Redefining knowledge in an information world – a polemic

This paper looks at knowledge and information as different forms of the same ideas or "memes". Very different, for knowledge is live, and information is dead. Knowledge is personal, difficult to acquire; information is plentiful, a commodity. Dawkins coined the term meme to refer to a "unit of cultural transmission". I distinguish between forms of the meme that are live knowledge – the internal idea, or imago, and the external transient representation of it, the ephemeron – and those which are permanent information (artefact and permaphemeron). It is a mistake to talk of a "content-free" learning experience, as though content were "just information". Content is knowledge. The point of education is not just to regenerate live knowledge from one generation to the next, it is to extend and add to it through knowledge creation. And knowledge creativity does not operate in a knowledge vacuum. You need ideas to breed ideas.

Globalising knowledge

The technology enablers of Friedman’s Flat World have made enormous differences to knowledge creation and sharing. The disaggregation of supply chains has been followed by the partial disaggregation of knowledge supply chains as some knowledge producers set up innovation centres in various locations around the world. But there is considerable evidence that instead of a flat world distribution of knowledge production there are hubs of innovation and knowledge creation developing in a relatively limited number of locations around the world. This paper discusses this clustering effect and looks at some of the possible explanations. In particular it looks at the human and social aspects of knowledge creation and sharing that resist distance and are starting to be taken into account in the design of technological approaches to knowledge management.