Jon Husband refers to Constellation W, a website in English & French that covers some interesting territory around the forces influencing our development as a society in the 21st century. Jon notes that, “This next era will create a society of knowledge; its principal tool will be the Internet 2 while its principal handicap will be too-large amounts of information that is not in context.”
Too large amounts of information is what the whole notion of PKM is about. I’ve noticed a real interest in personal knowledge management whenever we discuss it during the informal learning workshops. People are overwhelmed with information.
The Constellation W site is a wealth of information with great diagrams, though I still find navigation a bit confusing, and it’s too bad that you can’t make comments on each page. Perhaps this will change over time. Take a look at the principal diagram, showing the three waves of technology, economy and society. Here is the summary of the conclusions on the Knowledge-based Society:
- The challenge is not any longer to install the Internet everywhere or to modify the economy, but more fundamentally to change our society in all its aspects. What are the human sacrifices that the knowledge society risks reclaiming ?
- Because of the ubiquity of the Internet, millions of individual decisions may become collective actions. How do we tame or shape this extraordinary power of the collective which is beginning to make itself felt ?
- It will be the young people who will inherit this new society. What will be the values which will influence their decisions, thus their choices about the societies of the future ?
Lots of food for thought and many more conversations. Thanks to Jon and the rest of the team for the great work.
