A little over a year ago I wrote a blog post on KM 2.0. In it I wrote:
“… has KM evolved to KM 2.0? No, not at all. KM is still about people and sharing knowledge. It’s always been about ensuring a supporting environment in which this can be best achieved. It’s never been about the technology because good KM can exist without it!”
Well, I’m about to change my mind, but not in the way you might first think.
I’ve been listenning to David Weinberger’s talks on “Everything is Miscelaneous” for a while now and have even shared it inside my own organisation in my role as practice lead for Web and Information Management. I particularly like the one he gave to the National Library of Congress way back in 2004 where he talks of the way in which our attitudes toward knowledge as a society has changed. And this got me thinking.
For about 2000 years we’ve treated knowledge as the province of experts, those who in Aristotle’s mind could help us define what something was and what it was not. What we then did with that knowledge was store it in the most accessible place we could — libraries like those in Alexandria and Ephesus. Unfortunately, this movement started our modern scientific philosophy of valuing fact, logic and reason over the personal and subjective as one was equated to the processes that produced and refined knowledge while the other was not.
Today, the process of validating knowledge is about peer review, but in terms described as modern Taylorism by the likes of Jon Husband, Dave Snowden and Dave Pollard, it means knowledge becomes the product of a careful, measured process in the same way we manufacture cars or cans of fruit.
Only 10 years ago, if John Citizen wanted to share his knowledge with the world, he would have to write a book or publish a journal article. Then, reviewers, editors and established experts, would vet the work and based on their positions of power, and accepted logic of the time, refute or accept what he had to say BEFORE it saw the light of day. And if it didn’t appear in trusted, knowledge repositories like Encyclopedia Britannica, no one would believe it to be the truth.
Fortunately, the web has changed our ways of producing knowledge by giving us social computing tools that reduce the barrier for participation in sharing knowledge so that anyone with a computer (or a mobile phone) can make a contribution. It means that John Citizen can contribute what he knows — even his personal and subjective experiences — to the world in a way that hasn’t been possible for the last two thousand years.
For me, this suggests that knowledge management is changing because the way the world views knowledge and creates it is changing. People are more trusting of John Citizen’s personal views on his blog than they are of CEOs and their company. If John writes an article on his experiences with a washing machine on a community forum because people can more easily identify with John and his ‘human voice’ they will trust him. If John is a friend of your friend Sue then you’re more likely to trust John and what he says.
That’s why at the upcoming ACTKM08 conference I’m about to go out on a limb and say I’ve changed my mind about KM 2.0. Sure, KM is about storytelling, I think we’re in the midst of a global paradigm shift because of web 2.0 and social computing about what constitutes knowledge, the processes we undertake to produce it, and value we place on mythos versus logos …and I think it’s about to change the discipline of knowledge management.
Hope to see you there
M
9 October, 2008 at 4:18 am |
Hi, Matt .. thanks for the mention.
For me, this suggests that knowledge management is changing because the way the world views knowledge and creates it is changing
I think I’ve tried to address this in a soon-to-be-published so-called Masterclass (in two parts) at Inside Knowledge about the design of knowledge work in the industrial era versus what it may become in the networked age. No answers, just asking questions ..
9 October, 2008 at 7:27 pm |
I look forward to hearing about the Masterclass!
M
15 October, 2008 at 10:38 pm |
Hi Matt,
Nice to see a different view of KM 2.0. Note sure what Joe Firestone would think of it, but I has similar thoughts about the changing nature of human interaction and I find the idea of a national or even racial culture change quite delicious. Still got a little while to go before the rational side of my brain catches up with you.
I watched your presentation today on Slideshare (couldn’t make it to actKM) and found it illuminating, however you twittered that you would accept criticism so I offer some of that too, although it’s more a comment than a criticism.
In my readings of Geert Hofstedde it was pointed out to me that some of his work can be misapplied to smaller groups, sometimes with quite prejudicial results. I had the opportunity to listen to him at a Melbourne Uni lecture two years ago and he stated that nation-states were the real focus of his work. Even a global mega-company like IBM was on the very small side for his ideas to work. I asked him what he thought of those of his students who were applying them to much smaller groups of people and he called them “his wayward children”.
To accept your use of the Power-Distance factor influencing Web 2.0 at the national level, I will have to do some more research. In one of his books he has a graph with Power-Distance on one scale and country names on the other (I’m sure I have it somewhere). It would be interesting to compare that list with – say – Facebook or Twitter membership by country. Even saying that though, it is my opinion that Hofstedde’s work is so popular simply because it speaks to a function of our own minds that seeks to build generalistic categories of everything we see. In the real world people are all individuals (except me) and when applying these ideas to small businesses ie: less than 5000 employees, can be misleading at best.
Hope you don’t mind this feedback. I agree times are changing and have personally experienced the different types you talk about. In completing my Masters degree, te use of official knowledge is a must, and yet I have learnt just as much talking to practicioners, conversing on actKM and now twittering with experts who bounce ideas and evolve understandings and definitions in days what used to take years. My head gets giddy with the possibilities of an exponentially increasing understanding of our world, both scientifically and personally.
I look forward to reading more of your work.
16 October, 2008 at 6:44 am |
Thanks Stuart very much for your comments — I really value them. I think it’s important to see the conversation continue
The illustration of Power-Distance in relation to adoption of social computing tools is best illustrated in the book I contributed to The Relationship Economy.
Essentially I took international data available on Power Distance directly available from Hofstede’s own website and plotted it against international data on countries current uptake of social computing tools separating out socio-economic factors by taking into consideration developing countries and developed countries. What I found was quite startling — a fairly robust statistically significant trend that High-Power Distance equals low uptake.
Given the definitions of Power-Distance, and the plethora of information available in the KM-sphere about successful sharing environments, the results made a lot of sense.
Personally, as you’ve said, I’d like to see more data on Twitter, Facebook, and uptake of other tools so that we can continue to investigate these cultural factors.
… maybe I should continue this work as a PhD …? Anyone interested in giving me a grant or sponsoring me? *LOL*
M
16 October, 2008 at 9:10 am |
Thanks Matt,
My apologies for commenting without first doing more reading of your research. I’ve only been following you for a few days on blog and twitter.
Based on this explanation, Hofstedde is totally appropriate, and I admit my comments were spurred by a twit of @kdelarue during #actkm08 saying “The higher the ‘power-distance’ of your org’n (hierarchy, command & control), the harder it is to introduce 2.0 tools”
It was the jump from nations to organisations that I was concerned about. Maybe not a full PhD of work here, but certainly a research Masters would work. No funds from me though
I so regret not being able to get to actKM08. Besides the few people I know, I suspected someone like you would pop out of the woodwork with something I would like to get my teeth into.
I look forward to hearing more from you.
30 October, 2008 at 1:34 pm |
Matt – Any chance of getting the data you used – ideally in spreadsheet form?
2 November, 2008 at 2:31 pm |
[...] my presentations to Web Directions Government, Oz-IA 2008 and ACTKM08, I discussed some of these issues at length, particularly in relation to the introduction of social [...]