Technology an enabler to PKM

Through out my life journey, I have witnessed the cost reduction and size reduction to physical computer storage. We used to the 5 and 1/4 floppy diskette and then 3.5 inch diskette, higher density disk, followed by thumbdrive, finally to the portable removable hard disk which can store all my past years contents instead of the numerous diskettes which I had to store my personal contents. With the advert of web 2.0, where contents can now be created and published by practically any one, PKM has taken a new level, where personal knowledge are now captured in personal blogs and wikis. This is a shift of knowledge storage from personal storage to the Internet. Even our photos are no longer in physical albums but in social networking sites like facebook, myspace, flickr, photobucket etc to name a few. We have also transformed from organising our own photos to allow all others to tag our contents - folksonomy. How about bookmarking of URLs? I used to store it in my own "favorites" and then i have to back it up when ever i change personal computers, now we have Del.icio.us. As i was searching for a tool for bookmarking from firefox to Del.icio.us, I stumbled upon / discovered a new photo bookmarking site called http://vi.sualize.us/ This is also related to PKM, learning while surfing which is not heard of 20 years ago. Learning takes on a different level too as the internet is our virtual learning resource. I used to go to the library for my first primary school project but now I simply google my research topic and do my research via the WWW.

Started at age 14

My Knowledge Management journey started when I was in my secondary school years of age 14 when I witness the birth of my first nephew. As it is a custom for my mother to cook for my sister during her confinement, I realized that there are special ingredients and special sesame oil to be used for the dishes so as to be more nutritious. I asked my mother and she will share her knowledge on tradition and recipe with me. I started documenting in my notepad but I realized that there must be a better way for us to capture all these important knowledge which will be reused for my others sisters and my own wife when my turn to father my child comes.