Informational Learning (original) (raw)
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This paper examines the future of industrial capitalism, and more precisely the rise of the new information and knowledge society (IKS) and the development of the information network economy. We propose an interdisciplinary approach connecting economic analysis and information and communication sciences. First, we describe the euphoria over the new IKS. Then, we show that information networks lead to new economic laws, but not to a new civilisation. Even if new information technology accelerates changes, we must distinguish between Utopia and reality. Beyond euphoria we show the need for new critical approaches concerning technology, information and knowledge. We can thus explain the mechanisms of various myths of the IKS. technological innovations are indisputable (digitalisation, development of information storage and processing capacities...). These technological aspects are the base of the euphoria in favour of the IKS.
Theories of the Information Age
The Handbook of Service Industries, 2007
Contents 1. Introduction 2. The origins of information/knowledge age 3. Knowledge society predecessors 4. Knowledge about knowledge 5. Knowledge societies 6. The society of societies 7. The technical state 8. The power of knowledge and information 9. The information society 10. The network society 11. In what kind of society do we live? 12. Concluding remarks Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary This chapter covers theories of the modern information age in a number of steps: First, there is a description of some of the intellectual precursors that give rise to the notion that we are living in an information or knowledge age. Second, an enumeration of some of the perspectives that lead to the idea of modern societies as knowledge or information societies. Third, the usage of the term knowledge, defined as a capacity for action is explicated in greater detail. Fourth, the core sections of the article deal with the theory of the knowledge and the information society as well as some of its competitors such as the network society. The article presents the argument that advanced societies are best conceptualized as knowledge societies, last but not least because economic growth, social change and inequality generally but also the nature of social conflicts and identity formation are increasingly generated by knowledge. That is, knowledge does not merely open up the secrets of nature and society but is the becoming of a world.
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND NETWORK ECONOMY: FROM EUPHORIA TO REALITY
This paper examines the future of industrial capitalism, and more precisely the rise of the new information and knowledge society (IKS) and the development of the information network economy. We propose an interdisciplinary approach connecting economic analysis and information and communication sciences. First, we describe the euphoria over the new IKS. Then, we show that information networks lead to new economic laws, but not to a new civilisation. Even if new information technology accelerates changes, we must distinguish between Utopia and reality. Beyond euphoria we show the need for new critical approaches concerning technology, information and knowledge. We can thus explain the mechanisms of various myths of the IKS. technological innovations are indisputable (digitalisation, development of information storage and processing capacities...). These technological aspects are the base of the euphoria in favour of the IKS.
The “information society” and the role of knowledge in society
The passage from industrial societies to other forms of societies has been strongly influenced by knowledge/information and technology. This transformation has had an effect on the economy and society in different ways. Some interpretations argue that such developments, based on the principle of rationality, have brought about the improvement of the occupational status of workers, whereas some interpretations argue about the elusive role of information as opposed to knowledge. In a more critical understanding, there are also interpretations which emphasise the inclusive and exclusive character of the network and the irrationality of information which on the political level sees a shift of knowledge from public good to intellectual property. This article looks at the theoretical developments which characterised the different interpretation of the role of knowledge in society.
The once and future information society
Theory and Society, 2008
In the late twentieth century, many social scientists and other social commentators came to characterize the world as evolving into an "information society." Central to these claims was the notion that new social uses of information, and particularly application of scientific knowledge, are transforming social life in fundamental ways. Among the supposed transformations are the rise of intellectuals in social importance, growing productivity and prosperity stemming from increasingly knowledge-based economic activity, and replacement of political conflict by authoritative, knowledge-based decision-making. We trace these ideas to their origins in the Enlightenment doctrines of Saint Simon and Comte, show that empirical support for them has never been strong, and consider the durability of their social appeal. Intellectuals love to vie in the effort to name their own ageto define the essential and salient qualities that distinguish the times in which they live from every other. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, the upper hand in this struggle often seemed to go those insisting that we were entering an "Information Society." Beginning in the 1960s the idea took hold among many social scientists that information had assumed a new and decisive role in human affairs. For exponents of this idea, social processes based on innovative information uses, and particularly the transformation of information into authoritative knowledge, manifestly represented the distinguishing feature of the age. Characterizing the world's "advanced" societies as "information societies" became as axiomatic as bracketing other eras as "Neolithic societies" or "feudal societies."
Internet and the Shifting Grounds of Knowledge
ABSTRACT: Internet and the Explosion of Knowledge The impact of information technology revolution has been so globally comprehensive that all the available tools of academic inquiry – media theory, cultural studies, political economy, philosophy etc. – have been employed to study them and we have a vast literature addressing this issue. What is conspicuous by its relative absence is any concerted attempt to understand the explosion in the field of knowledge and major changes in the rules of the knowledge game as a result of the Internet revolution. This is despite the fact that such an inquiry was inaugurated even before the advent of world wide web by the well-known French philosopher Lyotard in this book ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’ in the early eighties. “As the economy becomes postindustrial, the culture becomes postmodern” was the formulation Lyotard advances his enquiry from. He went on to analyze the transformations of knowledge in the wake of new information technologies. At the level of practice, however, the academic world is abuzz with the impact of the restructuring that is going on accompanying the information revolution and is plagued by enormous anxieties regarding a whole range of issues from diluting of standards to subjection of researchers to the management. Outside the academia, however, the theme of ‘knowledge’ and ‘explosion of knowledge’ has been circulating widely in the spheres of media, economy, politics and society. ‘Knowledge society’, knowledge economy, knowledge management, dot the pages of policy documents, conferences, blogs, mailing lists etc. With the emergence of open source software and the attempts to apply its underlying philosophy to other fields, the idea of ‘knowledge commons’ has become the repository of utopian longings as well as inspiration for practical efforts to open up access to knowledge and advance cooperative models of knowledge production. In this whole discourse of ‘knowledge’ it is understood implicitly that computers and Internet are going to play a central role in the organization of knowledge globally and that they are already doing so to a great extent. This state of affairs can be understood on the assumption that the meaning of knowledge itself has changed in the transition to the information age. That is why one can often find the argument that what has changed with the Internet is merely the communication of knowledge and the assertions to the effect that information is not knowledge. The conception of knowledge that the university is built upon is no longer the same in the realm of the Internet and in some sense information is indeed knowledge. In the proposed paper, we seek to explore the new conception of knowledge that is in the making in the era of pervasive information technology. For example, what kind of knowledge does software constitute? Software is merely a ‘tool’, or a technique, if seen from the old perspective. But construction of software constitutes one of the most important knowledge activities for the connected world. Or, what is the knowledge that knowledge management speaks of and seeks to manage? We will try to look at the range of knowledge activities that take place in and through the Internet to explore whether the contours of a newly emerging conception of knowledge can be discerned. In the process we will attempt to clarify in what sense can the ‘digital information’ be considered to be knowledge. It is our understanding that only when armed with such a clarity on the question of the relationship of knowledge and information, can we approach the question of the significance of the ‘explosion’ of knowledge seen to be occurring with the rise of the new information technologies. We examine whether we can characterize the transition that has taken place in the conceptions of knowledge as a transition from science to information, i.e., as a transition from knowledge as representation to representations and organization of knowledge. In this paper, we examine some of the consequences of this transition on the world of knowledge.
The knowledge economy and society stem from the combination of four interdependent elements: the production of knowledge, mainly through scientific research; its transmission through education and training; its dissemination through information and communication technologies; its use in technological innovation. At the same time, new configurations of production, transmission and application of knowledge are emerging, and their effect is to involve a greater number of players, typically in an increasingly internationalized network-driven context.