Actually, these days I am more likely to balk at a verb like “make.” Eureka, which was probably the most successful Xerox effort in “knowledge flow,” did not, strictly speaking “make knowledge sharable.” Rather, it used anthropological field work to identify knowledge sharing practices that were already in place. Because these were LOCAL practices, the challenge was to expand them to a more GLOBAL scope; and the PARC researchers came up with a technology to do this (which was actually a very light-weight piece of technology).

This is the sort experience that sends me into my rants about the dangers of ignoring the social world:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/07/27/facebook-and-the-enterprise/#comment-167565

Just about every organization already has practices in place for “making knowledge sharable,” even if those practices are not “officially” recognized. (Any organization that has none of these practices is hopelessly toxic and is going to need a lot more than knowledge management to solve its problems!) Technology should be facilitating successful practices that are already in place, rather than obsessing over introducing something “innovative.” Once those practices are facilitated, they are likely to beget more such practices; and those are the innovations that matter! This, of course, is nothing more than structurationist thinking; but I doubt that there are very many serious Giddens readers out there in the business world!

Sharing also implies a bi-directional communication (both parties learn) otherwise it is a broadcast medium.

I’ve been working on the SEKT project ( http://www.sekt-project.com/ ) and one of the many issues was how to cope with evolving (inconsistent) ontologies. Look at the work on Frank Van Harmelan VUA (Free University Netherlands) in ontology reasoning. University of Karlsruhe and the Joseph Stephan Institute have done considerable work on lautomagic learning of ontologies from bodies of text.

[1] RAFAELI, S. & RABAN, D. R. (2005) Information sharing online: a research challenge. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 1, 2, 62-79. Web page http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?mainAction=search&action=record&rec_id=6251, viewed on 27th February, 2007.

[2] FAIRTLOUGH, G. (1994) Creative Compartments: A Design for Future Organisations, London, Adamantine Press Limited.

[3] CONNELLY, T. & THORN, B. K. (1990) Discretionary Databases: Theory, Data and Implications. IN FULK, J. & STEINFELD, C. (Eds.) Organizations and Communication Technology. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.

[4] HYAMS, J. & SELLEN, A. (2003) How Knowledge Workers Gather Information from the Web: Implications for Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Tools. HCI 2003: Designing for Society. Bath, UK. Web page http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-95.html, viewed on 27th April, 2005.

[5] HYAMS, J. & SELLEN, A. (2003) Gathering and sharing Web-based information: Implications for “ePersons” concepts. HP Laboratories, Bristol. Web page http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-19.html, viewed on 27th April, 2005.

[6] BANKS, D., CAYZER, S., DICKINSON, I. & REYNOLDS, D. (2002) The ePerson Snippet Manager: a Semantic Web Application. HP Labs., Bristol. Web page http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2002/HPL-2002-328.html, viewed on 12th May, 2005.

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/05/confronting-ghost-of-knowledge.html

It this light we can view tagging as an instrument for making knowledge sharable without worrying about whether or not it guarantees any results!

Also, in the world of “natural language,” ontologies are not “designed.” They emerge from the ways in which we use our language. (Wittgenstein strikes again!) That process of emergence-through-use entails that an ontology can never be cast in concrete; but we see very little (anything?) in the Semantic Web community about how ontologies can change over time in response to Web-based activities.

In theory, an ontology has been designed by a community (or at least a committee) to be a common model of a particular problem space (ie, SNOWMED CT). But, therein lies the cost… you have to get agreement beforehand on the actual meaning (understanding/usage) of concepts.

Tagging on the otherhand requires no agreement by anyone (and I can even use my own tags inconsistently). Just because I happen to use the same sequence of characters (‘t’, ‘a’, ‘g’) on two different items infers some kind of link. Folksonomies happen to emerge through sheer weight of mass of people choosing the same sequence. But, does that (should that) actually become the basis of shared meaning?

A company will choose to use (and perhaps release) open source if it’s in that companies interest to do so, not because of some notion of the common good :-)

Paul

Take your point re creative work though.

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/05/27/musing-about-nouns-and-verbs/

Any noun-based approach can only deal with “the structure of software objects,” which addresses nothing more than interface issues. Any questions of utility require a verb-based approach that deals with the processes embodied by those objects. As the hippies from our past would have put it, you have to forget about BEING and get “into” BECOMING!