6-8. December 2002, Austria Center, Vienna
Granularity and Context of Knowledge
Before we write more about knowledge it should be made very clear we must differentiate among these three types or levels of knowledge:
* Detailed or specialists' knowledge - very high precision and definition (granularity) in a certain subject field, language and culture. This is the domain of experts/specialists, number crunchers and search machines.
* Route knowledge - where you orient one application or subject to the next, like you find your way from one corner to the next. This is the domain of experts and where new second-generation knowledge tools can be helpful, if we do not lose the context and become overwhelmed by fixed knowledge molds and patterns.
* Survey or overview map knowledge - which is not only according to Kant and Popper, objective knowledge as we have an agreed upon frame or grid and can at least, in this framework, tell if something is in or out of a certain frame, overlapping with other fields, topics or issues, or possibly just a certain corner or area of that frame. This is the domain where we need our resort as humans to add shared feelings and values. This article is primarily about this third layer!