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Knowledge is power. If one possesses a collection of the “universal knowledge” of the world, one has ultimate power.

This is how Gerlinde Schuller opens the preface of her book Designing Universal Knowledge (2009).

Asymmetry of knowledge create asymmetry of power—more than ever in the age of information environments and surveillance capitalism.

Apart from those producing information, designers, scientists and academics have a great influence on how knowledge is communicated. They set standards for the classification and design of complex data and can facilitate but also manipulate the transfer of knowledge.

(Gerlinde Schuller)

Those who organize information, who control the means access to it or who simply understand knowledge, in its increasing complexity, set the stage for a new, unprecedented regime of power.