Linda Wing wrote:
>Stephen, I couldn't agree with you more that the issues facing us in
>knowledge management is at "best" misunderstood by many....and at its
>"worst" manipulated by some.
Even members of a relatively small community such as LO will
"misunderstand" knowledge management, in the sense that it's difficult to
get consensus on what it means.
>recently WIRED espoused that we are not really a "knowledge economy". What
>is emerging is that we are really an "attention" economy.
>
>The author took the position that economics is a study of scarce
>resources. We have no shortage of information. What we do have a
>shortage of is capturing the "attention" of people.
By some definitions, knowledge and information are not interchangeable.
Information is defined as "data with relevance", so the real problem is
connecting people with data that they care about. Knowledge is defined as
"know-how", which resides in human beings, and which is definitely a
scarce resource.
>These issues and others rest at the source of the knowledge management
>discussion. It is no longer what we can know (which is alot), but what we
>need to know. These are not issues of knowledge management, but of the
>ability of the individual to discern and choose appropriate information
>flows.
I think knowledge management IS about what we need to know, and how we go
about satisfying that need.
>I reckon we're simply going to have to start
>"studying" the issue and bringing attention to bear on the fact that we're
>headed down a dead-end street with regard to knowledge management.
I'm curious as to how this conclusion was arrived at.
>Computers and technology are tools....some people expect someday they will
>think for us with the hope that they will help us create a utopian world.
>I haven't seen it yet, nor do I expect to....
Agreed!
--"Patrick Sue" <psue@inforamp.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>