|
|
Person
|
David Weinberger |
|
|
|
David Weinberger is an American technologist, professional speaker, and commentator, probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Blog Post  Grassroots KM through BloggingPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 26 March 2002 Example WeblogsGurteen Knowledge-Log, David Gurteen, 29 March 2002 Living in the Blog-osphereGurteen Knowledge-Log, David Gurteen, 24 August 2002 Sites to watch for news of what's nextGurteen Knowledge-Log, David Gurteen, 29 December 2002 The Death of Documents and the End of DonenessGurteen Knowledge-Log, David Gurteen, 23 February 2003 Christopher Lydon InterviewsGurteen Knowledge-Log, David Gurteen, 2 May 2004 On data, information, knowledge and wisdomPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 11 February 2010 Education as a public act has tremendous powerPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 22 August 2012 David Weinberger at KMWorld 2012: facilitating knowledge sharingPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 18 January 2013 Let's have more interesting conversationsPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 28 May 2014 The true complexity of the world outstrips our ability to fully explain itPosted to Gurteen Knowledge-Log by David Gurteen on 28 April 2019 Book  Everything Is Miscellaneous (May 2007) by David WeinbergerThe Power of the New Digital Disorder Small Pieces Loosely Joined (Mar 2002) by David WeinbergerA Unified Theory of the Web The ClueTrain Manifesto (2000) by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine  , Doc Searls , David WeinbergerThe End of Business as Usual Link CluetrainPerson  David WeinbergerQuotation  On business as a conversation by David Weinberger On conversation and being human by David Weinberger On getting to knowledge by David Weinberger On implicit knowledge by David Weinberger On KM and understanding by David Weinberger On knowing too much and understanding by David Weinberger On knowledge management and understanding by David Weinberger On knowledge workers & conversation by David Weinberger On our business voice by David Weinberger On our voice by David Weinberger On the Internet and your own voice by David Weinberger On the knowledge management impulse by David Weinberger Quotations from David Weinberger:  Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation - literally. And 'knowledge workers' are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations.David Weinberger To have a conversation, you have to be comfortable being human - acknowledging you don't have all the answers, being eager to learn from someone else and to build new ideas together. You can only have a conversation if you're not afraid of being wrong. Otherwise, you're not conversing, you're just declaiming, speechifying, or reading what's on the PowerPoints. To converse, you have to be willing to be wrong in front of another person. Conversations occur between equals. The time your boss's boss asked you at a meeting about your project's deadline was not a conversation. The time you sat with your boss for an hour in the Polynesian-themed bar while on a business trip and you really talked, got past the corporate bullshit, told each other the truth about the dangers ahead, and ended up talking about your kids - that maybe was a conversation. David Weinberger We get to knowledge — especially "actionable" knowledge — by having desires and curiosity, through plotting and play, by being wrong more often than right, by talking with others and forming social bonds, by applying methods and then backing away from them, by calculation and serendipity, by rationality and intuition, by institutional processes and social roles.Most important in this regard, where the decisions are tough and knowledge is hard to come by, knowledge is not determined by information, for it is the knowing process that first decides which information is relevant, and how it is to be used. David Weinberger Implicit knowledge isn't explicit knowledge that we're not currently thinking about. Implicit knowledge isn't there the way ore is buried. It's "there" only in the sense that we can generate it when required.David Weinberger But the real problem with the information being provided to us in our businesses is that, for all the facts and ideas, we still have no idea what we're talking about. We don't understand what's going on in our business, our market, and our world. In fact, it'd be right to say that we already *know* way too much. KM isn't about helping us to know more. It's about helping us to understand. Knowledge without understanding is like, well, information.” So, how do we understand things? From the first accidental wiener roast on a prehistoric savannah, we've understood things by telling stories. It's through stories that we understand how the world works. David Weinberger But the real problem with the information being provided to us in our businesses is that, for all the facts and ideas, we still have no idea what we're talking about.
We don't understand what's going on in our business, our market, and our world. In fact, it'd be right to say that we already *know* way too much. KM isn't about helping us to know more. It's about helping us to understand. Knowledge without understanding is like, well, information. David Weinberger Knowledge Management should not be about helping us to know more.
It should be about helping us to understand better. David Weinberger Here's a definition of that pesky and borderline elitist phrase, 'knowledge worker'. A knowledge worker is someone whose job entails having really interesting conversations at work. The characteristics of conversations map to the conditions for genuine knowledge generation and sharing: they're unpredictable interactions among people speaking in their own voice about something they're interested in. The conversants implicitly acknowledge that they don't have all the answers (or else the conversation is really a lecture) and risk being wrong in front of someone else. And conversations overcome the class structure of business, suspending the organization chart at least for a little while. If you think about the aim of Knowledge Management as enabling better conversations rather than lassoing stray knowledge doggies, you end up focusing on breaking down the physical and class barriers to conversation. And if that's not what Knowledge Management is really about, then you ought to be doing it anyway. David Weinberger We have been trained throughout our business careers to suppress our individual voice and to sound like a 'professional', that is, to sound like everyone else.
This professional voice is distinctive. And weird. Taken out of context, it is as mannered as the ritualistic dialogue of the 17th-century French court. David Weinberger Our voice is our strongest, most direct expression of who we are.
Our voice is expressed in our own words, our tone, our body language, our visible enthusiasms. David Weinberger The Internet is a place where people get to speak in their own voice about what is important to them. Knowledge management has become a hot topic precisely because we silently recognize that our information isn't yielding understanding.
But information is unsatisfying because it's managed; to make it manageable, we strip out context and voice. So, if we identify something called knowledge and then insist on managing it, we'll repeat the problem that gave rise to our desire for knowledge. Conclusion? If you want to get past information, you have to give up all hope of managing your - and others' - understanding of the world. Also, you can't do it yourself: all understanding is social by definition. David Weinberger
|
|
10:47 AM GMT |
