Knowledge as Conversation

Posted: November 7, 2005

Very interesting blog post on knowledge as a conversation:

Then the Internet happened and the world fell into conversation. It’s no longer a matter of getting reports back on the strange beliefs of distant lands — “Why, in China crickets are considered to be smart and monkeys to be dumb…Believe it or not!” — but an immediate awareness that we’re all living within a single conversation space. We may not actually be IM’ing Chinese Communists or Jihadists, but we at least know that what’s being said in one corner of the Web is being refracted elsewhere. And we know that we can pick up the Skype phone and actually talk with a Communist. Where there aren’t actual conversations, there is now the constant awareness of the potential for conversation.

Source: Joho the Blog

Taken as a philosophy, it is interesting in it’s own right. However, taken in the context of the new community building that is happening on the web, a different view is brought to the table.

Is the web 2.0 project, Yahoo’s 360 initiative, the growing plethora of Wikis, and don’t forget the ever expanding blog communities, a place for conversation or a place for knowledge?

Does the fact the news breaks seconds after it happens, conversations break out minutes later, and new blogs or websites within an hour show the desire to share knowledge, or the desire to communicate through shared knowledge?

Just interesting thoughts.

Knowledge is not the body of beliefs that needs no further discussion. Knowledge is the neverending conversation. And much of that conversation is precisely about what we can disagree about and still share a world.

-Joho the Blog

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