Social Scientific Knowledge about Knowledge (and Information) 1 To talk about knowledge is to talk about people (original) (raw)

In the context of most social theories, perhaps with the exemption of variants of Marxism, the matter of knowledge has not been treated as problematic. The central hypothesis of this paper, and thus of a theory of modern society as a knowledge society, however is that knowledge, and not nature, accidents, violence, catastrophes, power, etc., is more than ever the basis and guide of human action in all areas of contemporary society. The study of knowledge societies is a response to the fundamental observation that modern science is by no means, as is still often assumed, only the key and access to the mysteries of nature and human behavior, but above all the becoming of a world: Knowledge as a motor, not just a camera (cf. MacKenzie, 2006). The extraordinary importance of scientific knowledge in particular does not mean, however, that it will succeed in simply overrunning traditional ways of life and attitudes, as has been hoped or feared time and again.