Replying to Arnold J. Wytenburg
Hello Arnold,
Good to hear from you.
>I am concerned, however, over what I construe from your post as an
>assertion that knowledge must precede information. You wrote:
>
>"You need knowledge to comprehend information, e.g. knowledge of medicine
>is required to understand the information in a medical reference text."
>
>I would argue that while information is indeed the basis from which
>knowledge can emerge, there is no possible way in which knowledge can
>exist a priori without a basis in information.
I think this is as close as you can get to a chicken and egg argument
without the chicken and the egg. I'm not saying which comes first,
although I was focusing on just one half of the cycle.
>I also have a concern over the assertion that knowledge
>
>"can perish in two ways:
>
>1. the real world changes, and the previous knowledge about the changed
>part of the real world perishes (becomes unusable)
>
>2. the last person that held that knowledge loses it (dies, suffers from
>Alzheimers's Disease, etc.)"
>
>Although I agree with your second point, I find the first challenging.
>While I would agree that the information component of the knowledge
>assertion may become invalid, the knowledge--the human capacity to place
>information into a useful context--is not necessarily invalid. To borrow
>from one of your examples: While the bridge (the information) may indeed
>be destroyed, the knowledge of how to get from A to B (an understanding of
>the dynamics and constraints of movement from one location to another) is
>not destroyed--one could easily build another bridge or follow an
>alternate route.
I had said "suppose you know only one way to get from A to B". So if you
ask me if I know how to get from A to B, and I responded by describing
that route, and then ended with "but the bridge is out", then I'd say I
USED to know, but I don't know now.
>While information is defineable in terms of its structure and its
>elements, knowledge is not. I would argue that knowledge is then not a
>'quantifiable' thing but instead a Complex Adaptive System that by its
>nature arises from the interaction of information, reflection, intent and
>action. From that point of view, the term 'knowledge management' is
>indeed useless techno-babble. Instead, I would urge us to learn how to
>'manage our organizations for knowledge' rather than trying to manage
>knowledge itself.
I agree completely. I think we're stuck with knowledge management until
the understanding catches up. I think "knowledge husbandry" comes closer,
but it could also give the wrong impression.
Regards,
Patrick
--"Patrick Sue" <psue@inforamp.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>