Knowledge Work

At present I'm reading a classical book related with one of the courses I've just started on the MSc. It has to do with the management of information for research and the title is certanly eloquent: Writing the doctoral dissertation. I have just started it but it begins with the letany: Knowledge work is not like clerical or manual work, it's very motivation dependant and productivity is hard to figure out. Anyhow, not for repeated is it going to become true but I feel really comfortable with this characteristics. I would add one, not mine but from my company's department: Knowledge work is deeply competence dependant. You can put a person without the competences-skills in front of a knowledge-based task and you'll get nothing. In manual or clerical work you may obtain a bad performance but the result in the knowledge one would be orders of magnitude bellow any substantial return (if any).
Because that, the book states, planning and management of knowledge work is even more important than in manual and clerical. If the nineteen and the first half of the past century was the time of manual work automation, the last half with clerical work automation, the present century, or at least the present start of it, is becoming the one of the knowledge work automation. Information context search engines, knowledge ontologies & patterns development, all the research stream in this area is going to dig deeper in the knowlege revolution we are nowadays living and although some rules are not going to change, it's importance growth may let we all surprised.