How Google has made us all knowledge workers

“Knowledge worker” is a term that was first used by management guru Peter Drucker, and nowadays, with Google’s dominance of the information-based society, it would not be an overstatement to say that, more or less, all of us have become knowledge workers in one way or another.

I believe that Google has contributed a major differentiation to how knowledge workers treat the knowledge that they have obtained through information searching.

Just a couple of decades ago, knowledge workers were professionals who processed and utilized information and knowledge within the context of the organizations for which they worked.

On the other hand, nowadays, information, and its derivative knowledge, can be directly processed and used by individuals in the sphere of personal life.

For example, a web user can watch an instructional video on YouTube on virtually any subject one can think of, and then follow the video’s instructions in real life. There is no need for an organizational context, in order for the derived knowledge to be applied in practice.

Knowledge was treated very differently in the past. There was a person or organization that was believed to be an expert in one or more fields of knowledge, the opinion of which was given undisputed authority status. Everyone waited for them to offer an “expert opinion”, otherwise nothing would be done, or even start.

This process has become much more straightforward, since the amount of readily available information has multiplied to an unprecedented level, and anyone, by just pressing a few buttons, can have immediate access to anything that they are interested in, in a matter of seconds.

However, what is different from the past, I believe, is that, now, everyone is encouraged to actually put this information immediately to practice.

What I mean is that, in the past, when someone decided to read a cooking recipe, they mostly did it purely for curiosity or encyclopedic purposes, whereas, nowadays, knowledge is accessed, in order for it to be put immediately in practice.

Therefore, there are web users who have become successful athletes, chefs, and other professions, by just searching for information online and then applying this information in their personal life, i.e. by literally becoming “knowledge workers” in their field.

This article was originally published by me on Medium.com
You can read it here.