Relationships & knowledge

"Technology does not connect us. Our relationships connect us. We share knowledge because we are in relationship" - Margaret Wheatley, 2001. Knowledge is an aspect of relationship, of interaction between human beings. It doesn't belong to any one of us. If we put what we think is knowledge down in a book, we simply have an artefact. Stacey, 2002.

In my almost 20 of working with expert systems and KM, this is my essential learning - something I have to continuously check myself on as I'm fascinated by technology, eager to experiment and extol new tools and experience mediums always looking for the magic fix that will make communication and connection happen.

Ralph Stacey and Margaret Wheatley helped me to appreciate the importance of emergence, the way knowledge is constructed in dialog & on the fly and 'lives' in the spaces between people rather than in things / objects. This I have come to revere after struggling with the finesse of expert system heuristics, experiencing the difficulties of knowledge adoption when people are not involved in the creation, and facing the brittleness of knowledge in the absence of a community.

The real work of Knowledge Management, Weatley 2001

The impossibility of managing knowledge, Stacey 2002

Knowledge is not a tool! - it is understanding, action and meaning - it is the interaction (and emergence) that is key