The knowledge society: Refounding the Socius

Abstract

The theme 'knowledge society' can have many meanings depending on who defines it. But can knowledge really define society since there are many other qualifying adjectives for society as well. What one should be preferred? Is knowledge a better qualifying term than risk, information, technology, or any other one? These questions need answers. There are many dreams and counter dreams regarding the ideal society. Some dreams, like Unesco's dream, focus on the self-evident issues in the knowledge society, or what people consider to be self-evident, or what is taken for granted, as if no exploration is required: issues like access to knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, etc. These dreams contain a threat despite promises of a future that cannot be achieved. Other dreams, like those of Ars Industrialis, dig deeper and look for founding possibilities, take nothing for granted, search for the original, the defining principles. These dreams bring hope and light, a future to live for. It is important to realise that the linking of these terms have an effect on the meaning of both terms. Is this meaning adequate or is it lacking something? Apart from their mutual impact, it is also true that when this connection is linked to other connections it can help us to understand these terms better. 'Knowledge economy' is one such connection. Its real effect on the terms is the transformation of knowledge into a commodity, something that can easily be exchanged, be bought or sold - a serious reduction. Another issue is 'knowledge management'. Making knowledge into a manageable entity takes the dynamics out of it, have a reductive effect on the relations between knowledge and truth, knowledge and meaning, knowledge and spirit. A regression, rather than progression, enters into the equation, which can in the long run be fatal. A devastating threat looms on the horizon. In order to avoid reductions and regressions and the concomitant degeneration of the social, societal, cultural, and spiritual that widely open the door to catastrophes, chaos, stupidities, barbarisms (the consequences of one set of dreams), it may be required to re-found the society of 'knowledge society' in terms of what is more original than society, that on which any society should be built - the socius, community, spirituality, philia, love (as envisaged by another set of dreams). All of these are missing from the society of the 'knowledge society', at least missing from the rhetoric that promotes it, and by that strip it from real vital importance. The plea of this paper is that these qualitative issues need to be reinvented for a sound society to emerge. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.