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We are in a new age of “networked knowledge,” meaning that knowledge — ideas, information, wisdom even — has broken out of its physical confines (the pages of a book or the mind of a person) and now exists in a hyperconnected online state… This new structure “feels more natural because the old ideals of knowledge were never realistic.”
Knowledge comes to be that which we can know with certainty, what is settled and beyond reasonable dispute. Yet, there is one basic fact about us human beings: We are profoundly fallible. We’ve known since the dawn of civilization that we basically get everything wrong and then die. The demand for certainty and clarity placed on creatures who recognize their own uncertainty is, in some sense, unnatural.
for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument. That social activity — collaborative and contentious, often at the same time — is a more accurate reflection of our condition as imperfect social creatures trying to understand a world that is too big and too complex for even the biggest-headed expert.
Like our collective interests, the Web and the knowledge that resides there is at odds and linked in conversation. That’s why the Internet, for all its weirdness, feels so familiar and comfortable to so many of us. And that’s the sense in which I think networked knowledge is more “natural.
Knowledge comes to be that which we can know with certainty, what is settled and beyond reasonable dispute. Yet, there is one basic fact about us human beings: We are profoundly fallible. We’ve known since the dawn of civilization that we basically get everything wrong and then die. The demand for certainty and clarity placed on creatures who recognize their own uncertainty is, in some sense, unnatural.
for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument. That social activity — collaborative and contentious, often at the same time — is a more accurate reflection of our condition as imperfect social creatures trying to understand a world that is too big and too complex for even the biggest-headed expert.
Like our collective interests, the Web and the knowledge that resides there is at odds and linked in conversation. That’s why the Internet, for all its weirdness, feels so familiar and comfortable to so many of us. And that’s the sense in which I think networked knowledge is more “natural.
