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Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic; there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.
Clay Shirky
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Knowledge is inherently tied to human understanding and cannot exist without awareness.

This quote highlights the distinction between knowledge and mere information. While information can exist independently of individuals' awareness or understanding, knowledge requires conscious recognition and comprehension by human beings. Thus, knowledge is a shared human trait, integrating personal insights and experiences, while information can be objective and abstract.

Themes

KnowledgeInformationUnderstandingWisdomHuman

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about education, one might emphasize the importance of transforming information into knowledge.

More from Clay Shirky

How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
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It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.
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What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.
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It is possible to think that the Internet will be a net positive for society while admitting that there are significant downsides - after all, it's not a revolution if nobody loses.
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Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads.
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A little wisdom, now and then

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Quote by Clay Shirky | QuoteProject