Knowen is an experiment in progress that is being designed to organize, preserve, and expand human knowledge - placing it in a hierarchical knowledge base (graph) that makes it readily available to learners of all backgrounds and ages.

The rate of scientific and engineering innovation is rapidly increasing. With the advent of the Internet and powerful search engines, millions of research articles are accessible within seconds from anywhere in the world. Despite this, because of the complexity of a typical journal article and the redundancy among these, it is often as difficult today as it was 50 or 100 years ago to find a particularly relevant and verified piece of knowledge.

Knowen addresses this problem by:

• Offering an organizational structure that facilitates correct placement of new content by authors and effective learning by readers.
• Including a direct feedback channel to connect authors and readers, who seek clarification of existing content or the development of new content.
• Providing automatic tools for finding connections between seemingly disconnected fields (e.g., biology and physics, music and math, physics and art).

Because it can grow and preserve the tree of human knowledge, Knowen can serve as a global clearinghouse for existing knowledge and emergent ideas. Existing content can be placed into a developing Knowen hierarchy of knowledge; new content can emerge directly within it, while connections can be established or reshaped as new information, or better understanding, emerges.