For a more thorough consideration, please read: Learning as knowledge networking: conceptual foundations for revised uses of the Internet in higher education (Allen and Long, 2009).
The idea of knowledge networking is critical to our capacity to develop a clear and effective understanding of the Internet and how it might be used in concert with educational approaches suitable for universities in contemporary society. Knowledge networking makes us think about the preparation that students receive before attending university, both at school and also from lives lived within a network culture, and to the likely scenarios both personal and professional in a virtual society within which graduates will find themselves, and to the state of knowledge work within the professions and the academy itself.
My model of knowledge networking, under the conditions of Web 2.0, is based on the fact that Web 2.0 brings together numerous component processes of knowledge work in simple, easy-to-use and interlinking forms. As a result, activities which had previously been quite separate now occur within in a shared space-time web environment, often conducted and displayed on the same screen. These activities also become more automated, building in networking aspects to the creation and reception of knowledge.
By way of example, consider the difference between publishing an article online and then having discussions about that article, referring to related articles, and disseminating and contextualising that article before and after Web 2.0. Before Web 2.0, it is likely the article would appear on a website somewhere, probably maintained by the author. Discussions would occur perhaps on an email list, or in a Usenet newsgroup, or even just by email between author and reader. Links to and from that article would be manually made, on other websites or float ephemerally within the conversational spaces of chat and email. Contextualising data about the article – its relevance, availability, subject matter, utility and so on – would largely be tacit, or encoded within the original presence of the article on its website. Within Web 2.0, things change. Let us imagine the article is created as a blog entry. Conversations about it can occur directly within the same space as the original; RSS feeds can automate the process of distribution of the availability of the article. Within some forms of collective web publishing, ratings can be attached to those articles; tagging of the article can occur at other places which, either manually or automatically, can further create a context in which the availability and relevance of the article can be judged.
Knowledge work involves a series of component processes (research, review, origination, presentation circulation, promotion, commentary, contextualisation, summation, re-use and reference, and so on), which collectively enrich the original object, creating both additional knowledge and links between knowledge objects. Knowledge work depends on and creates a network between knowledge objects. The Internet dramatically improved some of the possibilities for knowledge networking, primarily by making available opportunities to circulate knowledge and communicate about it with less reference to the constraints of time and space, physical production and presence. The Web, in its earliest formation, further increased the potential for networking – largely because of the embedding of links within one knowledge object to another. Web 2.0, however, produces yet more quantitative and qualitative change by further expanding the array of techniques and opportunities to ‘work’ within knowledge in a manner which makes explicit the interactions of many people all interested in and contributing to knowledge, whether it be something as simple as reviews of consumer electronic goods, or as profound as the science of genetic engineering. Critical to this change is the collocation within a single shared environment, which persists over time, both the informational and communicative aspects of knowledge work. Web 2.0 makes ‘conversations’ about knowledge and knowledge itself come together; it also realises the interlinking of knowledge, and knowledge about knowledge. Furthermore, it distributes this process through time and space and potentially draws into many more collaborators into the process.
Consider now a real example. Wikipedia predates the public hype about Web 2.0, operates without the business models associated with it and involves very simple technologies; it probably doesn’t conform to the individualistic conception of user generated content either. Yet, though basically failing to ‘be’ Web 2.0 in most respects, nevertheless Wikipedia provides a very good example of knowledge networking in practice within the Web 2.0 conceptual frame. Within Wikipedia, a particular knowledge object becomes subject to relatively regular and immediate revision by an indeterminate number of contributors; discussions about updates – potential or actual – occur within the same, visible space; references to Wikipedia (and use of Wikipedia) is automated throughout the Internet. Wikipedia itself embodies the delights and frustrations of hypertext linking such that no object exists alone. Knowledge about knowledge emerges and is explicit – in, for example, the disambiguation components. Collaboration within Wikipedia occurs on a continuum, ranging from people who come together tacitly and accidentally, to those engaged in deep discussion and who are highly organised. The fact that Wikipedia does not necessarily work ‘perfectly’ according to its stated aims, or to the standards normatively expected of such encyclopaedic work only heightens my contention. Knowledge networking now becomes the default form of knowledge work in a connected world, for good and bad. It is not a choice as to whether we work in knowledge networks, but rather a choice as to how we do it, how well we do it, and to what ends might we now put this default state.
