Knowledge Craft
May 07, 2003
Paul Graham discusses similarities between hackers and painters in an essay all about craft that never uses the word "craft". In the process of saying that hackers are more like painters than engineers or scientists he (again, sometimes indirectly) criticizes academia, supports extreme programming and agile methods, explores and explains some economics of innovation, trashes formal knowledge representations, suggests a model for collaborative software development and a bunch of other fun stuff that somehow fits together. (0000JD)
Throughout it all he maintains a notion of activity where how things are done and what is being done are not separated. This is craft. (0000JE)
So, with that in mind, I think it is time Knowledge Management Consultants went in for a name change. It's Knowledge Craft. (0000JF)
(Which means, according to google I need to read: Knowledge Work As Craft from Jim McGee?, but that will have to be tomorrow.) (0000JG)
Comments
mmm... you sound a mite alchemichal, there, good sir.
Despite that I think I subscribe to craft-models of production, as a consumer. Did you see Cringely this week and the week before?
Jim Flanagan cited Graham pon the 7th, too. Did you look at his scheduler for MT? Very elegant, very perl.
Alchemical? How do you mean? I mean, what do you mean?