When and how does 2.0 move from Communicative to Cognitive?

...or when does 2.0 stop being adaptation of old forms and start being something new?

We talk about2.o being a new thing but in terns of epistemology is it really new? I've seen the Epic 2015 video and the potential dismantling of the news media, but we have to admit that this may come to pass and it may not. CBS started in radio, but it has grown in many ways since its foudning. We speak of blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, and myspace pages, but these are new ways to reach out to people, not necessarily new epistemelogical or methodological forms. They are essentially ways to cut communication time and geography.

However, there are some emerging knowledge aggregation tools such as google's search alagrythrm, wikipedia, or prediction markets. Each of these info sources has strengths or weaknesses depending on the individual's info need. Yet, we cannot say that these tools entirely replace the epististemological or methodological forms such as quantative or qualitative forms of knowledge creation. They may have some impact on the nature of expertiese, but I do not think that we will see the elimination of expertise, since the knowledgebase from which they draw should include a diversity of expertiese.

Mashups, prepublished works, soical networking, efficiencies of scale , and knowledge communities may bring people and information together, but are we seeing these really transform into new forms of knowing? When do we move from communications to something more cognitive? I listed some examples above of possible first-steps. Or, does the ease in communication transform the cognitive by necessity? Does the nature of knowing really change or are we just talking about ease of communication?

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Permalink Reply by Marcia Divack on April 19, 2007 at 7:06pm

Cognition is defined as “That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.” Therefore, communication itself is a form of cognition – if we communicate something we are in fact perceiving it and processing it and if we’re lucky we are applying reason and judgment to what we are communicating. Language itself is a cognitive tool! Whenever and however we communicate, we are actively engaged in a cognitive process.

Can all of this lead to a new knowledge base? You bet, just look at what the printing press did to open the flow of communication, allowing more people access to information and ultimately new ways of thinking. Without open communication and collaboration thinking stagnates, by extending ourselves and accepting information from others and applying that information to new things and in new ways, we cannot help but create new ways of knowing and thinking.

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Permalink Reply by Troy Swanson on April 20, 2007 at 10:35am

I like the comparison to the printing press. This may be very apt, since much of the first century of printing was moving hand written works to the print medium. It took some time before new forms such as the concept of "news" or our current understanding of scholarship to emerge.

I think that the biggest impact we are seeing at this point is in bringing people together. It is cutting speed and geography to increase the rate of knowledge creation. I don't know if we are really seeing new forms of knowing.

Our library is in the process of developing prediction markets to use within the curriculum. These have been around for a while, so that really aren't something brand new, but they are more easily facilitated via the Web.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Parsons on April 21, 2007 at 1:28am

Troy, Marcia, and dised, first of all, I just want to say that I've enjoyed this discussion.

But, as a brief response to the printing press comparison, keep in mind that the press changed the way people understood and learned things, too. With more people able to read, mnemonic devices became less necessary, and organization of information became more important than recall.

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Permalink Reply by Troy Swanson on April 21, 2007 at 9:24am

Nice. And as Web 2.0 moves to handheld, we may expect new steps forward in understandings.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Hedreen on April 20, 2007 at 12:03pm

I would argue that these "2.0 things" are just the easing and expansion of communication. Libraries have been described as long-term conversations--someone writes something, others read it, some of them reply by writing a response, a critique, an analysis or by aggregating those ideas with others. It happens on a slow scale, however. Now it's happening faster, and it's happening with a greater percentage of the population.

I don't see it as a change in cognition such as the shift from rediscovering classical knowledge to discovering new knowledge that marked the Enlightenment in Europe. (I was just re-reading Steven Gould's "The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox").

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Permalink Reply by Marcia Divack on April 21, 2007 at 3:30pm

I agree that it is not a "change" in cognition, but in communication, one which allows for an increased dissemination of knowledge and hopefully, an increased understanding. One of the best books on the subject is Relevance: Communication and Cognition by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson.

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Permalink Reply by Troy Swanson on April 21, 2007 at 6:10pm

I have enjoyed this discussion because I think that we all would agree that at some point, the change in communication multiplies to new types of information (forms...even, ways of knowing?). The various methodologies that support and create information are essentially communication systems, so at some point we cross significant thresholds in knowing.