In this quite tedious post ‘Knowledge is crude: Far from being a touchstone of the truth, knowledge is a stone-age concept that harms our dealings with the modern world‘, some interesting concepts are developed how our view of knowledge needs to change as we move into the Collaborative Age.
My understanding of the thesis of the post is that basically, knowledge is increasingly relative – and more based on a statistical evidence. It is much less absolute and certain like we considered knowledge previously.
Specifically, knowledge being considered as something being shared between people becomes increasingly an alignment of opinions rather than a more certain knowledge independently vetted and settled.
I am quite convinced that we have realized in the few past decades how knowledge is temporary and can be put in question by new evidence. We now know that scientific knowledge and theories only wait for the next bit of evidence to contradict it and thus create the need for new, better theories.
In the Collaborative Age, we will increasingly see knowledge as relative and ready to be upended. Tools to support this are already there, such as online encyclopedia. The challenge of course is to ensure that knowledge remains grounded and does not become another set of conspiracy theories. We still have to invent the quality criteria of a relative knowledge. Let’s get to work.
