PKMastery

Personal knowledge mastery

talking to people

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In a post called, I am fed up with hiding myself, Mita Williams concludes that academic writing removes authors from their work by turning them into ‘sources’ and ‘references’ and that large language models are doing the same, but making authors even further removed from their work.

In writing this post, I’ve come to realize that the concerns here dovetail with a long-standing bugbear of mine: that libraries overemphasize authority from sources, and does not do enough to support bibliography, a format in which authority derives from people and their choices.

In a separate post, Williams states that, “The alternative to AI is talking to other people.” —Mita Williams 2023-09-19

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the dying social bookmark

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I have been publicly promoting social bookmarks since 2005, when I was using a defunct tool called FURL. Since then I have used Magnolia, Delicious, Diigo, and Pinboard. The first two are gone and the last two seem to be waning. For example, I cannot access my account settings when logged-in to Pinboard. Others are having no luck getting support from Diigo.

What are social bookmarks? They are like bookmarks on your browser except they are available online from any device, they are searchable, and you can add metadata like hashtags and categories. They can be public or private. The most important aspect is that they are shareable. Here are my Diigo bookmarks and Pinboard pins, as examples.

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crucial knowledge may be impossible to express

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In many fields, there is some critical knowledge that is very difficult to codify. “It’s the kind of knowledge that is never written down and yet can be crucial, even in the highest of hi-tech enterprises. And you won’t find it in ChatGPT, either”, says John Naughton in The Guardian.

KM expert, Nick Milton discussed the codification of knowledge and created this breakdown.

  1. impossible to express,
  2. can be expressed but has not been yet,
  3. expressed in speech but not documented,
  4. recorded knowledge, or
  5. information.

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sensemaking routines

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“Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things.”
—Andrea Jones-Rooy, Professor of data science, NYU

In 2014 I asked — what is your PKM routine?  I highlighted the routines of Jane Hart and Sacha Chua, and then described my own. Over time I added dozens of other examples that were shared online. My own PKM routine has changed over these years. My general principles are to keep my routine simple, use as few tools as possible, and limit any automating processes. My last post — manual sensemaking — explains the latter.

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manual sensemaking

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Sensemaking is a manual skill, which can be assisted with various tools, but the most important tool is our mind, using good practices.

Ideas often emerge in the complex domain, which is where people working in a network economy need to be active, probing, and playing. We also need to do shallow dives into the chaotic domain. Neither of these activities will be helped through automation. If anything, automation will make us lazy, or unaware.

The process of seeking out people and information sources, making sense of them by taking some action, and then sharing with others to confirm or accelerate our knowledge, are those activities from which we can build our knowledge. Managing and sharing information, especially through conversations, are fundamental processes for sensemaking in the complex domain. Sensemaking is acting on one’s knowledge.

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I write therefore I think

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I think this will become a major problem with embedded GPT & LLM appearing in almost every work productivity tool — “Skipping the writing process short-circuits reflection (‘Writing as Thinking’)” —Stephen P Anderson

While they may help to write summaries and presentations, tools like ChatGPT will likely short-circuit the creative writing process.

“For creative endeavors, I never want to have something else come up with my writing. The holistic labor of creative writing is struggling to succinctly translate your own experiences and ideas from your mental space to the physical realm. My ideas and the ways I express them in text are the most precious things I have, the ones that differentiate me from everyone else. Moreover, in the process of generating the written form of your ideas, you come up with different ways of thinking about them.” —Vicky Boykis 2023

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warning — effort required

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Seth Godin discusses Cliffs Notes and how these could be a path to better understanding.

Used as intended, Cliffs Notes and Quicklit were a gold mine of insight. They opened the door for real understanding, and often got to the heart of the literature better than an overworked high school teacher might be able to. —The Cliffs Notes Paradox

But he also notes that even with the widespread availability of these notes, insight in overall society has not improved. When I was in college, I majored in the Arts while most of the students were in engineering or science at Royal Roads Military College. Our cohort was about 25 students and on entering second year, I was given a barrack box filled with Cliffs Notes (and Coles Notes) for our entire curriculum. As the ‘keeper of the notes’ I was responsible for their safe-guarding and adding to the collection. It was a great responsibility.

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diversity > learning > trust

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“What is dumbing so many people down?” asks Henry Mintzberg. His explanations 1 and 2 [quote below with my emphasis added] resonate with me, as I have promoted the idea that we need to connect our work, our communities, and our networks to make sense by engaging with people and ideas. The core of this is curiosity, especially about other people, as well as ourselves.
Be a curious learner — about ideas, people, and oneself

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“the total decoding and synthesizing of reality”

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A seminal moment in my work came when I saw my first web page on a computer at Montreal’s CRIM in 1994. I finally saw computers as things that connect people around the globe. From here I completed a Master’s degree focusing on how people learn at work with information technology.

The next significant moment arrived with social media. I started blogging and sharing online. When Twitter came along it changed my relationship with hundreds of people. Social media platforms became the great connectors. But now in 2023 we know that much of the web is comprised of surveillance and tracking tools that are designed to influence our behaviour, especially our purchasing behaviour.

In whither Twitter, I wrote that more important than any single platform is our collective ability to seek diversity, think critically, and learn socially. For now I am staying on Twitter and watching the show, muting and blocking with abandon. But we know that platforms like Twitter can undermine democracy and spread disinformation and propaganda. Perhaps that is why Musk bought the company.

I had another seminal moment when I watched The AI Dilemma recorded on 9 March 2023. It shook my understanding about the current state of machine learning, which I thought I sort of understood conceptually. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, from The Center for Humane Technology, present on the new force that has been unleashed by several global companies with no regulatory oversight — the Generative Large Language Multi-modal Model (AKA Gollem-class AIs).

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curiosity trumps knowingness

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“I put forward formless and unresolved notions, not to establish the truth but to seek it.” —Michel de Montaigne

The perspective of perpetual beta is to make sense of our experiences by formulating models to help our sensemaking while at the same time being ready to discard these beta models as new information is discovered. It may not be the most comfortable way to understand our world but it may be the most adaptive. This perspective informs the personal knowledge mastery (PKM) framework, which has evolved since 2004.

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