I couldn't stop thinking about the post from yesterday and the wonderful Memex. It seems that the network of thoughts, the network of memes is key to what those people where: innovative. I think this is the whole story of Knowlegde Management (a totally unappropriate term, but nevertheless common), to provide a reasonable insight into your data, hopefully into information, to get more insight out and thus be more efficient in using the data.

Many corporate initatives and research projects undertook great efforts to codify, collect and manage organisational knowledge, with arguable success. Some sources argue that the failure rate of knowledge management system implementations might be as high as 70 %. The reason for this might be the prevalent paradigm of, what Malhotra calls, the technology-push, where KM systems define the way knowledge management is implemented. Information and Communication Systems provide the basis for rules, best-practices and procedures, that lead to pre-defined outcomes in the business environment. Most of those systems seem to be misaligned with the systems users' motivations and commitment. This is certainly true if we just think of the many applications and papers describing technical solutions to problem that haven't even been described so far.

But how could a different system work? What we are trying to accomplish is a system that get's out of the way, while focussing on what users want instead of what someone designing a KM process has laid out. What Joshua Porter analysed so brilliantly in his inspiring post on the del.icio.us lesson is, that the personal value always precedes the network value of any software. Not that new, but maybe a way we haven't thought about Enterprise software until now. It is the development in the "general web" that shows companies how to foster information sharing and contribution, without forcing people to do so. Because if you're honest: you're not really into sharing anything for free. You're just bookmarking for yourself, or to boost your reputation. It's a shame that we are that egoistic, but why not use this egoism and do something better for all of us.