In a world too big to know™, our basic strategy has been to filter, reduce, and fragment knowledge. This was true all the way through the Information Age. Our fear of information overload now seems antiquated. Not only is there “no such thing as information overload, only filter failure” Clay Shirky, natch, in the digital age, the nature of filters change. On the Net, we do not filter out. We filter forward. That is, on the Net, a filter merely shortens the number of clicks it takes to get to an object; all the other objects remain accessible.

This changes the role and nature of expertise, and of knowledge itself. For traditional knowledge is a system of stopping points for inquiry. This is very efficient, but its based on the limitations of paper as knowledges medium. Indeed, science itself has viewed itself as a type of publishing: It is done in private and not made public until its certain-ish.

But the networking of knowledge gives us a new strategy. We will continue to use the old one where appropriate. Networked knowledge is abundant, unsettled, never done, public, imperfect, and contains disagreements within itself.