The knowledge society agenda in Romania: From experts' vision to public perception

Abstract

The paper pertains to operationalising the Knowledge Society concept in Romania, following two lines of inquiry: a) drawing insights from a foresight exercise undertaken by domestic experts for vision-building purposes, and b) assessing the current public perception on the respective issue and proposing a desirable alternative to it. At experts' vision level, the experience with a Romanian Academy's project, with a Delphi survey as its core, is described. At the public perception level, a set of cliché-type implicit assumptions, assumed to be shared country-wide, is specified, against which a set of descriptors corresponding to an informed awareness stage is proposed. The main conclusion consists in recognising that gradually reaching the convergence between experts' vision and public informed awareness on the Knowledge Society agenda appears to be a pre-requisite for the advance of this new society type in Romania.