On Twitter this morning I was alerted by @israelblechman to a great article at the Social Computing website by Venkatesh Rao called "Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War." Rao asserts that different generations of knowledge workers have had quite different approaches to the perennial challenge of using technology to help generate, capture, and spread knowledge among people. He also predicts how the struggle among these approaches and their advocates will end:
"The Boomers will retire and the Millennials will win by default, in a bloodless end with no great drama. KM will quietly die, and SM will win the soul of Enterprise 2.0, with the Gen X leadership quietly slipping the best of the KM ideas into SM as they guide the bottom-up revolution."
Jeff Kelly replied with an equally valuable piece, "KM vs. Social Media: Beware the Warmongers" in which he cautions against, well, warmongering between the different approaches. His closing prediction is that:
"Our technology and society will continue to evolve; people will continue to be resistant to (but finally adapt to) change; youth will continue to disdain their elders until they become tempered by wisdom; and the opportunities to learn and prosper will continue to grow for those wise enough to do so."
I like Kelly’s caution against ageism: not all Boomers and Gen Xers are irretrievably clueless about social media or hostile to the ideas of information sharing platforms that are (at least initially) radically freeform and egalitarian.
But I also really like how Rao highlights that successive generations of technology to support group work and knowledge creation are not all the same, or essentially interchangeable. Instead, these different waves of technology reflect differing assumptions about the right, or smart, or best ways to go about these tasks. As I wrote earlier, "It’s not about the technology" is often a dangerous and incorrect oversimplification, and nowhere is this the case more clearly than with tools for group work and knowledge creation.
To make this point, Rao uses Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote that "the medium is the message." I also like Mitch Kapor’s insight that "Architecture is politics." You will get different politics, different dynamics, different levels and types of participation, and different results and benefits from different architectures of participation. And I’m with Rao that the newest architectures are the best ones we’ve come up with yet. Do you agree? And how ‘real’ is the war between KM and SM? Leave a comment, please, and let us know.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Andrew, I firmly believe that the social technologies will displace traditional KM systems over time, simply because they are more open, flexible and useful than proprietary systems. I don’t think it’s a generational thing primarily, though young people are more acquainted with 2.0 tools–in my mind, it’s correlated, not causal.
regards, John
I think one thing is for sure, social media is definitely going to continue to be an impact player in the future. Here’s my take. As the Gen Xers grow and develop and leave behind the student life and become contributing members of society, they will fill leadership positions in both politics and business. Because of their upbringing, they will know social media very well. It will evolve at that point to be used in coordination with KM. You can learn a lot through social media. It will turn into a tool used for KM. There’s no war here, only the makings of a partnership.
Oh the war is very real. A recent example that I saw involved a team lead who after switching to wiki style document management system, locked down the space completely to restrict any type of new content uploads, modifications etc…….
But this has nothing to do with age. I know of many many Digital Immigrants who have fully embraced the new SM. It is just a matter of making the switch.
I think one of the main characteristics of Digital Natives (regardless of age) is their passion for exploration. They seek out new ways to optimize content creation, aggregation, dissemination and consumption. They constantly search for and seek out new bookmarklets, firefox plugins, google gadgets etc that will help them achieve this goal.
This is requires a a cultural shift and a different mindset. It has nothing to do with age.
Saqib
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Andrew – I find it intersting that you discuss this as a “war of technologies.” Venkat and I had focused our argument on the socialogical aspect of KM vs. social media (SM) instead of boiling it down to the technology. I will say that I run into much more resistance to SM from IT professionals (of every age category) than I do from KM professionals. When I have discussed their resistance with them, it almost always comes down to a political governance issue. Since they are the ones who get their asses handed to them by management for every data spill or security breach, they often turn a jaundiced eye on any new platform or application. After years of focusing on security and governance, the SM platforms’ call for freedom, egalitarianism, and little governance is often anathema to them.
1. I don’t see social media completely replacing top down information management systems. I see the two co-existing. I do see there being more scope to do the kind of knowledge management I like (which is participatory/collaborative) using social media tools.
2. There’s a lot more to knowledge management than the tooling you use. The danger for the social software crew is that they assume it’s all about whether you use a database or a blog, a taxonomy or a folksonomy. And it’s not.
3. I think the generational stereotypes are dangerous because there tends to be as much behavioural variation within an age cohort as between them.As a Gen Xer, research shows that I love being shoehorned into crude generational stereotypes with millions of other people .
4. “Architecture is politics” – absolutely. But systems can also be perverted in ways their creators never thought of. This actually happened with some of the old KM systems.
It all feels like a phony war to me.
I agree with Jeff–the conflict between KM and SM is largely a matter of governance, rather than one of technology.
For example, at PBwiki, we still sometimes run into people whose higher-ups refuse to let them use a SaaS solution for “security” reasons. In actuality, it’s simply a way to stave off the behavioral change of allowing end user empowerment.
I concur with the comments from Saqib. We have gained some traction on focused, limited internal deployments of social media tools, but run into stiff (management) opposition attempting to expand the footprint, and ‘open’ the environments. The ‘keep the information to myself’ mentality is still quite prevalent, and only when more members of the Facebook generation start to influence these decisions will many organizations embrace these changes.
Andrew, your other commenters have it right in that it is not about age. Without going into detail, I think the “fork” is embodied in your view vs.Clay Shriky (and I personally devour everything both of you espouse). Can you arrange for a debate? Or would you be in complete agreement?
i quite agree with you … on two things here … first, that there is no real war that is out there, and second we shouldnt ignore technology.
http://atulrai1.blogspot.com/2008/11/people-or-technology.html
rather than a war, i would like to look at it as “creative tension”, where different ways of doing things are evaluated, and adopted, and i dont think one is going away because of the other (in fact, i had written about the search versus communities thought some time back …), because they are serving two different purposes.
Andrew – well, the “age-ism” question was something we specifically dived into in the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0, and delivered our short keynote at the E2.0 conference on (http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen/enterprise-20-ftw/).
Having lived through, and continuing to assist people with KM practices, as well as being an “E2.0 pundit” I don’t see the new wave as being at odds with the old in any way.
It’s just improved, lighter weight, get outta my way and let’s get things done rather than talk about it…
We’ve done a number of specific presentations to law firms, pharmaceutical companies, etc. discussing KM, KM2.0, and E2.0 and what to think of all of the discussion.
Most recent version of that presentation can be seen at: http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen/enterprise-20-knowledge-management-20-for-km-practitioners-in-law-firms-presentation/
In short, if your organization values information, knowledge, collaboration – call it whatever you like – if you don’t have the incentives, the culture, the business drivers (fully recognized by the “users” as well as managers and executives), well, then you are doomed, no matter what label you slap on it.
The tools themselves are the sharp end – it’s what’s pushing behind that will make the actual implementation take root or get ejected from the organization as a whole.
Cheers,
Dan
In the state of war everything from first side is against everything on the other side. Technology is on the front of the war. Who has advanced technology got great advantage.
These esoteric discussions about theory and inherent biases based on age serve what purpose? In the end, technology is only the device for fulfilling a need and this discussion would provide much more significant value if instead it focused on the business and personal needs that can be addressed by SM and/or KM techniques. To think that either approach warrants the “silver bullet” label is both naive and arrogant for anyone, regardless of their age. Both SM and KM techniques have different demonstrated values and need to be harvested selectively so as to align with implementations objectives, which must support the brands that take ownership for the content and the people that need to use it.
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Its true that knowledge and society continues to evolve. SM and KM should evolve in such a manner that they compliment each other and support the need.
Its true that knowledge and society continues to evolve. SM and KM should evolve in such a manner that they compliment each other and support the need.