Andrew McAfee has written an interesting post about explicit content. While the concept as related is quite interesting, i quite agree with him when he says the wager is more of academic interest rather than of any practical interest.
I for one believe we need to be careful so as not to get into too much semantics, and too much jargon ... it could actually kill web 2.0. In fact, i think this is the basic difference between the way technology has evolved in the past, to the way it is set to evolve ... Technology of the future, to my mind, would need to be far more user-friendly (and I dont just mean this in terms of the features) than it ever has been. And, the jargon is an important part of this, i would think.
Coming back after that little meandering ... I do believe the explicit part of the content is the more important one from the viewpoint of the KM practitioner. After all, the concept of implicit content, if taken to its logical conclusion, is about what the user was thinking when they clicked on something. The clicks and what the user actually did buy is a manifestation of what they were thinking. However, when we think, every one of us think in ways which are quite different from one to the other. And, to be able to appreciate what the other person is thinking, one needs to understand the way they think (remember Dr. Watson being unable to follow the train of thought of Sherlock Holmes?). And, the way the other person is thinking is something which is conditioned by their perspectives, their "mental models" so to say, and also the context of the content.
These are the thoughts that lead me to believe that at least at this point (maybe there will be a day when we will be able to read what the other person is thinking, along with their train of thought, and their contexts), explicit content is what KM practitioners need to focus on. Lets master this first (and we are a long way from there), and then see where this takes us.
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