Are we capable of re-inventing the relationship between knowledge and power?

“Knowledge is power and it can command obedience”

(This is the earliest documented occurrence of the phrase “Knowledge is power” is from Imam Ali [599–661CE], as recorded in the tenth-century book Nahj Al-Balagha ,originally in Arabic).

Human history bears repeated testament to the view that those with knowledge have both power and control which they will do extreme things to retain. In the twenty first century technology-based communications, coupled with the possibility of ever quicker global travel, gives opportunities as never before to democratise access to knowledge. Even more significantly, with this access comes the potential means for many more individuals and groups to further the development of knowledge and also to use or abuse knowledge either for their own ends or for wider benefit.

My purpose here is to reflect, using the ‘open’ debate in higher education (HE) as a starting point, the degree to which we (by whom I guess I mean human beings in general) can realistically aspire to create a sustainable culture of openness of knowledge. The OKHE module has invited us to focus on how, in HE, the open principles apply to practice, policy and culture. Whilst considering these, I am also going to seek to stretch the reflective process and look beyond those matters of undoubted importance in education, to broader societal questions. Despite this wide ambition, the reflection will draw upon relevant examples from within HE including those contained in OKHE1 blogs which have inspired my exploration here.

It was a posting by Carly P which first set me along this line of thought, when she told us about the Facebook Groups set up for students by their university. On the face of it these (albeit closed membership) groups were part of an emergent pattern of communication in UK HE aimed at diffusing information and knowledge more widely and openly across a community of students and academics who are involved in related programmes of study and research. Most of the matters covered in these Facebook groups (which ranged from the esoteric to the mundanely practical) were raised and responded to by students rather than academics, possibly inferring a change in the traditional balance of power and control. The largely passive behaviour of the academics seemed to imply an openness to release their former monopoly on knowledge and information. Then something changed.

A critical posting by a student triggered a notable reaction by some academics within a particular group. Although the student’s criticism was appropriately responded to by a relevant academic, who was supported in the online exchanges by another student, other academics felt that steps needed to be taken outside the online environment to formally counsel the student, who was the author of the original posting, about their conduct. I describe this case in such detail because I feel it is totemic of the rest of what I wish to explore below.

It feels like those holding power in this instance (the academics) were initially sending out a message to those who would traditionally be in a subservient position (the students) to say they had more power and autonomy than might have been the case until now. However that apparent openness only endured until the point at which a student did something of which certain academics disapproved, whereupon there was an attempt to assert the ‘old’ power balance and effectively remind the students who is ‘in charge’.

This made me wonder to what extent the academic ego has evolved since my undergraduate days in the 1980’s when there was a clearly demonstrable pattern amongst the academics at my (good) university of giving better marks to students who reflected back in essays the viewpoints and examples that had been provided in lectures and seminars by the same academics. Independent thinking was consciously and overtly encouraged, but in practice (unconsciously?) discouraged. Those of us who grew wise to this reality put self-interest ahead of any tendency towards independent thought and played the game to get higher marks. My suspicion, only countered by my most recent engagement with academic study in the PG Cert programme, remains that things have not changed all that much. My 1980’s experience was certainly echoed in my 21st century MBA where regurgitation of academic leaders’ ideas was the order of the day.

Sam Aston’s observation (in her example blog posting) about the absence of engagement by students with the discussion areas of Blackboard reminds us that many people (it happens to be students in this case, but I believe applies to a cross spectrum of society) are not inclined to take a lead in the debate and exploration of ideas when provided with the opportunity. Might it be the case that the majority of people want others — a minority who feel driven in that direction — to lead in terms of knowledge and power?

Aside from the desire for power, which clearly is not something we all share, are those who are powerful precisely because of the knowledge they possess (including university academics) actually carrying out a vital role that is more profound than simply having their hands on the wheel? Plato (referenced by Quinn p.4/8) felt that the role of teacher was far more than an imparter of knowledge. The teacher, in Plato’s view, having been appointed to that role by the community, uses skill and judgement to determine what knowledge is appropriate to share with whom on the basis of their receptive abilities. “In the case of the rest [i.e. those to whom the teacher did not grant the gift of knowledge] to do so would excite …, in a thoroughly offensive fashion, … lofty and vain hopes as if they had acquired some awesome lore”(Letter VII, 341d-342a). So perhaps those in power, be it directly political power, or as a product of their superior knowledge are, (ostensibly for the good of all involved), filtering what knowledge should be shared with whom, in order to avoid creating dissatisfaction or even revolution. It is therefore ironic that the societies and cultures that have sprung from revolutions which ejected the powerful elites, have typically themselves, and without much delay, become more closed and protective of knowledge and control than the self-serving rulers they displaced.

This leads me to reflect upon the nature of ‘knowledge management’ in current and former totalitarian states where the masses are deprived of information — is it from fear of civil disobedience that North Korea controls that nation’s internet content and use?

Even supposedly more open societies with transparent and accountable governments are very ready to firmly grasp the levers of power when their democratic societies are allowing behaviour and discourse which run counter to the orthodoxy of those in power. During OKHE we have looked at the case of Aaron Swartz whose approach to online openness brought him into conflict with U.S. authorities which used what many regard as extra-judicial powers to seek to control Swartz’s activities. Why would they do this? One explanation, taking account of the major financial hold that large corporations have over U.S. politics, would be that a great deal of knowledge, control and wealth was at risk if what Swartz was seeking to achieve was allowed.

Brian Burrows identified “There are three aspects which shape society and organizations. These are knowledge, wealth and violence”. Violence? Well, in a sense the threat of up to 35 years in prison, which was levelled at Swartz at the time of his suicide, can be seen as a form of non-physical violence, but there are many other more clear examples of where violence has been used to exert power. Control of wealth (under more palatable disguises) is what all governments of every political persuasion mainly concern themselves with. Control of knowledge is usually more subtle than the approach of the Third Reich during which 25,000 books were burned in a single night (May 10th 1933). One interpretation of that book burning process would have us believe that the purpose was to expunge Jewish cultural influence from German life, but closer examination reveals that the extended process of destroying books (and thereby knowledge) took into its scope all manner of works and authors who Hitler saw as holding contrary views to his own, irrespective of their religious, cultural or national status.

Logic might suggest that in the internet age the reduced control of the proliferation of knowledge in non-totalitarian societies would lead to a more reliable and balanced common perception of ‘the facts’. This seems to work on the whole with say Wikipedia where errors and misinterpretations are normally corrected promptly. However at the same time certain global networks (most notably ISIL) are built and sustained on what the mainstream would regard as fundamental distortions of the meanings of religious texts. Burrows (ibid.) was prescient when, in 1994, he referred to “the information revolution causing the rise of fundamentalist thinking harking back to the past”.

So does open knowledge sharing lead to the advancement of learning, progress and civilisation? Are there examples from the past that we can draw upon? The expanded access to knowledge in the Renaissance gave us the scientific and engineering advances of Leonardo da Vinci (and some art!) but it also gave us the Borgias who tried to return social norms back to those of mediaeval times. Is this perhaps the ying and yang of things down the ages — that the good has to be balanced by the bad and whilst knowledge is benefitting from liberal attitudes in one culture it is being repressed in another (or elsewhere within the same culture)?

Just a minute. This is all sounding rather like I am a hardened cynic who feels he has seen it all before and that nothing really changes. Let’s try supposing we are in fact moving to a new world where the norms of all history are changing and the relationship between knowledge and power really is changing. In this vision of the future I would choose Open Knowledge International as my standard bearer:

“Open Knowledge International is a worldwide non-profit network of people passionate about openness, using advocacy, technology and training to unlock information and enable people to work with it to create and share knowledge.

Our mission

We want to see enlightened societies around the world, where everyone has access to key information and the ability to use it to understand and shape their lives; where powerful institutions are comprehensible and accountable; and where vital research information that can help us tackle challenges such as poverty and climate change is available to all.

We envision a world where:

• knowledge creates power for the many, not the few.
• data frees us to make informed choices about how we live, what we buy and who gets our vote.
• information and insights are accessible — and apparent — to everyone.”

Wow! This sounds more like it. I really want them to succeed in their aspiration and I would love to live in the world they “envision” but then this moment of hope — that an open utopia can exist — gets crushed by a wave of evidence to the contrary. Oh and who has ever heard of Open Knowledge International anyway?

So here comes the final barrel-bombing of my devout wish that a new world of open knowledge could prevail, rolling back millennia of power based on access to, and control of knowledge.

At a macro-economic level, advanced societies are now often “knowledge economies”. Gone is the pre-eminent importance of natural resources and industrial prowess in many of the world’s largest economies, in favour of service industries, where competitive advantage can only be derived from having better knowledge or better infrastructure and technology (which are themselves evidence of superior access to and use of knowledge). When the success of nations relies on their knowledge advantage in this way, this locates the control of the dissemination of knowledge firmly in the political arena as identified by Quinn.

In this world view the decisions about how open to be with the knowledge we have generated (or have privileged access to) become of existential significance. In Darwinian terms we are no longer talking about survival of the fittest, but survival of the most knowledgeable. Suddenly the debate about open access to knowledge feels like it has moved from near the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (on the border of Esteem and Self Actualisation needs) to the very basic Physiological level, where superior knowledge is the key, for nations and individuals, to be able to feed themselves.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [There was an image of the hierarchy here, but I cannot get it to appear in Medium — JW]

Moving from national economies to major industries can we see evidence of knowledge sharing or guarding? The postwar period saw huge technological advances based on secrecy and competition, culminating in the “space race” of the 1960’s where the Soviet Union and the United States found that the desperation, for political reasons, for each to prove superiority over the other, generated a pace of technological and broader progress of knowledge that was unprecedented. Later collaborations e.g. Anglo-French on the design and construction of Concorde aircraft and, more notably, US-Russian on the International Space Station, have probably helped foster respect and understanding between nations, though the progress would appear to have been less rapid and radical in the absence of the competitive driver.

Finally I return to academia and the possibility that spared thus far the distorting effects of commercial competition, truly open sharing of, and unfettered access to knowledge will be possible. My concern here is not about where research is published and how freely available it becomes as a consequence, but rather it relates to the extent to which the range of research carried out by academics is really in any way compatible with the concept of academic freedom. Here is a useful description of what academic freedom should be and why its fundamental objective is not being achieved:

“Academic freedom is about not just the independence of universities from external control, but also about the autonomy of individual academics from university authorities. In the UK and elsewhere, this is being eroded, with moves away from collegial forms of governance towards strategic management, if not micromanagement, of research and teaching” (Martyn Hammersley writing in the Times Higher Education).

Hence, rather like me as an undergraduate writing essays that I knew my academic supervisors wanted to read, today’s academics operate in a finely-tuned system of carrots and sticks, in which they are rewarded for carrying out the ‘right’ types of research i.e. those that will appeal to highly regarded journals and achieve 4 stars in REF, and disadvantaged for seeking to pursue research avenues that are not in keeping with the highly prescribed parameters that will attract Research Council, charity or commercial funding. Hence, however openly available the research that is carried out becomes, there is power and control being exerted by the powerful over the new knowledge actually being generated.

So where does all this leave us? I had never expected to write such a one-sided account of the possibility of adjusting the relationship between knowledge and power. I genuinely believe in the potential power of the many to override the vested interests of the few, but my analysis here has caused me to re-examine that personal, political position.

Shall we therefore give up all aspirations to achieve more open knowledge? Counter-intuitively my conclusion is that I don’t believe we should give up, as I do think in some places (some of the time) openness is assisting progress and the dissemination of knowledge. To give up would be like a doctor saying that the patient will inevitably die at some point anyway so why try to improve their quality of life today?

Let’s press on with promoting and supporting open knowledge, albeit mindful of the risks and threats, whilst remembering that things do change and I have been wrong before!