So, what is Knowledge Management, anyway?

Knowledge is awareness, understanding, or skill that you get from experience or education.

Information is the facts or details of a subject. They are related: knowledge is the knowing of something, and information is what you can (or can't) know. Knowledge as information that, embedded in the right network of semantic relationships (that is: relationships of meaning), can be used either to understand a situation or to act to achieve a goal.

For a long time, when the term "knowledge management" came up, it was within the context of organizations. Complex organizations handle large quantities of information, much of which is "explicit knowledge." That is: knowledge that can be easily placed within a structure and transferred. Instruction manuals are a great example of explicit knowledge.

But human beings are not easily systematized. Throughout our lives we build vast stores of what's called "tacit knowledge" which is summed up within the concepts of wisdom, intuition, and the holistic realm of personal experience.

As organizational knowledge management developed into the 1990s and early 2000s, it became increasingly clear to researchers that organizational knowledge management wasn't as effective as it needed to be. A shift began to take place, putting increased emphasis on building tacit skills within the individual.

Ulrich Schmitt, a knowledge management researcher, wrote in a 2015 paper that "the most valuable asset in any organization or society is investment in intangible human capital and that the key competitive drivers are knowledge, creativity, and innovation" (Schmitt, 2015), p. 148).

Likewise, in the book The Semantic Sphere 1: Computation, Cognition, and Information Theory, Pierre Levy stresses that fomenting autonomous personal knowledge management capacities in students is “one of the most important functions of teaching, from elementary school to the different levels of university” (2011, p. 116).

More recently, in his groundbreaking book, How to Take Smart Notes, Sönke Ahrens wrote that "Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work" (Ahrens, 2022, Introduction pp. 5).

When we consider PKM, what we're trying to do is create an individualized systemic approach to structuring, storing, retrieving, and interacting with the knowledge you collect throughout your life. In Ahrens book, he made the point that the best students are those who go beyond their disciplines, who connect the various aspects of their information-soaked life together to form novel new perspectives.

This concept of Ahrens' is where I found connections between the vast world of PKM and the ancient practices of cultures the world over, who have practiced potent forms of knowledge management using primarily just that one tool all human beings share: the human brain.

Lynne Kelly, one of the world's leading popular researchers into indigenous mnemonics, points out that memory studies are "not rote learning, [they are] a way of putting down a foundation, linking to characters, to the landscape, and to physical objects, using art and music and song" (“Primary School Kids Use Indigenous Techniques to Make Learning Stick,” 2017).

Human beings are knowledge-management creatures. We build patterns from the world we experience on the personal level, and we intuitively seek ways to share that knowledge with a collective, a sort of informational mutual aid instinct.

As our tools and theories of PKM develop, we would be wise to return to ancestral practices of managing and sharing our knowledge. We can blend our traditional ways of learning and collaborating with the latest tools and evidence-based research, and usher in an era where every individual is the master of their own holistic knowledge experience.

I've grouped my studies into several broad categories, and my series here will attempt to incorporate balanced content from each:

• Zettelkasten Method: Focuses on the Zettelkasten method for note-taking and information management.
• PKM Tools and Methods: These focus on various tools and strategies.
• Educational Strategies and Learning Techniques: Where I explore various strategies and techniques to enhance learning and education, and the impact of PKM on individual and organizational learning
• Cybernetics, Systems Theory, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: This is where I dive into the more specialized or niche areas, touching on specific theoretical frameworks or indigenous knowledge applications.

If you find yourself interested in a particular aspect of my studies and would like to suggest a topic for a future article, or a video on my channel over at The Unenlightened Generalists, comment to let me know!

References

• Ahrens, S. (2022). How to take smart notes: One simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking.
• Primary school kids use Indigenous techniques to make learning stick. (2017, June 5). ABC News.
• Schmitt, U. Putting Personal Knowledge Management under the Macroscope of Informing Science.