While for me knowledge management (KM) has never been "dead", I now read in several places that people feel it's making a come back (for example, here or look at the graphs here). A few years ago, Thomas Davenport wrote that " ... knowledge management isn't dead, but it's gasping for breath".
I agree that companies seem to be (more) aware that knowledge is their driving power, the way to make a difference and innovate. Developments like machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, drive this need to re-think knowledge. Whether they call it knowledge management or not, organizations need a knowledge-related strategy. Is KM different now than it was in the earlier days?
Social media has changed how knowledge is transferred. When I started with KM, we didn't use social media as much as we do now and we didn't consider them in particular as a KM tool. Blogs, Twitter and even Facebook, to name a few, as well as enterprise social media like Yammer, have made it so much easier to access a wealth of knowledge in the company and from all over the world and to connect with peers, wherever they are. As people are using these tools in their private life, they will easily be adopted in the work environment. It's probably management that is more hesitating to use them than the workfloor.
The incremental use of data for decision making through the earlier-mentioned machine learning and big data, is also influencing on KM. The well-known pyramid with data-information-knowledge-wisdom seems even more applicable these days. Data is useless if it can't be turned into information and applied to get work done or make decisions (the knowledge level of the pyramid).
So, to my view, it's mainly the tools that have changed. I hope though that people, knowledge workers, are still the focus. "Collaboration is just another buzzword", I heard someone saying today. As if it will go away in 2018. My view on KM has always been around people, so collaboration, learning, coaching, sharing are part of that. Tools support this, not the other way around. For me this is what it was in my early KM days and what it will be.
If the KM comeback goes together with good strategy, around people, the work they do and the tools they use, I'm happy. Not a specialization, within one role, but for everybody who works with knowledge.