The changing nature of knowledge: KMWorld - 0 views
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Doris Reeves-Lipscomb on 08 Feb 12Interview by Hugh McKellar with David Weinberger, author of book: Too Big to Know: ReThinking Knowledge Now that the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room, 2/1/2012. Discusses how books as a medium for knowledge sharing have been overtaken by knowledge that is drawn from the internet through instantaneous sourcing, updating, etc. Very interesting idea on how greatest value may be derived by network of 'experts' who disagree and differ in their points of view rather than have full harmony on issues. Excerpt from interview: "The value of a web of ideas comes from the differences among the participants in that web. If everybody's saying the same thing, there's negative value in networking them. This gives us an idea that knowledge contains difference, rather than knowledge being that from which all disagreement has been driven, that which has been settled once and for all. I think that in many fields we're finding knowledge to exist in networks that contain disagreement and difference. This is not an entirely new idea, for sure. In Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Lincoln's cabinet, this is shown quite clearly. A group of people who disagree is wiser than any of the single people in it. This idea is not new but we now have an environment - a medium of knowledge-that makes it manifest; it's the norm. The medium only has value as far as it contains disagreement. That's a very different idea of expertise-expertise consists of a web of people who disagree-than the old idea of expert advice.