From the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, David Weinberger discusses the changing scope of knowledge in our society.
Weinberger addresses a group at Berkman on the last chapter of his book, Everything is Miscellaneous. In order to set a baseline, he talks about the properties of knowledge from the Western tradition. They are more or less the following as I'm paraphrasing.
1. There are three related terms: the knower, what is known, and knowledge
2. Knowledge is the same for everyone.. and there is one knowledge
3. Knowledge is a simplification of things that are complex and chaotic
4. Knowledge requires experts to filter out truth
5. Knowledge is independent of the knower
6. Knowledge is bigger than we are... a trans-generational realm
7. Knowledge is orderly. For example, we like knowledge that has been organized into hierarchical trees.
Weinberger then argues that the physical world limits our ability to organize knowledge. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica is limited by the amount of topics within its entries. If it gets too large, it will becomes too costly to produce and nobody would want to buy it since it won't fit anywhere.
So what the heck is up with Knowledge?
1. The blogosphere allows for us to complexify knowledge.
2. We are changing from a media world where our news is filtered based on an editor's point of view to one that allows the readers to choose what is important. For example, Digg.
3. The Authority of knowledge is changing. For example, John Stewart.
By understanding the relationships that things have to one another, we can derive meaning from them. For example, to truly understand a hammer you need to know about nails, wood, and their economies. And this is what the Web let's us do, it let's us pool together things in new an inventive ways that increase their meaning.
Listen or download the MP3 (time: 1:13:45)
Tags: weinberger knowledge
