It is surprising how much organisational knowledge there is
near the bottom of any large hierarchy. For example, folk on the Tesco
checkout seem to know quite a bit about what the company is getting right and
what it is getting wrong. Additionally, people near the bottom or middle of an
organisation may be well aware of who is useless and who is not.
To put this into a much wider context, Grandson has just
acquired his first laptop computer as a birthday present. He is already on his
second mobile phone. It isn’t easy to tell because he still lacks much of the
background knowledge to put things into context, but it’s a fascinating
development.
A lad of twelve has a powerful way to access information all
over the world. Vastly more powerful than anything available to any adult throughout
human history until only a few decades ago. Compare Grandson’s laptop to the
chained library at Hereford for example. A striking reminder of how things have changed and are changing still.
Looping back to the first point - in a wider sense, politically
relevant knowledge below the elites has become incomprehensibly vast in only a
few decades. If we don’t know something in the public domain we are usually on
the track of it within a few clicks.
We may not have access to the internal deliberations of the elites
but there are far more of us with far wider access to the public domain. We are
creating the public domain too. In the end that may be what counts.
3 comments:
On occasions, I wonder if, one day, every written word might be 'scanned' or similar in a process unknown at present, and that with the flick of a keyboard, the entire contents will be available to all!
That's when governments will control everything, as they'll charge everyone...
The explosion of information is a double-edged sword. It empowers people near the bottom of hierarchies, but it also allows those nearer the top to increase some sorts of control. That chained library was exceptionally hard to access (one needed to crack the code of ancient languages, and then gain the relevant social position) but it was utterly reliable in the sense of being unchanging. Conversely, information that everyone can access is information that anyone can tamper with.
Scrobs - they would like to control everything, but whether or not they succeed seems to be an open question at the moment.
Sam - tampering seems to be the main problem. People seem to be aware of it but too many think the other lot are doing it. Maybe it will simply come down to control by money in the end.
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