What is a measure anyway ?

Does a measure have to be truly quantitative ?

Lots of people are saying “trust your gut” – Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink seems to be saying that people with experience in a domain can and often should trust that instant reaction and not over-analyse.

So maybe it’s as simple as saying “People seem to know more about x than they did last month”, after listening to people tell us how wonderful our latest communication or collaboration or KM initiative was.

But hang on – we also know that people basically say almost anything when questioned – it depends on their mood, their feelings towards the questioner, how much time they have before they catch their bus.

Me – I’m leaning towards some sort of Borg style collective, so that we truly can measure what people know and learn and communicate. Probably only need to harvest a statistically significant sample – a few hundred thousand should do. Radical, but it may be the only way.

[PS Have just finished re-reading Neal Stephenson’s SnowCrash, in which the author addresses issues of information propogation, memes, and knowledge control].