Knowledge society

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Broadly speaking, the term Knowledge Society refers to any society where
knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. It
may also refer to the use a certain society gives to information. A Knowledge
society "creates, shares and uses knowledge for the prosperity and well-being of
its people".[1]

Contents

1 Characteristics

2 Examples of societies that
can blossom to knowledge societies

3 Infrastructure

4 References

5 See also

6 External links

6.1 Wikibooks

[edit]
Characteristics

Knowledge societies have the characteristic that knowledge forms a major
component of any human activity. Economic, social, cultural, and all other human
activities become dependent on a huge volume of knowledge and information. A
knowledge society is one in which knowledge becomes a major creative force.

Knowledge societies are not a new occurrence. For example, fishermen have
long shared the knowledge of predicting the weather to their community and this
knowledge gets added to the social capital of the community.

What is new is that

With current technologies, knowledge societies need not be constrained by
geographic proximity

Current technology offers much more possibilities for sharing, archiving
and retrieving knowledge

Knowledge has become the most important capital in the present age, and
hence the success of any society lies in harnessing

[edit]
Examples of societies that can blossom to knowledge
societies

People from the same field

Teachers teaching the same subject

Fans of the same musical groupklnkll

Artists with similar interests

People from different fields

Engineers talking to scientists about a scientific issue related to their
engineering project

Researchers of different fields discussing a common research problem

Artists interested in fractals getting in touch with
programmers

Mystics talking to scientists

[edit]
Infrastructure

A knowledge society needs infrastructure like

Physical: meeting places, notice boards ...

Technological: local language content sharing, mailing lists, web portals,
wikis, chat rooms, video conferencing, virtual meetings, collaborative
development environments, distance education ...

The Free software
movement is a success story of knowledge society

The term is frequently used by politicians, policy-makers, journalists and by
scientists in the Foresight social studies.

[edit]
References

^
"The Digital Strategy: Glossary of Key Terms". http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/Media-Centre/Glossary-of-Key-Terms/. Retrieved 2008-05-02.

Nico Stehr, Knowledge Societies (Sage, 1994); ISBN
0-8039-7892-8

Nico Stehr, The Fragility of Modern Societies. Knowledge and Risk in
the Information Age (Sage, 2001); ISBN
978-0-7619-5348-7

Gerardo Pastore, Verso la società della conoscenza. Analisi e critica
del caso italiano, (Le Lettere, 2009); ISBN
978-8860873125

[edit]
See also

information
society

information
revolution

knowledge economy

intellectual
capital

Knowledge building

knowledge divide

meta-knowledge

Libre Knowledge

[edit]
External links

UNESCO World Report: Towards knowledge societies (2005)

Knowledge Society - European Commission Homepage

EU CORDIS page

Economic Fundamentals of the Knowledge Society- Stanford
Univ. Economics faculty.

[edit]
Wikibooks

Legal
and Regulatory Issues in the Information Economy

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_society"

Categories: Information
Age | Libre | Knowledge

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This page was last modified on 28 October 2010 at
04:43.

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