Knowledge Management In Societies – The Vindobona Project To Reinvent Universities

Western societies today face many problems that are grounded in a somehow oldfashioned view of how societies are constituated and functioning. Apart from environmental problems, that are definitely beyond the reach of this article, unemployment, the growing gap between rich and poor, the rising psychic and psychosomatic stress symptoms and the loss of meanings in our personal lives can be named in this context. The article tries to connect those developments to the way we got used to view society, science, economy and the educational system as distinct entities. A holistic perspective is introduced that considers the educational system as the nucleus of science and economy and by which society at large can overcome the drawbacks of traditional splitting into separate realms. To put this theoretical approach into practical work would imply the reinvention of educational institutions, eg universities. That's where the Vindobona Project comes into play. Vindobona University shall be a new kind of self-organizing learning environment, where knowledge is not simply being “learned” by students but newly created and young people from different cultures can freely connect and communicate while being respected as autonomous persons with different identities and backgounds.