NOTE: I am continuing to post excerpts from my book World After Capital. The following is on the Knowledge Loop. Unfortunately I am dealing with a gitbook issue, so this revised text is not yet live on the book website.
The Knowledge Loop
Already today knowledge has made possible something extraordinary: by means of the innovations of the Industrial Age we can, in principle, meet everyone’s basic needs. But we cannot stop here. We need to generate additional knowledge to solve the problems we have introduced along the way, such as climate change. Knowledge is powerful, but only if we have enough of it. Where will that additional knowledge come from?
New knowledge does not spring forth in a vacuum. Instead it emerges from what I call the Knowledge Loop. In the Knowledge Loop, someone starts out by learning something, then uses that to create something new, which is then shared which in turn is the basis for more learning. And so on.
The Knowledge Loop is not new. Given my definition of knowledge, it has been around since humans first developed written language, some five thousand years ago. Before that humans were able to use spoken language, but as I have noted previously that puts tight limits on both time and space for learning and sharing. Since the invention of written language we have had breakthroughs that have helped accelerate and broaden access to the Knowledge Loop. Those include moveable type (about one thousand years ago), the printing press (about five hundred years ago), and then more recently the telegraph, radio and television. Now we are in the middle of another fundamental breakthrough: digital technologies, which can connect all of humanity to the Knowledge Loop at zero marginal cost and are allowing machines to participate in the Knowledge Loop.
It is easy to underestimate the potential of digital technologies for further accelerating and broadening access to the Knowledge Loop; to many, it seems as if these innovations have under-delivered. As a line on the Founders Fund website once complained, “We wanted flying cars and all we got was 140 characters.” Since that lament we have made great progress on flying cars in no small part because digital technologies, including the maligned Twitter, have already helped accelerate the Knowledge Loop.
