Knowledge management

Organizations increasingly rely on formal knowledge management (KM) systems, but "face questions about their long-term interpretation and use. Will future users understand the original context, intent, and assumptions of knowledge archived for 25 years or longer?" Computers can bridge distances between people in time as well as space. - [1]

"Traditional institutions that successfully transmit knowledge, such as apprenticeships, science, universities, and folklore, don't simply "preserve" it, but support an ongoing conversation with the past: a social process of re-interpreting, extending, and re-applying that knowledge. Human beings are central to the inherently social processes of negotiating meaning, responding to change, and re-constituting text into trusted, useful, embodied knowledge." Which is approximated by gnawing, or, simulation of real world constraints, into gnawlij.

"What is the impact of this process on the design of formal KM systems for the long-term? Because designers generally consider time frames of only a few years, they often ignore the effects of shifts in social, cultural, technological, and political landscape. How can designers ensure that future users will connect with the past? How can designers support future users and their conversations with the past?"

Three "interrelated dimensions of this conversation" are community, technologies and interpretation. How can formal KM systems survive or, preferably, engage social change? What stresses will different rates of change between technology and social institutions place on the system? What theoretical and practical ideas can help designers support the fundamentally human process of re-interpreting knowledge over many decades?"