If I knew what you know and you
knew what I know what we we both know? If we all knew what each other
knew how much value could we create from what everyone knows? Social
technology will eventually lead us to a “knowledge inventory which
indexes what everyone knows. Think about it.
As we share content we are sharing what we think we know or want to
know. Not knowing something can mean the difference in gaining or
loosing productivity, economic gain and relational value. Gaining
knowledge is how people and organizations learn how to do things more
efficiently and effectively which improves productivity.
The Cluster Effect
As social technology grows users tend to “cluster”
around an affinity of what they know or want to know.
The cluster effect is evident by the proliferation of communities
centric to “knowledge” people have or want to have. Subsequently these
communities converse around topical content indexed by all the search
engines. The content generated comes from the people participating. The
search engines index key words but what if they were able to index what
lies in the brains of the people who participate? Call it a
knowledge inventory which reflects what we know. How would that change
the game?
The cluster effect is similar to (but not the same as) the network
effect. It is similar in the sense that the affinity preferences of both
the medium and its participants are based on each ones perception of
others knowledge, affiliation, status and value. Thus the cluster effect
usually creates and emergence of new knowledge fueled by the
interactions of different knowledge nodes, i.e. me and you..
The emergence of social technology is the revolutionary wave of
consumer generated “knowledge” and “connections” is controversial to say
the least. The media sends a stream of opinions on “how” the systemic
dynamics of social technology works and the impact of what it produces
for businesses and society in general. Upon discovery of anything new
everyone thinks they understand the new phenomena but few are able to
truly comprehend the long term implications since there is no one
historical reference to explain the dynamics in an orderly fashion.
What we are experiencing is the emergence of knowledge assets being
transformed by technological. This emergence has a long tail of
discovery with ongoing analysis and development of new intellectual
properties being defined to explain the phenomena, i.e. new knowledge.
What does all this mean?
We’ve discussed what is converging together and creating the
phenomenon of a knowledge inventory. There are a host of other factors
that influence the dynamics of the emerging “knowledge inventory”
and to say the least, we’ve only just begun to learn and understand
what it all means to all of us as a global community of individuals
with diverse interest and knowledge.
Just imagine if the medium evolved and enabled us to quickly access
the knowledge needed to make better decisions, to become more productive
and to revolutionize the value of the human network. What new economies
could be created? How much faster could we solve relevant problems? How
much more productive could we all become?
The silos of irrelevant contextual key words will come down and when
they do the power of knowledge will be unleashed for all to access and
use. New value will be created by what we know collectively rather than
what we say individually.