Do We Need Custodians of Knowledge?

Knowledge can be used to access or develop tools and information for own purposes.

Sometimes, the objectives of users or handlers of knowledge can be conflicting with others’

objectives. Oftentimes, some may find that the use of knowledge in a certain way is

dangerous for their communities, people, or selves. Knowledge is a compilation of

information, facts, data. The purpose of acquiring knowledge is to be able to use it for what

each person or institution considers is good, or beneficial. This often means gaining

advantages over others in economic competition, academic performance, warfare and even

large-scale or organised crime. Since people and organisations hide weaknesses, when

conflicting sides exploit them, the advantage and disadvantage respectively can be enhanced

greatly. For this reason, people may develop strategies to protect their knowledge and

information. These means of countering ‘information misuse’ can sometimes become large

agencies such as the CIA, KGB or CNI. As a result though, these agencies may even consider

other agencies as enemies and may try to also restrict and steal information from each other.

This is an example of hypocrisy, wherein organisations take part in the very practices they

condemn. Due to this, it could be considered a failed system since it could be argued that

intelligence agencies would not be needed if governments were transparent. Since this is not

the case, we must live under the concealment of information and knowledge, given that if

there were no restrictions, someone would eventually take advantage of another’s

weaknesses. This shows how knowledge can be used against people and the danger is such,

that billions are spent in trying to conceal it and billions more in trying to acquire it.

However, there is knowledge that is held by communities which may sometimes be in danger

of being lost. This may be the case with ancient languages, medicines, and methods of life.

For this knowledge there may be the need of holding custody over it but for the opposite

reason. Here, it isn’t being concealed in secret; it’s being preserved for others to make use of
it. An historical example of this is the ancient library of Alexandria. Very large collections of

knowledge were kept there as a means of preserving it (the whole purpose of a library). The

moment the library burnt, it was all lost.

Some estimate that humanity was set back hundreds of years as a result of losing this

information. It goes to show that organisations in charge of collecting, classifying, and

preserving knowledge are needed for human development. Our societies are based around

what we can create, innovate on and the problems we can solve. If we had no bodies in

charge of keeping custody over knowledge, our development would probably be much slower

than it is, due to the large absence of information in different countries, demographics, or

disciplines. It could be argued that in a way, intelligence agencies limit our ability to progress

because they keep knowledge from others. However, the kind of knowledge being kept is

only that which is of use to enemies of the respective agencies or countries. Societies benefit

from more useful knowledge to people which concerns many other aspects like the arts or

research because it is more available. In a way, bodies like the World Wide Web act as a

modern counterpart to the library of Alexandria, only with the added benefits of being much

more available globally and perhaps containing even more knowledge. In a way, all these

kinds of bodies or entities act as custodians of knowledge for modern societies.