Web Monitoring

Unterschied zwischen Wissen und Information

⋅ November 8, 2007 ⋅  Print-Version ⋅ Kommentar schreiben

Oh ja, ein sehr kompliziertes und kontroverses Thema ! Siehe auch Wissen lässt sich nicht managen….

Es gibt eine recht oberflächliche Trennung der Bereiche Wissen und Information bei Wikipedia. 

Hier aber eine der früheren Sichtweisen von Karl-Erik Sveiby aus seinem Artikel "Informatized Markets - Dream Turns to Ashes" (1998, published in Transformation Spring 1996 Issue 8, London. Updated Jan 1998). Einige Bücher und Publikationen von ihm findet ihr in der Bibliothek/WM Grundlagen. Aber auch auf seiner Website.

The difference between knowledge and Information

A short diagnostic test.

Shut your eyes. Then try to touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. At the same time, concentrate hard on what you are doing and on where your arm is at all times. Do the exercise slowly. Take 20 seconds for it.

How did it go? Quite well, probably. You managed to touch the tip of your nose even though you could not see it. This is because you have tacit knowledge of where the tip of your nose is and how you must move your arm to touch it. In the exercise, moreover, you were consciously focussing on your tacit knowledge. Normally we do not concentrate so deliberately on the physical motions we make. If we did, we would never get anything done, because our conscious minds are hopelessly inefficient Information processors compared to our unconscious minds.

The conscious mind is capable of processing somewhere between 16 and 40 bits of Information (ones and zeroes) per second, whereas the unconscious can handle no fewer than 11 million bits per second. We are thus aware of less than a millionth of all the Information that our brains process. While you were deliberately and laboriously focussing on the movement of your arm, your brain was rapidly and efficiently dealing with an enormous amount of other Information to keep track of all your bodily functions.

Conscious thought is thus energy-intensive and inefficient. On the other hand it is very flexible. It can be switched in a fraction of a second to concentrate our attention on our heads or our toes, on listening carefully or on reflective thinking. Which hand did you use in the exercise? If you are right-handed, you probably used the right one. (About 90% of all the people I ask to do this exercise use their right hands if they are right-handed.) Why not the left hand? You never gave it a thought, it was purely automatic. Am I right?

Over the years we build up innumerable patterns in our brains that serve as unconscious rules of procedure to cope with every conceivable situation. These rules save us a great deal of energy, enabling us to act quickly and effectively without having to think about what we are doing the whole time.

These rules of procedure are also an essential part of acquiring and improving skills. But the rules of procedure are also a limitation. Since they are always there, they affect new knowledge like a filter or a pair of spectacles. If you used your right hand in the exercise, you missed the experience of trying it with your left hand. No great loss in this instance, perhaps, but consider how you act in more complex situations at home or at work. How much happens automatically? How much of your ability to create new knowledge do you unconsciously switch off?

Human beings, unlike computers, can never forget everything. The greatest difficulty lies not in persuading people to accept news ideas, but in persuading them to abandon old ones. (John Maynard Keynes)

Karl-Erik Sveiby
June 13th 1995