[Sigia-l] Google vs. Knowledge Management

[Listera]

"John McCrory" wrote:

> Other times I think that would just continue to encourage employees to manage
> their documents sloppily, without any conventions or reason.

Nail. Hammer. Direct hit --> This is the ultimate objective: end the tyranny
of rigid categorization by the end user.

For an analogy take our current OSes, like Windows XP or OSX or Linux. They
are based on discrete files and rigid directory structures, folders,
volumes, nodes, etc. Imagine nuking the whole notion of file/directory
structure in an OS. Far fetched? Apple's Newton OS, the one that powered the
first PDA a decade ago, did exactly that: there were no files in Newton OS.
You had opaque collections (like DB records) in what were called "soups".
Your "view" of the OS/files/soups was determined by the task being performed
and soups bled into various tasks seamlessly and horizontally. And you
didn't have to deal with saving/opening files.

I won't bore you with the details, but the reason I'm citing this example
is, once again, to underline the possibilities, once you leave legacy
notions behind. (Mind you Newton was an actual, shipping product.)

Google did to searches what Newton did to OSes. You can always try to
"teach" users to be anal retentive. It's a losing proposition, like trying
to demand from a 4 year old boy not to step into puddles. Architectures that
rely on users "managing their docs un-sloppily, following conventions and
reasons" is a asking for trouble.

Still looking for emancipation,

Ziya