“Technology provides ever-expanding access to shared knowledge.

Therefore, the need to

assimilate such knowledge personally is relentlessly diminishing.” To what extent do you agree

with this statement?

Technology is constantly improving in our world, creating connections between people and

knowledge that would never have been possible before. This is most visible through the rapid

development of the Internet, which enables extremely widespread access to shared knowledge, but

these advances are also noticeable in many fields of technology. The ease with which technology

provides access to shared knowledge leads to the claim that “Technology provides ever-expanding

access to shared knowledge. Therefore, the need to assimilate such knowledge personally is

relentlessly diminishing.” This raises further knowledge questions, such as “Is assimilation a needed

part of gaining knowledge?” and “Is the need to assimilate personal knowledge directly related to

the degree of shared knowledge available?”. These knowledge questions must also be evaluated.

Real-life situations will be evaluated by assessing the truth of this statement in the areas of

knowledge of the arts and the natural sciences, in which the effects of technology are particularly

noticeable. This essay will argue that the access to shared knowledge technology grants is directly

diminishing the need to assimilate knowledge, especially in the area of knowledge of the arts,

although not relentlessly so.

Firstly, the concept of assimilation and its role in gaining knowledge must be evaluated. This

creates the knowledge question “Is assimilation a needed part of gaining knowledge?” Assimilation

is defined as “The process of taking in and fully understanding information or ideas” according to

the Oxford English Dictionary, and as such can be interpreted as deep, complete, and active

absorption of knowledge. This indicates that passively reading over shared knowledge cannot be

considered assimilation, and that instead assimilation requires personal interpretation. However,
gaining knowledge of non-complex physical processes such as simple sporting activity could be

described as not needing assimilation. In more complex areas of knowledge, such as the arts and the

natural sciences, as well as more advanced levels of physical processes, assimilation is more

important. Thus, the claim can be made that assimilation is considered necessary to truly gain

knowledge in these areas of knowledge, or in other words that gaining knowledge is a direct

consequence of assimilation.

Furthermore, the relationship between the availability of shared knowledge and the need to

assimilate personal knowledge can also be examined. As noted above, personal knowledge of more

complex situations must be assimilated at some point, while shared knowledge is provided from

other sources. In a surface examination, it may appear that shared knowledge and especially the

convenience of accessing it with technology has completely obsoleted personal knowledge. In other

words, this leads to the claim that “The availability of shared knowledge decreases the value of

personal knowledge”. This claim will be evaluated through the lenses of two areas of knowledge:

the natural sciences and the arts.

The need to assimilate personal knowledge is diminishing in the area of knowledge of the natural

sciences. Shared knowledge has become increasingly available in this area, not only through in the

form of information but also through various other mediums. This is observable as shared

knowledge in the form of robots and AI take over various roles formerly performed by humans, thus

rendering their need to assimilate knowledge personally diminished. This can be seen through the

heavy role robots now take in fields such as medical sciences and astronomy. This forms a claim:

“The expanding access to shared knowledge in the area of knowledge of natural sciences is

relentlessly diminishing the need to assimilate knowledge personally in this field”. This can be

evaluated with evidence. In 2016, IBM’s supercomputer Watson was able to diagnose a rare form of
leukaemia which doctors were unable to do at a Japanese hospital.1 It achieved this through

artificial intelligence: it analysed 20 million cancer research papers and correctly gave useful

treatment advice. In this case, Watson literally took shared knowledge and presented it in a helpful

form, showing that shared knowledge could completely replace personal knowledge in this

situation. Thus, it indicated that the doctors no longer needed to assimilate personal knowledge

about cancer and leukaemia. This provides strong evidence for the claim.

However, the counterclaim that “The need to assimilate knowledge personally in the area of

knowledge of the natural sciences is diminishing due to the expanding access to shared knowledge,

but not relentlessly so” can be made. This is true for a number of reasons. Despite the ability of

robotics and artificial intelligence spreading the shared knowledge of a select few so widely, the

need to assimilate knowledge personally is still needed to interpret results. While this means that

fewer people hold valuable personal knowledge, these people must always exist while others must

always have a base understanding of this area of knowledge to evaluate information. Even in the

above situation, Watson required ‘training’ from human doctors, which is in fact a necessary

component of many machine learning systems, and particularly needed for important medical

systems.2 This means that while the need to personally assimilate knowledge is diminishing, this

diminishment cannot be considered relentless as it cannot and will not continue indefinitely.

While the need to assimilate personal knowledge is diminishing in the area of knowledge of the

natural sciences, the influence of technology is more severe on the area of knowledge of the arts. As

such, it can be claimed that “The increased intertwinement between the arts and shared knowledge

provided by technology relentlessly diminishes the need to assimilate personal knowledge in the

arts". Knowledge of a few select in the arts is spread in the form of information across the Internet,

but also condensed into applications that aid with artistic efforts such as photography and
cinematography. Evidence for this exists in the mass availability and popularity of photo and video

editing software, such as Instagram and iMovie. These services provide shared knowledge to the

end user, reducing the need for personal knowledge through the use of stock effects, filters, and

other editing tools. This shared knowledge devalues the need to assimilate personal knowledge - in

the case of photography, it reduces the need to understand a camera’s functions and simplifies it to

clicking a single button which implements a formula created by another person. Therefore, users no

longer have to have expertise in these fields, as shared knowledge is widely available and very

convenient to utilise via technology.

A counterclaim is that the need to assimilate personal knowledge is always present in the arts. This

counterclaim is supported by the nature of the arts. The arts are inherently filled with ambiguity, and

require creativity and use of multiple ways of knowing. Referring to the aforementioned example of

Instagram and photo editing, it is still necessary for the end user to have some degree of active

consideration with how they edit their photos, which leads to a degree of assimilation of personal

knowledge in understanding their own preferences and understanding the mechanics and execution

of these editing tools. In addition, someone on the software side must be capable of implementing

these effects, meaning that they must be familiar with the actual process and thus they have

assimilated personal knowledge at some point. Additionally, shared knowledge cannot provide real

expertise in artistic fields. Without personal assimilation, creativity and originality are limited, and

the ways of knowing of emotion and intuition cannot be developed in an artistic context. For

example, technology can heavily simplify drawing through the existence of software such as the

drawing program MediBang Paint. It provides virtual tools to create works faster, and can also

provide resources consisting of others’ shared knowledge on the Internet such as tutorials and pre-

existing artwork.3 However, this access to shared knowledge is not enough to produce art in itself,

and concepts must still be experienced personally for truly creative and artistic work to be
produced. Ultimately, the arts fundamentally require creativity and originality for their continued

survival, which means that assimilating personal knowledge instead of merely accessing shared

knowledge through technology is essential and continues to be needed, as it is the act of reflecting

on personal knowledge through various ways of knowing that leads to artistic creation.

Through the analysis of these two areas of knowledge, the counterclaim has been formed that “The

availability of shared knowledge has only decreased the perceived value of personal knowledge,

and not its real value”. Although this essay will not go into depth for other areas of knowledge, it

can be recognised that personal knowledge remains important for areas such as the ethics and

religious knowledge systems, which require personal interpretation with emotion, intuition, faith,

and other ways of knowing.

In conclusion, the rapid advancements constantly being made in technology simplify many

endeavours in various areas of knowledge as the convenience of accessing shared knowledge

continually increases. This increased degree of access certainly causes the need to assimilate

personal knowledge to be reduced in multiple areas of knoweldege. However, the decreasing of this

need cannot be truly considered relentless despite being often perceived as such. Personal

knowledge remains vital in a variety of applications. It is required to innovate, develop, and

interpret within the natural sciences, and is essential in the arts for their progression as well as their

continuation. While the effect is particularly significant on the area of knowledge of the arts, its

status as an human and emotional area of knowledge leads to the requirement that personal

knowledge always exist for it to develop. Ultimately, the sharing of knowledge via technology is

dependent on the existence of personal knowledge, and thus while the need to assimilate personal

knowledge appears to be rapidly diminishing this claim can be seen to be fundamentally untrue.
Works Consulted

1 Alfred Ng, "IBM’S Watson Gives Proper Diagnosis For Japanese Leukemia Patient After Doctors

Were Stumped For Months", NY Daily News, Last modified 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/

news/world/ibm-watson-proper-diagnosis-doctors-stumped-article-1.2741857.

2 Jason Brownlee, "Supervised And Unsupervised Machine Learning Algorithms", Machine

Learning Mastery, Last modified 2016, https://machinelearningmastery.com/supervised-and-

unsupervised-machine-learning-algorithms/.

3 "How To Use MediBang Paint Pro", MediBang Paint, Last modified 2017, https://

medibangpaint.com/en/pc/use/.