Electronic evolution: from technical communication to knowledge management

With the rise of the World Wide Web, technical communication is undergoing a transformation. Part of this transformation is a result of a new discipline shaping the way knowledge itself is being disseminated. This new discipline is knowledge management, which involves three areas. 1. Business transformation involves enhancing how the enterprise operates by utilizing communications technology more effectively. Corporations are undergoing a business transformation and are incorporating new communication technologies, including the Web, to enhance their organizational learning effectiveness and to help enhance their global competitiveness. 2. Organizational Learning is a result of an enterprise reaching a point of metacognition, of being conscious of its processes, its decisions, and the skills of its knowledge workers. In the near future, a Universal Campus Network will allow knowledge workers to consume the best possible interactive courses and content via the Web any time, any place. 3. Through Web Enablement, Vannevar Bush's vision from the 1940's of a world-encompassing electronic research "collaboratorium" is finally a reality today (V. Bush, 1945). Those of us in education need to revitalize our mission as educators and as knowledge sharers and disseminators through the use of new communication technologies, including the Web. Those educational institutions unable to transform themselves may not survive the next wave of change brought about by further technology advancements.