Managed knowledge is about context
For those KM'ers who aren't already reading Archestra by Malcolm Ryder, he has another article in his ongoing thoughts about knowledge management: Where's the "System" in Managed Knowledge? (last paragraph)
If knowledge is systematically managed, there will be clarity about what kind of value is being generated at the different points in the process of making, saving and delivering it, and users will not hop around randomly in this production environment but instead be guided through it appropriately in real-time as they work.
I appreciate Malcolm's emphasis on context and how typical information technology systems do not usually account for a user's in-the-moment circumstances.
3 Comment(s)
Am I correct to interpret your comment about context to be a negative comment? Are you saying that information technology systems SHOULD take the user's context into account?
If so, wouldn't that mean providing more to the system than some folks might be comfortable with? Or should the user be able just to provide whataver details about "context" he or she feels comfortable with divulging?
I agree this is a difficult discussion to have without having more details, and I haven't read the article you reference, but I sometimes think that IT gets a bum rap for not doing things it was never designed to do.
said:
Dennis - You have a good point. My point about accounting for the in-the-moment experience has just as much to do with the user as it does with the technology. And to be honest, a technology cannot absolutely "know" what a person needs. I can see where one could get worried about such a system. Look at MS Word and their "clippy" help system.
I suspect my mind raced in a different direction on reading Malcolm' article to the "system" in a larger sense. Whether it is a process map on the wall or software or the cultural mores, knowledge workers need guideposts along the way. Malcolm also argues that knowledge is in the environment (in the heads; between the people), not in the database. So "systems" fit properly into the environment to remove barriers and enable easier processing of that knowledge.
The phrase "be guided through it appropriately" rang all sorts of warning bells Jack.