Mark Pilgrim: Are knowledge management tools social engineering? Nah. They are merely tools that can be used to improve the management of a knowledge-centric company. Remember, many of the rules we use to run companies were designed in the 40s and 50s. By design they impose a massive (although relative to earlier efforts more efficient) overhead requirement on large organizations. Tools that empower people to effectively collaborate and share information lessen the need for that overhead and make the organization flatter. E-mail is a great ad-hoc tool for doing this, K-Logs (knowledge network Weblogs) are a more formal tool that will allow greater levels of improvement. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]