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Collective Knowing

"A rich social network makes it possible to move from knowledge-sharing to collective knowing.

Because you’re externalizing a lot more when you’re on an on-line environment, you end up processing your whole life differently in a way. I know that I experience that. A lot of times I’m thinking about how I’m going to communicate and the experience I’m having as I’m having it, which actually has the effect of tuning it up for me, because I’m more sharp in my experiencing of it because since it’s so easy to communicate it to my team or other people, it’s not if I happen to run into them in the hall I might, it’s that I know I can proactively choose to communicate it, therefore it’s worth thinking about how I would articulate it. Therefore I undergo the cognitive process of understanding what I’m experiencing in a way that’s communicable – an exercise that raises my own level of experience.

You’re not just quantitatively increasing the amount of knowledge that’s been exchanged, you’re qualitatively improving the process by which people perceive things in the world that are useful to the organization, and transmit that… Even when I don’t end up ever putting it on-line, it’s still had an effect on my own thinking, to have thought through how and if I’ll communicate whatever it is, or how it doesn’t relate to any of these conversations or not, and if so, how. Just that, that’s a one tick up reflective thinking process that’s catalyzed by being in that kind of environment.

You improve thinking." - (H. Rheinhold)

Resources:

Howard Rheingold - How Online Social Networks Benefit Organizations http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/onlinenetworks3.html

Lime Wire http://www.limewire.com

Edusplash.net http://www.edusplash.net