Comments on: Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War

By: Wissensaustausch » Warum XING? – Teil 2

Wissensaustausch » Warum XING? – Teil 2 — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:56:19 +0000

[...] ist der von Venkatesh Rao veröffentlichte Beitrag unter enterprise2blog.com. In seinem Beitrag beschreibt Venkatesh Rao Social Media und Knowledge Management als Bestandteil [...]

By: RG

RG — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:30:12 +0000

The emphasis in the two word pairs is different, at least subconsciously (M in KM and S in SM). Management of knowledge puts the focus on the technology tools used to *manage* something that we pretend to know the definition of. Management implies control. It is the social aspect of the new media that is rapidly and uncontrollably growing, subsuming the information/knowledge organization, sharing to relevant groups, searchability and so on.

Offhand I don’t know if millenia of philosophy has covered this ground but it seems to me that what is considered as knowledge changes with people–both as individuals and as communities. A trivial example is of advanced countries trying to patent what they believe to be discoveries or inventions but which millions of illiterate great grandmothers already know, practise and freely share across generations (e.g. neem, turmeric). So when we have enabling tools and newer uses of the network bringing an explosion of real-time communication across virtual communities, the social aspect becomes the determining factor, media-shmedia be damned.

So KM is close to achieving its nirvana by becoming a use case of SM.

The generational filter is an interesting but slightly contrived perspective but I would not argue against it as much as I would state that, as a rule, it is difficult for any generation to accept the novelty value and benefits of the next generation.

By: Benoit Debray

Benoit Debray — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:37:05 +0000

I found your post excellent, thank you. However, in term of generationnal frame of mind I don’t know exactly where I stand and if I can still move. But what I appreciate the most is your openness toward the generation following you and the understanding of the one preceding you. Wathever the technology may be, I feel that this is the good attitude to make social networks a successful reality.

By: Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » The Right and Left Brains of Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:33:28 +0000

[...] earlier generations of Enterprise groupware and Knowledge Management (KM) failed to do (yay! for my early KM vs. SM thesis). The usual laundry list of design principle differences are trotted out, starting with the [...]

By: Md Santo

Md Santo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:51:38 +0000

In my view, SM is Social Learning management tools as main part of the future of e-learning.

KM on the other hand is an integrated access mechanism which can be used accross any management tool type. To get more insight, follow the links : http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/map-of-knowledge and http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/human-born-as-knowledge and also http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/types-of-learning-domain

I think it is not quite relevant to comparing SM and KM whatsoever. It is more relevant if you compare KM with IM or in the future with Wisdom Management (WM) because both have the same epistemological line. In case KM vs SM, they don’t have such same line.

And last but not least, try also to see the link http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/we-are-the-knowledge-hybrid (WE ARE THE KNOWLEDGE : HYBRID DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE)

By: Knowledge Management vs. Social Media « Future Business

Knowledge Management vs. Social Media « Future Business — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:59:34 +0000

[...] triggering blog post I mentioned above is called Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War by Venkatesh Rao. Personally, I think he puts too much emphasis on age, but it is at the very [...]

By: Christian DE NEEF

Christian DE NEEF — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:02:45 +0000

Last year, a lot was written (and tweeted) about this supposed war… The death of KM was predicted. But there is no war.

To start, KM is NOT about ideology; KM has to be practical, hands-on to survive! Social Media are rather hands-on, but then, they are NOT KM! Rather than a war, I would say that there is a misunderstanding, mostly because the (traditional) KM practitioner is not fully embracing/understanding the power of Social Media, and of course most Social Media fanatics don’t know much about KM. Is there a generational aspect to this misunderstanding? Certainly, but in my opinion it is not worse here than anywhere else…

I think that some form of KM will die, indeed: the times of traditional KM with lots of discipline & structure (taxonomies and thesauri, heavily codified knowledge, etc.) are over. But there is a KM that will thrive: the KM of Knowledge Transformations (the good old SECI model), Communities of Practice, conversations, etc.

There is no war. We were afraid for many years that KM would die, but Social Media will be KM’s savior!

@cdn

By: KM: News from the battlefield… « kmcafe

KM: News from the battlefield… « kmcafe — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:56:29 +0000

[...] Rao is the perceptive guy who first noticed the war. His full findings can be found in his blog post. Rao believes that we are in the middle of a hidden KM-SM war. The real cause of the war is a [...]

By: Knowledge Management & Social Media: War? | Information Value Chain

Knowledge Management & Social Media: War? | Information Value Chain — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:17:40 +0000

[...] knowledge management (KM) sparked by a blog post by Xerox researcher Venkatesh G. Rao entitled Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War. The controversial claim is that a generational (and hidden) coporate cultural war is going on [...]

By: Yoga online

Yoga online — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:54:14 +0000

I prefer social media.