Who Gets To Digitize Whose Knowledge?

Who Gets To Digitize Whose Knowledge?

Diego Maranan dmaranan@upou.edu.phFaculty of Information and Communication StudiesUP Open University

GS 197: Culture and its Global EntanglementsUniversity of the Philippines Diliman 10 December 2008

CC-licensed photo from flickr.com/photos/amoration/3028563114/

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Many things can be represented and shared digitally

Sometimes we do it for the purpose of creating new worlds, new realities.

Other times, digitizing information simply makes the information more easily

shareable and archiveable...

...which can be very useful.

(Quick aside: Knowledge versus information according to the field of Knowledge Management)

Information“What is, Know what”~ Data

Knowledge“What works, Know how”“The capacity to act”

From Serafin Talisayon's blog:apintalisayon.wordpress.com

Tacit versus explicit knowledgeapintalisayon.wordpress.com

Digitizing information can play a crucial step in transforming implicit to explicit knowledge.

Can all tacit knowledge be explicitly documented and (subsequently) digitized?

Maybe. Maybe not.But even if it were possible...

... should all knowledge be digitized?

● When knowledge is digitized, what is lost? ● Transforming implicit to explicit knowledge is

a kind of mapping. – Digitizing knowledge is a kind of mapping.

– Mapping is often (though not always) a simplifying and distorting process.

In whose hands does the information lie? And do they have the legitimacy (the right, the accorded responsibility) to manage and transform that

knowledge?

"A Journey into Time Immemorial", from www.virtualmuseum.ca

● Nancy Maryboy is a First Nations (Navaho) professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University;

● Teaches an Internet-based course on Native American Astronomy

● “She shares her people's ancient knowledge of the Navaho night sky and tells the stories of the constellations, their names, and how they came to be.”

[During one conference], she was cautioned by one of the non-native experts that she ought to formally document [...] Navaho cosmology, since it would likely disappear in

the future.

“

She gently made the point that certain knowledge must remain in the Navaho people's possession and that she was very confident that they could be entrusted with its preservations, as they had done so for thousands of years. ”

Digitizing information/knowledge is a useful endeavor. But we ought to

think about who owns the knowledge and has the right to manage or

transform that knowledge, as well as who is supposed to benefit from

digitizing a particular body of information/knowledge.

This is all the more important when the claim of ownership is staked by

individuals or groups who whose voices have historically been

underrepresented in the digital world and who place an importance on the medium through which that

knowledge is transmitted.

“All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance [...]Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

TS Eliot, The Rock, 1934

CC-licensed photo from flickr.com/photos/imuttoo/2631466945/