202205021249 Stock and flow of knowledge

The 202203210833 Systems thinking approach of 202205021252 Stock and flow can be applied to how 202109060836 Knowledge should accumulate and 202109060835 Knowledge is constructed.

Stock and flow of knowledge can be used to describe media — and more broadly knowledge creation and communication — in the 21st century.

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that reminds people you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.¹

Flow is more popular than stock in our current society. Flow is the fast stream of information, linear and ephemeral. Stock is the garden of knowledge, timeless and topological (202205021701 Digital streams vs gardens).

Though flow is fleeting, it's vital to the creation and maintenance of our stocks of knowledge. We can only increase a stock by constructing new knowledge and we can only construct new knowledge by encountering new information. Therefore a constant stream of new information is required for constant knowledge creation.

There is such a thing as too much flow of information though. The act of constructing knowledge out of information is laborious (202109060816 Do your own thinking). If we never spend the time to collect, understand, and associate (202109091133 Notes should associate organically) information (e.g. through 202107272242 The Art of using a Zettelkasten) the information will only wash over and through us like a sieve without retention.

Likewise, stocks of information without this constructive accumulation aren't really knowledge. Often truly creating personal knowledge out of known information requires effortful engagement through creation or communication (202109061250 See, do, teach).