5 ms·

Ask HN: Why knowledge is not centralized?

2 points by mrwnmonm 6y ago

The flood of articles every minute can't be a healthy way to acquire knowledge. Should we have organized knowledge bases and we consume it step by step?

memexy 6y ago
What is your question? You are currently in charge of your knowledge consumption. What is preventing you from building a personal knowledge base? I'm currently trying various tools for managing information and plan to build something custom for myself. The current tools I'm using are raindrop.io (bookmarking/searching), notion.so (note taking), keybase (file sharing/note taking), and maybe one more but I'm forgetting. There are tools to manage your consumption and knowledge habits if you look for them and none of them require a centralized knowledge base.
- mrwnmonm 6y ago
  Nothing prevents me, but why we don't recognize this as a problem? Shouldn't it be the default way for publishing and storing knowledge?
  - memexy 6y ago
    If nothing is preventing you from building a personal one then nothing is preventing you from building a centralized one. All you have to do is convince enough people to use it. Google is essentially a centralized knowledge base. So centralized knowledge bases already exist and they're called search engines. There are also free blogging services that publish everything on the web to be indexed by Google. Blogger is even owned by Google.
gus_massa 6y ago
Who will be in charge? Imagine something like Wikipedia or Stack Overflow. They work but they are not perfect. (Or in the other extreme 4chan and Yahoo Answers)
- haspoken 6y ago
  Or google where certain topics are forbidden and they will even delete personal files that mention them. Perhaps that time AOL deleted all the Breast Cancer Awareness material because they simply did a search and delete on some word? And that was nothing compared to the work of Stalin or the North Korean government. Think Ministry of Truth.

5 ms·

Ask HN: Why knowledge is not centralized?

2 points by mrwnmonm 6y ago

The flood of articles every minute can't be a healthy way to acquire knowledge. Should we have organized knowledge bases and we consume it step by step?

memexy 6y ago
What is your question? You are currently in charge of your knowledge consumption. What is preventing you from building a personal knowledge base? I'm currently trying various tools for managing information and plan to build something custom for myself. The current tools I'm using are raindrop.io (bookmarking/searching), notion.so (note taking), keybase (file sharing/note taking), and maybe one more but I'm forgetting. There are tools to manage your consumption and knowledge habits if you look for them and none of them require a centralized knowledge base.
- mrwnmonm 6y ago
  Nothing prevents me, but why we don't recognize this as a problem? Shouldn't it be the default way for publishing and storing knowledge?
  - memexy 6y ago
    If nothing is preventing you from building a personal one then nothing is preventing you from building a centralized one. All you have to do is convince enough people to use it. Google is essentially a centralized knowledge base. So centralized knowledge bases already exist and they're called search engines. There are also free blogging services that publish everything on the web to be indexed by Google. Blogger is even owned by Google.
gus_massa 6y ago
Who will be in charge? Imagine something like Wikipedia or Stack Overflow. They work but they are not perfect. (Or in the other extreme 4chan and Yahoo Answers)
- haspoken 6y ago
  Or google where certain topics are forbidden and they will even delete personal files that mention them. Perhaps that time AOL deleted all the Breast Cancer Awareness material because they simply did a search and delete on some word? And that was nothing compared to the work of Stalin or the North Korean government. Think Ministry of Truth.