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Scaling the fences of knowledge
Pertti Saariluoma, The Importance of the Free Flow of Information and Knowledge, Human Technology, April 2006. (Thanks to Kimmo Kuusela.) Excerpt:
To get new information to the right people at the right time requires knowledge producers to break down many different barriers. The barriers to the flow of information are not just geographic. A fissure can be found between universities and private companies, which tacitly means between scientific knowledge and product knowledge....Knowledge becomes significant only when it is expressed in practical terms, such as product development and other applications. However, information becomes knowledge and applicable only when built upon the ever-growing body of basic knowledge, which is discovered in the academic inquiry of the university. To achieve such a complementary fusion of knowledge, those interested in the creation and application of knowledge need to find ways to scale the fences that might separate them. Such fences involve the languages (both cultural and terminological) of the fields of expertise, the different social rules and forms of expression between and within organizations, a lack of trust, and varying goals and interests, to name a few, which create barriers to effective communication and the quality use of knowledge. One possible means of bridging the gap between these distinct cultures is through open access scientific publishing. |