Tacit Knowledge Atrophy

Tacit Knowledge Atrophy describes the degenerative cycle that Ikujiro Nonaka's framework predicts as a structural consequence of automating the friction-generating work through which tacit knowledge accumulates. In the SECI spiral, Internalization—the conversion of explicit knowledge into embodied skill through the friction of practice—is the mode through which explicit outputs are deposited as personal, tacit understanding. When large language models produce the output the practitioner would have produced through effortful practice, the Internalization step is bypassed: the explicit knowledge has been generated, but the conversion into personal tacit knowledge through the friction of doing has been skipped. The practitioner's explicit output increases while her tacit knowledge base flatlines or erodes, because the experiences that deposit it have been optimized away in favor of speed. The atrophy is invisible in real time—dashboards show output, not depth—and becomes visible only when the tacit foundation is tested by a crisis, an ambiguous situation requiring judgment rather than computation, or a competitive encounter with an organization