The Know of Things

Contents: Preface. 1. The roots of knowledge. 2. The great knowledge superbazaar. 3. How do we know what we know? 4. True and false knowledge. 5. Zen and the art of paradox maintenance. 6. The never-ending universe of knowledge. 7. The third wave and the knowledge worker. 8. Managing knowledge: know why and know how. 9. Info-clutter: when more is less. 10. Who’s smart? Who’s not? Who knows? 11. The seamless robe of KQ. Index.

"How much do we know of the world around us, and how much can we know? What, in fact, is knowledge, and how can one’s knowledge be measured? These are questions that have tantalized mankind for centuries. Today, the knowledge industry is revolutionizing the world; never before have so many people had such wide access to so much information and analysis as now. But are we any closer to understanding the nature of knowledge, its uses and its limitations?

The Know of Things presents an informal, illuminating conversation on the quest for knowledge between Derek O’Brien, a leading proponent of the knowledge industry, and his three friendly interlocutors, Jug Suraiya, Bunny Suraiya and Vikas Singh. Together, they trace the history of mankind’s efforts at defining and comprehending knowledge systems, from Socrates (who held that knowledge resides in the world of pure ideas of which the physical world is merely an imperfect manifestation) to Descartes, Locke, Hume, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Kant and Russell. Drawing on the ideas of Alvin Toffler, Peter Drucker and Jack Welch, they look at the uses knowledge has been put to in modern times. Finally, the book looks at methods of measuring KQ or knowledge quotient, the only available scientific method for estimating human knowledge.

Witty, anecdotal, and bristling with ideas and philosophical conundrums drawn from diverse sources, this is a book every thinking person will be interested in reading." (jacket)