Average Room, Little People, Huge Connection

"The Smartest Person In The Room, Is The Room"

 

In his book "Too Big To Know" technologist David Weinberger describes how the internet is changing our concept of knowledge. Instead of relying simply on books or articles to look up information, our knowledge has become networked. Any person can now connect socially through the net and relay their own information about a subject. It is no longer only renowned experts or degree-holding doctorates information that can be published . It is changing both what we know, and how we know.

 

"Old knowledge institutions like newspapers, encyclopedias, and textbooks got much of their authority from the fact that they filtered information for the rest of us. If our social networks are our new filters, then authority is shifting from experts in faraway offices to the network of people we know, like, and respect."

 

So, about that saying up top... As the internet evolves and more information is flooded into it, the amount of knowledge available is becoming too large for any one person to understand. The net has surpassed us in comprehending. Therefore, the room, (or network) acts as a connection between those who are hosted within it, their thought and thesis's, and connects them to every other room along side it.

 

"As knowledge becomes networked, the smartest person in the room isn’t the person standing at the front lecturing us, and isn’t the collective wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room, and connects to those outside of it"

 

It is this vast connection that is changing our concept of knowledge. Every aspect of life can be mentioned or at least shown on the net. Our realm of learning has become much bigger in the last few decades, that we are going to continue to have problems of clarifications or questions regarding facts. The net, along with technology is constantly evolving, and in turn, so will our knowledge. Do we know what's next, no. I think the question is do we really want to find out?

 

"It’s the connecting of knowledge—the networking—that is changing our oldest, most basic strategy of knowing. Rather than knowing-by-reducing to what fits in a library or a scientific journal, we are now knowing-by-including every draft of every idea in vast, loosely connected webs. And that means knowledge is not the same as it was. Not for science, not for business, not for education, not for government, not for any of us"