Does the Web 2.0 actually increase the stock of knowledge held by those with access to it, or does it maintain the existing level and merely transmits it? Me and my Thesis supervisor, Prof. Paolo Paolini at the University of Lugano, haven’t really arrived yet at any conclusion. I set out to a little investigation on the epistemology of Web 2.0, I found of some papers, not specifically on the topic, but mainly in relation to the creation of new knowledge with the help of new technologies.
Without yet so much theoretical support I risk to say that, perhaps, the increase of knowledge comes through the otherwise non existing connections of different knowledge pools, in other words, through the interconnection of different disciplines, which is made nowadays much easier with the use social technologies, and an exponential augmentation of serendipitous knowledge finding methods, leading to new “open doors”. Today I read Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge“, which has thoughtful and acute insights in this direction. Although written in 1979, some of his predictions were actually spot on, especially related to explosion of “computerization” and the almost ubiquitous access to an overall knowledge “data bank.” It’s cute how old folks talk about technology. 
What he has not predicted was that those that would have access to this knowledge would also be able to alter it, mash it, remix it and give their interpretation on it. And also the speed in which information goes through “nodes” (us) today does probably affect the way in which we are able to acquire this knowledge, it is probably more than ever just in a transient state. We might not even acquire it, we are just permeated ad-hoc by it upon need. There is much more to his arguments of course, and it is not about technology, it’s about how people have lost their belief in a grand metanarrative or ideologies, and how this leads into new ways for the legitimation of knowledge. Anyway, it’s a thin — I mean in the number of pages — and thought-provoking read.
Anyway, going back to the beginning question of this post… anybody there knows it?
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