Artöm Mazurchak: posts tagged digital

What’s the difference between information, understanding and knowledge? And how the digital world changed the way we think about all that?

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 14:59:00 +0200

You could start from the idea that everything in the world is connected and everything affects everything. So when we try to really understand something, we have to look at it in a broader context.

But here’s another way to look at it. If we’re going to talk about a specific term, we need to define its boundaries clearly. Say “this is white and this is black.” Everyone joining the conversation should be on the same page about what we mean, so we’re not arguing about definitions, we’re agreeing on them first.

Let’s break down the difference between information, understanding and knowledge. Then we’ll look at how the digital age has changed what these words mean and how it’s reshaped the way we work and organize what we do.

Definitions of information, understanding and knowledge. And how are they connected?

You can break down communication into three steps:
A. First comes the transfer of information, spoken or written. That’s the basic act of communication.
B. Then, the person receiving that information filters it through their own context. They start to form an understanding of how to act in a way that might lead to a positive outcome. This is where information becomes personal. That’s why you can tell a group of people the same thing and they’ll each walk away with a different takeaway, because they process it through their own lens.
C. Finally, the person takes action. They do something based on their understanding and the results of that action or lack of results turn into real knowledge. That’s the key: knowledge doesn’t exist without action. It’s something we gain through doing.

Information is data about the world around us, passed along through communication.
Understanding is the meaning we personally assign to that information as we process it.
Knowledge is the experience we gain through action, it’s knowing what actually works in a specific situation.

How digital changed information and understanding?

On the information level:
The amount and speed of access to information have exploded. Now anyone can create and share it, since the cost of producing and distributing information has dropped dramatically.

On the understanding level:
Understanding often comes from information that’s structured like a clear, step-by-step guide. Digital tools have massively sped up how fast we can find those kinds of instructions. So now, thanks to tech, people can build understanding across way more areas than ever before.

Which means the number of areas where someone can start building their understanding has grown dramatically.

How digital changed knowledge?

On the knowledge level digital has brought the biggest changes. The important one is that we’ve started to lose the skill of acting in the unknown. These days, if there’s no step-by-step guide, people often just don’t know what to do.

Let’s take a look at how people worked with knowledge before the digital age:

There was a guy named John who lived in a village. He wanted to know how to grow a good potato harvest. His father passed down some knowledge like planting only the bigger potatoes. He also read in a book that you shouldn’t fertilize right before planting, but in the fall, after the previous harvest.
That was the extent of what John knew about planting. Those first two steps were within the bounds of what others had already figured out. He hit the limits of other people’s experience pretty quickly.

If John wanted to improve his potato harvest, he had to start experimenting. That meant stepping into the unknown. He had to figure things out for himself like what to do during a dry season or how to handle it when it rained nonstop.

Some of his ideas failed, others worked. And that’s how it used to go in the age of books, before the digital world took over. Gaining knowledge had two key features:

Whatever area John decided to explore, he quickly picked up all the available knowledge within the “known” and hit the edge of the “unknown”.
He often ended up in the “unknown” and had to figure things out by testing his own ideas.

With the invention of writing, the amount of information grew, people could finally store and pass down what they knew about the world. But it was digital technology that truly exploded the amount of information we have. That massively expanded the boundaries of the “known” world we live in. And that changed everything, now people can spend their whole lives staying within the “known” without ever needing to step into the “unknown”.

With digital you can spend your whole life learning a single field, even something like farming and still never reach the edge of the “known”. Most of the time you’re just following instructions, because it’s now so easy to find information that fits your exact situation.

To act in the “unknown” you need to be able to handle the emotional weight of trying things that don’t work out. But if you’re always following ready-made instructions, that kind of emotional resilience doesn’t develop. So stepping into the “unknown” feels not just unfamiliar, but uncomfortable too.

Conclusion: The skill of gaining new knowledge has weakened, because gaining new knowledge means testing hypotheses, some of which won’t lead to the best result. But thanks to easy access to information, people have gotten used to always following instructions that guarantee a positive outcome.

P.S. At the knowledge level, other important changes are happening too. Let’s list them without going into detail:

To reach the edge of the “unknown”, where new knowledge can be created, now takes more time for an individual. That’s led to a rise in specialization.
The value of easily repeatable knowledge has gone down, while the value of being able to synthesize knowledge has gone up.
Competition between companies has become less about quantity and more about quality.

November 2021

This text was created as part of the work done by the “Digital” group. The group included Ruslan Akhtyamov and Evgeny Oshchepkov.

The main challenge of digital transformation

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 14:56:00 +0200

During my MBA, in the “Kamchatka Module” we dug into Georgy Shchedrovitsky’s framework called Organizational‑Managerial Thinking. To keep sharpening that mindset, we launched the K2 Club, made up mostly of fellow alumni.

Inside the club we’ve split into a handful of focus groups: power&energy, health, digital, public strategy and a few more. The setup is three or four off‑site sessions a year, each one a three‑day. At those meet‑ups, the method’s experts Andrey Evgenievich Volkov and Pavel Brunovich Mrdulyash guide us through the process. Between sessions, each group keeps working together regularly. Here’s a quick recap of what our “Digital” group has been working on.

Defining “digital”

To define what we mean by “digital,” we’re starting with the ideas of language and writing. Language is a way to communicate through gestures, sounds or speech. It came long before writing and helped people connect within small groups. But language only worked in the moment, in the context of a situation. Language opened the door to new ways of organizing and working together. It transformed how people lived and interacted, it was a turning point for society.

The next big shift came with the invention of writing. The biggest change it brought was the ability to store knowledge. Writing made it possible to pass down information and shape culture in a whole new way, it laid the foundation for civilization. Капитализация знаний впервые стала вероятной. Knowledge could be capitalized, built up and shared across time and space. Writing broke the limits of the moment. It let people communicate outside of a specific situation or context. Information started moving faster, more widely and more densely. Writing changed how society was organized and opened the door to entirely new kinds of activity. It was another major transformation.

The role of digital in transformation

We believe that the rise of digital marks the next big transformation. What’s new this time is the arrival of a new player in communication – IT systems. Communication is no longer tied to physical media. It happens instantly, across any distance. When language first appeared, people usually had to be physically present to communicate. With writing, they could share knowledge through books. Now, with digital, we don’t need physical carriers at all. The density, speed and reach of communication have increased dramatically.

To show that IT systems are now active participants in communication, take this example: two route planners are discussing the best route for a cargo ship. They refer to the system that analyzes weather patterns and get recommendations on the optimal path. The fact that a system can now offer that kind of input has once again transformed how we operate as a society.

Whether it’s writing or digital, the goal of communication has always been the same – to share meaning. The speed, density, reach and number of actors involved in communication shape two key things:

What kinds of activities are possible;
What forms of organization can exist to support those activities.
We call a combination of these two things an activity model.

We call it a transformation when a new way of communicating leads to entirely new activity models. Digital technology has marked one of those turning points in society.

Problem framing

We place the idea of “digital” on the third level, the same level as religion, mythology and meaning. It’s a core concept, something foundational. The activity models it creates belong to the first level, the level of real-world projects. In between, on the second level, is culture. It connects deep ideas with everyday actions.

We also apply a digital transformation framework to this model. On the first level we find digital assets, digital models and digital organization. On the second level is digital culture – the focus of our studying.
We believe that digital technology led to new activity models and they’ve spread rapidly across all areas of life. But cultural change is happening much more slowly. That’s where we see the problem: the way we work has changed, but the culture to support this new way of working hasn’t fully formed. There’s a gap.

Our goal is to develop a method for transforming digital culture that can help bridge this gap.

July 2021.

The group also included: Ruslan Akhtyamov, Evgeny Oshchepkov, Sergey Chernobaev and Mikhail Milyokhin.