This is a response to some of Eva's comments re
"multi-layering of our textually mediated intercourse".
Developing the affordances for onlines Communities of Practice presnets
us with some difficulties. We are currently developing knoweldge sharing
tools for the Vocational Education and Training Research Sector in Europe
(aside...Graham... do you want to stop lurking?).
We are moving into times (thanks to the adoption of enabling iternational
standards like XML) where we can begin to develop what we might think of
as intelligent paper, and go some of the way of thinking about
contributions as intelligent documents (as per Brown and Duguid's social
life of documents
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/members/brown/papers/sociallife.html). Other
technologies like those developed under the C-SILE project and the work of
Authentic Inc, increase our capability in producing "knowledge sharing
technologies".
As this stuff proliferates the ability to keep a meta record of discourse
( not just topic ... but "this is an argument for"... "this contains
primary source data" etc etc ) becomes possible and can help us understand
the discourse and join in.
This stuff can be automated to an extent, but there will always be some
need for human agency, and one aspect of the agency is the decision to
adopt tools and methods that assist in the act of knowledge sharing. List
technology, using vanilla email readers although the lowest common
denominator in this business has the seduction of the fact that it pops up
in the mail box along with everything else. I don't have to go elswhere to
get the stuff, I don't have to change my email behaviour to be involved.
The downside is that for most people it becomes ephemeral (not all lists
have a sentence disector). The downside is that threads get tangled, the
downside is still reliant on memories of those who have been before and
the good nature of subscribers to remind us what we have said or talked
about.
The CoP compensates for the shortcoming of the tools. Sometimes from my
persepctive, there is a reluctance to change to tools not because the old
tool is satisfactory for the job, but because the adjustments made to
accomodate to the tool become embodied as the "practice".
Not all CoPs are as list-savvy as Xlist subscribers however, and whereas
from my seat I see it is blindingly obvious they need new technologies, it
is not always shared by the practitioners.
Knowledge management is a hot topic. It is a topic that lends itself
readily to CHAT analysis and synthesis.
Martin O.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:03:45 PST