Jargon

Having been exposed to a large body of documents about extrusion (fundamental to the production of plastics) I cannot resist stating my admiration of how knowledge and information is exchanged. They use terms like "die plate", "twin screw extruder" and "angel hair". The interesting thing is that these terms are well understood in the community and can be used for communication. Once the average plastics extrusion expert sees "twin screw extruder" in a post, the braincells associated with this term and the related concepts will get activated.

Nothing similar seems to happen in the KM community. Rather than trying to agree on what terms mean, and thereby trying to arrange a shared understanding, there appears to be a fierce competition to invent new terms, new meanings for existing terms, or both. The winner in this game is she who introduces the newest idea and the most fancy terminology and description thereof.

Well, KM'ers you have already been outdone as terminology goes. Beating "die plate", "twin screw extruder" and "angel hair" is an astounding task. Despite the fancy terms, those who use them know what they mean, thereby making communication possible. Communication between KM'ers appears impossible, shared understanding does not seem to exist, and meaning is described in terms of situatedness, by anecdotes or abstracted from very few cases.

For KM to become real, it is necessary to agree on at least some terms that everybody in the field can align to. Jargon is not a bad idea afterall.