Knowledge Management

The area of knowledge management is broad. I am currently approaching it mainly from the perspective of personal knowledge management (PKM).

Historically, knowledge management was seen as an organisational challenge that emerges from information management. If information is very structured, it becomes more of a data management challenge. As the type of work (and information) shifted towards more creative and free-form types of information, the result was more seen as knowledge rather than data.

In that perspective, knowledge is a social construct, with a group people sharing a joint understanding and interpretation. Or at least: trying to come to that.

In contrast, in the PKM world, knowledge is a subjective experience, tailored to an individual. Typically, you consider your PKM system as a second brain, better at remembering (storing) things.

Both approaches have led to similar outcomes: often large collections of notes and documents, perhaps organised, but usually lacking opportunities to apply the knowledge to concrete situations. They are mostly systems of free-form information retrieval.

With the rise of AI agents, these information stores can become more active participants in the process of reasoning about, reflecting on, and applying knowledge. Some already call these a third brain.

Whether you work with various AI agents reasoning over information, or also with other humans: these collaborations are turning into socio-technical systems.

So I am returning to the more general term of knowledge management. I mostly experiment with AI in the context of my PKM. But I also look at how group knowledge management and AI can interact.