"...the field of knowledge management had been co-opted by information technology vendors, and had become useless for organizational learning."

This point resonates with me, as well. I think we've become so used to our culture of lost knowledge that we're blind to its dangers and we're needlessly celebrating "eureka moments" that have likely happened over and over again thanks to our professional ancestors. Technology should have been a way to ease the burden, but it's complicated the situation to no end. Instead, we're relying on organizational culture to support the transfer of knowledge and continuous growth, but I think the number of organizations who do this consistently are very, very few in number. Is that too cynical?