Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

by David Weinberger
Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

by David Weinberger

Paperback(First Trade Paper Edition)

$19.99 
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Overview

"If anyone knows anything about the web, where it's been and where it's going, it's David Weinberger. . . . Too Big To Know is an optimistic, if not somewhat cautionary tale, of the information explosion." — Steven Rosenbaum, Forbes

With the advent of the Internet and the limitless information it contains, we're less sure about what we know, who knows what, or even what it means to know at all. And yet, human knowledge has recently grown in previously unimaginable ways and in inconceivable directions. In Too Big to Know, David Weinberger explains that, rather than a systemic collapse, the Internet era represents a fundamental change in the methods we have for understanding the world around us. With examples from history, politics, business, philosophy, and science, Too Big to Know describes how the very foundations of knowledge have been overturned, and what this revolution means for our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780465085965
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 01/07/2014
Edition description: First Trade Paper Edition
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.45(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range: 13 - 18 Years

About the Author

David Weinberger is a Senior Researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is the author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Everything Is Miscellaneous, and a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Crisis of Knowledge vii

1 Knowledge Overload 1

2 Bottomless Knowledge 19

3 The Body of Knowledge: An Introduction to the Rest of the Book 43

4 The Expertise of Clouds 47

5 A Marketplace of Echoes? 69

6 Long Form, Web Form 93

7 Too Much Science 121

8 Where the Rubber Hits the Node 159

9 Building the New Infrastructure of Knowledge 173

Acknowledgments 197

Notes 199

Index 219

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Marc Benioff, chairman, CEO salesforce.com, bestselling author of Behind the Cloud
“Led by the Internet, knowledge is now social, mobile, and open. Weinberger shows how to unlock the benefits.”

 

John Seely Brown, co-author of The Social Life of Information and A New Culture of Learning “Too Big to Know is a stunning and profound book on how our concept of knowledge is changing in the age of the Net. It honors the traditional social practices of knowing, where genres stay fixed, and provides a graceful way of understanding new strategies for knowing in today's rapidly evolving, networked world. I couldn't put this book down. It is a true tour-de-force written in a delightful way.” Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind“With this insightful book, David Weinberger cements his status as one of the most important thinkers of the digital age. If you want to understand what it means to live in a world awash in information, Too Big to Know is the guide you've been looking for.” Tony Burgess, Cofounder, CompanyCommand.com “David Weinberger’s Too Big to Know is an inspiring read—especially for networked leaders who already believe that the knowledge to change the world is living and active, personal, and vastly interconnected. If, as David writes, “Knowledge is becoming inextricable from—literally unthinkable without—the network that enables it” our great task as leaders is to design networks for the greater good. David casts the vision and gives us excellent examples of what that looks like in action, even as he warns us of the pitfalls that await us.” David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United StatesToo Big to Know is a refreshing antidote to the doomsday literature of information overload. Acknowledging the important roles that smart mobs and wise crowds have played, David Weinberger focuses on solutions to the crisis in knowledge—translating information into new knowledge by exploiting the network.  Based upon the premise that ‘knowledge lives not in books, not in heads, but on the net,’ Weinberger outlines a bold net infrastructure strategy that is inclusive rather that exclusive, creates more useful information—metadata, exploits linking technologies, and encourages institutional participation.  The result is a network that is both ‘a commons and a wilds’ where the excitement lies in the limitless possibilities that connected human beings can realize.” Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive SurplusToo Big To Know is Weinberger's brilliant synthesis of myriad little debates—information overload, echo chambers, the wisdom of crowds—into a single vision of life and work in an era of networked knowledge.”

 

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