PKMastery

Personal knowledge mastery

our sovereign territory

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Joan Westenberg promotes the idea of POSSE (publish on your own site & syndicate elsewhere) or what I have called social media’s home base — blogs. This may be just another blog, but it’s mine. Westenberg also promotes real simple syndication (RSS). So do I. Therefore, the idea that, “curation is the last hope of intelligent discourse” resonated with me.

As algorithms churn out vast quantities of information with varying degrees of accuracy and quality, the discerning judgment of human curators is the only defence against the tide of misinformation and mediocrity. Human curators bring nuanced understanding, contextual awareness, and ethical judgment to the table—qualities that AI, in its current state, is fundamentally unable to replicate.

Human curators can distinguish between nuanced arguments, recognise cultural subtleties, and evaluate the credibility of sources in ways that algorithms cannot. This human touch is essential for maintaining the integrity of our information ecosystem. It serves not only as a filter for quality but also as a signal for meaningful and trustworthy content amidst the overwhelming noise generated by AI systems. —Joan Westenberg 2024-01-10

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PKM Summit

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I just presented at the first annual European PKM Summit, with a formal presentation yesterday and a casual chat today. Next year’s summit is scheduled for 14/15 March 2025. Some of what I covered is posted at 20 years of PKM. I mentioned several projects and resources which are available on this site.

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just another blog

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I write this blog mostly for myself, though it’s great to have people join in and create conversations.

“But there’s also a part of writing, of online writing particularly, blogging, that’s all the humble without the security, that’s full of risk, that’s vulnerable even if what you’re saying isn’t necessarily personal or deeply meaningful or anything you or anyone else even really cares about. This thing we do, blogging, is crazy. Really. What a trip, what a concept, what an experience. It’s a place where the public share is instant and your little words can tromp their way across the world before you have time to regret it.”—Annie Mueller

I highly recommend reading all of Annie’s blog post — it’s just a blog (thanks to Euan Semple and Chris Corrigan for highlighting Annie’s work)

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careening toward a meaningless world

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As we get inundated with new knowledge and information regurgitated by large language models and generative pre-trained transformers — time for meaning-making becomes critical.

Meaning-making is the process by which we interpret situations or events in the light of our previous knowledge and experience. It is a matter of identity: it is who we understand ourselves to be in relation to the world around us.” —Dave Gurteen

Are we swimming in a world of meaninglessness?

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blogging is enough

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This blog turned 20 last month — dead blog walking. One of the big challenges that the growth of AI [GPT, LLM, etc.] presents us is connecting with people — not machines — for our sensemaking. A personal blog is a human way to connect. There is no algorithm to filter what others read. They can subscribe, on their terms, and with their chosen technology thanks to real simple syndication (RSS). The great thing about blogging is that there are few rules. You can write as you like, when you like, and as often as you like.

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skill erosion

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If you don’t use it, you will lose it. Automate what was once a skill-developed process and those skills will decline.

“Cognitive automation powered by advanced intelligent technologies is increasingly enabling organizations to automate more of their knowledge work tasks. Although this often offers higher efficiency and lower costs, cognitive automation exacerbates the erosion of human skill and expertise in automated tasks. Accepting the erosion of obsolete skills is necessary to reap the benefits of technology—however, the erosion of essential human expertise is problematic if workers remain accountable for tasks for which they lack sufficient understanding, rendering them incapable of responding if the automation fails.” —The Vicious Circles of Skill Erosion (2023)

One key factor in understanding how we learn and develop skills is that experience cannot be automated. Increasing automation requires that the Learning and Development (L&D) field must get out of the comfort zone of course development and into the most complex aspects of human learning and performance. To understand learning at work, L&D must understand the work systems. Now they also have to understand skill erosion.

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dead blog walking at 20

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Twenty years ago I started writing this blog. Over 3,600 posts later, it’s still my main tool for making sense of my work and the world.

Only a few months after I started blogging, I heard Tod Maffin, a Canadian digital journalist, on CBC radio state that blogging was dead — already! But I saw my blog as a tool for work, and not necessarily a way to make money, so I marched on — dead blog walking.

What has my blog been good for?

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20 years of PKM

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This year marks the tenth anniversary of my personal knowledge mastery workshops. Ten years before that I discovered PKM and started working on my own frameworks which grew into client projects, first with Domino’s Pizza for their franchise leadership development program. Subsequent clients included ING Bank, Carlsberg, Citibank, the MasterCard Foundation, United Cities & Local Governments, and many more. What is available today has twenty years of experimentation and application behind it.

The inspiration for the ‘in 40 days‘ format came from my friends at En Nu Online in the Netherlands. Since then, hundreds of people have participated in the program, coming from all continents (except Antarctica of course). The content has changed with the times and will continue to be in a state of ‘perpetual beta’, as I try to meet the changing needs of the modern creative knowledge worker. Several new topics were added in the past year.

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frames for collective sensemaking

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“The communicative solution to pervasive misinformation is not better facts, but better frames”, concludes Kate Starbird (University of Washington) in Facts, frames, and (mis)interpretations: Understanding rumors as collective sensemaking. Starbird describes the case of a frame called ‘Sharpiegate’ during the 2020 US Presidential election.

We highlight how, prior to the election, elites in politics and media — including President Trump himself — set an expectation (or a frame) of a “rigged election.” As the election progressed, many of President Trump’s supporters went to the polls (or their mailboxes) and misinterpreted their own experiences through that lens. Later, they went online, sharing those experiences and seeing other “evidence” from around the country, which they interpreted through the same “rigged election” or “voter fraud” frame.

The entire post is worth reading. I want to highlight three insights Starbird found concerning rumors, conspiracy theorizing, and disinformation.

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