We Enterprise ?
Link from Blogger to “Time to Blog On”, article by Ben Hammersley of The Guardian.
Quote
“This is my guiding principle in journalism. My readers know more than I do, and that’s great! We have gone, [claims Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News], from Old Media, through New Media, to We Media: The idea of using the power and the knowledge and the energy of people at the edges.”
Unquote
This is the same thread as my interest in the post-Napster-world. The power of peer-to-peer user communities, both processing power and the power of the shared knowledge. So rather than just readers, perhaps a systems developer should always be well advised to recognise “My users know more than I do.” So not just We Media, but We Enterprise computing too ? (See my Manifesto). Also plays directly to Douglas Adams’ line on the social reality of the web oft quoted earlier in this blog. Another of DNA’s lines of thinking which pre-date blogging.
On a similar subject, I’m currently reading “Knowledge is Power“, by John Henry (Edinburgh Univ.), a biography of Francis Bacon – the father of “modern” scientific method. Superbly interesting read on the “aspiration of objectivity vs the social reality of subjectivity”. (Ref p.9 of 2002 Icon Books edition.) Knowledge as power is also the subject of a Jul/Aug 1985 Harvard Business Review article “How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage” by Porter M.E. and Millar V.E. (Michael Porter, the very same guru of Competitive Advantage in many subsequent best-sellers. Article quoted in my earlier MBA Dissertation, a reference provided originally by John Vincent.)
(Academic credentials of John Henry, impressive in the history of science, end somewhat eclectically with the line “and has also illustrated a book on darts.” !?! )