Towers of Knowledge, Part One
In Knowledge Management circles, Knowledge is often defined as “Information with potential for action”. Static Pattern Engineering used to share that definition; however, it has been refined in the last year to “Information with potential to produce effects” which is a larger net to qualify knowledge. The discussion of effects will be a much more longer thread this year in the blog entries — but for now I will just say that knowledge does not always produce action; however, a chain of knowledge components can be combined to produce a series of effects which causes action. What acts and what is acted upon is actually what defines which of the three domains you are analyzing or seeking to change: Physical, Cognitive, or Virtual.
This shift is essential to get to the level of granularity that SPE seeks to obtain, and this micro-level granularity leads naturally to a discussion of how knowledge is often organized. We will start with the Tower of Knowledge metaphor — to friends I have presented it a multitude of ways, but my goal on this blog is to express it in the most concise way. Therefore, I feel best it is best to use the metaphorical picture that produced it:
When you embark on a study of anything, you will find, whether to your delight or your dismay, that unless the field is entirely new (i.e., has just been created in the last five years) there will be a group of ‘seminal books’ that have been created on the subject. To find out if you truly enjoy this field, it will be suggested to absorb these seminal books, whether it is by the guidance of a curriculum (in an academic institution or any organized program) or the prompting of industry experts or gurus. Whatever the order of the books suggested to you, you can take these books and stack them on the ground. If chapters or sections are omitted, picture cutting those out of the binding.
What you have before you is a physical representation of the Tower of Knowledge your mind must conquer. If you conquer this tower and can demonstrate (whether by certified testing services or application in a field) you did so, you will have accomplished a great deal. In some curricula, you may vary the order of the floors you climb or the breadth and depth of the building may be changed such that the bottom floor is five books wide with one of your choosing (from an approved list) and the other floors may vary in arrangement. The floors or set of floors may carry different titles like ‘Apprentice’, …., ‘Master’, or they may have no title at all.
You may have a guide through these floors, as in an institution where someone professes the essence (hopefully) of the knowledge contained in these books to you, or you may be guiding yourself. All in all, no matter the case, the fact that your mind is climbing this structured tower is a worthy endeavour.
Yet, how will you know before you take the journey whether you will enjoy the knowledge that is interwoven into this Tower? Based on the previous post of Resonant Knowledge, how will you know beforehand if you will truly resonate with the knowledge contained in this tower? If these knowledge components will be what is used and executed throughout your daily life if this is for a vocation (or way of life), would it not be best to know beforehand that due to resonance there is a strong likelihood that your mind will be energized enough to produce extraordinary results/effects from that knowledge?
Looking at professors, it is easy to spot those who chose the right tower to climb because of the way that they resonate with the knowledge they transmit to students. It is equally obvious to spot those who at the very least are asked to transmit a section of the tower they do not resonate with, or at the very worst simply climbed the wrong tower.
The boundary case that has always been of interest in SPE is those who resonate with a high proportion of the knowledge of the tower they have surmounted. These individuals are especially valuable to us as a society — they are the consultant in a certain industry that your company must hire and who produces tremendous results, they are the professors in the university that everyone recommends to each other, they are the ones who fully immerse themselves in their vocation as if they were playing instead of working.
The opposite case is something we’d like to avoid for all involved for obvious reasons. Usually a crisis will invoke abandoning that tower via a career change or otherwise, but that is often painful for the individual undergoing this journey.
Continued in Part Two….
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