From Information to Knowledge to Social Networking

As part of its 40th anniversary celebration, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries are putting on a series of interesting and provocative lectures through the autumn.  In addition to being face-to-face events, the lectures are available as live and archived webinars (links to the videos are through their blog).

In the most recent webinar, David Weinberger, author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Everything Is Miscellaneous, spoke about "Knowledge, Noise, and the End of Information." 

Some of the ideas he shared with the audience:

• Knowledge is rare, and orderly.  We attempt to control, classify and organize it.  It's scarce because it has been managed into books, libraries, systems to organize it.

• When you remove restrictions on management of information and knowledge, you have the success of the Internet, which is "non-conforming" and "non-systematic" and expanding in all directions.  It's messy.  It's different for everyone.  It's not uniform.  Everything is not saying the same thing and it's very noisy.  The noise and breadth are what make it useful.

• The interactivity of the Internet reveals culture.  The discussions we have and the comments we make (on sites such as Flickr and on blogs) add depth to information, news, etc.  These conversations have value themselves.

• We cannot anticipate what people will be interested in because perception of value varies with use and audience.  Digitization and the Internet have allowed us to save/"collect" more without physical restriction.  The audience is now the world.  Collective knowledge adds insight to the conversation.  (Weinberger used the example of the Library of Congress using Flickr to post photos from WWII, and the letting the public tag and comment on photos.)

If you have the opportunity, have a listen to one or more of these lectures.  Ideas like these can influence the way we develop services and deliver content.  Upcoming speakers include Roy Tennant on "Libraries in a Networked World" and Clay Shirky on "Finding Content as a Social Problem."