Our uneasy relationship with knowledge
Let’s survey the kinds of knowledge we have, how we feel about it, and think about that in context of new technologies such as the web. What have we gained? What have we lost? What do we seek to build next?
Contradictions
We seem to simultaneously hold many contradictory beliefs about knowledge. Knowledge is power, knowledge is sacred. Knowledge can level the field. Knowledge is dangerous.
In our deep myth there is a repeated motif of a trickster who succeeds by wits rather than brawn. The web tells us that the Akan have the Anansi, the spider trickster that is the source of all knowledge - known for outwitting more powerful opponents using wits alone; often taking a perceived weakness and turning into a strength. Br'er Rabbit shows up in children stories in the American South also emerging from the same African-American folklore. The Bible has the story of Eve and the Forbidden Fruit - here knowledge is poison and a fall from innocence. Buddhist legend and art has conveyed an idea of the deity Mañjuśrī - often depicted astride a blue lion; representing the use of wisdom to tame the mind and speaking to both the power and peril of knowledge.
Some of our contradictory unease may be a function of how knowledge is used, conveyed, stored and who can make use of it. Roughly speaking we can divide knowledge into three kinds: Explicit, Implicit and Tacit. Each has different powers, different trade-offs, different risks and rewards. We’ve been burned by each in different ways and have different apprehensions about each.
Explicit Knowledge
If we look to the written past we hear of The Library of Alexandria - containing between 200,000 and 700,000 books divided into rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science, and miscellaneous. But other libraries were remarkable as well: The Library of Ashurbanipal. The hidden library Sarouyeh at Isfahan. The Library of Moctezuma. These are often both celebrated for having existed, our high water mark of civilization, and as well lamented for their loss. And another tragedy (although not specifically a single library) was in 1430 when Itzcoatl, fourth emperor the Aztecs ordered the burning of all pictographic codices, in which the early history of the Aztecs was recorded.
Knowledge here is presumed as a universal good, a form of wealth, and we are claimed poorer for the loss. But formal knowledge repositories are slightly different from access to knowledge. Can anybody walk into these great libraries of extremely rare books? Or only a priesthood or scholars, only those who can read? In that light this knowledge can be more like a weapon held against the disenfranchised. Who the stakeholders are, and who is enfranchised is glossed over in popular narratives. Even ideas such as the Jubilee are a response to some of the risks of dry accountings; speaking to the imperfection of knowledge itself.
We further observe that something about the constancy of explicit facts allows empires to vastly swell; it is somehow different from merely spoken word. Christianity in a sense is a technology with gold leaf and hand transcribed copies of the Bible; even if those prostrating themselves didn’t understand the liturgy and couldn’t read - somebody could.
The ease of use makes this knowledge dangerous. Any documented facts that can be easily scratched onto a clay tablet or onto paper, can be easily used, granting great power without responsibility.
Implicit Knowledge
Implicit or applied information, knowledge embodied in a process or tool itself, can automate a class of risks that can be terrifying: The Sorcerers Apprentice or modern weapons such as guns show up here. Again this is power without responsibility.
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge feels a bit different from both of the above. And it feels most precious. It is contextual, difficult to codify or even articulate. How do you ollie a skateboard? This is multi-dimensional, felt in our bodies. It is hard won, requiring our full embodiment and has to be learned as a practice.
Imagine spending your days walking around with a tribal elder, looking closely at plants, tasting them, rubbing their leaves, and listening to how certain substances produce certain reactions, what to avoid and what to look for.
Or imagine walking through a modern winery, say in Sonoma, picking up the soil and feeling it, tasting it, thinking about the exposure and drainage, having a memory of decades of vines and what fruit they bore.
This kind of lore or wisdom seems the least fraught; it is as if ability to hold the power grows with the power acquired, becoming earned, not stolen.
The Web
Where this leads is to our great digital Alexandria; the web. A knowledge service that is built by no one and can be torn down by nobody.
We can praise the web for democratizing access to knowledge, democratizing access. But with the web taking on such a universal role in our lives, it is worth critiquing as well. We carry forward and magnify our general unease here.
The web can create a feeling of knowing that is not backed by ability. It’s good at showing images, and giving people a sensation of understanding; but it’s not always clear if this dream like awareness actually translates to the kinds of real world entangled ability that makes us human. One can learn music theory, and chords from a web-site, but that doesn’t immediately translate to being able to play a ukulele. Our digital Alexandria displaces real voices, but is largely limited to declarative patterns, not procedural patterns with engagement. It describes how to do something; and it rarely proxies that something. It describes how to play an instrument, but is rarely the mentor who can see closely what you are doing wrong and correct you.
Digital knowledge can often be driven by a hidden hand at industrial and inhuman scales. In the deep past what we believed was “real” came from lived experience or from the direct and patient communication of somebody who has made the mistakes for us. On the net however the best SEO wins, and bad actors can more easily distort our truths; A/B testing those truths against millions of people - effectively statistically outwitting our collective intelligence.
The problem with asking the web about the web is that it is a medium that can only say certain things. The web is mostly good at talking about itself. It is almost certainly a non-objective view. It paints itself and its relatives in a charitable light. And in some senses pats itself on the back - positing itself as a solution - as if somehow that facts merely exist is equal to the problem being solved. Knowledge that doesn’t fit into the web simply doesn’t exist.
As humans we understand that our instruments have an affect, a voicing that each is most suitable for. We understand that our instruments don’t just convey our thoughts but also shape them. And a band brings several musical instruments to the stage, not just one - due to a full awareness of the different limits of each. Marshall McLuhan speaks to some of these points in The Medium is the Message. And Richard Dawkins coins the term “meme” to bracket how ideas themselves act like living creatures, flourishing along our delicate vibrating communication lines. As well the web is situated in a larger history, a see-saw back and forth from peer-to-peer conversations, to pamphlets, to letter writing campaigns such as Humboldt engaged in, to broadcast radio media and back again.
Charitably, the web is ever-shifting; we are continually working on the instrument. We can imagine an augmented reality web that shows information in context. We can imagine a highly interactive web that can become a mentor and a teacher; that embodies the lore of a domain expert. We can even imagine a web that makes the novice work harder to acquire knowledge and power; at a pace where they are less likely to harm themselves or others.
Comments
We have a relationship to knowledge over these last millennia that in many ways defines us in the sense that we are our tools. And, if we choose to be conscious, we have ongoing opportunities to rephrase that relationship, to look closer at what we want to offer to our children and each other.