Stealing knowledge

Can anyone steal your knowledge?

In my understanding of knowledge, i.e., a complex linkage between context, information, personal frameworks and social mediation; it can never be stolen. Sure you may have your ideas copied, your information and documentation purloined, your opinions replicated without attributation, but it is just not possible to duplicate your 'thought engine', your unique perspective, reverse-engineer your experience, or your ability to make new and more valuable connections.

These abilities / qualities help to set knowledge apart from information and data.

Comments

[Josh Forest]

Looks like a short definition of 'knowledge management' in practice in the previous comment. Is the premise of the topic using knowledge to indicate intelligence - and not the static, recorded meaning, but the biological capability?

But that can be stolen also, one notable example being the guillotine, a historic, emblematic tool of a former knowledge management community.

Of the old, silent movies, Lon Chaney's 'He Who Laughs Last' is memorable. A man's research is stolen, and the pretender steals his woman also with the notoriety gained from 'authoring' the research. Chaney, the victim, becomes a clown to the community when claiming authorship, and subsequently a carnival clown as a profession.

His intelligence is corrupted, turning his motivations from research, to revenge.

[David Locke]

I've seen people sign employment contracts that took their research away from them and forbid them from working on it outside of that employment. The company managed to steal this researcher's livelihood and her knowledge, precisely, because it was no longer reproducible in a community.