How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Clay ShirkyRead
Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic; there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.
Interpretation
Knowledge is inherently tied to human understanding and cannot exist without awareness.
This quote highlights the distinction between knowledge and mere information. While information can exist independently of individuals' awareness or understanding, knowledge requires conscious recognition and comprehension by human beings. Thus, knowledge is a shared human trait, integrating personal insights and experiences, while information can be objective and abstract.
In practice
In a speech about education, one might emphasize the importance of transforming information into knowledge.
How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Curation comes up when people realize that it isnβt just about information seeking, itβs also about synchronizing a community.
It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.
What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.
It is possible to think that the Internet will be a net positive for society while admitting that there are significant downsides - after all, it's not a revolution if nobody loses.
Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads.
I am never bored; to be bored is an insult to one's self.
My whole goal is to keep my spirit intact. If that doesn't happen, none of this is worth it.
There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering. The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.
You can often help others more by correcting your own faults than theirs. Remember, and you should, because of your own experience, that allowing God to correct your faults is not easy. Be patient with people, wait for God to work with them as He wills.
The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.
People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.
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