Knowledge in the Internet Age - networked knowledge - is becoming more like what knowledge has been in the past few hundreds years for scientists: it's provisional; it's a hypothesis that is waiting to be disproved.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Knowledge is now accepted as the best we humans can do at the moment, but with the hope that we will turn out to be wrong - and thus to advance our knowledge. What's happening to networked knowledge seems to make it much closer to the scientific idea of what knowledge is.
With the new medium of knowledge - the Internet - knowledge not only takes on properties of that medium but also lives at the level of the network.
In fact, technology has been the story of human progress from as long back as we know. In 100 years people will look back on now and say, 'That was the Internet Age.' And computers will be seen as a mere ingredient to the Internet Age.
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.
Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.
In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it's very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access, not just to knowledge, but to the intelligence contained in people's crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis.
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Research is creating new knowledge.
Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.
The Age of Information, Has turned out to be the Age of Ignorance.