Understanding the formation and the health problems of the knowledge society

I'll get to cyberspace and the knowledge society, but first a little story. Let's imagine for a moment that you are extracting ore from a gold mine. You are studying some recent reports.

The good news

You are confronted with a report from the experts (geologists in this case) that the size of your gold mine will grow 40% a year forever, doubling every two years.

The amount of the best ore that converts more quickly into gold will increase from 22% to 37% in just the next few years, and will continue to improve (IDC, 2014). Using your techniques, there is not only a rapidly growing number of other gold mine sites that have high potential, but an astonishing number of other kinds of valuable ores that are appearing as well. There is a high amount of financial capital not currently in use that is interested in financing mine expansion.

The bad news

The investors need to see a higher level of actual gold (profit) before they will invest. Though you are highly automated, there are only two of you working this particular gold mine. The  personnel report shows that the number of people finishing their education who have the skills at any pay grade to  work gold mines or assess and prioritize the values of the other types of mine sites is at best 1 in four and is actually decreasing. The funding to produce more of the needed highly skilled workers and management is decreasing. Because of their low production rate, those who prepare skilled workers are being starved for resources to improve or punished and leaving the teaching field and the numbers to replace them are dropping. Anyone else available to work is already working in a gold mine.

Cyberspace - the Digital Universe

Now replace the word gold with data. In addition to data doubling every 2 years, the amount that is tagged and therefore more easily found and analyzed is growing significantly as well. This scene only begins to describe the current challenges and opportunities in the digital universe, cyberspace. There is an astounding amount "... of valuable data in the digital universe, but it will take determination and skilled workforce to find and put to use" (IDC, 2014).

How does the difference between digital data and actual gold change what it means to effectively use it? Just how rapidly is the amount of digital data growing and what problems is this creating? What do we do about it?

Doing something about it begins by understanding that the knowledge society is as different from the skills of finance and Wall Street society as Wall Street finance is from farms that grow food. They share much but the differences are critical in maximizing the best of each.

Some concentrated effort is needed to understand the formation and the health problems of the knowledge society.


http://ow.ly/vOz8J  #ncmle #pbl #edchat #data #cosn #pln

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