Thought Leader

By Jon Husband and Jim Bair

The literature and discussion surrounding social computing and knowledge management (KM) has focused on both technology and cultural/human issues. While we acknowledge the importance of addressing the requirement for cultural change, we believe well designed and well-implemented social computing and KM systems will go a long way in overcoming social barriers to finding, constructing and using knowledge.
The internet was effectively fully operational for 25 years before an easy-to-understand user interface – the web browser – made the web a world-wide phenomenon. Finding, building and using knowledge, more than the web or traditional IT programs, depends upon the inextricable intertwining of human and technical systems. It is the value of this human-computer symbiosis upon which KM is founded.
This is what forms the core of the promise and practical value of Web 2.0 applications, platforms and capabilities ... and paradoxically (or ironically) is what has generated some resistance, wonderment and concern about its implementation. The growth of Web 2.0 represents and demonstrates real and fundamental change to the structures and processes of knowledge work.
We maintain that good technological tools enable the improvement of human systems in more permanent ways than behavioural interventions alone. There is overwhelming evidence throughout the course of civilisation that humans adopt technology if it meets their needs, and then adopt new behaviours to exploit that technology as part of a continuous cycle.
Social computing applied to KM purposes offers a means of integrating technology into people’s daily work, going far beyond current IT in making knowledge work. Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 developments have accelerated and enhanced this potential in practical terms. While success also depends on individual and organisational behaviour, the potential is enormous.
Meeting knowledge-worker needs is the simplest way of ensuring success with KM, and that is one of the seemingly near-magical aspects to the use of wikis and blogs in the hands (and minds) of engaged, curious and committed knowledge workers. Simply put, knowledge workers have needed technology that improves human communication, and the development and growth of capability and capacity since the advent of the web browser has held out that promise.
It is only through communication that knowledge is developed, constructed and shared, whether instantaneously through conversation, or over prolonged periods of time, as made possible by archived written material. And now we can have text-based ‘conversations’, intensified and amplified, enriched by hyperlinks and displayed to users, to help in the hunt for other relevant and useful information. This capability quickly leads to the social construction of knowledge; layer and layer of information and understanding being built up to create useful knowledge made available through the use of links and effective search and retrieval.
Semantics is one of the most significant hurdles facing KM practitioners. Of course, to make real advances in KM technology, enabling increased understanding is vital (which implies overcoming the semantic barrier). Admittedly, education, training, organisational development and so on can help to overcome semantic issues, but technology is a key factor in meeting the needs of knowledge workers in the 21st-century enterprise.