ays lead to more information-seeking? If a flower or plant is photo-tropic, does that make us info-tropic? Why else do we pursue the information around us? Samuel Johnson wrote: "Curiosity is the thirst of the soul...""The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy..."Samuel JohnsonRambler, March 12, 1751Technology, the collective tool kit we've assembled for our semi-skilled use, has led us into elaborate information-seeking over the years. Like the creation of an IT department for example. It's got everything, from INFORMATION to TECHNOLOGY, the best of both worlds, though maybe, as Peter Drucker suggests, we could do with a little more "I" and a little less "T" in our knowledge mix.How has our info-tropic nature led us into such a quagmire of knowledge-fragmentation? Or, better yet, let's say we understand how the corporation got to be where it is today -- it's a given. A better question might be, How do we get out of here, particularly if "here" is a place where important things can't be found?"What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes fromcomputer to computer ... but nobody actually knows anything."Don DeLillo, White NoiseThere's every possibility, based on more evidence than we have time to look at right now, that human beings are a lot better at information-seeking and knowledge-creation than knowledge management.The image that keeps coming to my mind when I imagine some far-flung corporate empire, operating across a world of time zones, is a string of islands, an archipelago, maybe something like the Malay Archipelago, with 17,000 islands and hundreds of languages and cultures.It's easy enough to see how we got ahead of ourselves in "managing" the data, information and knowledge that's used to run the comp...
