May I get a kilogram of grade-200 Knowledge to go please?

Gagan Saxena
Nov 7 · 3 min read

“I don’t have time to connect to the knowledge-pump right now. So, I will just take the jar today. And also this medium coffee, please. Thanks!”

Photo by Maria Molinero on Unsplash

This dialog is science fiction even twenty years after Neo learnt martial arts in a few minutes through a pipe connected to his brain. There have been huge advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, neurosciences, brain-computer interfaces and related areas — but we have a long way to go.

Download knowledge from one machine and plug seamlessly into another machine, or a human, or a cat. That is the goal.

This concept assumes of course that a lot of theoretical and practical issues have been resolved. And yes — reasonable advances have been made in representing, transferring, storing and applying knowledge within tight domain definitions. The quest for general intelligence continues and at some point the engineering folks will have to stop and think about the length, the breadth, the height and the weight of knowledge.

How do we measure knowledge intrinsically and not in terms of how effective it is in its application?

Hard engineering will have to assume that knowledge has hard borders — that is, either the knowledge is on this component or it is not. There are no grey borders where part of the knowledge on a component sort of fades out on the edges — and then gets restored when that component is plugged into a system that does have full knowledge about those faded edges.

In other words, even though in the real world ‘strength’ of knowledge varies over degrees, we need to make some simplifying assumptions about knowledge being binary — its either there or it is not. Nevertheless this is an interesting area that requires more analysis and research.

How to describe ‘degree’ of knowledge since knowledge cannot be simply binary?

Then there are the ‘grades’ of knowledge defined along some qualitative dimensions. What are the dimensions that can be used to measure knowledge? There are things like reliability or trustworthiness; and then there are various degrees of specialization that can be applied. One overall thing to consider is that most knowledge is based on context. Is knowledge fit for purpose?

What is the unit of measure for knowledge? Are these closer to measures of power, or measures of size? Or is there just a suitability scale of some kind on a log normal scale that just measures fit for purpose?

Then there is the organization system for knowledge, the ontologies and taxonomies. Are there rectangular and circular knowledge-blocks? Red, blue or green knowledge? These sort of real world ways to identify knowledge are much more attractive than having an obtuse identifier system with numbers and alphabets. But given the vastness of knowledge, it is very likely that identification systems will rely on meaningful codes of some kind. Just need to acknowledge that coding systems will necessarily be binary and will have difficulty accommodating the degrees of knowledge.

We need to look for other concepts around the world that are a not very deterministic but probabilistic in nature. The irony is that the real world is actually completely probabilistic, but in order to make sense of it we have ended up making a bunch of simplifying assumptions — landing into a deterministic model. But now is the time to expand the envelope and start incorporating the true chaotic nature of the real world into our operating models.

We can’t transact in commodities that cannot be measured — and therefore cannot be valued consistently. Knowledge cannot be packaged as a commodity. Yet.

As the knowledge economy starts creating more and more artificially intelligent entities, commoditized blocks of knowledge or ‘flows’ of knowledge will be needed as the fuel for these new intelligent machines.

Knowledge Pods

Transacting in Knowledge

Gagan Saxena

Written by

Living at the intersection of Innovation, Complexity and Technology. #DecisionMgt @Gagan_S KnowledgePods.com

Knowledge Pods

Transacting in Knowledge

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