Knowledge infrastructure

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The knowledge infrastructure of a society is understood to mean those institutions that determine the production, distribution and use of information and thus organize how this information can be converted and adopted into the knowledge of a society and an individual. The term understood in this way was proposed by representatives of information and media sciences in order to take into account the interactions between the organization and reception of information and its conversion into knowledge.

Information and knowledge infrastructure as a technical and political term

Based on the so-called " Information Super Highway ", which was called for in Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1993 by Al Gore , the talk of national or international information infrastructures was established in 1996 with the "National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996" . As a political term, it soon turns out to be imprecise, which is why the US also speaks of “knowledge infrastructures”. This term prevailed above all in the different areas of " knowledge management " and basically describes those technical facilities that serve to find, gain and target-oriented distribution of information, which is particularly important in larger organizational units. In this context, knowledge is understood as an "asset", an asset of an organization or society and as a consumer good. In this sense, the concept of knowledge infrastructure is also understood by architects, as well as city and library planners. In experimental economics , the concept is also used to take account of the organizational aspects of information gathering.

Pedagogues and others speak a little more differentiated. a. like Ursula Maier-Rabler about cultural determination or disposition in dealing with information, about "information-cultural dimensions". They state that the information and communication media in a society represent a “central control dimension of national politics”, which is all the more important as the traditional communication media and the “new media” converge. However, it is also proposed to introduce the concept of knowledge infrastructure to give the European character to the discussion of information infrastructures.

In the information sciences, however, Rafael Capurro uses the term knowledge infrastructure to propose technical systems that meet the needs of “intellectual creativity”. To this end, he describes - with reference to Michael Polanyi, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi - types of knowledge which, with their different forms of learning, place different demands on "knowledge systems". Here, the media determination and disposition of “implicit” and “explicit” knowledge is taken into account by the fact that knowledge management systems should correspond to the different types of knowledge and learning.

Knowledge infrastructure as a discourse analytical term

In the form used here to describe the determination of knowledge, the term goes back primarily to the work of media scientist Friedrich Kittler . Kittler had advocated the application of Michel Foucault's post-structuralist approaches , especially discourse analysis, to media studies at an early stage . He criticized that Foucault did not take a close enough look at the technical conditions of social discourse , especially where books were no longer central storage media. Kittler would like to examine the technical conditions that both enable and cause the emergence of social discourses. He diagnosed a growing standardization of media forms. Just as writing superseded oral transmission as a "storage medium", so "new media" are displacing writing. In digitization, the differences between the individual media are eliminated, so that ultimately only data flows remain: “ In the general digitization of news and channels, the differences between the individual media disappear. Sound and image, voice and text are only available as a surface effect, as it is received by consumers under the beautiful name of Interface. […] And if the cabling brings previously separate data flows to a digitally standardized sequence of numbers, each medium can merge into any other. Nothing is impossible with numbers. [...] A total media network on a digital basis will cash in on the term medium itself. Instead of connecting techniques to people, absolute knowledge runs in an endless loop. “(Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter, 1986).

In an interdisciplinary approach, Kittler and various authors have been subjecting the media to a discourse analysis since 1987 (series “Discourse Analyzes”, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Opladen) in order to show how knowledge is determined and arranged by the media. What is meant are different epistemological structures that are implemented in systems (Bernhard J. Dotzler), as well as media-political strategies (Bettina Rommel), which are always reflected in technical systems. Knowledge systems and their infrastructures significantly "form" the processes in which information is converted into knowledge.

Based on Michel Foucault's post-structuralist analyzes , it is assumed that the information infrastructures of a society not only transport information and make it available, but also organize and present it in a way in which the conversion into knowledge is determined by epistemological and discursive social rules. This disposition of information through the infrastructures of a society does not mean “attitudes” or “ ideologies ”, but basic, possibly unconscious assumptions about what is “worth knowing” and how this knowledge should be applied. These assumptions are, for example, "hard-coded" in the algorithms of the various search engines (see also the work on latent semantic indexing ). The concept of knowledge infrastructure, which extends the concept of information infrastructure, is intended to take account of this fact of the disposition of information.

From this core premise it is deduced that ultimately no “neutral” data can be “found” with these infrastructures, but only data that have already been processed with a specific interpretation that cannot be circumvented by the user. Knowledge infrastructures organize and shape the knowledge of a society to a certain extent, but this also applies to other communication media such as language and writing.

For the theory of knowledge structures, knowledge is therefore dependent on the organizing and representing way of a media network , which is understood as a unit of computer , interface and network (Faßler / Halbach). This media network begins to subsume traditional media under one another. Each of the three elements of the association arranges the knowledge of a society according to its own conditions, which would have to be analyzed in the sense of a “discourse analysis of the algorithms” or a “library science education” (Wolfgang Ernst) in order to determine how information is “staged”. Since the new association potentially includes classic communication media, unlike Werner Faulstich, it is not viewed as an entanglement of traditional media, but as a composite of its functional elements: the technical nature of the hardware ("computer"), the specific possibilities from its networking ("network") as well as the forms of representation and interaction ("interface"). It is the level of the hardware where the "norms and standards of electronic communication" (Friedrich A. Kittler) determine what we in the media network - e.g. B. using a webcam - and how exactly the pattern recognition works, for example in image processing . Networks are more than just the amalgamation of storage space, because in this "synchronization" contexts can be updated, which put the given information in new and different contexts and can thus fundamentally change it. B. a text - are necessarily updated by the author or a reader.

In the case of latent semantic indexing, an analysis of the functioning of such dispositions of knowledge would only be possible if proprietary source code were disclosed. However, precisely such analyzes would be a prerequisite for showing how the Internet - as a knowledge infrastructure and part of the media network - organizes and represents knowledge in our societies.

Nietzsche already expressed a clear “distrust” of the media with his thesis that our “writing utensils” work on our thoughts. As a result of the advancing mechanization, however, it becomes even clearer in modern societies than in Nietzsche's time to what extent what we regard as knowledge must be viewed as partially predetermined . It has become even more difficult to look behind these media and determine in which way they have a determining effect ( Friedrich A. Kittler ). For Marshall McLuhan , this meant that the media would "completely revise" us.

Theoretical starting points

Knowledge infrastructures are therefore that part of our media system that (a) represents knowledge and makes it available, but also (b) organizes it according to explicit and implicit rules of the social system and those of the media itself. The problem is that part of the rules that works implicitly and that which is not addressed at all, which is of course implemented in the media system and invisibly determines what “knowledge” is presented to the user.

As a result, such infrastructures have an important social function, which manifests itself primarily in the fact that through these infrastructures new knowledge is also integrated into the epistemological organization of a society, according to what can be conveyed by means of these infrastructures. In the sense of a sociology of knowledge, it depends on such technical and media institutions and their organization what a society can "know" how and what can become a topic of social discussion in it at all. Obviously, the Internet is a knowledge infrastructure, because not only are new topics and perspectives transported in societies within the framework of globalization promoted by this medium , but rather its technical facilities are designed to structure this knowledge in a (technical) way, such as this was never possible in any other medium before. The Internet as a knowledge infrastructure organizes knowledge, for example in search engines and other aids, so that what can and cannot be found or “ known ” depends on this organization .

Knowledge is organized according to what is already known. Its construction is thus predisposed by (a) subjective factors of psychic systems, (b) the epistemes of a society, (c) its consistent discourses and (d) the technical / media facilities to find and present knowledge. Such infrastructures of knowledge have historically existed in all societies; they are important "evolutionary achievements" ( Niklas Luhmann ), which ensure the continuity of the same.

classification

The fact that knowledge is always disposed or is already presented in an organized manner has been known since Aristotle's theory of categories and becomes an explicit problem of the sciences at the latest when reading it in scholasticism , after all, the disposition of knowledge means that it is found in the way we find it organized, is not created in the world. Knowledge is the result of a constructive process of converting data into information that is applied to knowledge. Information and knowledge are therefore the result of an individual and thus always subjective construction process that is influenced by social guidelines; but also data are specifically organized.

How knowledge is organized and what influence this organization has on society was illustrated by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things ( Les mots et les choses - Une archéologie des sciences humaines ) from 1966. The Cybernetics and in consequence of the radical constructivism ( Siegfried J. Schmidt u. A.), The sociological systems theory ( Niklas Luhmann and others) and the modern brain research ( Wolf Singer and others) have gone even further and say that even "world" that for us is only always perceived, the result is depending on the individual construction process.

This means, however, that knowledge is not only the result of individual "knowledge acquisition", but rather also and primarily depends on what is socially structured or organized, i.e. what the media offer us and that in our own way Knowledge is processed there. How knowledge is established independently of individuals has been discussed since the 17th century, and how society is involved in it is a core question of the sociology of knowledge, which has endeavored to uncover the hidden mechanisms of how this happens with an enlightening interest at least since Max Scheler . For Berger and Luckmann , it is natural to speak of the "social construction of reality" in this tradition.

With the introduction of new infrastructures, there have always been social discussions about whether and to what extent they endanger the existence of a status quo and whether important social achievements would not be affected. This is no different with the introduction of the media network consisting of computer, interface and network. However, it is significant - and this has always been said with the introduction of new media - that this media network results in quantitative and qualitative changes in the way we present knowledge in our specific “information environment”.

literature

  • Peter L. Berger , Thomas Luckmann : The social construction of reality. A theory of the sociology of knowledge. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1980.
  • Manfred Fassler, Wulf R. Halbach (Hrsg.): History of the media. Fink, Munich 1998.
  • Manfred Fassler, Wulf R. Halbach (Hrsg.): Staging of information. Motifs of electronic order. Focus, Giessen 1992, ISBN 3-88349-419-4 .
  • Michel Foucault : The order of things. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  • Wulf R. Halbach: Interfaces. Media and communication theoretical elements of an interface theory. Fink, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7705-2934-0 .
  • Friedrich A. Kittler : Literature, media, information systems: Essays. GB Arts International, Amsterdam 1997, ISBN 9-0570-1071-2 .
  • Norbert Bolz, Friedrich A. Kittler, Christoph Tholen (eds.): Computer as a medium. Literature and media analyzes. Volume 4. Fink, Munich 1994.
  • Friedrich A. Kittler: Synchronization. About norms and standards of electronic communication. In: Klaus Peter Deucher (Ed.): Interface. Electronic media and artistic creativity. Hamburg 1992, pp. 175-183.
  • Friedrich A. Kittler, Manfred Schneider , Samuel Weber (eds.): Discourse analyzes 1: Media. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1987, ISBN 3-531-11803-X .
  • Friedrich A. Kittler: Grammophone Film Typewriter. Brinkman & Bose, Berlin 1986.
  • Niklas Luhmann : Social Systems. Outline of a general theory. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi: The Organization of Knowledge. Campus, Frankfurt am Main, New York Campus, 1997, ISBN 3-593-35643-0 .
  • John H. Kagel , Alvin E. Roth (Eds.): Handbook of Experimental Economics. Princeton, 1995.
  • Michael Polanyi : Implicit knowledge. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-28143-7 .
  • Max Scheler : Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. In: Max Scheler (Hrsg.): Attempts at a sociology of knowledge. Duncker & Humblot, Munich, Leipzig 1924, pp. 1-146.
  • Siegfried J. Schmidt (Ed.): The discourse of radical constructivism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.

See also

Web links