The first post...

Introduction

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. " says the British scientist and author Arthur C. Clarke "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law), in other words when the human being does not understand advanced technology, it considers it magic. And magic can produce positive and negative reactions, the first called curiosity and the second rejection to the unknown. Experience teaches that when the computer and information science was born, the reaction has been the latter, which explains the delay we've been having expanding knowledge collaboration and administration.

The Human Factor (Collaboration) drives the creation, development, implementation and enhancement of science and nature in general. The faster technology assimilation translates into new concepts formulation, new criteria and a better sharing of ideas and information. Accepting that knowledge is information plus experience we observe that the extensive knowledge possessed by humanity is still in a rejection phase to the possibility of sharing it universally through technology.

In the majority of countries, the official government resists and rejects letting it's knowledge be known to the people. Same principle applies to private companies. The controlling nature and autocracy structure generates silos — Organizational as informational. Human condition copied from nature (Preservation or survival of the strongest) prescribes each individual must defend fiercely its survival conserving any advantage physical or intellectual that differentiates him from others; sharing them takes away the character that makes him (her) possess a privileged spot in society.

In the beginning of the information age alter 1950, the popular question between people was "How many people will the computer replace because it can make thousands of operations per second? In the mid 1980's that question evolved into "How can I use the computer?"

Once into the information age distributed in the Global Village through THE NET, the human factor comes again as the main player (Demonstrating a big shift) with fresh evidence that information availability through services like Google, Wikipedia free to all, forces individuals to rethink what is the key to innovation and creativity, the next phase once you make all information available and accessible to anyone. The big paradigm "Information is power" has changed.

In the corporate environment the fight will be even harder given people's competitiveness. Each member might not be willing to deposit his knowledge in the central "warehouse" until he (she) understand through better (Transformational) leadership that team learning and collaboration are the keys to a successful organization and that each individual interaction with others is the true value of a system.

Knowledge Management has then to rethink the way it approaches individuals to make them share/collaborate their knowledge into one pool and give the right tools to make better and simplet the use of it. The objective might be reached when people start thinking that technology is not magic, and begin using it for its own benefit, learning and growth.
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Why this site-book?

I've come to realize that the "Human Factor" invalidates Knowledge Management (an information technology area) through different sources of information and experience.

My first conference about KM and what is wrong with it became a reality in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2005. It was a summary of 10 years working, studying and learning about data and information technology, how we try to apply it and the tough experience doing it 'successfully'. In other words I have come to learn about Knowledge through continuous practice (Trial and error) through Information technology and here is the byproduct of it. I am delighted to share this e-book on lessons learned and invite you all to collaborate in order to expand these concepts and ideas. Nothing new, just rediscovering the basics... it's time to start looking in the different direction.

Objectives for this online book:

I intend to make this e-book, the first two way product, a collaboration effort to better understand what knowledge means and how we can take advantage of new technologies to make it more useful (Which I do not claim as only mine, many others have come to the same conclusion) and find the organization willing to fund the implementation of a knowledge product based on these concepts.

I invite you to a dialogue about these insights and experience. Email me

Printed version: If you want a printed version of this site, I will include it eventually in lulu.com.