My eventual purpose is to better understand the impact of weblogging on knowledge-making. In this foray into knowledge land I will be using knowledge-making (km) in the more universal sense, that is, km when what is at issue is creating a knowledge artifact (a "piece of knowledge") that NOBODY knows.

Aside: I know that knowledge is a dynamic state, an individual <--> environment relationship. But, as long as that that state has been shown to be apparently transmissable between one person and another, I feel it's possible to discuss it as if it had an independent, stand-alone nature. Call my intellectual short-hand 'the everyday view of knowledge'

In daily efforts at km (knowledge-making) we struggle to create useful personal knowledge, e.g., knowledge that allows us to better handle a situation which continues in some perceptible way to 'bug us', to 'not seem right', to be'still confusing', etc. Satisfactory resolution comes when we now feel that the situation, at its most demanding, is now something we can handle.

Take learning to ride a bike, for example; in the "before" learning situation riding on level ground and as the learner followed a straight track was ok but as soon as there were bumps or turns the learner would fall. Not good.

Subsequently, through persistence, and maybe some help, learner becomes better about shifting weight on turns and "not freezing up" when hitting bumps. Now the learner has the situation under control and has made knowledge [many growth paths connecting the pre and the post... but, however traversed, at the end the learner can do more under more variant environmental conditions and has, therefore, 'made knowledge']. But it's not knowlege-making in the universal sense.

The universal sense applies when our new knowledge is also [provably, arguably] new for EVERYBODY. Claims for knowledge-making in the universal sense are addressed in the academic and scientific literature. Examples of relatively recent universal knowledge-making yielding universal knowledge: Einstein: theory of relativity, Heisenberg: uncertainty principle, Guilford: 120 forms of intelligence, Rawls: Theory of Justice, Freud: the Unconscious Mind, etc., Newton and Leibniz: calculus, Tolstoy: War and Peace.

We might summarize by saying that this knowledge is new to the idea universe, i.e., in its particular formulation a particular idea is absolutely new to the full inventory of ideas expressed in this or any culture, in this or any time. As soon as we say this we know we're in trouble. Why? Because many ideas have a person+place+culture+time boundedness which may not allow use anywhere, in any culture, or at any time. Universal is an imperfect idea but, I feel, a foundational assumption when people rate, credit, praise or credential knowledge artifacts.

The pursuit of a bit of universal knowledge won't be unlike the pursuit of personal knowledge; the quest, before it ends, will , however, be more rigorous. This would be so first because establishing its newness in a universal sense has one communicating, explaining, demonstrating to a broad audience. Those that are skeptical about its newness or it's utility in the environment to which it will apply (remember the equilibrium between individual and environment) will have to be satisfied, through reading descriptions of the inventor's efforts of study and research, first, and her/his communication/explanation of the artifact itself, second, that it is both useful and new.

My next concern, now that I have reviewed issues in the quest for new ideas, will be to relate weblogging to the quest for new (universal) knowledge. That quest for knowledge won't be over until fellow questors agree that it is both useful and new.

In my next entry I will reconstruct a nonweblogged knowledge-making experience and then I will speculate how the same effort might have been different with weblog mediation. [All of this to determine the value-added by weblogging as part of knowledge-making efforts].

See some previous thoughts on knowledge-making and knowledge.