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By David Weinberger We are not the first age to think of knowledge as a building. Up through the Middle Ages memory was often thought of as a palace with many rooms.[1] But with the Web, we've taken it several steps further. We are turning documents into buildings. This is hard to see if you're fixated on understanding the Web as a communications medium. But a medium is that through which something travels: Person A sends a bundle to Person B through the connecting medium. While we sometimes experience the Net that way, more often our language betrays us. We talk about the Web not primarily in terms of a medium I send things through but as a place through which I move. I surf, browse, visit. My destinations are sites, homes. The Web is a landscape through which I journey. But we have a second commonplace set of metaphors for understanding the Web: pages. Most Web sites present themselves as some type of document, laid out like documents, using document conventions such as titles, headers, articles and multiple columns. In fact, the two metaphors -- places and documents -- intersect. Web pages are themselves sites that we *enter* and that may have an "Under construction" sign on them as if jackhammers could be heard in the background. It's as if we've entered a world in which the buildings are documents, and the documents have taken on some of the architectural properties of physical buildings. For example, normal documents we carry around, store, file. But on the Web, we *go to* documents. Document become destinations. Going to a new page on the "site" often feels like going to a new place, rarely like flipping a page. And while real documents are published in multiple identical copies, on the Web there's only one authentic document, as public as a skyscraper in a city skyline. The intersection of the metaphors of place and documents is not accidental. The objects in real space are structured according to the vagaries of geography, but that geography also provides the public way in which space is organized -- your office is near the river, across the tracks, next to the Olmstead House. But there is no accidental geography in cyberspace. Objects -- places -- are organized by their meaning, as expressed in hyperlinks: two Web sites are "near" if I can get from one to the other by clicking on a link, and that link is there because the author saw some meaningful connection. And in our culture, documents are the way in which meaning is made public and given some persistence. So it's natural that documents have become the nodes of organization on the Web. The weird thing is how easily we have grown accustomed to the hybridization of documents and buildings. Perhaps this is because an absorbing work of fiction draws us into its imagined world, so we already have a sense of books as portals to new places. The transition, weird as it is, is not as unexpected as it might first seem: books-as-portals have become documents-as-buildings. This is where the real battle with broadband will be waged, for broadband (as envisioned by companies who still haven't gotten over TV) is a code word for "broadcast," turning the semantic landscape of the Web into a mere communications medium. We will have both document sites and Web-based programming. But only one will change the world. [1]Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140080988/ GOODNESS MANAGEMENT KM took off initially not as a technology, not as an application, not as a theory, not as a body of practice, but as a buzz word. Believe it or not, there was a time when the word "knowledge" actually struck the ear as charmingly out of place in the business context. In fact, much of KM's appeal came from the fact that knowledge had a venerable, philosophical history that gave our tawdry corporate lives a classical sheen. So, let us learn from history so that we may repeat it, purely for financial gain. If Knowledge Management was such a hit, then think of the bucks we could rake in with Goodness Management. Hmm, what could GM be? Given KM's success, defining the term carefully obviously is not a requirement for it to ascend to the firmaments at rocket speed. But, we need at least to wave our hands a bit so we can give a PowerPoint presentation about it and sound like we're not just speaking gibberish. (Oh, wait, that's obviously not a requirement either!)
So, what's GM? Here's the pitch:
That should be enough to kick off a 3-year run of GM
products, consulting practices, web sites, and
conferences. And when the steam has finally gone out
of GM, not to worry! We still have Truth Management
and Beauty Management waiting in the wings, ready to
go.
David Weinberger writes JOHO and is one of the Ringleaders of cluetrain.com,
a manifesto of web ethics. He also provides strategic marketing
consulting to high-tech companies, writes for several magazines
(including Wired)
and is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered."
He was, as VP of Strategic Marketing, one of the shapers of Open
Text's intranet strategy. David sits on several conference boards
and is a member of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group. Reach
him at self@evident.com |
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