Anthony Judge
To say that Anthony Judge has seen it all is no doubt a slight exaggeration. But where attempts to change the world for the better are concerned, the evidence indicates that this amazing individual is very likely to have seen more than anyone else on the planet. A native of Australia, Judge moved to Brussels, Belgium in 1968 to begin a career with the Union of International Associations (UIA) — an organization founded in 1907 that is today an information clearinghouse for more than 50,000 international NGOs. Anthony Judge, as Director of Communications and Research, is at the heart of the UIA's information sharing activities. He helped to create, and is responsible for the continuing development of, the 4-volume Yearbook of International Organizations, the 3-volume Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, the organization's computer networking activites, and its many information-rich hypertext-linked databases. Among these databases, eight are freely available to everyone, not just members of the UIA:
World Problems – Issues: 56,564 profiles, 276,791 links
Global Strategies – Solutions: 32,547 profiles, 284,382 links
Human Values: 3,257 profiles, 119,255 links
Human Development: 4,817 profiles, 19,757 links
Patterns and Metaphors: 1,275 profiles, 4,535 links
Bibliography (issues): 16,579 profiles, 24,236 links
Integrative Concepts: 633 profiles, 0 links
Network Visualizations
As if the above activities were not enough to fill a life and a half, Anthony Judge is one of the most prolific writers I have ever encountered. His web site, laetus in praesens (joy in the present) is at http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/, and is home to some 1300 of his essays and research papers. He writes in hypertext with great skill. By that I mean that each new work is likely to have numerous links to previous essays and to other relevant documents. And the content of his papers is always at the mind-expanding edge of discourse and thought about how to create a wiser and more functional world. Weary, after all these years, of the “same old, same old” approaches to policy making, Judge is currently exploring new approaches that involve novel metaphors, other unusual ways of thinking about things, art, poetry, new approaches to dialogue, new ways of visualizing social organization, and new approaches to transformative conferencing.
With 1300 essays, where do you start? Judge gives you a variety of options. He has created indices which allow you to approach this body of material from several different perspectives. If you go to his site's home page, http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/, you can choose the approach that best suits your needs and interests:
- The chronological approach. You are presented with links to 40 or so of the most recent documents, and the option to see indices of titles for the years 2000+, 1990-99, 1980-89, 1970-79, 1962-69, as well as a complete index for ALL years.
- A thematic overviewin which the Anthony Judge's papers and UIA database entries are organized by theme — by area of concern or type of content.
- An experimental ordering of his research papers from 1962 to 2004 by the set of value polarities which they address — polarities such as Diversity/Unity, Agreement/Disagreement, Organization/Chaos, etc.
If you'd like to discover some fresh ways of thinking about the human situation, I encourage you to spend some serious time exploring this site and the prodigious creative output of Anthony Judge.
Tip of the Hat to The Wisdom Page for the above compilation.
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