Summary and looking forward

I'll quickly summarise my last few posts. I've said this blog is an enquiry into whether relatively recent developments on the Web, known collectively as Web 2.0 or Social Software, can help address knowledge-sharing challenges within organisations that have proved intractable in the past. I've examined various tools that have traditionally been used and explained why I think none of them are really up to the job. And I've particularly homed in on email as being something that has reached the point where it creates as many problems as it solves.

So why do I see Web 2.0 tools as different and better for knowledge sharing than its predecessors? First of all I must emphasise that I do not see them as a cure-all. They don't need completely to replace other tools. And making them available is not the same as getting them to be used. And getting them used is not necessarily the same as creating a knowledge-sharing culture.

Putting those caveats to one side for the moment, these technologies are, I think, sufficiently enabling of collaboration and knowledge-sharing for me to be optimistic that they can be used as a lever to create a knowledge-sharing culture.