Characteristics of Knowledge Media

Why is knowledge-in-software taking over the world? Will it replace knowledge-in-books? Will it replace knowledge-in-brains?

To start to answer these questions, we need to look at some of the characteristics of knowledge in each of the five media:

We can see from this simple analysis that only software ticks all the boxes. Only software has all the characteristics of a knowledge storage medium that we consider valuable:

• Insertion Effort:
  Once the knowledge is obtained, it is generally quite easy to put that knowledge into the software medium.

• Intentionality:
  Knowledge-in-software shares with other knowledge storage the characteristic that, in general, knowledge cannot be accidentally inserted into software (though “incorrect” knowledge certainly can—we will address this later)

• Persistency:
  The software business has not done a very good job of making knowledge-in-software persistent, but this is more a fault of the management than of the medium. It could be very persistent if we managed it correctly.

• Update:
  It is quite easy to update knowledge-in-software though, again, updating the correct knowledge is a different issue that needs to be addressed.

• Modify itself:
  While most software to date has not been explicitly designed to update itself, it could be, and it will be. There is a substantial body of knowledge in the field of cybernetics dating back to the early part of the 20^th century that is being applied more and more consistently now.

• Modify environment:
  This is the primary function of software. Coupled with the appropriate hardware, software can extensively modify its surroundings and, with its self-modification capability, learn to execute this modification better and better.
  And software can learn.