TITLE: Knowledge Arbitrage
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: November 15, 2009  8:02 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
A couple of weeks back, Brian Foote
<A HREF="http://twitter.com/bigballofmud/status/5209395023">
   tweeted</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Ward Cunningham: Pure Knowledge arbitrageurs will
no longer gain by hoarding as knowledge increasingly
becomes a plentiful commodity #oopsla
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

This reminds me of a "quought" of the day that I read
a couple of years ago.  Paraphrased, it asked marketers:
<EM>What will you do when all of your competitors know
all of the same things you do?</EM>  Ward's message
broadens the implication from marketers to any playing
field on which knowledge drives success.  If everyone
has access to the same knowledge, how do you distinguish
yourself?  Your product?  The future looks a bit more
imposing when no one starts with any particular advantage
in knowledge.

Ward's own contributions to the world -- the wiki and
extreme programming among them -- give us a hint as
to what this new future might look like.  Hoarding is
not the answer.  Sharing and building together might be.

The history of the internet and the web tells us at
the result of collaboration and open knowledge may
well be a net win for all of us over a world in which
knowledge is hoarded and exploited for gain in
controlled bursts.

Part of the ideal of the academy has always been the
creation and sharing of knowledge.  But increasingly
its business model has been exposed as depending on
the sort of knowledge arbitrage that Ward warns
against.  Universities now compete in a world of
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-06.html#e2009-06-11T20_24_02.htm">
   knowledge more plentiful and open</A>
than ever before.  <EM>What can they do when all of
their <B>customers</B> have access to much of the
same knowledge that they hope to disseminate?</EM>
Taking a cue from Ward, universities probably need
to be thinking hard about how they share knowledge,
how they help students, professors, and industry
build knowledge together, and how they add value
in their unique way through academic inquiry.
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