Beyond the commodification of knowledge

Enhancing the Quality of Knowing through Integration of East-West metaphors (Part #2)

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There is a long tradition of treatment of knowledge as a commodity to be sought, bought and sold, and -- above all -- exclusively possessed. This is most evident in the case of military intelligence -- as currently epitomized by the Echelon electronic surveillance system. Increasingly it is evident in the many dimensions of intellectual property -- especially within the emergent information society. It is part of development aid negotiations for the acquisition of "know-how". It is also evident in educational processes through which knowledge is "acquired", possibly against payment of fees to educational institutions or tutors. And it is even evident in the acquisition of spiritual knowledge from people of wisdom.

There is now a strong movement to build the future global economy on knowledge and its commodification -- as exemplified by the World Bank's Global Knowledge Partnership (http://www.globalknowledge.org/) and the ASIS Strategic Alliance for a Sustainable Information Society (http://asis.jrc.es/html/fsummary.html). Such dematerialization is considered a valuable step away from the focus on material goods. Countries of the East are being encouraged to rise to the challenge of staking their place in this highly competitive knowledge economy -- and much is made of their potential in the software and data processing industries.

There are however some other kinds of challenges built into this logic. The question is whether this commodification logic is merely replicating at a new level a logic whose dysfunctionality has been challenged and demonstrated at a more material level by many authors. It is not changing the game but merely changing the terrain on which the game has been played -- notably to the disadvantage of eastern and indigenous modes of thought. This is especially evident in the prevalence of what might be called 'Project Logic', namely a focused 'efficient' mode of strategic thinking in support of economic development that is inherently economical with any wider truth (Knowledge gardening through music: eliciting patterns of coherence for African management as an alternative to Project Logic, 2000).

The concern here is not whether knowledge should be "free" -- as frequently argued by radical denizens of cyberspace. This perspective is merely another way of approaching the commodification of knowledge -- specifying some commodities as free of cost.

The question here is rather whether what is most valuable in knowledge can in fact be commodified. And if an attempt is made to do so, whether what is then "possessed" by the individual, or collective, "owner" is capable of retaining the qualities that renders that knowledge a significant attractor. Clearly commercially successful attempts can be made to commodify knowledge but the question is the nature of the distinction between what is possessed and the quality of knowing associated with it.

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