Multilitteratus Incognitus

The other day I came across a recent #change11 post by Jaap on his blog and there was an interesting question: Do we need to know each other when we are sharing knowledge and collaborating? This is a case where I had an immediate response, then I thought back to my own personal examples of sharing...and then I ended up with no answer at all, but rather I was left with a giant question mark (i.e. this needs some research) My initial answer, without giving it much thought, was: of course we need to know one another to share information!  - This reaction came from my own preferences when meeting and talking to people. If I don't know someone I tend to size them up before I offer up any information. They also tend to be the conversation initiators. Then, I had to take a step back and evaluate my online interactions, examples of which would be on forums like macosx.com and howardforums.com . In my online interactions I have  initiated conversations, both in the forms of que...

Another interesting post by Jaap in this week's (final week) of CCK11 made me think. Jaap writes: As a connectivist (CCK11) I do not like the words “acquisition of knowledge”, I like to that to be “connecting to information”. This made me think of the philosophy behind knowledge, how one sees knowledge and information (and ultimately wisdom?), and the semantics behind the words we use. Take for instance this phrase: Acquisition of Knowledge What does Acquisition of Knowledge imply? Well, we acquire something that in concrete, something already pre-made, ready for us to pick up and consume, use, or put it on a mantle. This view of knowledge is very behaviorist in its connotation. I don't necessarily subscribe to this idea. I think information can be given (example: don't touch the stove, it's hot) but there is no necessary knowledge of what happens if you touch a hot stove. As a kid I was told this time and time again, and I never touched a hot stove. A few m...