Finding knowledge: what is it to «know» when we search?

the article discusses the epistemological implications of people’s social and technical interactions with information including those important for education. The author analyzes search in an open informational environment as a specific educational tool. The author seeks to answer the questions: what the role of search functions in gaining knowledge is; how they affect students' understanding of the information and teachers' assessment of students' knowledge; how users evaluate the quality and impact of the informational sources they use. The paper examines the role of modern search engines and social networks as sources and media of different search strategies and information representation. It compares the targets of different search engines (Google, Bing Social, DuckDuckGo), social networks (Facebook), technologies and apps (Semantic Web, Facebook Graph Search, Tumblr). The author shows different options of information bias arising from the filter bubble. He draws attention to the fact that search engines through personalization and demographic characteristics filter SERPs to provide individuals with biased information, affirming prior beliefs. The article develops the idea of preparing a person for diversity-aware search and understanding the broader knowledge context. The goal is to develop search engines that can both personalize information and reduce the risks of testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. The paper highlights the importance of developing the initial position of a search engine user aiming to check, filter, analyze and evaluate the information obtained as well as understand the knowledge gaps. This poses the question of what is "knowledge" and how it may be assessed within the educational system. It also sets the task of developing the ability to think critically and evaluate judgements and information obtained as a result of the search for knowledge. The proposed conclusions will be interesting to researchers in the field of education philosophy, experts in IT, school teachers, university instructors and continuing professional development instructors. The article is translated into Russian and provided with the necessary translator’s comments with the author’s and publisher’s (Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam) permission under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Originally published: Knight Simon. Finding Knowledge: What Is It to 'Know' When We Search? / Society of the Query Reader. Ed.by R.König and M.Rasch. - Institute of Network Cultures, 2014, pp. 227-238. Simon Knight‘s research focuses on student’s epistemic practices in information seeking. Following teaching high school philosophy and psychology, he completed his MA in philosophy of education exploring the implications of the ‘extended mind’ thesis for our understanding of knowledge and its assessment. That work particularly focused on the Danish use of internet in examinations, asking the question ‘Is Wikipedia a part of my extended mind?’ He then completed an MPhil in Educational research, focusing on the epistemic dialogue children used in collaborative information seeking tasks. His PhD work at the UK’s Open University continues this line of research, applying learning analytic techniques to the exploration of epistemic dialogue and commitments in collaborative information seeking. English version of the text is open access, URL:http://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SotQmagazine_def.pdf