What you do, where you are and who you meet, and if you've seen my message has become public information

In response to changes to Whatsapp's privacy settings, and the two blue checkmarks indicating that the messages have been seen and read, there are already tricks to bypassing these changes: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/141108/technology-mobiles-and-tabs/article/how-avoid-whatsapps-blue-ticks.

For as long as I can remember, Facebook has similar privacy issues, where it reads "seen" if the message has been read.  Of course, these can lead to all kinds of problems between people, especially if somebody is expecting an answer, but doesn't receive one.  Of greater concern is the ability to track people via their GPS, and to see where they are during chats.  I recently spoke (chatted) with somebody from the Palestinian Authority who lacks a permit to come into Israel.  The chats indicated his location as being in Mevasseret.  In fact, I was able to open a map and see exactly on what street he was. I don't think this was information that this person wanted to share with me, and it made me immediately turn off my location settings on Facebook for the same reason. Nobody on Facebook chat needs to know my whereabouts.


And now, where are Israel's Ministers and members of Knesset, and what are they doing to promote public interests? We can now know via their online appointment calendars, posted a week later, thanks to the efforts of the Movement for Freedom of Information.  But no surprises here, Yair Lapid's calendar shows a lot of appointments that he didn't want us to know about, while Minister of Housing, Uri Ariel submitted a practically blank calendar. Apparently he doesn't want us to know who he has been meeting with  (for those of us who follow the news in East Jerusalem, we can guess). 



Yesterday's class discussion on Nonaka's SECI model left me confused about the case study that we are to turn in. I had thought that since most knowledge is tacit, the best option for the Ontario Ministry of Education might be the "communities of practice," where employees can share their knowledge with one another.  However, upon learning about SECI and reading Nonaka's article, I am beginning to think that this is not the case.  According to Nonaka, "Organizational knowledge creation, as distinct from individual knowledge creation, takes place when all four modes of knowledge creation are 'organizationally' managed to form a continual cycle." (p.20).  There is no beginning to this model, and no end point.  As it's cyclical, each form of knowledge conversion can serve the needs of an organization, and are all equally important.