People-focused knowledge management

Societal Side-Effects
From a societal perspective, there will be numerous effects of sys-
tematic and deliberate management of knowledge. Most will have
positive societal values as people become better educated and more
knowledgeable. Also, elaborate knowledge discovery processes will
provide powerful insights into the preferences and behaviors of the
general public by institutions that aim to serve public needs and
demands. To make this knowledge more valuable for use, particu-
larly when communicated to end-users whose behavior it is expected
to improve, knowledge building will be combined with advanced
speech-act theory and other communication techniques. That will
allow the message to be communicated more effectively. However,
there are potentials for disuse by parties that are not always honest.
The effects of better KM will not always be positive and desirable.
Our KM expertise will not always work to society’s or individual’s
advantage. Biased and self-serving uses will abound. Companies,
political parties, and others will wish to gain greater understanding
of how to influence their customers through advertising, sales tactics,
and even through misinformation and propaganda. Part of this
misuse has already been experienced in simple formats on the World
Wide Web and is likely to become parts of political campaigns.
On the other hand, we will see emerging availabilities of reliable
expertise — knowledge, insights, information, and explanations —
for direct access by consumers and packaged to provide understand-
ing and mental model development, giving them understanding 
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People-Focused Knowledge Management
and insights to counter undue influences. This trend is expected to
be important, allowing the average person to defend against the
avalanche of “influence information.” Consequently, we can expect
to see a broad, worldwide, “yin-yang battleground” of subjective
influencing countered by objective and vetted knowledge, where both
sides draw upon extensive KM expertise to sharpen their weapons.