Is Knowledge Management Political?

Today and yesterday the reports from Burma have been that internet and mobile phone networks are down there. An email on the BBC site says that soldiers in Rangoon are warning people from looking out of their windows. Repression must slow the flow of information. Limit the knowledge of what is happening. Maximise ignorance and maximise fear.

The inner lives of organisations are not by any stretch as brutal as the current crackdown in Burma. But incapacitating and soul destroying corporate power-plays use exactly the same mechanisms, dressed up in more civilised garb. If you want to protect your turf, you play the information restriction game. I think we’re too tolerant of it when we encounter it.

Is KM political? Absolutely, one hundred percent.

There is a blogger’s Burma support day planned for 4 October.

2 Comments so far

ONG Lip Hua

Yup, absolutely is.

The Yuan Dynasty (Mongols) requires every Han family to have a Mongol living with them to restrict information and oragnisation of revolts.

Zhu Yuan Zhang passed messages in mooncakes, a special delicacy of the Hans, which the Mongols never wanted to touch, and had all the Mongols living in Han families killed on the same day.  KM sure is political, and Dynasty changing.

Posted on November 18, 2007 at 05:35 PM | Comment permalink

Patrick Lambe

Thanks Lip Hua. You reminded me of the phenomenon of “bilioclasms” in China, Aztec Mexico and ancient Sumeria - a new dynasty would systemativally destroy all literature and libraries and then build their own. It’s documented by Alex Wright in his new book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages.

Posted on November 23, 2007 at 09:53 AM | Comment permalink

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