Posted by Michael Kran on June 23, 1997 at 12:24:43:

In Reply to: Re: Tom Davenport on 'Pitfalls of Knowledge Management' posted by Mezei on June 23, 1997 at 10:35:15:

This is "KM" is a Big Broom theory.

I did not intend to distract attention from KM in 1997 by picking up Thomas H. Davenport's reference to Socrates. It may be a red herring. Then for some, it may not seem to be a red herring, but I may be in crowd of one on this, and would respect the group consensus on what's on-topic and what's off-topic for this discussion.

So it is with some trepidation that I offer the following suggestion:

Knowledge management might be seen as a current practice defined by its practioners. If so, there would be a cluster of definitions we could more or less live with and possibly reach a mutual understanding.

Knowledge management could be seen in a historical light. While both the object and the method of historically defined KM is changing, is shares a characteristic of being "on the edge of chaos".

So, the great encyclopedists of the 18th century we attempting to put order where there had been chaos.

John Dewey, with library classification systems named after his, was putting a new level of order to what had been chaotic.

And so, the current embodiment of the "ghost" is focused on {add your own method and object} that reduces chaos to order.

My scant knowledge of Greek philosophy suggest that there was a conscious effort to codify the practice of rhetoric and debate into the 'science of rhetoric'.

I am comfortable drawing the historical parallel, but I am equally sympathetic to the desire to keep the discussion focus on what KM means in 1997 and beyond from a practical (this would include an academic and managerial viewpoint) or even just a practioner's point of view.

It seems possible that current KM has a method and an object of study and may fail to achieve its goals, while another disipline (fill in the blank: say, functional MRI,) actually ends up achieving the goal. So, one could reasonable ask:

At the current stage of scientific, managerial and cognitive understanding are the goals of KM achievable?

There is a body of techniques, a set of goals that define the practice. Techniques might have to be replaced to achieve the same goal. Or goals could be abandoned. Or, goals could be achieved with other techniques (not part of KM).

In an earlier post, Yogesh mentioned:

"Furthermore, based on my current hypothesis on 'emergence,' I tend to believe that greater degree of
knowledge creation occurs on the 'edge of chaos' than in any 'order' that one may impose using any
kind of technology.

I wonder if there are any connections to the evolving frontiers of human knowledge. So that real human knowledge is just a little ahead of any form of systemization, and that once this "systemization" catches up to the body of practices, objects and subjects of the study, the frontiers of human have again moved on.

It stands to reason that the creative edge of anything is ahead of the orderly, systemitized edge. There woun't be anything new to organize without the creative edge, and if it's what we call creative, it cannot have be reduced to order before hand.

[Purely speculative footnote: Now, of course, it is conceivable that human creativity will be reproducible, so that the concept of "order" and "creativity" merge. (I'm not sure I want to be around then, but what the heck, if there's a better way to get the job done, we can write poetry or learn to hang glide. I think the human spirit will rise above the systems men create for a long time to come, though sometimes there can be a time lag before that happens.]

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