Phillip,
I appreciated your comments on epistemic cultures and your criticisms
of the typical stance towards "knowledge" found in schools. However,
I think it's important to distinguishg between "knowledge" and
"information". When what is"'knowledge" for the expert is
transmitted - as through teacher lecture or textbook - what is
transmitted is received as "information". For it to become
"knowledge", some form of transformation by the receiver is
necessary: at minimum, assimilation into the receiver's "knowledge"
systems or, very frequently, an accommodation of those structures to
make sense of the new information. Even more effective is some action
in which the information is put to the test: does it enable the
receiver to act more effectively or to understand the relevant
phenomena more deeply?
Information obtained from the internet is no different. In itself,
it does not constitute knowledge. As with information from any
source, it has to be transformed by the receiver in order for it to
contribute to the receiver's understanding of the world.
What do you think?
Gordon Wells
-- Gordon Wells UC Santa Cruz. gwells@cats.ucsc.edu http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/
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