The Experience of Knowledge
With every experience, we acquire knowledge; it is the understanding gained through experiences--good or bad. Knowledge is communicated by building compelling interactions with others or with tools so that the patterns and meanings in their information can be learned by others.
There are many types of experiences that confer different types of knowledge. Some knowledge is personal, having meaning unique to one person's experiences, thoughts, or point of view. Local knowledge is knowledge shared by a few people because of their shared experiences. Global knowledge is more general, limited, and process-based, since it relies on such heavy levels of shared understandings and agreements about communication. Effective communication must take into account the audience's level of knowledge. This makes it more difficult to communicate to larger audiences because the pool of shared knowledge is less detailed and more generalized. Knowledge is gained through a process of integration, both in the presentation and in the mind of the participant. Information forms the stimulus of an experience while wisdom can be the understanding of the message gained through the experience. Knowledge is a fundamentally participatory level of communication and we should always make it our goal because it allows the most valuable messages to be conveyed.
What is Wisdom?
Wisdom is the most vague and
intimate level of understanding. It is much more abstract and
philosophical than other levels and less is known about how to
create or effect it. Wisdom is a kind of "meta-knowledge"
of processes and relationships gained through experiences. It
is the result of contemplation, evaluation, retrospection,
and interpretation--all of which are particularly personal
processes. We cannot create wisdom like we can data and information,
and we cannot share it with others like we can with knowledge.
We can only create experiences that offer opportunities and describe
processes. Ultimately, it is an understanding that must be gained
by one's self.
beginning
Copyright 1994 Nathan Shedroff