The "WE" Individuals of the Digital Era

'Bee hive 2' by Botters
under a CC license

Knowledge has always been a valuable thing. A lot of resources are invested in getting it, being studies or just hiring the right people. And there are tools available to transmit it (books, schools, the media, etc.) as well as the means to protect it (intellectual property laws, non-disclosure agreements, information concealing technologies, etc.).

Information technologies have considerably changed the knowledge landscape, though. Information tends to be better distributed or - at least - more accessible. With a bit of exaggeration, one could support that it is getting increasingly easier to become "an expert" on something.

As usual, however, there is a catch. Well, in fact, many catches:

 Reliability; Accuracy;Suitability;Completeness... and that is just to name a few.

The interesting point is that those same catches also apply to several of the traditional means of knowledge dissemination, such as books. The difference, however, is that the perception of reliability, accuracy, etc., of what we find online tends to be favourably biased. I don't know why. Maybe because when we look something up on the internet we want to get somewhere quickly and easily.

The bottom line is that the people of the digital era are no longer isolated knowledge-islands but, rather, autonomous nodes of a network: they have access to "collective knowledge" and, sometimes, contribute to it. Individuals are (digitally) backed up by many others, although the process often happens unconsciously, well hidden in the background.

At any rate, in the modern business world, that brings up to the scene some new facts.

Firstly, the "layman" should now be considered as one with access to a lot of information, possibly unfiltered, possibly biased, possibly incomprehensible to him/ her, maybe even wrong but, at any rate, information.

Secondly, the expectations from an "expert" should now be somewhat different: having some knowledge on his/ her field is just not enough anymore. Experts should be able to go much beyond the layman of today and considerably beyond the well-informed professional that hires him/ her.

I have the feeling that we are now in a transitional period, where the new and old types of common people/ experts co-exist. Understandably, that leads to confusion, especially when our expectations of the others are not matched in reality.

Daniel Gulati, a New York entrepreneur, has gone as far as to advise us: "Beware of the everyday expert" in his article in Harvard Business Review. I understand his concerns. But, on the brighter side of things, today, business people may be able to do much more on their own than what was normally possible a few years ago. That is particularly helpful for entrepreneurs, I guess, although the audience they are addressing has also become more demanding.

To me, the real challenge is how we use this potential to make our lives better, at the professional but also at the personal (societal) level.

P.S. (1) And, just to be fair, a lot of focus has been falling lately on the  knowledge-based economy and the society of knowledge. The niche of this post is really tiny and has to do with everyday people in their everyday lives. In other words, please don't extrapolate to the world economy level :-)

P.S. (2) Just because we have access to information that many others have provided, we are not necessarily less "individual" than we used to. No, we haven't reached the Borg stage, yet. Surely, many people will feel handicapped if google (or bing) goes offline but it's the access to information that will be what they'll be missing, not the people behind it :-)

What the world needs...

'October 2010 Alaskan
Viaduct Closure' by
WSDOT under a CC license.

...is plenty of things. Clarity and simplicity? Peace on earth? Food for all? Money? Ideas? All of those things? Which ones exactly, depend on your point of view but, really, I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here. The world is a game of many players, where all can do their bit to influence the result.

A friend send me a link to Architectes de l'urgence the other day. I felt surprised. Even though I am an engineer myself. Even though I am aware of the contribution of engineers in many places around the globe, where the need for (re)construction exists.

I felt surprised possibly because in our everyday life, houses, roads, manufacturing plants, schools, office buildings, etc., are taken for granted. I felt surprised simply because there is nothing hero-like in the view of an engineer. And it's not just me, I believe. Many have heard of Doctors without borders - but that is human health we are talking about. Don't worry. I won't go to claiming that we should reserve a cheer for engineers. But I feel like reminding me (us) that what the world may truly need is expertise.

Expertise. Expertise in construction, IT, medicine, agriculture, education, food processing, energy, etc. Expertise on all those things that are the structural elements of modern life as we know it. That is the thing that can make the difference. And, indeed, you can't have development without the right minds (and hands) in place (and in the right order). Even when you achieve development, you still need the right experts to ensure sustainability.

That's certainly not a personal discovery of mine. Generating or enriching in-house expertise, attracting the right people, achieving the right level of education, etc., have all been in the competitiveness/ innovation agenda of communities (countries and  regions) for quite some time now; take the Marie Curie schemes as an example. But still, I find that, as a priority, it tends to fall under the radar quite often - possibly because expertise costs, without leading to direct profits.

I believe that investing in expertise, preferably in a sustainable way, needs to stay on table, especially in times of crises. In the same way that expertise should be part of any emergency aid package, be it a response to a natural catastrophe or human destruction.