Putting Personal Knowledge Management under the Macroscope of Informing Science

Abstract

The paper introduces a novel Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) Concept and prototype system. Their objective is to aid life-long-learning, resourcefulness, creativity, and teamwork of individuals throughout their academic and professional life and as contributors and beneficiaries of organizational and societal performance. Such a scope offers appealing and viable opportunities for stakeholders in the educational, professional, and developmental context. In order to emphasize the profound differences of the proposed meme-based PKM System compared to its traditional organizational counterparts as well as its inherent complementing synergies, a systems thinking approach has been adopted by putting the PKM concept and design under the macroscope of the Informing Science Framework and the Complexity Framework for Design Tasks. As a result, the paper shows how the system is closing in on Vannevar Bush’s still unfulfilled vison of the ‘Memex’, an as-close-as-it-gets imaginary ancestor celebrating its 70th anniversary as an inspiring idea never realized, and how it concurs with a scenario recently put forward by Levy: “Just as computer science underwent a revolution in the 1980s with the widespread use of personal computers, it is possible that Knowledge Management (KM) will in the twenty-first century experience a decentralizing revolution that gives more power and autonomy to individuals and self-organized groups.” A revised version of this paper was published in the journal Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, Volume 18, 2015