Plato and the InternetWe live in a knowledge economy. Competition now straddles the world, and competitive advantage will be produced from now on by knowledge and creativity. Acquiring and managing knowledge better has become a political imperative. And yet - what is knowledge? The arguments have changed little since Plato. Arguing against sceptics who claim we have no knowledge at all, philosophers have focused on knowledge of facts, on how to distinguish true knowledge from mere belief. But the knowledge economy is less interested in knowledge about facts as in know-how - the Internet provides anyone with a PC and a phone line with access to billions of documents. We are drowning in information, while being starved of knowledge. What we really want is to get clever things done, in smarter ways. Plato and the Internet argues that what is important is not 'what facts you know', but 'what you know how to do', and that the essential contrast is not between knowledge and belief, but between knowledge and information. Is the Internet really something new - or a continuation of the past by other means? |
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A.J. Ayer acquisition Alec Fisher arguments billion browser characterisation of knowledge context data-sets default reasoning Descartes developed different types Doulton drive a car dynamic routing Edmund Gettier employees epistemo epistemology Everitt and Alec example expert expertise false files gigabyte Gorgias heuristic Icon Books idea important Information overload Intranet JTB tradition Justified True Belief Kieron O'Hara know-how knowledge and true knowledge economy knowledge management ledge economy logy London Lyotard markup language mation Myles Burnyeat Nicholas Everitt organisation possesses organisation's Oxford particular Penguin philosophers possess knowledge POSTMODERN ENCOUNTERS Plato problems of knowledge proposition propositional knowledge psychological reliable rooms have floors scepticism Semantic Web six challenges Smith Smith's knowledge Socrates STANFORD LIBRARIES stuff supermarket Susan Haack Theaetetus theory thing Timothy Williamson tion types of knowledge University Press usable information virtue Webpages Wittgenstein World Wide World Wide Web writing X-type widgets