Knowledge

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  • Power comes from the right knowledge shared at the right time. (Evans, D., 2010)
  • "Knowing what you do not know is as important as knowing what is known."

Which makes some sense of Donald Rumsfeld's: "We have known knowns (things we know we know), known unknowns (things we know we don't know), unknown unknowns (things we don't know we don't know), and unknown knowns (things we don't know we know)" Source: Donald Rumsfeld.


Too much or inadequate knowledge may be counterproductive for an individual or an organisation. This is clearly illustrated in the following story:

In October (northern hemisphere), a village of indians asked their Chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or not.
Not really knowing the answer, the chief replied that the winter would be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. Being a good leader, he then went to a phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, 'is this winter going to be cold?'. The man on the phone responded, 'this winter is indeed going to be very cold'.
So the Chief went back to encourage his people to collect even more wood to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again, and asked again, 'is it going to be a very cold winter?'. 'Yes', the man replied, 'it's going to be a very cold winter'.
The Chief went back to his people and ordered them to go out and bring back every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again: 'Are you absolutely sure that this winter is going to be very cold?'.
'Absolutely' the man replied, 'the indians are collecting wood like crazy'. (Author unknown)

Knowledge is an interesting concept. The acquiring of knowledge is always a direct result of sensory input via hearing, sight, touch, smell as well as internal awareness of pain, pleasure and other sensations. Cognitive awareness of feelings, emotions and thoughts also generates new knowledge. Philosophy is the field in which these areas are explored along with The Sciences and The Arts. How does humanity advance (if that is the right concept) through time? Is the human of 2007 any different from those of the ancient egyptian period or even earlier? In what way(s) have we changed?

Today's humans have a vast warehouse of information, an infoglut in fact, to add to their knowledge. However simply buying a book and placing it on a shelf does not unfortunately enhance the knowledge of the possessor. For some the taking on of information is as ancient as the times when humanity sat around a fire or stream and talked or listened to one another. The ancients took on the stories of travellers and poets or the elders and with frequent repetition the knowledge was passed on and down through the ages.

Not that dissimilar to watching television,listening to the radio or more recently sitting in front of a computer screen and interacting with the content of the World Wide Web. Greater interactivity is now emerging in blog commentary and some of the social networking innovations that allow clarification and reinforcement of the legends, stories and facts on the internet.

Has humankind changed much? Our personal interactions are very much driven by our genetic makeup and the influences of our peer groups. Our behaviour is a rich blend of taboos, cultural learnings passed down from parents, relatives, religious advisers and the experiences of life.

In order to further explore how mankind advances (there is that notion again) one needs to contemplate much including language development, childhood development, educational processes, semiotics, genetics, the histories of science, religion and philiosophical thought. Increasingly in the 21st Century it is plausable that the current and future uses of technology may enhance this progress. Clearly information technology provides a limitless opportunity to acccess the written, auditory and visual information created by man. Our ability to categorise and name the elements of information and to create new information with the aggregation and collection of different data elements from limitless amounts of data simply makes it easier for individuals or groups to access, memorise and utilise such knowledge in their life tasks.

There is something new being brought to bear here and it is difficult to know what its impact will be. The searching, aggregating, merging, transmitting and visualising of data to an extent never before experienced by humankind may have profound effects on society and even the physical world.

Is the potential to be able to 'know' everything documented by man something new? The limits are obvious - time, age, mental capacity to absorb and recall - but what will hummankind do with limitless knowledge.

The World Bank in 1999 stated: For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge had become the most important factor determining the standard of living - more than land, than tools, than labour.

The Essence of Knowledge

You can have your cake and eat it too! (Davidson, C. and Voss, P., (2005), Knowledge Management, Orient Paperbacks,India, ISBN [8170945607],p.35)

  • Don't know what you don't know.
  • Don’t know what you know till you need to know.
  • People know more than they can express.
  • Knowledge can only ever be volunteered.
  • The more knowledge is used the more it grows.
  • Knowledge can be used without being consumed - (e.g. sharing a sandwich compared with sharing a story).
  • Knowledge can have multiple, simultaneous 'owners'
  • The effectiveness of shared knowledge can be assessed by testing and examinations.
  • Knowledge can be in more than one place at a time.
  • The cost for the first instance of knowledge is disproportionately higher than subsequent instances of the smae knowledge.
  • Ignoring publishing costs, the effort to develop the first instance (or book) for one person is no more for another million or more. The economies of scale for the knowledge author are all and nothing.
  • The return for obtaining knowledge is unpredictable. As an asset you may get no return for the purchase or effort to obtain.
  • You don't know what you have got till you have gotten it! Thomas Stewart explains that you cannot judge whether the knowledge is worth paying for until the purchaser has it, but once possessed it no longer needs to be ourchased. (1999, p121)


Knowledge can be lost. The knowledge of concrete was known to the Ancient Romans but lost to humanity during the dark ages.

"Intellectual capital grows more valuable as it is used." Robert Reich 1992, The Work of Nations. Vintage Books NY.



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