Practical Knowledge

Ever since the Planet of the Apes, we all identify with the "Knowledge Imperative". I am not talking about the smooth talk of a KM salesman , I am talking about the primitive drive in each one of us to know stuff. This imperative ranks right up there with procreating in the human psyche - the need to not "un-know" anything. Heaven forbid we forget how to make electricity (we can always look it up on Google, right?), or find the roots of a polynomial, or something as mundane as balancing a checkbook. Business organizations are the same way. The organizational memory is vast and ingrained in the organization. Much in the same way the human memory is safely contained in the inside our own body, I am skeptical that a process or practice can be developed and implemented that can extract and capture all that is known and keep it accessible and useful. (It’s a well known fact that a fact that falls in a forest makes no sound).

Ray Kurzweil in his future looking book The Singularity is Near, makes a compelling argument that the capability of technology will continue to grow at its continue exponential rate and be comparable to the human mind’s capability for processing in the near future. When this happens, machines will become both inseparable and indistinguishable from people. While I am a big fan of the Singularity, I am still skeptical that we as a people know enough about how knowledge management works in practice.

a priori knowledge is the measuring stick I will use to measure when machine (assisted) learning will transcend biology. This mysterious set of things we just know. There is no citation, no class, no documentation on these things; we just Know them and take them for granted.

In any job or situation in life there are things that are known from experience. Jargon, technique, stylistic approaches are all learned, but at some point they become second nature. For that set of people one could argue that the knowledge from these experiences has become a priori. Some a priori knowledge is truly that, “known before experience” breathing? We all breathe? Anyone ever read a book or took a class on breathing (other than pregnant women, the will be the first to tell you that pregnancy makes you forget…but that is another story). What about walking? We all started as sub-performers in the bipedal transportation area, but most of us can walk without even thinking about it. Could the same be true for things at work? If programmers are learning a new language, or technology, we don’t start at the beginning; we start at some common point of common knowledge.

Is there a substitute for this second nature knowledge? Not a chance. Would you go to a surgeon fresh out of med school or one that is in her prime? Experience is invaluable. You can’t teach experience and therefore, you can’t teach a priori knowledge.

It is learned. It's not what you know - but what you can know.