Anthony Judge, (

Port Said Port Said ( ar, بورسعيد, Būrsaʿīd, ; grc, Πηλούσιον, Pēlousion) is a city that lies in northeast Egypt extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal. With an approximate population of 6 ...

, 21 January 1940) is mainly known for his career at the

Union of International Associations The Union of International Associations (UIA) is a non-profit non-governmental research institute and documentation center based in Brussels, Belgium, and operating under United Nations mandate. It was founded in 1907 under the name Central Office ...

(UIA), where he has been Director of Communications and Research, as well as Assistant Secretary-General. He was responsible at the UIA for the development of interlinked databases and for publications based on those databases, mainly the

Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential The ''Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential'' is published by the Union of International Associations (UIA). It is available online since 2000, and was previously available as a CD-ROM and as a three-volume book. The ''Encyclopedia' ...

, the

Yearbook of International Organizations The Yearbook of International Organizations is a reference work on non-profit international organizations, published by the Union of International Associations. It was first published in 1908 under the title ''Annuaire de la vie internationale'', a ...

, and the

International Congress Calendar The International Congress Calendar is a calendar of events organized by non-profit international organizations, mainly those organizations which are included in the Yearbook of International Organizations. It has been published since 1960 by the Un ...

. Judge has also personally authored a collection of over 1,600 documents of relevance to governance and strategy-making. All these papers are freely available on his personal website ''Laetus in Praesens''. Now retired from the UIA, he is continuing his research within the context of an initiative called ''Union of Imaginable Associations''.

Early life

Anthony John Nesbitt (Tony) Judge, an Australian national, was born in Port Said, Egypt, in 1940. His father was a pilot and officer in the Royal Air Force. He was brought up in what was Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), with some schooling in the United Kingdom and Australia. He did chemical engineering at Imperial College (London) and an MBA at the University of Cape Town. He worked at the Union of International Associations between 1961 and 1963, and from 1968 till 2007. He is still living in Belgium, his wife is German, and they have one son.

Career

Anthony Judge's work at the UIA, from the sixties until 2007, involved the adaptation of a wide range of emerging technologies to

data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource. Concept The concept of data management arose in the 1980s as technology moved from sequential processing (first punched cards, then magnetic tape) to r ...

and

knowledge management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

, such as in-house computers, computer

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...

, email, extension of email access to developing countries,

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

structure,

collaborative editing __NOTOC__ Collaborative editing is the process of multiple people editing the same document simultaneously. This technique may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially improve the quality of documents and increase productivity. ...

Machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

web technology The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

VRML VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced ''vermal'' or by its initials, originally—before 1995—known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language) is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graphi ...

, and inter-institutional data integration. A particular focus of his activities was on the possibilities of visualizing networks of organizations, world problems and other sets of data. His work also involved the production of many research papers relevant to the strategic position of international organizations and the organized response to world problems. He wrote papers for instance on dialogue facilitation, transformative conferencing, information system design, relevance of metaphor for governance and communication, transdisciplinarity, and concepts of human development. Under Judge's direction the UIA developed the most extensive databases on global

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.UIA Online Databases
Publications based on those databases include the

, the

, and many other. Judge carried out also consulting and related activities with such institutions as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), UNESCO, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN University (Tokyo), and the Commonwealth Science Council. One of his continuing research interests has been innovation in international meeting processes, especially in conferences with special problems. He thus played advisory and facilitatory roles in several events such as Inter-Sectoral Dialogue (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), World Futures Studies Conference (Turku, 1993), and Parliament of the World's Religions (Chicago, 1993).

Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential

The ''Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential'', of which Anthony Judge has been the main architect, is a monumental work that came into being thanks to a partnership between the UIA and Mankind 2000. Initiated in 1972, that collaborative project gave rise to a succession of editions of the ''Encyclopedia'' in 1976, 1986, 1990, and 1995, while in 2000 a new edition was made available as a collection of online databases through the UIA website. In 2005, following disagreement over the partnership contract, and as Executive Secretary of Mankind 2000, Judge reframed the ''Encyclopedia'' as having been a strategic initiative of the Union of Intelligible Associations.

Richard Slaughter Richard Slaughter is a scholar and writer in the field of futures studies, applied foresight and social innovation. He is the co-director of Foresight International, and has guest edited the journals ''Futures'' and '' foresight''. His work ha ...

, in a review article, praised in particular the ''Encyclopedia'' introductory and commentary texts (available online), which were mainly written by Judge himself. Slaughter emphasized that the significance of this work is not its size or the scope of its tens of thousands of references, impressive though these are. It is rather in the nature of what has been attempted. Those numerous accompanying texts, he said, are good enough to be published separately because they contain highly cogent observations on the "global problematique", commentaries on the work of numerous great thinkers from a wide variety of fields, and an impressive array of insights about the epistemology, symbolism, metaphysics, metaphors and linguistic representations of the subject.

Writings

Over the years Judge has produced more than 1,600 papers on information, knowledge organization, and other topics of relevance to governance,

policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organ ...

and strategy-making. Most of these papers are freely available on his personal website ''Laetus in Praesens'' (translated from Latin: ''Joy in the Present''), where they are listed by themes and dates. Many of them evolve around the quest to create a wiser and more functional world, especially in the perspective of learning from the relative lack of success of past initiatives in view of the dimensions and urgency of challenges. His work has a high level of novelty, for instance innovation in the use of

metaphors A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

debate Debate is a process that involves formal discourse on a particular topic, often including a moderator and audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for often opposing viewpoints. Debates have historically occurred in public meetings, a ...

, data-visualization and system structures. The exploratory interdisciplinary methodology of

futures studies Futures studies, futures research, futurism or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will li ...

, with which Judge has long been associated, also significantly gives form to his whole, unique, work. Now retired from the UIA, Anthony Judge is continuing to write within the context of an initiative called ''Union of Imaginable Associations'', and its associated projects.

References

External links

''Laetus In Praesens''
Anthony Judge's personal website.
Biography: Anthony Judge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Judge, Anthony 1940 births Knowledge management Futurologists Encyclopedists Living people