Jeff Jarvis Channels David Weinberger

I wish I had heard David’s talk, although going to Germany for DLD might have been a bit much. His talk was Knowledge In The Age Of Abundance, summarized by Jeff Jarvis:

[via Weinberger’s Wisdom]

[…] knowledge, as we’ve traditionally known or referred to it, is singlar, binary, simple, scarce, and settled. Those properties of knowledge, he says, are, not by accident, are also the properties of the book. We think with our things. Knowledge, in short, was atoms. So now, we’re digitizing and connecting in an age of abundance. There’s an abundance of good and of crap but, he says, we’re much better at dealing with the abundance of crap. Yes, we filter it, kill it. David says that when there’s an abundance of good, our institutions are not built for it. “Control does not scale,” he says, “except at tremendous human costs.”

I wrote some about ‘scalar freedom’ last year, a related notion. It could be recast as ‘scalar meaning’ or ‘scalar ethics’. As we move away from mass allegiance — mass identity and belonging — our freedoms become situated in socially scaled communities. This is a core of tribalism. It turns out, I believe, that our only option for scaling control of potential abundance of good is a scalar ethos, where self-defining, self-selecting communities affirm what is true, right, and fair. Or, what are the shared beliefs: what is known to be true.

Next: “The mess is essential.” The mess is the better reflection of who we are. In the era of scarcity, knowledge is limited in the book but online links and the ethic of the link are the means of generosity with abundance.

And an outcome of online sharing is that there are many communities of differing beliefs, contrasting if not antithetical ethics, and an infinity of competing allegiances. A real mess.