computing devices, to start learning about the working principles of these computing devices, while having sufficient contextualized usage of these devices. In other words, it is not possible to have a new university curriculum that integrates machine-accelerated data processing as a central part of knowledge processing and acquisition process for the general public.

Goal Statement

The goal of MU is to encode universal properties in ways that could create learning opportunities to the broadest possible audience at scale.

Implementation Strategy

To make this happen, we decide to leverage the Web Tech Stack as an operational platform and leverage the resources and tools in this open ended platform to govern the evolutionary trends of MU. MU has three explicit functions:

1. MU is an data container for Learning Activities, it captures physical activities in concrete data elements for the organization.
2. The Data Content of MU is governed by the participants of these learning activities, implemented as smart contracts authorized by the said participants.
3. MU invites verification and validation, through namespace management, time stamping and data linkages, MU associates physical meaning to data by encoding content knowledge based on the observable patterns of the physical universe.

The goal statement mentioned above also indicates that MU will provide a curriculum that enables minimal footprint to the core content knowledge, while covering the broadest possible content areas. In other words, MU's existence can be thought of as the core/kernel of an operating system of knowledge acquisition in this data-intensive era, and it will help organize learning activities in a structure that best adhere to this fast changing world. Specifically, MY will offer a curriculum structure that follows the above assumptions, and try to link all knowledge content using a unifying data management strategy.

Individuals and their Society

Knowing that all content knowledge cannot exist in isolation. MU is intended to be a social learning tool that allows individuals to maintain one's private content, while maximize its ease of exchange with other interacting parties. Therefore, MU will explicitly spell out project management tools and practices for both individuals and team members, and offer data governing policies for all participants. The logic of how data evolve, is the foundation of computing science, and that is where all projects on MU-supported projects will leverage its project management/governance features. This requires users to be highly aware of data security and data privacy related issues.

In layman's term, MU will organize content knowledge in the units of languages, starting with the foundation of all languages, the meta language, or the logic of data in general. Then, MU will introduce domain-specific languages, including linkages to natural languages as ways to demonstrate the power of information compression in languages. Therefore, MU participants can continuously leverage a single repository of languages, to organize their own knowledge content in privately controlled data storage containers.

A Type of Universal Container

The first principle of MU is to assume that certain universal principle exists. The principle that we will introduce to all MU students is the notion that all data can be represented using the same type, a type called: "Lattice" or bounded "Partially ordered set"(POSet). This universal data type can be mapped onto human's daily experience in terms of space, time, and energy. The reason that we must introduce this common notion of data structure is to offer a universal data framework that will be applicable to situations across all spatial and temporal contexts. To guarantee this universality, some logical assumptions must be made, and we assume that all spacetime complex follows the logical boundaries of POSet.

Foundational References

MU differs from other universities by starting its curriculum in a sequence that is almost opposite of what most popular curriculum are designed. This is suggested by Gregory Chaitin, that many accomplished mathematicians are taught the most advanced mathematics from a young age and in a sequence that delights their interest to pursue mathematical content. When properly administered, this strategy may apply to learn and teach content knowledge of many kind. For example, we will provide a universal data structure, a.k.a. lattice, to approximate the boundary of our logical reasoning scopes.

Prior work

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MetaUniversity

The Notion of Unviersality

Universality is a operationalized definition according to logicians.

Containers for all Knowledge

Using Wikidata as an example.

Data as the Medium

Smart Contract as the platform for managing collaboration

All students in Meta University must use Smart Contracts to organize their shared tasks.

An Exchange Platform

There are some existing literature that already covers content related to this proposition.