Aug 17
Do you think Qualia are Epiphenomenal?
Have you ever woken up at night wondering what epiphenomenal qualia are? All right, I admit it, I haven’t… yet. But I might, having just come across this article by Frank Jackson which reminds me why I only half enjoyed studying philosophy of mind.
Thanks to Kim, who sent me this link to a smorgasbord of papers in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence etc etc.
Oh, still curious about epiphenomenal qualia? Qualia refers to the “whatness” of “whats” – the itchiness of itches, the painness of pains, the noise-ness of noise… what it’s like to feel those whatnesses through our senses as living beings. And epiphenomenality? THAT claims that such feelings of whatness are not a pure product of cause-effect stimulation of our bodies by the outside world.
Which is all very boring really. MUCH more interesting is that wonderful turn of phrase… even if I forget the definition, must add it to my list of Must-Use impressive phrases in a conference presentation, ranking even higher than Lateral Synchronous Excitation.
Aug 11
Fewer But Not Clearer
Last month, Open Text acquired Hummingbird. Yesterday, IBM acquired FileNet. For those who think that such industry consolidations will make the enterprise content management space less fuzzy, think again. Tony Byrne writes about how these ECM services do not differ much in the first place, and how customers will have to make sense of competing products from the same vendor. Holy smoke!
Aug 11
Dilbert on Taxonomies
Damn, there I was, making excellent progress on my book, when Maish sends me this link. My entire book summed up in three frames…
Aug 07
Taskonomies and Information Neighbourhoods
Kim Sbarcea has just sent me this link to an article by Don Norman on activity centered design. He goes back to some basic anthropological work done in the 1980s by Janet Dougherty and Charles Keller in a landmark article entitled “Taskonomy: a practical approach to knowledge structures”.
Don Norman points out that taxonomies provide well-ordered, logical organization for well-structured retrieval, but “taskonomies” group things together that are required for any particular activity. In the Dougherty and Keller example, a real blacksmith does not at the end of the day arrange all his hammers together neatly on a shelf, and the tongs on another shelf, he puts the hammers he needs next to the anvil, and next to the tongs. The tools are organised for use, not logical tidiness.
This chimes in well with my posting the other day on “information neighbourhoods” (which was inspired by Maish Nichani’s recent article on “taming your target content” ). It’s not that taskonomies are any better than taxonomies – in fact, you’ll need both taxonomies and metadata to support your taskonomies behind the scenes. But what the taskonomy does is bring the usability of the information being organised closer to the user. Taxonomists cannot remain in the back storeroom keeping the shelves tidy. They also need to venture into the storefront and see how customers need their information organised for use. Thanks Kim, this will go into chapter 10 of my book!
Aug 04
Explaining KM #2
Dr David Vaine, Senior Partner with Apparently KM, PLC, proposes some practical techniques to address the problem of knowledge sharing in organisations, in this second video blog post from Green Chameleon. If you have questions about practical problems in KM for Dr Vaine, do post them in the comments section to this post. Enjoy!
Aug 04
Book Binge
Here’s a list of recently delivered goodies from Amazon that I can’t wait to get into… I acknowledge the people who have pointed me to them, and whether I anticipate them to be a joy to read or virtuous hard work.
Edwin Hutchins Cognition in the wild 1995 (thanks Maish) – on naturally situated cognitive processes – virtue!
Steven Reiss Who am I? (2000) (thanks Awie) – on the basic motivational factors for why people do things (like share knowledge for example) – curiosity!
Charles Tilly Identities, boundaries and social ties (2005) (thanks Amazon and Maish for originally pointing me to Tilly’s book Why? ) – on foundations of how social networks and social infrastructure work – joy!
Frances Yates The art of memory (1966) (thanks Philipp Blom) – hope it will give me ideas on how memory and forgetting work in institutions – joy!
Beth Crandall, Gary Klein, Robert Hoffman Working minds (2006) (thanks Gary) – at last a practitioners guide to cognitive task analysis techniques – joy!
Edward Tufte, Beautiful evidence (2006) (thanks Maish) – on the representation of knowledge – joy!
Jean Mills, Making sense of organisational change (2003) (thanks Shawn) on complexity and change
Just finished:
Chris Anderson The long tail (2006) – (thanks Maish) – some useful stuff on taxonomies, believe it or not! – joy!
Charles Tilly Why? (2006) – (thanks Maish) – I’ve blogged about this – joy!
Philipp Blom To have and to hold (2004) – (thanks Amazon) – about collectors and collecting… where taxonomy started! – joy!
Douglas Wilson, Jefferson’s books (2001) (thanks David) – short but clear exposition of a pragmatic taxonomist – joy!
Daniel Pink A whole new mind (2006) (thanks Shawn) – right brain narrative and patterns gaining prominence in a world with lots of left brain analytico-logical baggage – joy!
Aug 02
Amaretto or Cognac – Which Tastes Better in Tiramisu?
I figure there are probably lots of recipes an how to make a good tiramisu but after an Italian meal and my run-down of the ingredients and how easy it was to make, Patrick chipped in and said “amaretto”. I said I used cognac.
So, what has this got to do with knowledge management? Well nothing directly, except that it made me google “tiramisu recipe” and the first return caught my eye, as I’m sure it would yours – http://www.heavenlytiramisu.com/basic.htm and led me to some interesting discoveries.
My little research project into recipes for tiramisu led to me to discover that there are basic tiramisu recipes and then there are varieties. However, even within the basic recipes, some tiramisus have their eggs cooked, others don’t, some whisk the egg yolks and beat the egg whites, while some beat the egg yolks and whisk the egg whites, some use baking soda, some use chocolate and for the oomph – some use amaretto, some cognac, some coffee-flavoured liqueur, some kahlua, some white rum and some wine! One thing’s for sure though – they all use mascarpone cheese and coffee, for what is tiramisu without these. So, is there a best practice recipe for tiramisu? Seems not.
Knowledge management and knowledge work (Peter Garas shares an article on actKM) is a lot like that. There is no standard definition, yes after all this time, but that has not stopped the KM community and other stakeholders attempting to arrive at one. Many have contributed definitions and believe that theirs is the “truth and nothing but the truth”. These definitions have come in variations of process/action-based definitions, outcome-based definitions, customer-focused ones, people-oriented ones and occasionally although thankfully to a lesser degree now, the microscopic “information at your fingertips” one.
I think that some ingredients in KM are just standard stuff you need to have, like the mascarpone and the coffee in tiramisu, the other bits are a matter of tastes. It’s therefore a question of where you want to lean in putting together the dessert. Dave Snowden in a recent comment on the actKM forum, valiantly remarked that KM as a discipline is on its way out because the different organizational “frontiers” are already taking up the challenge from their various corners (someone correct me if I misunderstood). I agree that the troops are being mobilised on the various fronts but see it as a reinforcing sign that KM is here to stay. However, in addressing each of these various fronts, I would vary the definition of KM and knowledge work without straying from the base ingredients to suit the orientation of the audience. If it is understanding that we want them to have, then what is wrong with “tweaking” orientations to definitions to enable understanding, provided the basic underlying ingredients remain unchanged.
I think the real question to answer is what is the “mascarpone and coffee” for KM? What are the basic ingredients that remain irrespective of what the definition sounds like? My personal favourites are “people” and “decisions”.
Back to the tiramisu – to Patrick – if Kevin Twohy is anything to go by, he said “I wanted to take a Tiramisu to school for my class to celebrate my 17th birthday. Mom said it’d be better to have a recipe with cooked eggs and little alcohol (good on her given that they’re a bunch of 17 year-olds!). So we tried a few recipes and came up with this combination. My classmates raved about it and I liked the extra flavors of hazelnut and Amaretto, which replaced the bite of the usual brandy. I think it’s the best recipe ever!” So, it seems amaretto may less stinging afteralll… although I still prefer the cognac.
Hope you enjoyed the treat!
Aug 02
Getting Management Buy-In - More contributions needed
We now have 22 stories about practitioner experience in trying to get management buy-in at various levels for a KM intiative.
We’re hoping for a lot more! To save you scrolling energy, we’ve opened up a supplementary project page here. Please do contribute your experiences, and we’ll share the results of this study (approaches and techniques to use in getting buy-in for KM) with anyone who participates. Let it not be said that knowledge managers don’t share!
In particular, we’re looking for your stories, not (at this stage) your advice. We plan to process these stories in workshops in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore in October through November, so we need a good range to work with.
Many thanks!
Jul 29
Ignorance and Negative Knowledge
Regular visitors will be aware that one of my longstanding interests is in the area of ignorance management. Nikolai Krjachkov has just shared an interesting article published recently in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy on “negative knowledge” (via the KM Forum community). The authors take Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory to argue for a concept of knowledge formation that includes “unknowing” what is “known” in order to construct new forms of knowledge. You can download a free copy of the paper at Knowledgeboard (free registration required). Thanks Nikolai.
Jul 29
The Motivation to Participate in Communities
Back in mid June I blogged on Miguel Cornejo Castro’s paper on lurkers and parasites , and I critiqued his treatment of motivation to participate in communities as “one dimensional”. Well Miguel was kind enough to take me seriously, and did me the additional honour of asking me to comment on his response, which he’s now published, titled Layers and Levers of Motivation (warning, it’s 7MB!). This is a much more sophisticated account, although motivation is a fiendishly complex area. I particularly like the way Miguel shows motivators as an evolving system, meshing with Wenger’s idea of trajectories of participation.
