It's interesting to think about the container transport concepts behind "getting" as a synonym for understanding. When you "get" what somebody says, you're saying a sum of knowledge has been delivered to you, in a form you can use. "I gather..." makes a similar assumption, through the same deep unconscious metaphor: knowledge is a substance, a commodity: something you can harvest and ship.
Doc quotes Terry Heaton's The Matter of "Getting It":
… one no longer needs to own the infrastructure in order to publish, distribute or broadcast content. This is turning the media world upside-down, and most of the traditional media response, I'm sorry, falls under the category of "they just don't get it."
Doc:
Terry goes on to give a lot of good advice. Meanwhile, however, I think we have a deeper problem, and that's with the concept of knowledge as a solid substance. Think how much of what we talk about here is provisional. It's not thought out all the way. Often (usually?) it can't be delivered as a finished product because it isn't finished, and won't be for a long time. Much of what we do is pass along interesting information about subjects we won't be done talking about for a long time.
