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Jan 1, 1440
Gutenberg's Printing Press
The first movable type of Europe, despite Asia having held the idea since 1377.
Each character had an individual metal component, allowing for the first mass production of literature! This meant that reading and writing levels increased! -
John Locke is defining knowledge!
Locke provided a view of humans as 'organs' which, when stimulated, create 'ideas of stimulation'. These, when reviewed upon become 'ideas of reflection'.
He also says that we have no knowledge apart from that of our ideas.
He made a reference to two types of a material idea; simple and complex. A simple idea being one that consisted of one thing, ie the grass is green, and a complex one being made up of multiple simple ones, these are the foundations of ideas. -
The knowledge Industry - Fritz Machlup, innovator...
It is in Machlup's book, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, where he states that knowledge is a commodity, accountable for 29% of all gross profits of the USA.
He divided Knowledge into 3 areas; intellectual, past time and instrumental.
He also identifies 5 types of knowledge;
Pratical
Intellectual - satisfying of intellectual curiousity
Past time - satisfying of non-intellectual curiousity
Spirtiual/Religious
Unwanted - accidentally aquired knowledge -
Tacit Knowledge, Imitate this!
Michael Polanyi is the brainbox behind Tacit knowledge. This knowledge is made up of conceptual and sensory information. this means you can either pull existing knowledge out, or use scattered/fragmented bits of knowledge to create a new model!
This Tacit knowledge is based upon embedded learning, making it impossible to write down! -
Marshall Mcluhan,Technological determinist, leading the way
He saw that the future was to be found in greater connectivity and networking!
It is through this he was coined the Technological determinist, as he saw technology shaping us and not vice versa.
He also believed, in his later life, that the medium is merely a carrier and what we do with the media is the true nest of learning. -
New words? What is this?
The terms Hypermedia and Hypertext were coined during the creation of Apples Hypercard, showing the progress Apple were making, sparking acction and development from others such as the notecard by Xerox. -
Knowledge workers, indespensible!
Peter Drucker believed that a new class, those he called the knowledge workers, would become the largest group in society as information pulled in major societal changes.
The new class would be defined mainly through education, but, also through training they received through the new knowledge society. -
Information age, watch those differences!!!
Daniel Bell coined the term 'Information age'. However, at a later date rephrased it to the 'Information society'.
With this he outlined a society where theoretical knowledge, technology and information becomes the commodity and we move away from a manufacturing economy of goods.
He outlins how information is expensive to produce, but cheap to reproduce.
He also mentions that we need to predict, not forecast the future to better map out possibilities for society to change. -
The Third Wave, a rad time
Alvin Toffler writes that human history can be seen to fit into 3 distinct stages progression.
These stages were:
An Agricultural society - found around 2,000 B.C
An Industrial society - found around 1750 A.D
An Information society - found around 1950 A.D
The latter stage incorporates political, cultural, moral, insitutional and social alignments more with a brain force information economy than the strength based industrial societty. -
Locke to The Next Level!
Winter, McCellard and Stewart expanded upon Lockes ideals.
They created a cirriculum within which they allowed learners to take a group of complementary subjects, testing the cognitive development.
What they found was, those who undertook this style of learning experienced a greater cognitive development. -
Trends go MEGA!
Penned by Naisbitt and Aburdene, they notes how there was a shift from the industrial to information society. it was here they drew up the 10 key changes that would occur:
Industrial society to Information society
Forced tech to high tech/high touch
National economy to World economy
Short term to Long term
Centralization to Decentralization
Institutional Help to Self-Help
Representative Democracy to Participatory Democracy
Hierarchies to Networking
North to South
Either/Or to Multiple Choice -
Hyperwhat???
The birth of the hypercard by Apple employee Bill Atkinson ushers in a near birth of the modern format of the internet.
With information stored in cards, which in turn are arranged into stacks.
These cards could be linked, allowing an ease of usage by anyone, and, with the built in plain english programming language, it was generally accessable.
The stack acted as a database, but, approached it from a visual aspect,
The programme also introduced hypertext very much like hyperlinks. -
Tetrad! A follow up to Tetris?
A theory thought up my Marshall Mcluhan and his son Eric.
This was a frame of four laws through which you could look at culture.
The laws were:
Enhancement or extend - the new medias improving over old
Obsolence - new media proves old is out dated
Retrieval - existing elements are still in usage with the new.
Reversal - the new is done so much negatives start to appear from it.
For example, the Internet. -
A Community of Practices
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger theorised that knowledge can be developed through the interactions of a community as long as common ground is held. However they argued that innovation is only born through the interaction of varying communities.
Each community is developed around a particular section of knowledge and defines itself by 3 principles:
What it is about
How it Functions
What capability it produced
They also undergo 5 stages:
Potential
Coalescing
Active
Dispersed
A decentralised community -
Spiralling Knowledge!
This theory is based on a reapeating cycle involving tacit and explicit information and 4 stages;
Externalization - tacit to explicit - Use of methapor or a model allows the tacit infomation to become explicit.
Internalization - explicit to explicit - Systemic knowledge in the form of sorting etc.
Combination - explicit to tacit - Learning by doing
Socialization - tacit to tacit - Sharing experiences with others
These processes work hand in hand taking into account context and sequence. -
The Internet???
Although perfected in 1991, there were two prior steps to the internets birth:
1971 - Ray Tomlinson writes the first email programme
1985 - National Science Foundation create a series of networks for communication and education (NFSNET).
However, as previously stated, it is seen as 1991 being the bort of the internet as scientists at CERN/ the lLarge Hadron Collider, created a programme based on hypertext to share their information. -
Intellectual Capital
The Intellectual capital of a company was worked out to be the difference between the book and market value of a company.
Worked out by Sveiby, working at a Swedish insurance company using the 'Navigator'. -
Themes of A New Economy, all 12!
Don Tabscott wrote about how digital networking would affect the economy. His criteria consisted of these 12 points:
Knowledge
Digital
Virtual
Molecularization
Internetworking
Disintermediation no middle function between producer and consumer
Convergence - a combination of computing, communications and content
Innovation - Making your products obsolete
Prosumption - combination of consumption and production
Immediacy
Globalization
Discordance - social conflicts giving birth to unforeseen issues -
Velocity? and Viscosity? Of Information?
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak came up with the Velocity and Viscosity theory where;
Velocity means the speed that knowledge is passed through an organization
Viscosity means the richness/thickness of the knowledge being transferred
