KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES Compendious reflections on VINE’s technology inquiries Mona A. Mohamed and Mirghani S. Mohamed New York Institute of Technology – Bahrain, Adliya, Bahrain Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to integrate and reflect on different ideas about the role of knowledge management (KM) technology that have been published in VINE. In effect, the paper seeks to relate, interpret, and synthesize various technology milestones discussed by various authors. It also aims to discusss the literature that describes technology as an “enabler”, but “not enough”. Design/methodology/approach – This paper addresses the role and the importance of technology as appeared in articles in VINE about technology within the last three years. Different ideas from different authors are compared and contrasted with the general trend in technology advances in the field of KM. Findings – Because of the immaturity of KM technology there is still disagreement about its real role in the KM lifecycle. There is an obvious lack of standardization and generalization about the role of inter- and/or intra-organization technology transfer today. Although technology has made a quantum leap in the proportionality of the expressed tacit knowledge, many investigators still believe that technology is no more than an enabler. Practical implications – This paper provides useful information as a result of summary and augmentation of different opinions discussed in this journal about technologies in the last three years. Originality/value – This paper provides information to researchers and practitioners who need to know about the practical recent KM technology implementations. Keywords Communication technologies, Tacit knowledge, Extensible Markup Language, Worldwide web, Semantics Paper type Literature review Background The dialog between technology proponents and knowledge management (KM) practitioners has no;t been easy, particularly during the first KM generations. The main raison d’e ˆtre is that technology cannot and may not be able to reflect the entirety of tacit knowledge. But, this criticism started to fade way as technology made noticeable advancements in the area of artificial intelligence, neural networks, natural languages, grid networking, and object-oriented databases and applications. The Very Information Newsletter (VINE) literature on technology started at the inception of the journal in 1971, where the first computerization of catalogs took place. Then computers such as Digico Micro 16P were used for checking the status of patrons and the validity of books codes, cataloguing, and indexing. At that time, IBM 360 computer with storage not more than 24 k was used to create MARC records, where most prestigious universities cannot afford to own more than one machine. Today with technologies such as SAN and RAID giant organizations are able to send and store The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm VINE 38,4 388 VINE: The journal of information and knowledge management systems Vol. 38 No. 4, 2008 pp. 388-397 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0305-5728 DOI 10.1108/03055720810917642