Dear Kari,
Thanks for reminding me about Blackler. The sources on which he drew were also useful.
Using the verb “knowing” is helpful when we want to keep an active being in the picture, a being that knows. At the same time, the noun “knowledge” is also useful The noun “knowledge” represents what a knowing being knows when knowledge is embodied within the being. The contrast to this use of the word “knowledge” with the word “information,” a word that describes disembodied representations of knowledge.
This is a key point in Plato’s Phaedrus. Socrates sees knowledge as an active mental process – knowing, in Blackler’s terms. Socrates opposes writing as a dangerous illusion because it represents knowledge in an inactive form. Writing is inactive knowledge, mere information that “pretends to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind . . . writing reifies, it turns mental processes into manufactured things” (Rose 1992: 62).
Perhaps that’s too decisive a perspective, but it captures a Socratic understanding: the knowing being is the only one who can truly know. Information has valuable uses, but the debate in Phaedrus offers a powerful comment on the intersection ofknowing, doing, and being.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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Reference
Rose, Steven. 1992. The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind. New York: Anchor Doubleday.
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Kari Kuutti wrote:
—snip—
knowledge is indeed an overloaded and easily misused word, and information would have been a more accurate term. We computer people are especially prone towards reification of knowledge – that has been plaguing the knowledge management field since its inception. The issue is treated very well in Frank Blackler’s classic paper on knowledge management, where he ends up in suggesting that we should drop the term “knowledge” and use “knowing” instead – to not to lose the knowing actor from our sight.
Blackler, Frank (1995) Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation. Organization Studies vol 16 no 6, pp. 1021-1046
http://pure.au.dk/portal-asb-student/files/825/Bilag_6_-_Knowledge__knowledge_work_and_organizations.pdf
—snip—
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