Knowledge - Trends
Putting the Bits Together
At home or in the officeweve never before faced such a flood of information. The question is, how can useful information be separated from the worthless, sensibly turned into knowledge, and shared in a way that allows individuals and companies to succeed?
Children face the data flood. Lifelong learning in a knowledge-based society will only be possible if citizens start practicing early on
The knowledge-based society isnt just a trendy catchphrase. Were actually on our way to creating it, and some people have already moved in," says Prof. Rolf Kreibich, director of the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment in Berlin. In the worlds industrial countries, knowledge and know-how are the forces behind growth and progress. One hundred years ago, nearly 80 % of workers in Germany were employed in agriculture and production. But the relationship has reversed today in favor of the service sectorwhich mostly provides information services, in segments that include banking, insurance, media and science (see graphic).
"80 % of all the scientists who have ever lived on Earth are working right now," Kreibich says. Five exabytes of digital dataa 19-digit figurewere created and stored in 2002, according to calculations by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. That amounts to nearly 800 MB for every person on the planet. To transform that data into value, however, it must mature into knowledge in peoples mindsknowledge that enables them to take meaningful action. This, as experts agree, is the challenge facing the knowledge-based society.
If they are to make the most of the potential harbored in the knowledge available today, companies, society and each individual face an enormous challenge. Companies must create knowledge strategiesand employees must practice lifelong learning because knowledge grows old very rapidly. "Even in simple jobs, knowledge is gaining a higher and higher priority," says Andreas Schleicher, an expert at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris who was responsible for the PISA Study, a series of tests that compared the performance of 15-year-old schoolchildren in the OECDs 30 member countries. He gives an example: Todays auto mechanics use operating manuals that are up to 15,000 pages long. A society not only has to provide its citizens with basic knowledge but also has to motivate them to learn, Schleicher says. The ability to motivate oneself emerges very early, placing challenging demands on the educational system. One approach is learning via computers. Today, online lectures provide a preview of the way knowledge will be shared in the futureby interactive and multimedia means (see e-Learning).
In 2002, 31 billion e-mails were sent daily. The mails average size was about 60 kB. In one year, that amounts to 668,000 TB. One-third of that was spam, or junk mail
At the moment, the OECD is working on a study with adults that employs the Pisa testing model. "We want to create an empirical foundation to determine the best way to enable lifelong learning," says Schleicher. In each country, a total of 5,000 people in various age groups are being interviewed. Without wanting to anticipate the findings of the new study, Schleicher says knowledge sharing is a decisive factor.
Knowledge has one special quality: when shared, it expands instead of shrinking. For this reason, knowledge management has been a top priority at Siemens for years. But thats not surprising, because the company is built on innovations that arise from new knowledge. To cultivate knowledge successfully, a company needs to have an organizational structure that encourages discussion, it needs to meet the technical requirements that advance research and it needs to create incentives that encourage people to pass on their knowledge (see Knowledge Management). Worldwide, Siemens has more than 1,500 "Communities of Practice" in which some 90,000 specialists, representing a variety of disciplines can exchange ideas in virtual settings and personal meetings. They can pose and answer questions about special problems and download "knowledge objects" that contain documented solutions and experiences.
Earning a Reputation Through Knowledge. Open to all in principle, communities on the Internet create a new form of meeting place that extends across company and country borders. The exchange is uncomplicated, and expertise counts more than hierarchies (see Communities). In these communities, experts and non-experts alike collaborate to develop projects. They can write software, for examplelicense-free programs like the Linux operating system or OpenOffice office tools. The programmers of this open-source software see their reward in creating something jointly, helping others and earning a reputation through knowledge. Like knowledge management, open-source software is based on give and take. Siemens, for instance, has published software for employee portals. "We dont earn any license fees this way. But we get our name out there, and we can benefit from the service business," explains Karsten Ehms, who works on knowledge management at Siemens Corporate Technology.
Source: Roy Williams, California Institute of Technology
The Internet is a form of knowledge reservoir, but it has one crucial shortcoming. The reliability of the raw information is difficult for individuals to check. "We are being bombarded with information, including junk information," says Kreibich. "To remain fit for the future, we need selective knowledge." Our brains are perfectly suited for this task in everyday life, he says. When youre driving a car, your senses experience billions of impressions, but you process only the most important ones, those that ensure an accident-free trip. "To obtain orientation knowledge, we have to act in the very same way," Kreibich says. In terms of the Internet, this means that the computer of the future will understand the meaning of particular information and its context. In a "semantic web" being developed by experts (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2002, The Thinking Web), Web sites contain background information and descriptive tags that simplify communication by computers and ease the work of search engines.
A hard disk: In 2002, up to 2 EB of data were stored on hard disks, twice as much as in 1999
Wolfgang Krohn, a sociologist and professor at the Institute of Science and Technical Research at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, suggests that a seal of quality for information on the Web should be developed. "Knowledge and information on the Internet have to be reliable," he says, adding that those who produce knowledge are interested in its reliability as well. Krohn suggests that rating agencies similar to those that check a companys creditworthiness could evaluate the quality of information on the Internet. Siemens has already introduced a simple form of quality check in several communities, whereby group members rate the information they have used on a scale from "very useful" to "unusable."
"Knowledge never will be as stable as a mass-produced product you find in a department store," Krohn says, "because it changes constantly." As a result, he recommends that people take an experimental approach to everyday living. Given the wide access to information now available, everyone can conduct research that applies to their own lives. The Internet can steer us in planning a vacation trip to the best beaches, or when selecting high-tech equipment for office and home. Krohn is watching this practical form of research as it works its way into all areas of life. At the same time, scientific research is increasingly leaving the closed world of the laboratory.
Krohn points to real experiments that are so complex that they never could be performed in a lab, such as open-field testing of genetically altered plants. "One characteristic of a knowledge-based society is that, to an ever-increasing extent, research tends to penetrates into the fabric of society," Krohn says.
Knowledge, the No. 1 Productive Force
Beware of Information Overload. Scientists are accustomed to drawing conclusions on the basis of incomplete and imprecise information. But this practice unsettles non-scientists. Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, is working to determine which types of information make the most senseand in what volume. Psychologists have found, surprisingly, that too much information often has a negative effect on the quality of a decision. The critical factors in the process come from an individuals experience. In his research, Gigerenzer showed a group of professional European handball players a video of a particular scene from a game. He froze the action at a certain point, and the players then were asked to describe how they would react. The coaches later compared the answers with statements the players made after examining the situation more closely. The evaluation revealed that the spontaneous answers were better than the ones that were supposed to be well-founded. Obviously, experts can size up a situation very quickly when they have a small amount of key information. But a surfeit of information seems to cause confusion.
In 2002, around 31 million hours of television programming were produced around the worldexcluding reruns. That amounts to about 70,000 TB depending on the broadcast data rate
Gigerenzer concludes that we must develop decision-making principles that take uncertainty into account. One way of doing so is through simplification. For instance, Gigerenzer has devised a method that uses just a few questions to determine whether a person with severe chest pains should be sent to intensive care or to a regular hospital room. In the United States, doctors concerned about potential malpractice lawsuits send 90 percent of these patients to intensive care, many of them unnecessarily.
First, Gigerenzer asks about a specific abnormality in the ECG. If it is present, the patient is placed in intensive care right away. The second question focuses on the persons primary complaints. If the complaints dont involve the heart, the patient is sent to a regular ward. Studies have shown that the method performs better than complex systems used by experts. And theres one other advantage: Thanks to a decision tree, the doctor can follow the case step by step. "We create robustness through simplicity," Gigerenzer says. Google is based on simplicity as well. Its excellent user-friendliness and powerful search algorithms have turned it into the most widely used search engine. Every day it handles 200 million queries (see interview).
Googles creators have tailored a sophisticated technology to users needs. As a result, theyve heeded the advice that experts have been giving all along. In other words, human beings must be at the heart of the knowledge-based society. As bearers of knowledge, humans are the No. 1 productive power, despite all the technical support available from machines and computers.
Norbert Aschenbrenner