Everything old is new again?

Helene's new post is on New Knowledge. It made me think, too. I've quoted the link and mused a bit about it out loud ( or whatever you call typing in the now). What's your take on this?

Quote of the Day: New Knowledge

From “Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace” (600+ page .pdf) comes this passage by Robert Steele in his essay “Creating a Smart Nation:”

Published knowledge is old knowledge: The art of intelligence in the 21st Century will be less concerned with integrating old knowledge and more concerned with using published knowledge as a path to exactly the right source or sources that can create new knowledge tailored to a new situation, in real time.”

While this is in the context of national security and intelligence, I think it’s applicable to the ways in which we think about networked learning, which is why we need to publish what we know and share it widely.

Publish what we know. So, how do we know what we know? Better yet, how do we know what we believe we know is factual (if that is important) and is worth publishing? How do we as disseminators of information assure our customers that what we are giving them is factual if our new definition of knowledge is this vague or unfounded? (Isn’t that the argument about Wiki’s and tagging-letting anyone add to a document? Is it fact or opinion; isn’t this how urban legends come about?) Who is the “we” in the above statement? What if “we” begin to make up what we know, or “refine” what we know (aka revisionism) or just slant what we know (like journalists?). What happens if this knowledge is passed on in real time but is later on discovered to be unreliable?

If published knowledge is old knowledge, and the art of intelligence in the 21st Century will be less concerned with integrating old knowledge and more concerned with using published knowledge as a path to exactly the right source or sources that can create new knowledge tailored to a new situation, in real time, doesn’t this mean that they are more concerned with using old knowledge?

Maybe taking ideas from other disciplines and trying to adapt them elsewhere is not always workable. Maybe it’s like what happened on the Island of Dr. Moreau…..