Curiosity and desire

I was describing the Knowledge Base and the new Independent Learning forum to an acquaintance over the weekend, who commented that it must take a lot of discipline to study a subject on your own.
In some respect, I think it does, but I would tend to describe the required qualities differently. They would be curiosity and desire. Children tend to be curious, they are avid to explore the world around them, although I've known some who seldom asked questions, but were inclined if anything to act out their curiosity. As they get older, and especially as they are confined to the limited environment of a school, they tend to lose that curiosity. An independent student, a life-long learner has to keep or regain something of that quality.

What's up

I've been trying to develop contacts with someone in the unschooling community, without a lot of success.
Mostly in the last few days, I've been working on the knowledge base. About two years years back, I spent some time poring over chemistry books in the University library trying to figure out how to classify chemical reactions. After letting that information compost in the back of my mind since then, I was following a thread of curiosity and creating links sometime in the past three days, when I came across chemical reactions. A classification that fits what I remember about them sprang up and introduced itself. Next time I lay hands on a chemistry text, I'll have to see whether it really works. I've also been wandering back and forth across language and linguistics, and thought I'd resurrect some old notes on the subject, rather than leaving the page as a stub waiting for future developments. I've been wanting to get around to that subject for the longest time, and finally got there.
I've also been anxiously hovering over the Independent Learning Forum, so far, I'm pleased. I'm getting plenty of visits or visitors, and have picked up a few members and comments. The weblog analysis program my site host uses reports that quite a few of them are coming through here. Thanks to all my readers, whoever you are.
On top of that, I've been following current events and a couple of debates...I have some commentary on the past week's worth of that over on my other blog, From the Ground.
I took a break from all this to go over to the local Barnes & Noble and do some leisure reading I liked "The Ninth Talisman" by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I like his protagonists attitude of of "trying to do the right thing without being too sure what the right thing really is". I also took a look at "1635: The Baltic War", but really, the cast of that series is getting so big I can't keep track of who's who, especially when I don't have the last five books at hand to go remind myself. It's getting as bad as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and won't everyone be relieved when that finally reaches the end.

School emptiness

I was looking over one of the political blogs that I've been following lately, and ran across a link to this analysis of Why Nerds are Unpopular.

Rather than repeat his points and his powerful critique of the whole educational system, about all I can say is, Hear! Hear!

College level unschooling

One of the things I've found as I've looked into the various home schooling and unschooling movements is that most of the available sites concentrate on parents teaching their children. A great many are geared toward creating and selling curriculum. Sites intended for self-education for adults tend to focus on various degree-granting programs. There certainly don't seem to be many sites to support college-level unschooling, except in a few special areas.
That bothers me. As I browse the Intenet and see the various discussion boards, I'm apalled by the amount of name-calling, free substitution of personal opinion for verifiable fact, and horrendously sloppy reasoning on the part of supposedly educated men and women. It almost seems that if you want a true education, you just about have to go out and get it yourself.

Unschooling

Not long ago, a conversation with an acquaintance drifted to what I was doing with my life. I described my work on the Knowledge Base, and we talked a little about my disappointment that no one seemed to be interested. The conversation drifted to publicity and marketing, and he suggested that I needed to more clearly identify my target market, and since I had suggested home schoolers, he thought I might start there.
I set that idea aside, since I was wrestling with other things, but since then I've set up the Independent Learning Forum, which gives me a little more freedom to explore home-schooling and independent education. A Google search led to the Wikipeda article on home schooling, and it seems that my beliefs about education have a lot in common with those who advocate unschooling. So, as a believer in self-eduction, I'm about to go practice it and look into this more closely.

Independent Learning Forum

Since I set up this blog, I've had a lot less commentary from e-mail than I expected. Since I upgraded my web server account so that I now have access to statistics, I see that the Sapience Knowledge Base is indeed getting traffic, but no one is taking the trouble to give me any feedback on the site. For some time, I've been interested in trying to build a community of independent learners, and a web-based forum has been on my wish list. That wish has become a reality, and the Independent Learning Forum can be found now at
http://www.sapiencekb.com/forum This suggests another shift in emphasis for this particular blog, so I plan to be putting announcements about the Knowledge Base on that forum, while I talk here more about techniques of self-directed education.

Update and rambling

I mentioned a while ago that I was thinking of just taking notes on a day's work on the knowledge base and wandering through it. This represents the kind of work I do on it in a day, and illustrates how this organization connects a hierarchical organization, but also gives the user of this knowledge base freedom to ramble. Where I've gone, others may follow. Suggestions from anyone who uses the knowledge base may well influence the decisions I make in developing it.

I started in science, and connected to the Royal Society, one of the oldest learned societies, and a major influence in the development of modern science, which led to a reconsideration of history. For this subject, I decided to go into particular groups and connect to the World History association, which led back to history. I decided to look at material culture, and connect a particular page that I had developed, Communications technology. This, I decided, has roots in science so I went back there. There, I decided that studies of material culture have progressed enough since I wrote that section that I needed to revise the application of it to science entirely. This led to revisiting material culture, and I reached an important development point by adding a page for clothing and dress. I decided material culture had a connection to physical anthropology. This has some connection to geohistory, which I connected to solar system, history, which is so undeveloped that it led back up to science. Continuing the development of science lad to language, which I have hardly looked at for a while. This needed some development of personal studies. I decided to look at its history and push that back to late classical times. I wasn't quite sure how to go about developing that, so I skipped to early medieval times. This led me to considering Pakistan, which let to human geography. Human geography had an almost complete set of subdivision, so to finish it, I added Oceanic Geography. To more fully incorporate this, I went to the next higher level to consider Anthropology. Review of the fundamentals of that subject led to Geohistory. Here, saw that I had another almost complete set of subdivisions and I could add Precambrian geology. This led back up to Geology, which needed a connection to the structure of matter, which needed a connection to quantum physics, which needed a connection to nonrigid mechanics, which I connected to Sociology. I decided to approach this by examining some of its early roots in middle preahistory. This led back into physical anthropology, which this time I pursued into its roots in study of the human body. The human body has a partial set of subdivisions, so I stopped to add human disease, and back up to personal studies again. This time, I decided to push the connections to history back further into early classical, which led into biographies. I had decided earlier that I needed to start adding more biographies, so I added a page for Napoleon. Biographies connect somewhat to social foundations, and here I added a new page for social control. This led back up to Anthropology, which this time I connected to ecology, and I added a new page for system ecology. Taking this back up to biology, I decided that I could start pushing its history a little but further back, and connected to the 18th century, which I referred back to biography. The next entry to be added to that list was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Here I decided to start checking Late medieval history to be sure that everyone who should have been added by now has been. This led to Martin Luther. Luther I connected to the social institutions, and here I decided to go back to the beginnings and connect this to middle prehistory. Middle prehistory could be connected to human ecology as the next logical step, and here things begin to get a bit tricky, because I really don't like the way I had divided human ecology anymore. This page was old enough and my general approach has changed since I last worked on it, so I rewrote the biology section again. This let back to biology, and I took this back to the 17th century, which led back to biography and the addition of a page for William Morton. I decided that since I'm using the application of history to biography as a method of searching the biographical list, I don't need to link biography directly to either history or classical and medieval history, since these now no longer have direct connections to individuals. Historical individuals have long been distributed to the particular periods, and now, so have classical and medieval individuals. Early classical, late classical, early medieval, and late medieval history now each have a set of prominent individuals. That wound up the day's work.

Site upgrade

Doteasy.com, which hosts the Sapience Knowledge Base, just offered a deal for full service that was too good to pass up, which is going to let me add some features that should make it more interesting. Before I publish the current version, I want to get the site map current.
I've started to revive my other active blog, From the Ground as a political/current events blog, so I've been doing a little work on that, somewhat at the expense of this one, but I haven't dropped work on it.

I decided that no version of the planned approach was working well, so for now, I'm just going to let the SKB just grow naturally and see what happens. So far, that's resulting in more developments in science, in areas that I have neglected, and it's occurred to me that, rather than providing dry summaries, it may be more interesting to any potential readers to describe some of my meandering progress.

Science

I keep experimenting with different approaches to building and expanding the knowledge base, because no one of them works all the time. I had about given up on a bottom-up approach, but I thought I'd give it another try.

There is a lot to be said for simple appreciation of nature. Going for a walk outdoors, seeking the sky clouds, sun, moon (if it's up), trees, grass, birds, bugs, and small animals, the breeze... All these are ways of experiencing and appreciating nature. Every day, even every hour, brings its own new experiences. All the various parts and facets of nature seem to be woven together, almost in one seamless web., and this overall, or holistic view, is an important part of understanding and appreciating nature.
But, for the purposes of science, it's necessary to focus on one thing at a time, and by convention it's useful to group things that are similar in some way together. The trees, grass, birds, bugs, and small animals, we recognize as living things. Even the sticks of wood that have fallen from the trees, we recognize as once having been living, and for a time we focus on them and call the subject biology.
The ground we walk on, the clouds, the breeze, and any streams that may happen to be flowing nearby, we recognize as nonliving, and are part of earth science.
The sun and moon belong to astronomy.
There are two more branches of science, which are less obvious: The substances things are made of is considered as part of chemistry, and heat and warmth, and light and darkness, and sound are considered to belong to physics.
What's often missing in education is the ability, once we have isolated and analyzed all these things and taken them apart, is bringing them back together and appreciating the whole.

Also, there is the fact that the study of nature is a human activity, performed by people, acting in society. The tools, ideas, and occupations that scientists use and follow, the social institutions, the communities and peoples that produce them, and the history of the whole scientific enterprise are also connected, so that the whole can be overwhelming to contemplate. So, I go back to looking at one small piece at a time.

Slow grind

For some times I've been frustrated with the emphasis on the form of history and sociology, but limited content, and I've been looking for a way to balance out the developments. For instance, history depends rather heavily on biographies, but I've been doing fine divisions of history and now working on biographies at all. So, I've mades some adjustments, and the situation seens to be improving.

Apparently *someone* is reading this blog...I got a comment from a reader. I'm just going to raise an eyebrow at the apparent claim of superiority of Hard Knocks U. to any other. (Speaking as an alumnus of HKU myself). And wonder which "we" he is speaking of that no longer sees any value in sociology. And wonder what the use or non-use of guns has to do with anything I've been writing about.

Global society

It's been something of a frustrating week, as my various possible schemes for developing the knowledge base keep conflicting with each other. But I am making progress, of a sort: the top-down approach is penetrating into the middle levels.
There still isn't much new in history at any level. The problem is principally that at this stage, I'm still connecting to fairly high-level abstract topics instead of getting down to the details that make a subject more interesting and colorful.
Likewise, there isn't a great deal new in the subject of sociology. In order to make real progress in considering peoples of the world, I need to bring particular nations back into the development guide. In the area of social structure and change, I have managed to get started on the general theme of the industrial revolution and its various subdivisions and associated movements.
Most of the progress has come in institutions, enough that I'm starting to see the outlines of global society. At this point, there is limited progress on the major religions of the world, since these have already been developed to a certain extent. There has been a little bit more progress in government, particularly international government. Economics has been progressing more slowly, but I'm starting to bring in some major corporations. I've also begun to identify major universities. I haven't identified any families of worldwide scope or influence.
There still hasn't been as much noteworthy development in other areas, but there has been some progress.

Details

As well as trying to be comprehensive, I also mean my knowledge base to be useful. A couple of times lately, I've tried taking a particular news story and analyzed it a bit. Take, for instance, the story of the bombing a mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, by suspected al-Qaeda members. This item might have been filed under History-Modern History-20th century-Early 21st century-Late 2000s-2007-2nd quarter-June. It might have also been filed under Sociology-Peoples-Asiatic Peoples-Middle East, or Sociology-Peoples-Nations-Iraq, or Sociology-Communities-Baghdad. Or, Institutions-Religion-Particular Religion-Abrahamic Religion-Islam. Or Culture-Behavioral culture-Cultural events=Disasters. Or, Culture-Material culture-Buildings. Or, Anthropology-Particular groups-al Qaeda. But most of these subjects are not quite developed this far, and if they are, they aren't yet well enough connected to each other.
A great deal of the development of the knowledge base has been driven more or less internally and more or less mechanically. However, in the interest of making it more useful, I'm going to be using more external cues.
I don't have a specific report on what new pages have been added or developed recently, but there have been some. For instance, I now have a page on the United Nations, which is something I've been aiming for for a while.

Back again

No, there haven't been any disasters. I've just been sidetracked for the past couple of weeks.
For one, I got in a debate with some feminists on a mailing list, which ate practically a whole weekend. and then I decided that my development guide wasn't working the way I wanted it to, and started it over. It's still not entirely caught up to where I had it, but it's close enough that I'm generating new links, as well as getting around to some topics that have been waiting forever for me to even touch.

History is not greatly changed. There is still a distinct emphasis on modern history with a secondary emphasis on classical and medieval history. Within modern history, there is a significant emphasis on the last two centuries, and in the last century, mostly on the last 30 years. I am giving a bit more attention to the future.
The emphasis on what I call sociology is being shifted. I've put a lot of emphasis on development of particular nations in the past few months, until I found that the nations I was most interested were too recently added and too far down the list for me to get to, and plan for developing them was too rigid and inflexible. So, now, I have fewer nations scheduled for development, but more emphasis on the major groups of people. Western civilization and Asiatic peoples, are the predominant groups. I also decided that my list of cities wasn't adding much, so this has been rather toned down. On the other hand, the investigation of social structure and change has developed well in the last few months, so It's getting a more prominent role.
I'm also giving more attention to the institutional areas; more religion and government that I had. I'd like to flatten this out a bit more, with attention to economics, education, and families, but that should begin to happen as more areas are better developed.
One of the developments I'm most pleased with is that some long-dormant areas are starting to be reactivated. Sports is a subject I've been avoiding, since I have no great personal interest in them. Quite some time ago a friend who is an engineer asked where I was going to put a section on that: Now I have a more specific answer. Math is another area I've been avoiding, for a different reason, in spite of the fact that I am very much interested in it, and that's showed up on my development list. Literature promises to show up soon, and various forms of physical objects should also start appearing.
Another area I've neglected for a while, simply because I didn't know much about it, is various parts of what I call anthropology, but that's about to be fully included.
Personal studies are also being brought in. I consider this to be one of the more interesting developments, because a lot of history, society, institutions, culture, and so forth is linked to biography. When I started working on this version of the Knowledge base, I build a lot of it on biographies, and then I shifted away from that approach, so I will be glad to get these worked back in.
Science is another area I am anxious to get included, because I have a lot of personal interest in it. However, I've found that there is a whole lot more to the world (at least, the human world) than science accounts for, and I've been scrambling to catch up in everything else. But that, too, is getting worked in.

Fluff and Flutter, and political succession

The fluff and flutter refers to how I've been developing the knowledge base. Anyone who's more interested in political succession should skip to the end.
Saturday night, after I had done my blog post, I thought more about the idea I had, and decided it probably wasn't going to work. But I was also rather unsatisfied with the pace things are going. The demand-oriented approach is still basically the approach I want, but it was starting to look like a lot of others that have lost focus and bogged down; too mechanical and not satisfying enough. I decided that this was because I had made too many arbitrary rules for myself that resulted in a lot of bouncing around and not making the connections that needed to be made while focusing too much on ones that were less important. Fluff and flutter, in other words. So, I decided, it was time to go back and revise my rules for deciding which connections to look at next. On to the review of progress.
The connections of the main history page to the rest of the base are fairly solid and well developed, and there wasn't anything that called for a general overview of history, so no additions there. For Classical and medieval history, I made connections to National governments and government structure. Modern history included reviewing of links to cities of Western Civilization. In the 19th century, international government (There were plenty of alliances and diplomatic agreements that preceded the kind of international arrangements we are familiar with), and government structure. The 20th century now has links to the section on particular schools, not that I have any of them yet) , and to Educational organization. The early 21st century now allows a peek into periods just before ( late 1990s) and just after ( the future), and future studies can make some use of the industrial revolution (and developments related to it) and industrial societies.
For sociology, there is a connection to educational organization and cultural institutions (for instance libraries and museums). People are connected to religious beliefs, modern compact types of international government, national governments, government forms, and government activities. Nations are clear to connect to a couple more cities. Communities in general weren't called on to link to anything, but for Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro have summaries for the 19th century. (I'd heard of Copacabana, but I didn't know that's where it was) There wasn't anything at the general level for social structure and change, but the industrial revolution can now be connected to peoples, and industrial societies to the 20th century.
There was a fair amount of work within institutions. For religion in general, I have a connection to futures studies, and for beliefs, one to peoples. There was more activity in government, to the early 21st century and into the future, and particular governments also into the early 21st century. For international governments there is a connection to culture, and modern compacts have a connection to sociology. National governments have a connection to peoples and institutions, government structure to the 20th century, and forms of government have some connection to modern history. (That's forms like republics, monarchies, and so forth, not like those the United States Internal Revenue Service inflicts on taxpayers, .although eventually I may get around to those, too). In government activities, I added a new page, succession. That's for inheritance, appointments, elections, coups and assassinations,, and other methods for gaining political position and power. There wasn't any call for economics, this time, but there was for education. There were a couple of checks called for. In particular schools I added a page for secondary schools, educational organization linked to peoples, and for cultural institutions, to modern history.
There were a few other link checks I didn't mention, but most of the others involved either creations of new links, or some expansion on the discussion. that was already in place. Overall, it felt more like real progress.

Since a great deal of what is recorded as history is political, I thought I'd throw in an aside. Few things make you more aware of how important the problem of succession in government is than a review of history. There are several possible methods, including inheritance (not used much anymore), appointment (usually for lower officials), election, and coups and assassinations. Have I left any out, or does that cover most of the possibilities? Inheritance has a problem, mostly because there is no way to guarantee that your heir will be any good at the job. of governing. Appointment is a problem, because who is going to do the appointing, and do they have power to rectify a bad decision? Election has problems, because what if the election is rigged, the loser doesn't accept the results, and what if the incumbent refuses to step down when the term of office is up? Coups and revolutions present a problem, because the ruler has the advantage and you usually have to catch him (rarely her) by surprise, the struggle is likely to be bloody and disruptive, and it sets a very bad precedent: The next fellow has just as good a right to overthrow you.

External Demand

Have I mentioned lately that I'm looking for feedback and comments, either on the web site or this blog? Not that I want to beg too desperately, but it's been some time since any visitor to either has commented. I thought that one of the most basic factors of having a successful web site is to have useful, interesting content. I'm not so sure this is either, yet. Since I'm using an "on demand" approach to developing this site, I'd like to see some external demand, from interested visitors or users, and not just the internal demand. Hmm..now there's a thought..

More small steps. From the main history page, I did a little more pushing of religion, but it didn't amount to any big changes. More or less by coincidence rather than design, I was also reviewing and improving the connections to religion in the classical and medieval period. Years ago when I took a History of Western Civilization course in college, it was evident that the Catholic church was so bound up with medieval European history that it was impossible to talk about the one without bringing in the other. That would be the case for the world history in general, and if it were not for the fact that Americans are in general as poorly educated in world history as they are in religion, it would be one way to introduce the subject.
There wasn't as much of a push for modern history today as there has been earlier, so I made little progress, but the 20th century is now a little better connected to Government. I finished a cycle of review for the early 21st century, although it's still a bit bare of events.
From the main sociology page, there are better connections to economics. There wasn't much progress in peoples or nations, although I did add some expansion of modern history for Algeria, Afghanistan, Peru, and Nepal.

More steps

More on the progress of the knowledge base.
There wasn't much new stuff added to history. Although I made a pass through a few of the more prominent nations, peoples, and communities, there were just small additions. What I did get was a little bit clearer idea of how the topic of social change can be applied to history; a few changes in wording that make that section more than just a collection of links. I had dome similarly for religion the last time through.
Part of this is because prehistory, antiquity, and classical and medieval history have been pushing the same subjects. In modern history, I'm doing the kind of checking of links to nations of Western civilization that I was doing for history in general a few days back. There has been a little development in the 19th and 20th century, principally in religion and economics, respectively, but nothing really much to report.
Improvement of topics supporting the main peoples of the world have been going much faster, now that a full set of virtual links to communities are done. Social structure and change and religion Inquiries into nations have been advancing its set of virtual links to communities. There are lots of links to particular nations, but most of these are just creepy-crawling through a review of their links to historical topics. However, I did get a little expansion of the bare history topic for Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia. The major groups of peoples, Western Civilization, Asiatic peoples, Africans, and American Indians, aren't moving very fast yet, and probably won't for a while.
Communities are also a spot where I'm past the hard part of making virtual links to nations, and this subject is demanding connections to religion. Specific cities are generally still tied up in the high levels of history. Social structure and change in general has just started reviewing its (real) links to nations and communities, and has a while to go yet.
Institutions are still checking connections to nations. With all the subjects pushing religion, I've made some fair progress and and have a new page for European pagans, which will eventually point to things such as Greek, Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Norse, and Slavic religion and mythology. There are slight stirrings in government, but nothing much substantial.

There is a post on the blog By Study and Also By Faith that links to an interview of Dr. Stephan Prothero of Boston University about his new book on Religious Literacy. Not that my opinion has ever counted for much, but I do happen to agree with him. But please, don't cut all the math.

Another update

I got the latest updates, including all the additions and changes I've mentioned since April 30, published to the web, in case anyone wants to see what I was talking about. About a half a dozen more new links are included in that batch, but none really worth am extended discussion.
I had finished going through links from the history main page, and I've started cycling through them again. This is going to be another case of fairly slow going for a day or so, since I've been starting out with nations and cities of Western civilization, and at the moment all references to nations and cities lead to short threads that check links and don't include anything new. I should be getting out of that thicket before long.

Changes, Self-Education, and History

It occurred to me that, although I'm talking a lot about the Sapience Knowledge Base, I didn't have a link to it. I thought I did, but it might have been on one of my posts which is now buried in the archives. It has also occurred to me that I might do well to link the blog to other blogs, and reserve reference links for the web site. I have also begun to add labels for specific topics that I discuss. So, I have completely revised and reorganized the links section.

Although the title of this blog would lead one to expect that there is something about self-directed education here, I've posted precious little on that specific topic. One of the reasons is that I consider self-directed education to be a part of education. More specifically, it has a lot in common with research, which I take to be a part of education. Without that connection to other areas of education or even other subjects, I feel like I'm discussing in a vacuum, as a meaningless abstract generality. Give it a context and a connection to something else, give it parts, and I can then say something meaningful about it. With today's developments, I have an application: specifically history, so I can now say something meaningful about education in general and self education in particular.

When I first began considering how to structure the topic of education in this knowledge base, and what its parts and processes were, I decided that the foundation of education is the discovery of new knowledge, which generally involves a research process. One cannot teach what one has not first learned. Then comes teaching, and then comes the organization of the process, and finally, schools. Since I'm working outside the school system, I decided that I needed to pay attention to the roots of the subject, but because I had structured my studies from a "top down" approach, I had trouble getting to that particular area. Now I have a connection.

I've noticed for some time the complaint that "history is boring", at least, as it's often taught in school. I'm not sure that I have a better answer for that than anyone else, but I might just observe not that a child's knowledge and memory start at the self and the immediate environment, and go outward. A child is far less likely to be interested in the history of the world, than in the history of his own local neighborhood, and less interested in what happened long ago and far away than what happened yesterday or last month, unless there is something in that tale of long ago and far away that makes a connection to right now. Another has to do with the approach taken by professional historians in the past century or so. In their attempts to be scientific, factually correct, and manageable the amount of source material they have to work with, they have tended to become highly specialized, and technically dry. Many works of professional historians are unreadable to the nonspecialist. While historians have been accused of concentrating too much on the "his" in history, many have forgotten the "story" part.
But enough rant on that subject. In general terms, a self-directed student might wish to focus on research, on learning from someone else, on organizing a learning project, or pay for a pre-compiled package (complete with certification) from a recognized school.

I hadn't expected to add any new links from the history main page for a while yet, but one to Democratic (national) governments appeared. I got a lot further in checking links than I had expected, and in the process rewrote the section on how education applies to history. Since that's been an area I wanted to get around to for some time, I was very pleased to finally see it appear. I was expecting a fair amount of demand for prehistory, and there was, but it came mostly in the form of checking already existing links, rather than creating new one. Antiquity has a new link to hunting and gathering societies, and Classical and Medieval history a new link to Judaism. No new links from Modern history main page: I'm doing a lot of checking links to particular countries and cities of Western civilization. The 18th century, though, ahas a new link to Southeast Asia, the 19th century to pagan religion, the early 19th to institutions, the late 20th century to social structure and change, and the current quarter of 2007 a link to institutions.
I have nothing new for the main page in sociology. For peoples and nations I'm examining virtual links to communities, and for communities, virtual links to nations, and for social structure and change, I've wrapped up history for the time being and am about to start checking real links to nations. (A virtual link is one that exists only on my development guide, for the purpose of helping assure that I don't develop low-level topics before having considering them at a higher level.) I am actually looking at pages to nations and cities, but mostly these include already-developed links to history, so it's checking, not any new development.
For the main institutions page, I'm also checking links to nations, so there's no news there. But, for the individual sections, things are starting to move. For particular religions of the world, I now have a link to this year's news. I can connect pagan religion to the major peoples. Abrahamic religion to this decade. I gave Government connections to the 19th century, and government activities back to prehistory. Economics is linked to the 19th century, economic activities to modern history, and industries to history in general. I also added a new page, for building and construction industries. I also have links to the history of teaching and the history of research. I especially wanted to get to these the first real, tangible development of these subjects.
As a bonus that I wasn't expecting to get to today, I have culture linked to the current quarter and month, so that now when the catalog of recent events lists sports and the like, I have some place to discuss them. (Personally, I don't think I could care about them less than I do, but since they are highly visible part of society, I almost have to give them some attention to them.) The area of applied science now connects to antiquity, at least better than it did.

Small steps

The threads of inquiry starting from history are pushing the development of religion and government. I recently reorganized Asiatic religions, and the history page now reflects this reorganization. Otherwise, I haven't added a great deal to my knowledge of history.
Not much has gone on in earlier areas of history, except that particular nations are starting to push prehistory a little, and the effect of that push is to develop social structure and change a little. As usual, modern history is getting the lion's share of attention I finished a review of modern history. On the plus side, this will let me select priorities for development better. On the minus side, it seems like everything is needed! This is going to be focusing for a while on particular peoples, nations, and cities; just to get them fully incorporated into the "study on demand" approach. The next time through, I hope to have a better idea of which ones to pay attention to.
For the 19th century, I expanded the discussion of Asiatic religions a bit, and finally got around to a note in the 20th century on modern world governmental organizations, such as the United Nations, European Union, and NATO. I've been wanting to include this subject for a long time, and it's nice to have a toehold. In the late 21st century, (the last 7 years, as I've mentioned), I have a start on discussion of economics.
Sociology has been helping drive development of religion, but doesn't have any new links. I'm checking virtual links from peoples to particular cities, and from nations to particular cities, and checking virtual links from communities to particular nations. This doesn't immediately contribute much to the knowledge base, but it will help later when I go to work on specific details, as in which nations have which cities and which cities belong to which nations. A historical survey of social structure and change hasn't yielded a whole lot of new and useful information, but I do have this linked to the future now.
For institutions in general I am also checking links to nations of the world, except that these are actual links. There has been progress in religion, for instance, a place for a survey of major religions in the past 7 years and more specifically in the last two. I have links from Christianity to nations, so that I can start gathering detail, Judaism in modern times, Islam and Asiatic religions in the 20th century. Government has also been progressing with a a 20th century peek ad international governments, and a modern history look at particular types of governments. (this is approximately the reverse of the other link: One starts in the 20th century and considers the role of modern international organizations, the other starts with these organizations and considered their modern history. The idea is to be able to approach the subject from either side.
I have a development plan which lists each page, the links from it, I have made and checked, and the ones that are planned to be made and checked. In many cases, there are more links already existing, than I have on the list, in other cases, these are new links to be created. I'm making a special effort to keep this matched to the actual state of work, and I also like to keep a digest so I can see at a glance where I am and guess where I will be going.
So, at a guess, I will be advancing review of nations and cities of Western Civilization, in the process giving more weight to earlier periods of history, connecting peoples and communities to each other at least in principle, and also starting to move from religion to government.
I've also been thinking about publishing all these updates I've been talking about to the web, but since the knowledge base is so thoroughly cross-linked, it more or less to be published all at once, rather than a few pieces at a time. It doesn't seem economical to do that until updates have been sufficiently significant. Some of the changes I've discussed here, and some that I haven't will make more sense when they're put together instead of in disconnected fragments, in perhaps a week or so.

Spinning wheels

I did quite a bit of link checking, but it's astonishing how little real progress I actually made on adding anything. Hopefully it's groundwork for more interesting developments. Some days are like that, whichever approach I use.