The ``god's eye'' paradigm

The paradigm of knowledge representation and integration that inspired the KB approach - and perhaps is still dominant in most KM systems - is based on the following general assumptions:

1.

knowledge is independent from any subjective element, and thus the process of knowledge production is independent from the identity of the knower. The same knowledge could be produced by one person or more, in different groups, in different places, and so on;

2.

knowledge can be represented in systems of general and abstract propositions, organized in a single, coherent, and sharable structure;

3.

linguistic heterogeneity and semantic differentiation, which derive from context and specificity, are seen as limitations to the potential value of knowledge, and therefore must be wiped out through a process of homogenization (abstraction, generalization, ...).

This leads to a fundamental consequence in terms of how a knowledge system is to be organized, namely the possibility to use economies of scale in the process of knowledge production. Sub-consequences are: the opportunity to centralize knowledge production processes in order to minimize unitary costs; the opportunity to specialize people in the knowledge production process in order to gain efficiency; the opportunity to maximize the value of knowledge by replication and use in any context.

Concepts such as sociality and identity, though widely used in KM, are considered as human needs that are to be satisfied without interfering with the pure process of cognition. It is recognized that knowledge is often embedded into a context (tacit and implicit are terms frequently used [19]). But its exploitation requires a sort of pre-processing, that is to say generalizing what is specific and abstracting away what is contextual. The result of this pre-processing should be a corpus of knowledge that can be shared within an organization. In conclusion, knowledge is related to the concept of ``absolute truth'', learning to the passive process of acquiring what is already given, and inquiring to the attempt to see "the true reality" through the ``god's eye''. That's why we call this paradigm, the ``god's eyes'' paradigm (GEP). Here we present some elements that characterize a KM system consistent with the GEP:

• knowledge is stored in Knowledge Bases, repositories of formal representations about knowledge domains;
• knowledge is represented with a language that tends to be context indipendent: there is a univocal relation between meanings, words, and objects;
• knowledge is produced by team of experts deductively (by articulating methodologies from theories) and inductively (by extracting best practices from experiences);
• learning occurs when new truths are discovered (methodologies and practices) and acquired through use and study by knowledge consumers.