Monday, April 27, 2009

Twitter - knowledge or data?

In a blog post entitled, Dull Networks? How microblogging might turn the wisdom pyramid upside down, Miguel Encarnação presents concerns that the brevity of microblog messages such as Twitter may circumvent the way we process data into more useful forms of knowledge. He provides examples:

  • Data represents a fact or statement of event without relation to other things.
    Ex: It is raining.
  • Information embodies the understanding of a relationship of some sort, possibly cause and effect.
    Ex: The temperature dropped 15 degrees and then it started raining.
  • Knowledge represents a pattern that connects and generally provides a high level of predictability as to what is described or what will happen next.
    Ex: If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmosphere is often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains.
  • Wisdom embodies more of an understanding of fundamental principles embodied within the knowledge and is essentially systemic.
In my view, even with the 140 character limit, tweets can be and often are more than bits of data. In my view, they are bytes of knowledge. The example of knowledge in Miguel's post is: "If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmosphere is often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains" This is 146 characters. This can easily be shortened to: "If the humidity is very high and the temp drops substantially the atmosphere is often unable to hold the moisture so it rains" which is 130 characters and can be tweeted. Moreover, tweets can and often do contain links to other websites that contain full explanations on the topics referenced.

In fairness, Miguel is correct that information received on microblogs such as Twitter, as all information sources, need to be closely examined and
verified.

In summary, tweets, if used properly can augment both knowledge and wisdom.

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