Posted by Reilly Atkinson on June 07, 2000 at 14:59:39:

In Reply to: KM in education posted by Dr Edward Sallis on June 04, 2000 at 12:21:59:

Sir -- Let me suggest that for all practical purposes, KM has been an integral part of the scientific community, and has been so since time immemorial. The sciences are close models of J.S. Mills marketplace of ideas. Further, there is enormous effort put to the training of young scientists, there is tolerance for new ideas -- although sometimes the tolerance is minimal --, there is masssive effort toward keeping the scientific community informed; seminars are the life blood of science, and enable dialogue, and on and on. Ideas and knowledge are key.

While physicists and mathematicians have been comfortable with each other's company for a long time, physicists and biologists have only comported together for the past century, and heavily so over the past forty years or so. That this union, biophysics, came about was primarily due to successful research -- Watson and Crick, the mechanics of the retina, the CAT scan, radiative treatments for cancer, and so on.

In the university world of independent departments, my sense is that "KM" follows practice, but does not create much new. That is the case even though many academicians know that dialogue and sharing between different disciplines could be valuable. There simply is not enough time, nor enough resources, nor enough incentive to indulge in multi-departmental work. That's a great shame. I don't think the vanilla KM platitudes will play well among professors(most of us had much of our intellectual idealism beaten out of us in the reality of graduate school). I think it is unlikely that administrative efforts can create a committment to substantially new ways of doing academic work, teaching and research. Rather, the distribution of benefits of KM across a university , I think, will depend on charismatic, or highly willful, brilliant thinkers bent on an integrative mission, and who have a strong desire to do new work.

Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

---

Follow Ups:

• Re: KM in education Ron de Weijze 20:35:47 06/24/00 (0)

---

Click Here to Post Follow Up in New Forums

    Knowledge Management Think Tank (New)

  

 Subject: 

Message: