TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

PREFACE

Application Holy Wars - the Tech Writer List Manager's Nightmare

SUBJECT - Epistemology and Knowledge Growth

Thesis - "Holy Wars" Highlight Fundamental Changes in the Creation and Use of Knowledge 14

Karl Popper's Epistemology and Thomas Kuhn's Scientific Revolutions

Theory of Knowledge

Knowledge Revolutions

Paradigms and Incommensurability

Popper's Three Worlds

Technological and Conceptual Revolutions in Human Affairs

Biological Evolution vs Revolution

Revolutions that Reinvented the Nature of Humanity

Technological Revolutions

Cognitive Revolutions

COUNTER SUBJECT - Valuing Knowledge

Caveat

Transforming Data and Knowledge into Power

Measuring the Quantity of Information

Measuring the Qualitative Value of Different Kinds of Information

Adaptation and Knowledge in Popper's Three Worlds

The Cybernetics of Power: Boyd's OODA Loop Concept

The Revolution in Military Affairs

Evolutionary vs Revolutionary Adaptation

Tools and Applications that Extend Humanity's Cognitive Abilities

EPISODE 1 - Printing

The First Printing Revolution: Replicating, Preserving and Disseminating Knowledge

EPISODE 2 - Microelectronics

The Second Printing Revolution: Automating Replication and Processing

Mechanical Data Processing and Calculating

First Generation Electronic Computers (1943-1955)

Second Generation Computers (1955 - 1964)

Third Generation Computers (1964 - 1971)

The Fourth Generation and Beyond

EPISODE 3 - Cognitive Tools for Individuals

Tools to Capture Knowledge

Word processing (extending the paradigm of paper)

Calculators and spreadsheets (extending the paradigm of a paper spreadsheet)

Databases (extending the tabular paradigm to more than two dimensions)

Paper Paradigms and Microsoft's Waning Dominance of Personal Computing

Structured Authoring Adds Computer Readable Syntax and Semantics to Text

Typesetting Markup

Structural and Semantic Markup (Enabling the Structural Paradigm)

Tools to Store, Manage and Retrieve Preserved Knowledge

Books, Journals and Libraries

Library Catalogs Helped Individuals Find Books

Information Science

Disseminating, Indexing and Retrieving Scholarly, Scientific and Technical Knowledge

Computerising and Moving the Indexes On-Line

Indexing and Semantic Retrieval

The increasing cost of publishing and the limitations of libraries

The World Wide Web

Web Origins and History

Vannevar Bush's Memex

Tim Berners-Lee Invents the World Wide Web

Basic Web Tools

The Web Explodes

How Much Information Does the Web Hold?

Retrieving Value from the Web Semantically

Cataloging

Indexing

Using Portals

Multimedia

Wrapping Up the Web

EPISODE 4 - Organizations Develop Minds of their Own

Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Emergence of Complex Autopoietic Systems

In the beginning...

Fluxes of Energy Drive Cosmic Evolution

The Emergence of Chaos and Complexity

Autocatalysis, Self-Regulation, Self-Production, Autonomy, Identity and Autopoiesis

Natural Selection and Descent With Modification

Origins and Importance of Systems of Heredity

Foundation Problems in Organizational Theory and Epistemology

Semantic issues

Epistemology in an Organizational Framework

Introduction to a Theory of Organizational Knowledge

Michael Polanyi's Concepts of Personal Knowledge vs Popper and Kuhn

An Epistemological Holy War

Knowledge: The Explicit - Tacit Dimension

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Organizations as Transcendent Entities

Initial Definitions of the Organization 88

Collective vs Transcendent Properties of the Organization: Self-Regulation and Autopoiesis 89

Cognition 91

Organismic Biology and Heredity 94

Autopoiesis and Membranes 96

Organizational Self-Production and Heredity 97

Other Organizational Paradigms 100

Organizational Knowledge, Learning, Adaptation and Evolution in a Competitive Environment 104

Categories of Organizational Knowledge 112

Classifying Organizational Knowledge 122

Building organisational knowledge, intelligence, wisdom and stategic power 126

Tools for Keeping Data and Establishing Organisational Memories 126

Data processing for large organisations 127

Turning Information into Organisational Knowledge 128

Making the Tacit Explicit 131

Corporate Knowledge, Intelligence and Feedback Build Corporate Power 131

Birth of the Cybercorp 133

CADENZA 135

Liberating Knowledge 135

Economics of scholarly publishing is stifling the growth of knowledge 135

The Move to Electronic Publishing and Retrieval 135

Research Libraries as Knowledge Publishers not Purchasers 138

The Free Literature Movement 138

The Knowledge Explosion 140

Automating the Growth of Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom 143

The Knowledge Growth Cycle 143

Artificial Intelligence 144

CODA 145

Another Look at the Knowledge Management Revolution 145

The Spike or a Point of Inflection? 146

Climax 147