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Name: G.A. Buchholz
Bio: Web producer, technology writer and information strategist since 1994.
Area of Expertise: Futurist/Consultant
Topic: Getting, Sharing Information
Headline: Recombinant Knowledge – Human Intelligence Cedes to Networked Extelligence
Nutshell: Networked extelligence will replace or supercede learned intelligence — in other words, we may not know, but we will know how to know.
Vision:Gone are the days of the Renaissance, when a scholar could be an expert in all fields of knowledge. As information consumers make increasing demands for customized information, education and research, this has presented a new challenge: How can human beings cognitively manage, access and process the terabytes of intellectual capital they now share across multiple networks?
The popularity of file sharing and P2P networking were the first signs of an impending change in the way we are re-organizing fields of knowledge. New technologies driven by such profound cultural changes will enable end users to redesign existing knowledge resources. Consumers, already accustomed to downloading information when they want it and how they want it, will restructure information and recombine disciplines, categories and fields of knowledge into new classifications, or knowledge clusters.
This “recombinant knowledge” across peer-to-peer networks will allow users to not only draw data and customize it, but also to create new fields of knowledge that can be adapted to our cultural and commercial needs.
Recombinant knowledge in networked communities could lead to innovations in arts, commerce, technology, medicine and other fields. Our cognitive processes will evolve; people will literally learn to think differently.
In other words, while a medical specialization today might be neurology, including all of its offshoots, a new field of knowledge in the future will be far more obscure and specialized – for example, “neurology of left-handed space travellers who are 40-45 years old” will become an established field of knowledge in itself, with “microspecialist” experts who are so specialized that they know little general knowledge about others aspects of neurology. In fact, if a very specific field of knowledge does not exist, or there are no experts in it, the new generation of knowledge workers will be able to develop the new field and create a recombinant knowledge cluster for it that can be peer-evaluated.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that these microspecialists will not be able to access knowledge in other areas. The ability to index, categorize, and search knowledge externally in networked databases — networked extelligence replacing or superceding learned intelligence — will free our minds from the task of storing knowledge to the more dynamic activity of searching, retrieving and analyzing knowledge. in other words, we may not know, but we will know how to know.
Date Submitted: March 6, 2005
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