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Week 7
Feb. 27th: Tacit and Explicit Knowledge: The Problem of Archiving Information
MacKenzie, Donald. 1996. “Chapter 3: Economic and Sociological Explanations of Technological Change.” in Knowing Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Osterloh, Margit and Bruno S. Frey. 2000. “Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Forms.” Organization Science 11:538-550. ![[PDF]](http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i203/s07/wp-content/acrobat_pdf_icon_sm.gif){kind=icon}
Mar. 1st: Social Issues in Computer-Mediated Communication
Wellman, Barry, Janet Slaff, Dimitrina Dimitrova, Laura Garton, Milena Gulia, and Caroline Haythornthwaite. 1996. “Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and the Virtual Community.” Annual Review of Sociology 22:213-238.
Nass, Clifford I., Youngme Moon, John Morkes, Fun-Young King, and B. J. Fogg. 1997. “Computers are Social Actors: A Review of Current Research.” Pp. 137-162 in Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology.
Kiesler, S. and L. Sproull. “‘Social’ Human Computer Interaction.” Pp. 191-199 in Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology.
January 2nd, 2007posted by:
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13 Comments Add your own
1. igorp | February 24th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Great readings this week. The MacKenzie piece picked a fascinating topic, development of nuclear weapons, as a framework to introduce and discuss nuances of tacit knowledge. Despite the clearly loaded (ahem) nature of the example, the paper mostly resisted going off on a subjective tangent and remained focused on the true subject matter – tacit knowledge.
I was at first resistant to MacKenzie’s use of Paleolithinc flint knapping as tacit knowledge that died out. After all, this knowledge was tacit only because it wasn’t documented, not because it couldn’t be documented. Thus, though I agree that some tacit knowledge can die out, the set of knowledge ‘in danger’ is reduced to that information that truly can not be described in a meaningful manner. On further thought, however, I concede that it doesn’t matter whether knowledge at hand it truly tacit or tacit in that it just hasn’t been documented yet. The important fact is the (meaningful) documentation state of the information at the time.
MacKenzie presents a very good case that it is extremely challenging, if not impossible, to completely document a hugely complex activity. In the case of nuclear weapons, there are concrete performance requirements alongside great risk and expense (synonymous with expertise and time of many people and their products). But is there a fundamental reason for why every piece of the production process can not be described? Absolutely not. The problem is that description, whether oral, written, audio or video taped does and can not contain all information involved, just what is judged to be essential. Of course, with such complex operations, a whole lot of things are essential. Anyhow, I’m going to stop myself from climbing down this philosophical well right here.
If the testing moratorium, no longer in effect I believe, did take place and facilities scrapped, and enough time lapsed, etc. could we uninvent nuclear weapons? I think MacKenzie makes a good case for yes. However, he also points out a number of example proving that we could then reinvent them right back. So what about those nukes and world peace? Doesn’t matter, we’ve gotten all of his points on tacit knowledge.
This paper was particularly close to my heart as I’d spent 3.5 summers working Los Alamos, a good deal of it on an assembly of a electric pulse power machine the size of a football field designed to do ‘materials research,’ ie ramming different metals into each other at super high speeds (sound familiar?). Now that was watching build up of tacit knowledge first hand! ie “Oops, I guess the transistor oil really has to be cleaner in the tank next time… Igor, how about we pump the 30 drums of oil out and then we lower you in there and you clean it by hand with the other solvent?” I was also fortunate to get a DOE insiders (relatively) tour of the Nevada test site where we saw the subcritical underground testing sites (1000 ft underground) meant to keep up the skills of the scientists. Everybody was really bummed about the moratorium, in part because the reduction in visitor traffic necessitated the reorganization of the DOE subsidized steak house on site.
The second paper, by Osterloh and Frey, was also great. The quote they pulled from another paper, “we know more than we can tell,” reminded me of Rheingold’s concerns for our loss of ‘humanity.’ This ability to know more than we can tell strikes me as a key element of being human. Computer systems are, or currently are, largely deterministic. When a computer performs an act, the decision can be traced very precisely and clearly laid out. A human brain is currently way beyond that in its complexity. How long will that last?
But that’s a digression from the paper. The subjects of psychological contracts, crowding-in, crowding-out, etc. were a cool way to look at people’s actions. Also, the description of opportunism as a “worst case scenario” model for institutional structures is very intuitive – we all know people are better than THAT!
2c5a February 24th, 2007 at 6:35 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 12. k7lim | February 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I’ve grappled with the issues described by Frey and Osterloh with respect to this very blog.
Topics such as the digital divide and diffusion of innovations are core interests of most iSchoolers, including myself. In our hallway conversations, and the blogposts we write in our personal blogs, many of us can’t help but marvel or rant about the things that we’re reading.
However, does the knowledge that the entire class is blogging and that the teaching staff is monitoring “crowd out” the intrinsic motivation to write about and react to the interesting threads at hand? We all have our “tacit knowledge” from poring over the weekly discussion and text. I’ve had cafe conversations with other iSchoolers and written posts on localoaf responding to these very topics.
Earlier this semester, Coye’s lecture would highlight good points and questions he read on this here blog. An outside actor and an outside motivation were introduced, and suddenly, I felt like I didn’t want to blog to be mentioned in class. I wanted to blog because I liked the topic. But this assumes a baseline level of intrinsic motivation, that could be diminished by the extrinsic reward of recognition. Perhaps the average class doesn’t have that baseline, and needs something extrinsic like props in class?
Do you relish blogging and writing about this stuff *less* because of the outside actors (classmates, teachers), outside influences (grades, in-class prestige) or other extrinsic motivations in this system?
I’m not criticizing the structure of the blog, because we can’t simply be allowed to meander and post random interesting crap; there has to be some control. and to a great degree, our class has generated cool works. surely this blog has balanced the clamp-down blog-once-a-week-or-fail regime with the write-whatever graffiti-wall wiki that we’ve seen in other classes.
However, Frey and Osterloh harp on the example of the young children who expect to be paid to do the homework. Are we less inclined to really get into a text if we’re (in some part) doing it for the grade? Has anyone else tried their tails of in a pass/fail class because the stuff was *that* interesting and they felt less fettered by grades?
February 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 13. bryan | February 25th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Tacit knowledge is just knowledge that isn’t explicit yet.
While the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge made by MacKenzie was certainly interesting and useful, I do think that he overstated the case.
In particular, I felt his first supporting point, that tacit knowledge is crucial to the development of a nuclear device because the Manhattan Project was more difficult than expected despite the theoretical groundwork having already been laid, is the weakest. The reason is that almost any new technology or process is difficult to implement at first. Many technologies that we now consider explicit, such as how to build a car or an airplane, were likely also difficult to implement at first despite strong theoretical grounding.
I would posit that any technology or knowledge follows this life cycle: unknown, tacit, explicit. I think the reason is that many new technologies rely on a combination of trial and error and singular brilliance to initially develop. Understandably, in such situations, all the variables can be difficult to either account for (why some bombs fizzle and not others) or articulate (how shiny does the metal have to be to not be oxidized). Nonetheless, as that technology or process matures, we are better able to isolate and understand the relevant variables and pass them on.
In fact, such a property is probably a fundamental property of science.
There are many things that rely on tacit knowledge. For example, design. It’s almost impossible to list properties that invariably lead to good design, always. Art will always, perhaps by definition, fall outside of this process.
But the history of science and technology, from the building of airplanes to the application of medicine, has shown that things that are implicit are only temporarily so, and that further development and insight will generally allow such information to be made explicit.
February 25th, 2007 at 11:16 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 14. Ken-ichi | February 26th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
On MacKenzie
This might be my favorite reading to date. Well-written, fascinating, real subject matter, analysis scaling from minute operational details to massive shifts in societal behavior, and almost jargon-free, to boot! I’m particularly enamored of the idea that uninvention is not simply a matter of destroying tacit and explicit knowledge or artifacts, but that it could also require the destruction or diversion of hope and belief. Outside of dystopian science fiction, I’d like to think belief in achieving something previously achieved is indestructible, at least on a societal level. If no one believed voting actually did any good, we’d all be stay-at-home anarchists at best, complacent drones in a fascist dictatorship at worst. I guess the “translation of interest” is the more promising target, but sadly leaves us upon the treacherous and unreliable grounds of statecraft, marketing, and rhetoric. And even if we could convince everyone to hold hands and dance in field of daisies instead of maintaining their nuclear arsenals, the belief in the possibility of nuclear weapons will live as long as written history. This reading proves lack of tacit knowledge is a significant hurdle on the path to nukes, but not a wall. It seems information cannot be destroyed until it has been utterly forgotten.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:54 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 15. celeste | February 27th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I really enjoyed the readings for today. They were well-written, and involved subjects that caught my attention. The idea of tacit knowledge is something that I was thinking about just the other night in relation to dancing, and it was interesting to think that there might be a tacit component of most systems - even those that we would traditionally think of as fully explicit, like the manufacture of a bomb (I would never have thought there was an “art” to it) or other complicated system. Are nuclear bombs more tacit or more exlpicit? I’d say probably more explicit, with a good deal of other knowledge needed around the production, which could easily be made explicit as well. I wonder at the thought that a technology could be uninvented. We have all read stories about a future where the technology exists but the information about it doesn’t, leading to turmoil when the technology finally fails. But how realistic is that? I think fairly unrealistic, even in our world of couch potatoes and reality television, barring a fully catastrophic event such as full scale nuclear war. But even then, with the knowledge that nuclear power was possible and had been created before, doesn’t it really become a deterministic problem - a question of only when the technology will come along again, even if in a slightly different incarnation. I think this is where determinism has the most validity. Say we learned tomorrow that warp drive, for example, had been obtained by some alien species - wouldn’t it just be a matter of time, then, before we did the same, even if in a socially constructivist way?
In anycase, I thought the second article was even more interesting than the first in that it talked about intrinisic and extrinsic motivation and how they effect the transfer of tacit knowledge. This has a great many implications on how to run a business and whether a technology will be successful if key players decide to leave a firm pioneering that technology. In these situations, there is the question of whether the tacit knowledge held by your employees could really be made explicit or not. I don’t believe that all knowledge can be made explicit. If you can’t make design and art explicit, why do you think you could make other types of knowledge fully explicit either? Oops, time for class
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 16. n8agrin | February 27th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
“Stand on the shoulders of giants”, who among us has not heard this phrase? The dizzying pace of technological advancement is often explained away with these six words. Glibly excusing innovation seemingly without an insight into technology’s impact has, however, often come under general criticism. What happens to the tacit knowledge that those who came before us developed in order to discover the incites and methodologies necessary for the technological advancements to occur? What warnings and cautions did this tacit knowledge provide to the discoverers that we cannot or chose not to carry on?
The constant evolution of technology requires the eventual loss of this tacit knowledge. Not because we are unwilling to learn what subtleties the discoverers coincidentally stumbled upon on their path to invention, but because we formulate the new technology, mostly codifying its properties so that it may be recreated and reproduced. We tend not to be concerned with casual observations the inventor may have noticed or predicted when characterizing a technology. This has the potential for both positive and negative effects. If we did weigh heavily on any innovation, it is difficult to perceive of a world filled with cars, planes, lithium ion batteries, chemotherapy or medical x-rays. On the other hand, we would better understand (or have understood earlier) that our laptop batteries are quite literally explosive, and that x-rays and radiation cause can cause cancer in certain doses.
My point is not that technology discoveries and the understanding of a technology’s impact co-evolve. Instead I am suggesting that the loss of tacit knowledge in technological innovation is often not just ignored, but inevitable. What if we had to relearn every building technique throughout history in order to understand how to build a skyscraper? We would still understand how to build egyptian pyramids, but would the skyscraper exist as it is today, if at all? What if geneticists had to, on their own, develop DNA extraction and cloning techniques from square one every time? Would we have genetic cloning, DNA sequencing and gene therapy technologies?
Genetics research (sorry guys, I know I use this as a topic too much), exemplifies the loss of tacit knowledge. The race to become a giant for others to stand on, that extrinsic reward of recognition of your peers along with the intrinsic desire to be successful in your research often tosses the cautionary wisdom developed and embodied in tacit knowledge to the wind.
Herein lies one of the great dichotomy of the mind. We are blessed with being able to take in a vast amount of information, process and understand it. We understand why the pyramids are the way they are, and why they do not float off into space or slide apart into a pile. We perceive their heaviness and the difficulties inherent in the building of such massive structures. From seeing the finalized form we can deduce a likely starting point for the next technological innovation in building. We can do this all without having to relearn everything those before us have. In doing so we don’t loose the wisdom those before us had as a result of their own innovation, but rather we never learn it for ourselves. Whether or not this absence of knowledge helps or hurts us, we may never know; that it is not there in its totality is clear.
February 27th, 2007 at 3:12 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 17. k7lim | February 27th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
A few weeks back, we had a discussion about uninvention of technologies on localoaf. For those who have a baseline amount of intrinsic incentive to discuss these things, feel free to post here:
http://localoaf.org/2007/01/19/death-to-wind-cloud/
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 18. cvolz | March 1st, 2007 at 2:26 pm
first off, I realized that I had forgot to post something last week, so I just wanted to mention that while I found the panopticon piece to be interesting I don’t think it was as useful as it could be. In my experience most workers don’t consider improper for their employees to monitor them. It is, in fact, a requirement if workers want to be evaluated on performance. There are two other pressures that would help keep company surveillance to a minmum: the first is that companies, by nature, are seeking to grow their productivity which means they frequently try to do as much as possible with as few people as possible. Both of the panopticon pieces illustrated this fact by pointing out that the management in charge of monitoring were frequently too busy doing other tasks to devote much time to it. Constant surveillance of employees just doesn’t seem to be a profitable activity to engage in. The second point is that workers do have a choice in where they work; until surveillance became pervasisve, I think employees would be likely to move to a different company. So, anyway, that’s that.
Now… for this week’s readings: first, a personal quirk… I take issue with the term “uninvention”. I know it’s catchy and all, but it’s kind of misleading. Uninvention implies an unmaking of something, but what the article described was really a loss of knowledge/expertise required in an industry. I think there’s a big difference between actively un-inventing something and passively not keeping skills and expertise up. But that’s just me being picky about words.
What was most striking was how widespread and how important tacit knowledge is. Nuclear weapons are kind of a rarefied field, but my own personal experience at my last job was similar. The internal system there was very complex and had a lot of arcane quirks such that a new employee wasn’t really useful until they’d been on the job for about 9 months, and probably not completely versed in how everything works for another 9 after that.
That said, I think there are very few types of knowledge that can’t be described, though many may not be described easily. Someone mentioned in class how it’s hard to learn how to ride a bike. You just sort of experiment with it until you “get it” and then you’ve intenralized the knowledge and it’s become tacit. I don’t specifically remember how I learned to ride a bike, but I have very vivid memories of going snowboarding (incidentally, i hate the snow). I was repeatedly told that I’d “pick it up” on my own, I just had to experiment with it. And I did, a little bit. But I didn’t actually make any progress until I finally convinced someone to actually describe what it was they were doing.
The problem is that most people, once they’ve acquired this tacit knowledge, have a very hard time reflecting on it. IN this sense it’s not really tacit knowledge so much as it’s an internalized skill. It’s not really knowledge, in my opinion, until you can, on some level, describe what it is you’re doing.
And that, of course, is why we have teachers and trainers. Someone who is good at a skills (or field or profession or what have you) who can help cut down the amount of trial and error required to learn a new skill. You can probably learn to play the cello all on your lonesome. But things will go a lot faster if you have someone who already knows and can instruct you on what to do, and perhaps most importantly, correct your mistakes and describe your mistakes back to you. eventually you’ll get good enough that you won’t need as much feedback, but until then there’s a lot of hand-holding that goes on.
2d95 March 1st, 2007 at 2:26 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 19. lawan | March 4th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that is not explicitly documented. Documentation is done by the writer, and what one write is depend on how that person views the issue, which is based on one’s basic understanding of issue. You can not expect to have one write everything he/she have experience in a lifetime, which make him/her to have knowledge or enough capability about that subject he/she is written about. Also, it is based on the basic knowledge of reader who will read that document, if he/she has good or about the same understanding/experience as the writer, I believe he/she might found that there is no missing information. In contrast, if having 1st year CS major reading the CS master thesis, he/she might found that the knowledge explain is not completed and thus is the tacit knowlege though the write think he/she has explain everything clear enough.
However, what irritate me that most about this MacKenzie’s reading is that though everyone already realized how bad result it is for nuclear weapon after the World War II (Hiroshima/Nagasaki bomb), why there is still an attempt to re-create nuclear weapon again? Isn’t it enough to stop thinking about how advance technology can destroy the world? They should use their time and energy more wisely in trying to solve other problems like poverty, education in suburban or undevelop country. Though there is a small portion talking about how we can use nuclear weapon knowledge in developing nuclear energy resource, it seems like this is not the actual intention of this re-create/re-invent nuclear weapon project.
March 4th, 2007 at 1:15 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 110. jilblu | March 4th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
On tacit and explicit knowledge:
The learning of languages is another example of something that involves a large percentage of tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge may be available in the form of dictionaries, books on grammar, pronunciation recordings, written examples, etc., but I suspect it would not be possible to actually speak a language without learning it from native speakers. In English, for example, for every grammar and spelling rule, there are several exceptions. Dictionaries may define meanings of words, but it’s often hard to discern the correct contextual usage of the word from the definition. Slang words, which are a large part of every day vocabulary, come in and out of usage so quickly that even native speakers have a hard time understanding the slang terms of certain groups.
Recently, there have been some attempts to capture extinct languages or languages on the verge of extinction. In Canada, some 300 people still speak Nuuchahnulth, a Native American language. Linguists have been working on a dictionary, using words from present speakers, and words recorded by linguist Edward Sapir more than a century ago. Nuuchahnulth is a complex language, with entire sentences built up into single words. Some examples:
• uqee-oh - Always-absent woman
• hina?aluk- I look out for what I know is to happen
• Simaacyin?ahinnaanuhsim?aki - their whaling spears were poised in the bow
• haasulapi-ck’in?i - sing a little louder
Creating a dictionary of Nuuchahnulth words will capture some of the explicit knowledge of the language, but none of the tacit. Once the language is extinct, it will not enable future learners to learn the language and speak it in the original way.
Another example: with the now extinct language Warrungu, groups headed by grandchildren of the last speakers are attempting to revitalize the language. Since there are no more native speakers, the groups are working with the linguists who studied Warrungu; they are listening to field tapes recorded by linguists.
As mentioned in “The Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons”, when people attempt to recreate something using explicit knowledge without tacit knowledge, the result will likely be different from the original. Similarly, although today’s learners of Warrungu may be able to learn about Warrungu by studying linguists’ tapes, I believe that if they actually learn to use the language, they will actually be creating a new language derived from or inspired by Warrungu.
March 4th, 2007 at 4:56 pm |WordPress database error: [Table 'i203.is203_users' doesn't exist]
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 111. daniela | March 4th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I agree with Chris that the term “uninvention” is misleading. It implies a deconstruction of the creation or invention, not just missing knowledge. I wonder if Chris would agree, but I think this term is powerful for just this reason. It speaks to our intellectual curiosity, spinning impossible - deconstructing the construction of an idea or thought - with the irony of its implications - the idea must be re-invented, implying not only that the knowledge is missing, but that the knowledge is the invention and the invention no longer exists. This observation also highlights the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge: an invention created by tacit knowledge may not be reproduced without the knowledge itself; whereas an invention created using explicit knowledge may be reproduced using only the product or output of the knowledge.
Tacit and explicit knowledge do not seem necessarily causally related - for example, tacit knowledge does not and may not ever lead into explicit knowledge. But as Brian brought up earlier, I found myself striving to find to draw a causal or temporal link. Osterloh and Frey suggest intrinsic and extrinsic motivations similarly undergo constant development where intrinsic motivation does not automatically add to the extrinsic. So should we apply this non-opportunistic model from motivations to knowledge? We may be inclined to believe tacit knowledge adds to explicit knowledge or one leads to another when in fact they are two separate variables in which the knowledge can described by any amount of either, both or neither characteristic.
I’m also curious what the effect of managers and parents intrinsic or extrinsic motivations could be. For example, do parents bribing a child to do homework present “crowding effects” that are extrinically motivated? Maybe pressures from their community to raise a successful child motivate them to bribe. While other parents who provide a structure of values and beliefs, emphasizing the importance of learning, may be intrinsically motivated through their love for learning. Our own motivations could correlate with our choices to control other’s motivations.
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 112. jess | March 6th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
The reading by Nass et al. describes studies that prove that computers are social actors. The following post looks at how expectations of a computer’s social abilities influence your opinions regarding an interaction experience. Specifically, when I expect computers to be human-like and they behave like an ordinary computer I am disappointed. On the other hand when I expect computers to behave like ordinary computers and they behave human-like I am pleasantly surprised.
The Eliza therapist (a computer program that takes input from the user and substitutes input keywords into general therapist-like statements) is an example of a situation where I expect a computer to act more human-like and am later disappointed my expectations are not fulfilled. We recreated Eliza last semester in 206 – here’s a typical conversation I would have with her:
Eliza: Hi, I am Eliza
Me: Hi Eliza. I’m Jess. How are you today?
Eliza: How does this relate to your situation?
Me: It doesn’t. I was just asking how you are.
Eliza: How does this relate to your situation?
Because I programmed Eliza’s statements, I knew which responses Eliza would give under certain situations. For example, if she received input with “you” in it she would respond with “how does this relate to your situation?” Despite this previous knowledge, it still bothered me that Eliza did not carry out a typical conversation. Because Eliza emulates a human therapist, I expect her to converse accordingly. In this situation I simply wanted her to tell me she’s fine or that she’s terrible or that she’s tired because she’s been staying up all night watching America’s Next Top Model. Furthermore, it bothered me that she wouldn’t notice if you insulted her (I never tried insulting her because she did feel so human) or if you wrote to her in another language or even if you ignored her.
On the other hand, I am pleasantly surprised when I receive feedback after deleting spam messages from my gmail account. In normal circumstances I don’t think of gmail as human-like. However, my perception changes after deleting spam messages because gmail responds with a human conversational phrase (“hooray no spam here!”) In normal circumstances you would expect gmail to provide lackluster feedback such as “there are no spam messages located in your spam folder” but instead it responds with an enthusiastic (and unexpected) statement.
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SELECT * FROM is203_users WHERE ID = '1' LIMIT 113. Bernt Wahl | March 13th, 2007 at 9:24 am
How I Learned to Build the Atomic Bomb
In the 1930’s at Stephen’s Hall (1932) – next to the South Hall– on the U.C. Berkeley Campus, a group for physics faculty and graduate students meet regularly to discuss the possibilities of building an ‘Atomic Bomb’. Lead by the articulate physicist Robert Oppenheimer endless ideas were forth on how such advice could be constructed. Many other scientists had speculated on the possibility — including Albert Einstein — but it would take a monumental effort a team of over 10,000 people to make it happen.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:24 am |How could information to be disseminated to make ‘the bomb’ happen? In Mac Kenzie’s Tacit Knowledge and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons the author compares explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge. He argues that if knowledge could be simply contained in books, the secrets of the device could written down and stored until the time came that it was needed. We could then whip out the ‘old’ manual, build as many as we needed and be on our way. It just does not work that way. One reason that we keep research labs is that there is tacit knowledge that gets acquired that needs to be passed on by scientist. They in turn build upon it so that future generations can build upon it. Today we have objects that were built generations prior, that we only have inklings of how they were built (e.g. Stonehenge and the Stradivarius Violin). That is why for centuries we had apprenticeships, this gave the trade artisan the time to share his knowledge with the apparatus.
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