Developments in the
area of information and communication technologies create a changing
working environment in which so-called knowledge work is playing a
more and more central role.
A decisive characteristic of knowledge work is the usage of one's own
as well as other people's knowledge resources in order to solve
problems. New knowledge is developed by identifying, using and
combining existing knowledge. At this point, the immense importance of
exchanging knowledge with others should be highlighted. Knowledge work
always implies collaboration ( distributed knowledge work).
These elements have always been part of knowledge-based work. However,
they have gained significant importance due to the development of the
Internet and the subsequent creation of new communication and
information infrastructures. In the meantime, web-based collaboration
via Internet has become indispensable. More and more often, central
Internet communication platforms are used rather than communicating via
e-mail and sending files back and forth. The stated reasons are
increased efficiency due to central structuring and archiving of
information as well as the usage of a common communication
infrastructure which can be accessed by all participants.
fig.
1: Increase of efficiency via usage of an internet platform (central
structuring and archiving) as opposed to e-mail
A further but
rarely used strength of internet platforms is the possibility to
involve co-workers in the knowledge development process at an early
stage. By doing so, knowledge workers do not only use the Internet to
transport end results. Instead the expertise of others is included in
the thinking process as early as possible. Due to the fact that
distributed knowledge workers are usually members of several project
groups, expertise of other knowledge areas can be included. The
result of such distributed, web-based knowledge work is oftentimes
dynamicly linked hypertext of a collective of authors which in turn
is linked with hypertexts of other collectives. The
contextualization and integration of texts in these kinds of living
knowledge repositories creates added value which
cannot be shown in a printable form.
fig.
2: distributed, web-based knowledge work by hypertextually linking to
different knowledge areas
However, a
fundamental obstacle needs to be overcome: the uncertainty of whether
and how long integrated text or rather text modules will be available
in the Internet. At present, there is no accepted principle authors
can rely on if they want to integrate web-generated text in their
hypertext. A typical reference to web-generated text reads basically
as follows: The page looked like that when I visited it that day
for the last time. At the same time, authors do not have a
possibility to signalize other authors how to deal with their texts.
As a result, the potential of Internet technologies is not used:
texts are printed out, documents are stored on hard disks etc. This
problem is the origin of the following contemplation.
First, a short
excursion about itnernet platforms and EU-projects and their typical
users will follow.
In chapter II,
we will elaborate on the problem and deal with the aspects of
referencing and reliable availability.
In chapter III,
we will roughly describe a solution with the help of guarantees of
existence. We will look at permissions and restrictions for assigning
GOEs.
Chapter IV
includes future prospects of how the concept will influence our
current working methods.
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