Tacit Knowledge

Many thanks to John Hagel from Edge Perspectives, whose recent post helped me tie together some thoughts that had been kicking around in my head recently. John's post was in response to a rather famous article written Nicholas Carr that you probably read ("Is Google Making Us Stupid?").

When I first read Nicholas Carr's article, my initial instinct was to basically ignore it as another "the Internet is ruining our lives" type article. Coming from Nicholas Carr, this isn't surprising. His main point is that we are losing the ability to absorb long form content (like books) as we turn more and more to consuming snippets of information. We're feasting on snacks, in lieu of real meals (something like that, forgive me, lunch is delayed today).

Even if you don't agree that "Google is making us stupid" (as Carr puts it), the question of just how our minds are changing as we adapt new ways of consuming and processing information is a fascinating one. We may not be getting stupider, but something is definitely changing, and our definition of what constitutes "knowledge" is changing as well. Beyond the neurological or psychological changes that may or may not be occurring, there are a number of converging themes to consider.

The first is the growing importance of things like infographics/visual displays of complex data, and how that is helping us crystallize meaning and render patterns more readily. (Here is a recent example of one that I like). The idea of patterns is particularly important here. Faris and Noah refer to "new ways of seeing" that infographics make possible. I like that a lot, because it is a subtle reminder that we are expanding our idea of what counts as "knowledge". New ways of telling stories and seeing patterns emerge is what is most important here. Of course, this doesn't replace other ways of seeing patterns. It's just relatively newer, not necessarily "better" (knowledge isn't a "zero sum" game).

As Hagel suggests, patterns emerge as a result of tacit knowledge, or things that we "know" but that we don't learn from reading a book, and I imagine that in our information rich world we stand to aquire a great deal of tacit knowledge visually. 

The other broad theme that came to mind when reading Hagel's response to Carr is the idea of presence media and flow. I'm thinking of everything from Tumblr to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook (especially the News Feed). Presence applications and formats that capture "snippets" of thoughts, data or information are generating streams of data about us and the world, and the process of assimilating that flow of information is also resulting in interesting new forms of "knowledge" that don't really have anything to do with reading books. It's pretty fascinating to me how knowledge and emotion emerge as a result of patterns in presence media and the flow of information, and how the network is the infrastructure for this. One of the most radical implications here is the notion that in a web of flow, information and knowledge finds us, rather than the other way around. This is in some ways opposite to the model of knowledge that Carr supposes we are losing. (Check out more on this here).

On that note, and as we start to talk about networks and their role in shaping knowledge, it's helpful to think about relationships and "information made meaningful through relationships", because networks are nothing more than aggregated relationships. But whereas the applications mentioned above deal with explicit information and data, there is also the whole world of "non-obvious relationship awareness" that both Adrian and Russell have recently written about. Again, this has to do with relationships and patterns, but here they are patterns between seemingly unrelated things. In effect, these are hidden relationships. Adrian writes, "as our ability to measure just about every facet of our world increases, odd and unexpected relationships start to appear".
Fascinating stuff, and also pointing to entirely new ways of seeing and aquiring tacit knowledge.

Since I have to quickly wrap this up, I will have to include this brilliant passage from Hagel's post, and hope to return to some of these thoughts in a future post.

 We are also at the earliest stages of figuring out how to create environments that enhance serendipity and make visible the relationships and patterns that today lurk behind the cascade of events and snippets of information. The World Wide Web that was designed by content junkies for content junkies to more rapidly locate more snippets of content is already giving way to much richer platforms that will help people to connect with each other and engage together in sustained efforts to create new knowledge.

Tacit knowledge – that which cannot be readily expressed in published content of any length, whether snippets or books – has always been our most valuable knowledge. You can read all the books you want on brain surgery, but that alone will never qualify you to perform brain surgery. At an even simpler level, no book can teach you how to ride a bicycle.

The ultimate impact of the Internet on our intelligence will hinge on its ability to support the creation and sharing of tacit knowledge. Again, we are at the earliest stages of tapping into this potential.

Stories offer potential to communicate some elements of tacit knowledge.  They help to provide enough of a sense of context to reconstruct and extend parts of the tacit.  Stories, properly told to communicate the richness of context, do not reduce to snippets.

(image via)

 

Comments

[Faris]

awesome. thanks for this my man.

[Mike Wagner]

Thanks for this post; you've got my mind racing.

As I read about concepts like "presence media and flow" and "tacit knowledge" along with the challenge "to create environments that enhance serendipity and make visible the relationships and patterns that today lurk behind the cascade of events and snippets of information," I looked for a familiar context.

What came to mind are the stories I've read of combat veterans who were thrust into environments that resulted in serendipitous learning and pattern recognition if it didn't kill you first.

Combat veterans would purposefully try and communicate what they had learned in the flow of battlefield data with the hope of keeping new recruits alive.

Of course what we are seeing emerge is different in that it is not a shared experience nor so narrowly defined a context as a battlefield.

I'm rambling, sorry, all I'm trying to say is that I see some possible parallels.

Thanks again for such a thoughtful post.

Keep creating...a story worth repeating,
Mike

[Damon]

I have read California based Tacit has raised a total of $21 million by developing software designed to automatically identify experts within a company's work force on various topics from vendors to databases. [Cnet] But I have never used this personally.

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