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This article provides information about the different diversions of knowledge society:
The society that is emerging is a “knowledge society” one which is characterised by “new structures” of knowledge, methods of dissemination and a technology that permits and sustains “unrestricted” access to knowledge and control over it. Thus in the contemporary phase of human society the proliferation of information technology has led to the emergence of a mass society that produces knowledge and information on a mass scale as the driving force of economy.
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Consequently there has been the rise of the category of knowledge workers, who are fast replacing both histories’ traditional groups and the groups of industrial society; the group, which is fast becoming the center of gravity of the working population.
This group is also becoming the single largest group of the work force in the post-industrial society. The social and economic dynamics of the knowledge society are widely shaped by the new forces of production, influence of the global market and the state. To Antony Giddens globalisation and knowledge economy are the co-constituents of the global information order and that this economy is populated by an active and reflexive citizenry of wired workers, whose knowledge is the principal source of production and they are non-hierarchical in their work environment.
According to Bob Jessop, knowledge can acquire commodity value after entering the labour market and once it is made artificially scarce and its access depends on payment of rent. Knowledge can be transformed into a fictions commodity by transforming it from a collective resources (intellectual commons) into intellectual property (e.g. Patent, copyright etc.) for revenue generation; subsuming of knowledge production under exploitative class relations and by transforming intellectual labour into wage labour for producing knowledge for the market; and bringing intellectual labour under capitalist control through commoditisation and integration into a networked digitised production and a consumption process controlled by the capital. He foresees the possibilities of monopolies in knowledge and information by embedding them in technology, standards or legally entrenching in intellectual property rights.
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It is now reorganised that in the wake of present phase of globalisation ICTs have paved the way for the emergence of global knowledge society and economy; a networked society with a varied kind of economic and educational requirements and principles of organising the society, its moral, values and identity. In essence the ICTs have been juxtaposed to the process of restructuring of economic and social institutional arrangements of the knowledge economy of information age locally and globally. ICTs now offer a challenge to the conventional ways of getting information, knowing and disseminating.
Thus this cutting edge technology has been linked to the new discourse’ of development. In this information age knowledge is the basic form of capital and that economic growth is driven by the accumulation of knowledge. There has emerged a symbiotic relationship between knowledge economy and ICTs for releasing the creative potential and knowledge embodied in people and harnessing local-global connectivity, for generation of wealth and to widen the market of this economy.
Following are some of the distinctive features of knowledge society:
i. The basis of knowledge-based development in the knowledge societies is the generation, dissemination and deployment of knowledge.
ii. In knowledge society scientific knowledge is considered as an asset and the scientific and technical group will rise into prominence.
iii. The social network in a knowledge society is based on tele and other communication technologies.
iv. The creation and retrieval of knowledge plays a decisive role in the organisation of work and occupation. The occupations, which make more and more innovative knowledge, will become predominant in this economy.
v. The knowledge/information is treated, as commodity and the possession of knowledge gives more power to the owner.
vi. In knowledge society inequality is defined in terms of exclusion from knowledge.
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vii. In knowledge society knowledge is transformed from collective recourses (intellectual commons) into intellectual property for revenue generation.
viii. In knowledge society the conflict is between minority knowledge workers and the majority traditional workers.
ix. Knowledge society will be far more competitive than the earlier societies, as knowledge will be key competitive factor for career and earning opportunities.
x. Knowledge in the knowledge society basically exists in specialised application by specialised experts. The central work force will be the highly specialised people and not the generalists. Here the people who acquire the specialised knowledge will have the ever more scope of mobility. “It demands for the first time in history that people with knowledge take responsibility for making themselves understood by the people who do not have the same knowledge base. It requires that people learn to assimilate into their own work specialised knowledge from other areas and disciplines”.