Useless Knowledge

What constitutes useless knowledge?

I ask this question in the context of a society and a world that has become intensely knowledge dependent. Knowledge, more so than any other factor, is the acknowledge (clever pun, no?) to advancement and success.

The definition I often hear or see used for useless knowledge is knowledge which in no way contributes to what I actually doing, typically in the business context: the royal line of England, how cheese is made, the parts of a katana, the fact that only certain varieties of armadillos and humans can catch leprosy. To rattle one of these facts off in the context of the work environment is to stop the conversation, get a strange look, and then have the speaker continue on as if nothing had happened.

But I would counter that. Knowledge is useless only if it cannot or will not be used.

For example, I would argue much of my career knowledge is fairly useless outside of a specific narrow band of use. Perhaps 80% of my daily activities are not something that can be directly transferred to anything else. Certainly it only indirectly helps me with practical skills, like how to cook for myself or thresh grain or change a tire.

In other ways knowledge which is considered "useless" has been and is being lost at a fantastic rate. At one time, tribes of the Siberian plain knew how to make horsehair goggles to prevent snow blindness; that knowledge is lost. And as many societies make the transition to "modern", we lose precious a precious knowledge base, a base as significant and useful as that of any gene base we lose due to extinction of species. It makes us even more totally dependent on technology (never a good thing, in my opinion. Species that become specialized to a single environment or plant are in danger when that environment or plant changes).

So maybe we should expand our definition of "useless" knowledge from that which merely serves me in my present time to that knowledge which cannot really be used beyond a very specific situation. That knowledge, like a solar panel during the thirty days of night in Alaska, is truly useless.

As for me, I'll continue to gather my knowledge in the hope and belief it will someday be useful - like, for example, that whey from cheese making used to be considered a popular drink in inns and coffee house? Who knew...