It is often said that knowledge is power. Is it? Or does knowledge simply avail us to the means of power, if that?
There are criticisms to be made of the naive view that knowledge can automatically solve the world's ills, but we do not even have to venture there. In the first place, we should ask what kind of knowledge is regarded as power.
It stands to reason that not all kinds of knowledge can be associated with power. But aside from the fact that some knowledge is obviously of limited use, there's a particular kind that is foremost in the hierarchy of knowledge, being perhaps the only kind that is really recognised as empowering in the minds of many: Actionable knowledge.
In a way, this is apt when we consider the naive belief that knowledge is automatically empowering. Obviously, actionable knowledge is valuable because it allows us to take actions that would otherwise not have been possible or as effective without it. On the other hand, the notion that only actionable knowledge is empowering leads to the idea that only knowledge that is actionable is worth pursuing. That is why we hear rants, such as the one in New York Times recently, about the amount of time and money spent pursuing 'useless' knowledge.
Such complaints do have their points, but they often leave us with the distinct impression that people expect a lot from the knowledge they pursue. They expect it to pave the way to good jobs, to yield financial profit, to save time—in short, knowledge is expected to have tangible benefits, measured in terms that people are already familiar with and fully expect.
There are two criticisms that can be made. Firstly, such expectations are contrary to the nature of discovery. Whether the discovery is unprecedented or personal, whether the knowledge gained is completely new or already known to others, gaining knowledge entails learning something you didn't know before. It is therefore strange that we think we know what we can expect out of gaining some knowledge. While we can perhaps guess at or imagine its possible outcomes, the process of learning is likely to entail learning more than just actionable knowledge. In any particular body of knowledge learned, perhaps only a small part of it is actionable knowledge. Yet such 'wastage' is an unavoidable part of the learning process, a consequence of not knowing what exactly to expect, and this is especially true when engaging in cutting-edge research that seeks to break new ground.
This brings us to the second point, which is what the New York Times article seems to overlook when it rehashes old complaints about the academic ivory tower: A lot of the knowledge gained through research in institutes of higher learning is 'useless' because research is not an entirely predictable process. Important discoveries are often unexpected and made when pursuing lines of inquiry that might initially seem esoteric and of limited practical consequence. Even if a body knowledge seems to be full of information that is of little use outside of academia, the discourse it generates may have a cumulative effect that could be instrumental to making important discoveries within that body or outside of it. Thus, research is not made up self-contained projects that either yield useful results or not—research can be seen as consisting of discourses that together form the ground from which new knowledge germinates, not necessarily as a result of any single effort.
That is not to say that research need not be directed by practical goals. However, we should not be surprised that only "around 40 percent" or whatever proportion of academic research proves to be immediately useful in practical contexts. These circumstances are part and parcel of the process of research, and perhaps it is a gross misunderstanding of the way knowledge is gained that leads to the kind of cynicism that demands that knowledge yield tangible rewards or be deemed not worthwhile.
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