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This article provides information about the meaning of the term “Knowledge Society” !
Manuel Castells argues that in the new economy emerged around the world as a result of the current phase of globalisation process, productivity and competitiveness is by and large a function of knowledge generation and information processing or informatisation. In the new information age knowledge became the power and the tool for capital accumulation.
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According to Yoneji Masuda, in the post-industrial, information-based society, knowledge, or the production of information values, will be the driving force of society, rather than industrial technologies. Thus in the evolving information age the generation, dissemination and application of knowledge becomes the basis of all aspects of knowledge and hence it is also called as knowledge society.
According to Daniel Bell, in information and knowledge society science plays an increased role in the productive forces; professional, scientific and technical groups will rise into prominence in addition to the vast expansion of information technology, which include a converging set of technologies in microelectronics, computing (machines and software), telecommunications/broadcasting, and optoelectronics etc. This will be the new axial principle of the economy and society.
He forecasts the growth of new social framework based on telecommunications which may be decisive for the way knowledge is created and retrieved, and the character of work and occupations people are engaged in. The computer will play a pivotal role. In information society knowledge and information will supplant labour and capital as the central variables of the economy. Here the information will be treated as a commodity and the possession of information will give more power to its owner.
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There will be more and more penetration of information into more traditional areas of agriculture, manufacturing and services. There will be major social changes resulting from the establishment of new telecommunications infrastructure. New forms of social interaction based on electronic communications devises are replacing older types of social relations. There is more application of IT to overcome the ecological and environmental problems associated with industrialism as well.
Mannual Castells prefer to call the emerging society as “informational” society where the process of generation and transformation of information generation has rather become the fundamental sources of productivity and power. To Scott Lash in the information society the source of power is information. Power in the manufacturing age was attached to property as the mechanical means of production.
In the information age it is attached to intellectual property in the form of patent, copyright, and trademark so that they can be valorised to create profit. There is thus commodification of information and no time for reflection. In this society, however, it is not the commodification that is driving the informationalisation but the informationalisation that is driving commodification. In this age inequality is less defined in terms of the relations of production but more by exclusion.