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McAfee first explains why past knowledge management "solutions" rarely solved anything. He then explains what makes Web 2.0 technologies different. "The good news," he writes, is that the new technologies "focus not on capturing knowledge itself, but rather on the practices and output of knowledge workers." By providing both a platform for collaboration and a means of recording the details of the collaboration, the technologies create a public record of previously private knowledge-sharing conversations, a record that's permanent and easily searched. Knowledge is captured, in other words, as it's created, without requiring any additional work. As people search and use that knowledge, moreover, they refine it - through commenting, linking, syndicating and tagging, for instance - which makes it even more valuable.

Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call. Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

In his report, Band says that rapid adoption of Web 2.0 technologies is not just a critical factor, but a generational one as well, noting that "22 percent of adults now read blogs at least monthly, and 19 percent are members of a social networking site like Facebook or LinkedIn. Even more amazingly, almost one-third of all youth publish a blog at least weekly, and 41 percent of youth visit a social networking site daily."Band also suggests that the true 2.0 shift has been about control and power. "'Web 2.0' began as a user-focused revolution," he writes, "remaking the consumer Web into a landscape that is easy to use, efficient to navigate, populated by self-generated content (versus institutional publications) and driven by ad hoc and established communities of people with similar interests. In a Web 2.0 world, power moves from institutions to consumers because they can now rapidly connect and digitally converse among themselves about the products and services they buy."