10801 Resource 214 21 21 1059367437630 1201981050083 Controlled Can a blog post contain knowledge?

At the risk of oversimplifying: Yes!

Sounds like a simple enough question, right? However, a question like this, especially when raised among techies, runs the risk of triggering deep philosophical—I would call them religious—debates. In no time at all, the debate focuses on a fundamental issue: What is knowledge?I figured I could find such a debate-in-progress when I noticed the following comment in <a title="Roland Tanglao" href="http://www.rolandtanglao.com/" target="_blank">Roland Tanglao's Weblog</a>:<blockquote>I am not an AI guy, but I think knowledge *can* be contained within a weblog post if the post is [in a] format where the blog system can automatically extract categories/keywords/topics.</blockquote>I didn't have far to look.  Roland was commenting on dueling posts by <a href="http://jrobb.mindplex.org/2003/07/26.html#a3381" target="_blank">John Robb</a>, former Userland CEO and active K-log (Knowledge webLog) champion, and <a href="http://www.kamat.com/vikas/blog.php?date=7/24/2003" target="_blank">Vikas Kamat</a>, computer scientist.  Naturally, John think blogs can contain knowledge; Vikas does not.  Roland offers a qualified "yes".Who's right?  Everybody (given each his own definition of knowledge, anyway).Let me suggest a pragmatic definition of knowledge for those of us who are trying to chip away at real world KM problems (to use the overloaded, seriously baggage laden, "KM" term):<blockquote>Knowledge is information that improves a person's ability to act wisely.</blockquote>This is a simple but powerful definition.  It defines knowledge implicitly in terms of its enabling effect—improved ability to act wisely—rather than any specific attributes.  (By the way, the <a href="http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/test.html" target="_blank">Turning Test</a> uses a similar technique to define intelligence.)  Ultimately, it is this enabling effect that we value; that we create software to help achieve; that companies are willing to pay for.  Any specific attributes are just "implementation details".So, can a blog post contain knowledge?  If you are talking about information that improves a person's ability to act wisely, then certainly, the answer is yes. 10 application/xml false knowledge capture knowledge management Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 190014 false false true false false false true 214 blog blogsite/MySTHome/web