Shifting
From Knowing Knowledge
Changes do not manifest themselves significantly in society until they are of sufficient weight and force. The building of many small, individual changes requires long periods of time before fundamental change occurs.1 Our conceptual world view of knowledge—static, organized, and defined by experts—is in the process of being replaced by a more dynamic and multi-faceted view.
Knowledge has broken free from its moorings, its shackles. Those, like Francis Bacon, who equate knowledge with power, find that the masses are flooding the pools and reservoirs of the elite. The filters, gatekeepers, and organizers are awakening to a sea of change that leaves them adrift, clinging to their old methods of creating, controlling, and distributing knowledge.
We are in the early stages of dramatic change—change that will shake the spaces and structures of our society. Knowledge, the building block of tomorrow, is riding a tumultuous sea of change. Previously, knowledge served the aims of the economy—creation, production, and marketing. Today, knowledge is the economy. What used to be the means has today become the end.
Left in the wake of cataclysmic change are the knowledge creation and holding structures of the past. The ideologies and philosophies of reality and knowing—battle spaces of thought and theory for the last several millennia—have fallen as guides. Libraries, schools, businesses—engines of productivity and society—are stretching under the heavy burden of change. New epistemological and ontological theories are being formed, as we will discuss shortly with connective knowledge. These changes do not wash away previous definitions of knowledge, but instead serve as the fertile top of multiple soil layers.
The task of this book is to provide an overview of what is happening to knowledge and to the spaces in which knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and utilized.
The pursuit of knowledge is ongoing. Unlike most desires, this desire is insatiable.2 We tinker with the constructs of reality: What causes weather patterns? Why did it (pick any event) happen? What is that (pick any phenomenon)? If we change this, how does it impact that?
Human existence is a quest to understand. Our spaces and structures need to be aligned with our new understanding of knowledge…and the manner in which it moves, flows, and behaves.
We live as an integrated experience—we see, know, and function in connections. Life, like knowing, is not an isolated activity—it is a rich, interconnected part of who we are. We cannot stop the desire to know. The desire to know is balanced with our desire to communicate, to share, to connect, and our desire to make sense, to understand—to know the meaning. In an effort to make ourselves understood, we create structures to hold our knowledge: hierarchies, books, libraries, encyclopedias, the internet, search engines. We create spaces where we can dialogue about and enact knowledge: corporations, organizations, schools, universities, societies. And we create tools to disseminate knowledge: peer-review journals, discussion panels, conferences.
The last decade has fundamentally re-written how we:
- consume media
- collaborate
- find information
- store information
- authenticate and validate
- express ourselves and our ideas
- relate to information/knowledge (the relationship time is much shorter—compare 1/2 hour reading the morning newspaper vs. reading 50 news sources online in 10 minutes)
- relate to the deluge of information, requiring that we become much more selective and that we start using external resources (social bookmarking, user-generated and filtered content, personal tagging) to cope
- function in knowledge intense environments (mass movement to knowledge-based work, diminishing physical or industrial work activities).
[edit] What has caused knowledge to leave the safe, trusted spaces of generations past?
Changes are occurring on several levels:
| 1. | the context (or environment) in which knowledge exists; and |
| 2. | the flow and characteristics of knowledge itself. |
[edit] What is the impact of knowledge set free?
The most substantial changes will be felt in how we organize ourselves. The spaces and structures of society—corporations, churches and religious bodies, schools, and government—will experience a different relationship with knowledge. Instead of relationships of control/monitor and cause/effect, these organizations require a shift in view to foster, nurture, and connect. Customers, students, and clients no longer tolerate pre-packaging (music, news, media). Knowledge set free enables dynamic, adaptive, and personalized experiences.
Yochai Benkler, in his exploration of the growing prominence of networks in society, offers a glimpse into what is at stake in our world of morphing knowledge:
Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the ways we see the state of the world as it is and might be…for more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production.3
These changes are still being interpreted through existing beliefs of how we should structure our organizations and what it means to know and learn. How deep must change penetrate our organizations before we see systemic change? The first attempt at implementation usually involves forcing decentralized processes into centralized models.
We stand with our feet in two worlds: one in the models and structures that originated in (and served well) the industrial era, and the second within the emerging processes and functions of knowledge flow in our era today. Our dual existence is noticed in business, education, and media—we have new tools being used to serve old needs. This phenomenon was found in the early days of video. Initially, video was thought to be best suited for taping and recording live stage shows. Video was seen as a second-rate experience to live shows. Over time, once producers and editors understood the uniqueness of the medium, video developed into its own art form.
Or consider email in its earlier days—it seemed that nearly everyone was printing out a paper copy of emails, at least the important ones, and filling them in a file cabinet. Today we are beginning to see a shift with email products that archive and make email searchable and allow individuals to apply metadata at point of use (tagging).
Similarly, we are in the in-between stage of organizational models—we are trying to force the changed context and expressions of knowledge into structures and processes that served a previous age.
Knowledge is not static. The knowledge flow cycle (see Figure 3) begins with some type of knowledge creation (individual, group, organization) and then moves through the following stages:
| Co-creation | (like end-user generated content) is a recent addition to the knowledge cycle. The ability to build on/with the work of others opens doors for innovation and rapid development of ideas and concepts. |
| Dissemination | (analysis, evaluation, and filtering elements through the network) is the next stage in the knowledge flow cycle |
| Communication of key ideas | (those that have survived the dissemination process) enter conduits for dispersion throughout the network |
| Personalization. | at this stage, we bring new knowledge to ourselves through the experience of internalization, dialogue, or reflection. |
| Implementation | is the final stage, where action occurs and feeds back into the personalization stage. Our understanding of a concept changes when we are acting on it, versus only theorizing or learning about. |
(It is worth noting, even the diagram provided to support this line of reasoning falls into static, almost hierarchical representations—our text/visual tools perpetuate and feed our linearity—a concept we will explore in greater detail when discussing the changed attributes of knowledge).
A simple example is the process of communicating via text. Traditionally, a book was the created knowledge object. Once written, it was released for others to read and disseminate. As an object, the flow of discussion was essentially one way—from the author to the reader (though readers may form book clubs to discuss the work of an author). The original source was not updated regularly, perhaps only in subsequent editions occurring every several years.
In today’s online world, an author can post a series of ideas/writings, and receive critique from colleagues, members of other disciplines, or peers from around the world. The ideas can be used by others to build more elaborate (or personalized) representations. The dialogue continues, and ideas gain momentum as they are analyzed and co-created in different variations. After only a brief time (sometimes a matter of days), the ideas can be sharpened, enlarged, challenged, or propagated. The cycle is dizzying in pace, process, and final product, which is then fed back into the flow cycle for continual iteration.
We do not consume knowledge as a passive entity that remains unchanged as it moves through our world and our work. We dance and court the knowledge of others—in ways the original creators did not intend. We make it ours, and in so doing, diminish the prominence of the originator.
Many processes tug at and work the fabric of knowledge.
Figure 3. Knowledge Flow Cycle
| Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, firmly-founded but by no means uniformly transparent medium of experience. | |
| Theodor Adorno 4 |
We exist in multiple domains 5:
Physical
Cognitive
Emotional
Spiritual
It is to our own ill that we consider any one domain above the others. We are most alive, most human, and most complete when we see the full color of our multi-domain continuums.
Figure 4. Domains of Knowing
Our quadratic existence runs through spheres of interconnection. Cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual domains of knowledge interact in a myriad of ways. Life is not lived in a silo. Artificial constructs may be useful for categorization, but fail to capture the true richness and interconnectivity of knowledge.
The aggregate of domains, each with various levels of prominence in different situations, provides the conduit through which we experience knowledge.
Figure 5. Knowledge Types
Knowledge consists of different types:
| Knowing about | news events, basics of a field, introductory concepts in a discipline |
| Knowing to do | drive a car, solve a math problem, code a program, conduct research, manage a project |
| Knowing to be | to embody knowledge with humanity (doing blended with consistency and daily existence), to be a doctor or psychologist (mannerism, professionalism), to be an ethical person, to be compassionate, to relate, to feel |
| Knowing where | to find knowledge when needed, web search, library, database, an organization, and increasingly, knowing who to approach for assistance |
| Knowing to transform | to tweak, to adjust, to recombine, to align with reality, to innovate, to exist at levels deeper than readily noticeable, to think. The "why of knowing" resides in this domain |
We have created journals, books, libraries, and museums to house knowledge. Most knowledge in these storage structures is in the about and doing levels. Knowing to be, where to find knowledge (in today’s environment, knowing how to navigate knowledge as a process or flow), and knowing to transform are all outside of these container-views.
Schools, universities, and corporations attempt to serve dissemination processes of knowledge-in-containers. Under the pressure of constant, ongoing change (and being designed to manage products, not process), these organizations are unable to attend to the full array of knowing. For most of us, we find our higher-level understanding through reflection and informal learning, where we engage with knowledge to gain new understandings. The skills and processes that will make us people of tomorrow are not yet embedded in our educational structures. While there are many who are attempting new approaches, the vast majority are ensconced in structures, preparing students and employees for a future that will not exist
The quad-space of self occurs in the larger space of organizations and society; just as we exist in different domains: physical, cognitive, social, and spiritual (see Figure 4), we exist in different spaces: self, collective, organizational, and societal (see Figure 6).
Each space of existence holds its own culture. Knowledge experienced in the space of self holds a different context (and thereby, meaning) than knowledge experienced in our collective spaces (hobbies, volunteer groups, social spaces). Each sphere of existence has an accompanying culture and feel (an evolving zeitgeist)…which, themselves, become perspective-points for perceiving (and filtering) knowledge.
Figure 6. Our Structures of Existence
The complexities of functioning in numerous (and ambiguous) spaces requires increased lines of communication. Duncan Watts addresses the challenge of rapidly changing environments through "intense communication," ensuring that each agent in the space is aware and informed.
| When solving complex problems in ambiguous environments, individuals compensate for their limited knowledge of the interdependencies between their various tasks and for their uncertainty about the future by exchanging information—knowledge, advice, expertise, and resources—with other problem solvers within the same organization. | |
| Duncan Watts 6 |
| An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is its opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning. | |
| Max Planck 7 |
Figure 7. What is Knowledge?
In order to understand beauty, we kill it.
And in the process, we understand more about our nature and less about beauty.
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1 Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2Biederman, I., & Vessel, E. A. (2006). Perceptual pleasure and the brain. American Scientist, 94(3), 247. Irving Biederman and Edward A. Vessel suggest "visual input activates receptors in the parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward, and that the brain associates new images with old while also responding strongly to new ones. Using functional MRI imaging and other findings, they are exploring how human beings are ’infovores’ whose brains love to learn." Our brain appears to "crave information" (¶ 1).
3 Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks (p. 1). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
4 Adorno, T. W. (1984). Minima moralia: Reflections from damaged life. London: Verso.
5 Bandura, A. (1985). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory (p. 23). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Offers "triadic reciprocality" of interaction. He includes the domains: behavior, cognitive, and personal factors, as well as environment influences. The three elements work together, influencing and shaping each other. In a similar sense, the four domains provided in this text (cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual) exist in an interplay of interaction and functioning.
6 Watts, D. (2003). Six degrees (p. 273). New York: W. W. Norton.
7 Great thoughts about physics. (n.d.). Max Planck. Retrieved September 1, 2006, from http://www.helical-structures.org/great_thoughts.htm
