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Knowledge combiners

Why is knowledge siloed between companies, universities, students?
 
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I feel there is an untapped human profession.

The profession is to take knowledge that has been produced and comparing it with other knowledge that has been produced and working out if they are relevant to eachother and if they could be combined together. Then capturing this information and then sharing it with the wider community like a journal.

They would sit reading papers all day, interview companies and university researchers with knowledge they're happy sharing.

In software for example, many companies and universities have solved problems that are not unique to themselves. But the knowledge hasn't truly distilled the marketplace. So you move from one company to another and the company commits the same errors in IT systems. It's a nightmare.

Another example is products that are open source: Postgresql is the worlds most advanced open source database. It has an implementation of Btrees which is rock solid. My implementation of Btrees is arguably a lot less rock solid. It doesn't even balance :'( Why isn't this Btrees solved as a product or library that everybody can use.

chronological, Apr 24 2021

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       I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. What is the similarity between a "knowledge combiner" that makes and sells a custom library and one that tutors students?
Voice, Apr 24 2021
  

       The problem is that the future is unevenly distributed. We have technology to solve many world problems, it's just not distributed in everybody's head, known to too few people, not known by the right people, not invested in. Our knowledge is fragmented.   

       The problem I was interested in at the time was scaling computer systems. There's a lot of knowledge in this area of computing but it's unevenly distributed in the hands of Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, (FAANG)   

       Each company solves the problem in its own way and the knowledge rarely leaves the company except when people who worked there work elsewhere and bring what they knew with them.   

       A knowledge combiner would take this knowledge (knowledge we don't know) and combine it with other knowledge (that we already know).
chronological, Apr 24 2021
  

       I understand the problem, but I'm not seeing an idea that addresses it.
Voice, Apr 24 2021
  

       //Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, (FAANG)// Ah, but with the M, it'd be FMAANG (rhymes with orange), or NMAGAF (where the N is silent), but definitely not Oolongftangftang.
Sgt Teacup, Apr 24 2021
  

       The idea seems to be to implement communism, except the good that gets "redistributed" by the revolutionaries is proprietary technical information. A beautiful idea in theory; many problems in practice.
sninctown, Apr 24 2021
  

       I wouldn't support total elimination of the existing patent and copyright/"trade secret" system, but I would pare it back to 10 years for copyright and 7+7 years for patents. And no protection for trade secrets. Fucking hell, why should a company have the "right" to no one knowing their recipe? Especially a hundred years down the line. The further you get into trade secret laws the more it stinks of crony capitalism, fascism, oligarchy, and corruption in general.   

       We're heading for a cyberpunk dystopia.
Voice, Apr 24 2021
  

       //So you move from one company to another and the company commits the same errors in IT systems. It's a nightmare.//   

       Well, the first time around, it's a nightmare. The second time around, it's a consulting opportunity. Then, the third time around, it's an open-source project. Since the Btrees of Postgresql are, as you say, open source, why don't you just take a cutting, so to speak, to plant in your own garden?
pertinax, Apr 25 2021
  

       Isn't this exactly the problem what "publishing" is designed to solve?
pocmloc, Apr 25 2021
  

       //but definitely not Oolongftangftang// which is a shame at the best of times.   

       But mostly, what [pertinax] said - and you can see this happening a lot along with the business model of gaining open source traction and enthusiasm for a particular solution, and then opening a consultancy to commercialise it. In that way, knowledge is spread, and the inventors of that knowledge are able to benefit.   

       Further, whilst it is perhaps less optimal in the moment, over long periods of time, systematic knowledge redundancy is not a bad thing. Reinventing wheels multiple times allows for a kind of emergent, evolution to take place, with variants of the same solution bubbling up to replace earlier ones. Every solution bears the marks of its origin, the specific issues that were in place during its early development - no matter how generic its makers were trying to be - personally, I think it's a good thing for IT builders to have a go at the rock-face and build something from the ground up, even if it only gives them a more intimate understanding of the underlying structure of the problems at hand.
zen_tom, Apr 25 2021
  

       // facts //   

       Truth is a heavy burden that few want to carry.
sninctown, Apr 25 2021
  

       //weird// sp. normal   

       'Twas ever thus. Why did you think Maecenas got Virgil to write the Aeneid the way he did?
pertinax, Apr 26 2021
  

       Did you keep the receipts?
pertinax, Apr 26 2021
  

       Briefly, yes. Russell Brand is not a serious thinker (sorry, [po]). He doesn't know anything that the rest of us don't know. His understanding of tech is probably rather inferior to that of the average half-baker. He brings no new insights into economics or the human condition. He's just decided that he has a vocation to be a celebrity messiah, to which end he's going to run his mouth until further notice, drawing on ideas which might have been fresh and exciting in the 1920s, or maybe the 1890s.
pertinax, Apr 26 2021
  

       MAFANG? FANGAM?
Voice, Apr 26 2021
  

       Ia! Ia! Microsoft FAAGN!
sninctown, Apr 26 2021
  

       [Sgt. Teacup] wrote, "NMAGAF (where the N is silent)". Technically this is much better than "fang", for one thing it is like if they wanted to name a new pharmaceutical drug, they wanted customers to thing was "magnificent" then:   

       Magaf sounds vauguely like it might make customers think it was magnificent. NMagaf is even more fun and memorable with the first silent N.   

       Magaf-N sounds even more pharmaceuticalish. .
beanangel, Apr 27 2021
  


 

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