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Publications: Newsweek Internet guide Financial Times The Independent Knowledge Management Magazine CILIP - Content Management Dialog IWR - Semantic web IWR - Pay-for placement IWR - Search optimisation IWR - Search revenue models IWR - XML IWR - Agents and peer-to-peer IWR - Perspectives 01 IWR - Perspectives 00 IWR - Perspectives 99 IBS Publications

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Perspectives Information World Review - Dec 99 This article appeared in the December 99 issue of Information World Review under the section called "Perspectives", where IWR asks people in the information profession to share their views of the year just gone, and their predictions for the year to come. Sometimes in life a little distance is needed to gain a clearer focus and so I thought I'd step back and focus on the years on either side of that arbitrary millennium time line. What have been the underlying currents in the recent tides of time? What are their implications? We are leaving the 20th century, with its industrial, artefact-orientated economies, with a shuddering catharsis and being propelled into a 'new economy', whose characteristics will redefine our societies, how we work and live. Old dogs will have to learn new clicks. Many of the characteristics of this new, 'weightless' economy have been driving the changes of the last few years. They all enable the same common feature - the exchange of information. The Web - HTML allowed the easy publication of information, but not its manipulation and seamless exchange. XML fulfils this requirement across multiple platforms - and by shifting the required processing power onto the user's local device it will help drastically reduce bandwidth demands. HTML is dead. XHTML is the hybrid gap that will bridge the world onto XML. Together with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), XML enables a future of information retrieval and data exchange that is anything, anywhere you want. Knowledge management helps organisations know what they know (including their customers) and it should develop a synergistic relationship with ebusiness. As organisations seek to deliver customised service and product offerings, they will need to capture and analyse everything they can about their customers' behaviours and preferences. Knowledge is usually categorised as explicit (codifiable facts and data) and tacit (experience, behaviour and ideas). While most knowledge systems focus on explicit knowledge, these only teach an organisation about its past. To survive and thrive, organisations need flexibility for the future. This can be best developed by cultivating connectivity, creativity and even chaos - organisations need knowledge environments, not systems. With hysterical expectations surlied by the disappointment of early experience, some claim that the virtual organisation is being tempered by reality. Yes it is. But not by current expectations. The near-future reality is an unprecedented explosion of content, connectivity and creativity. It is this challenge and this reality, that those seeking to exploit the virtues of the virtual model will need, soberly, to address. Other perspectives articles: Perspectives 01 | Perspectives 00 Information World Review is Europe's leading information industry publication. This article is reprinted in its entirety with permission from Learned Information Europe Ltd. All material copyright Learned Information Europe Ltd.

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