Context
Dave Weinberger explains why knowledge management is doomed. “Truth is not enough. Knowledge is tribal. It has to be relevant to the tribe. It has to be expressed in the way appropriate to the tribe. It has to come from someone in the tribe or else it must be delivered in the way the tribe chooses to receive foreign ideas.”
There is a solution to this problem: personalisation. Caveat: personalisation is built on knowledge management. Whoops. Note that no one’s done great wonders with all that personal info you tap into every. single. thing. you. subscribe. to.
Luckily, people are pretty good at personalisation. Unfortunately, no one could possibly have enough clueful people to service a large organisation.
Unless… unless… we replace them all with AI! Er, hold on, got a little carried away there. AI is hard. Hmm, back to the drawing board.
Incidentally, this is why mobile phones will never even be good for the current greatly reduced vision of their commerce potential. To whit: bringing up-to-date stock quotes and such. Because mobile phones will never have the nose.
What the eyes don’t see, the nose knows. — Steeljaw
I always claim to have learned a lot from Transformers (and Doctor Who, for that matter). It was from Starscream and Megatron that I learned the word “megalomaniacal”. It was because of Brawn that I began down one of the main paths to what I am today.
But I could never have followed through with the sparks of ideas — never even thought it possible to — were it not for my schooling.
There are two schools of thought on schooling, let us call them the “vocational” school and the “ideas” school. I think all readers should know what I mean (a good conversational gambit; should you require expansion feel free to ask). I am a firmly avowed believer and participant in the school of ideas. I believe I am smarter and more capable because of this. Though ideas aren’t for everybody. But I think it should be tried first, before neurons can be locked down.
I am grateful for all the teachers I have had (and not merely those inside school or school hours).
So I am sad to hear about the degradation of Monash University. Some would say “transformation”, but I am too upset at the loss of quality education that cannot be found elsewhere. First they came for classics; then for pure maths; now, for physics.
PS
Site of the day: Alamut. “Bastion of Peace and Information.”