Geoff Mulgan - 21.02.2013
My view of the Knowledge Society is the same as Gandhi's view of western civilisation: that it would be a good idea.
We've now had fifty years of discussion about the arrival of a knowledge society and a knowledge economy. Much of this discussion is couched in quantitative terms, with successive measures of the proportion of jobs or GDP that's devoted to knowledge. But what would a true knowledge economy look like?
Presumably it would be one constantly enriched by knowledge in all its forms, in which workers, consumers, and citizens had a deep knowledge of the world they're in and its opportunities and challenges.
A moment's reflection shows how far we are from it. We have highly sophisticated systems for producing and circulating information of all kinds. But little of it counts as knowledge. Much of it is data about our behaviour that is bought and sold without our knowledge. A lot of it is simply inaccurate - lies and half-truths - and the dominant search engines distinguish by popularity not accuracy. Commercial messaging dominates - often with almost zero information content - and a high proportion of the messages we're bombarded with have no relevance to us.
Clutter prevails over insight. Opinions circulate at phenomenal speed - the more opinionated the better. Public intellectuals feel compelled to dumb down, or to deliberately distort in order to sell books. Recent elections confirm the point. In the US Presidential election was there a higher premium for truths relative to non-truths than in the past? Is advertising more accurate? Do people have a more accurate understanding of their world? The internet could be an extraordinary tool for knowledge - and already has been. But those in charge don't show much signs of ethical sense; much sign of acting like guardians; or much sign of understanding what a knowledge based society would look and feel like.
We need a new generation of leaders who aren't just interested in the gadgets and cool stuff - but also have the wisdom to understand what it means.
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makemexile
06 Mar 13, 6:47pm (3 weeks ago)
Knowledge Economy & Society
A knowledge-based economy is not a new phenomenon – the hunter-gatherers in the Amazon Jungle have little else but knowledge to aid them in their struggle for survival. The importance of knowledge in firms' competitiveness and economic activity is not new either. The craftsmen's guilds of medieval Europe placed great importance on the 'mysteries of their trade' which they were very concerned to protect. However those changes which are making up the transition to a 'knowledge based economy' are greatly increasing the importance of knowledge in economic activity and the competitiveness of firms. They are also changing the kinds of the knowledge which firms need to possess, the way that knowledge is acquired and managed, the way firms are organised and the kinds of knowledge and skills required of their employees.
A number of changes would seem to characterise the transition to a knowledge-based economy. First, there is a continuing increase in the relative importance of intangible assets. The Industrial Revolution greatly increased the amount and variety of artefacts produced and used within the economic system. Thus thirty years ago advanced industrial economies were dominated by sectors such as steel, bulk chemicals and power generation which invested large amounts in plant and machinery. By contrast the rapidly growing sectors of the 1990s such as electronics, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications invest mainly in R&D, software and information technology, advertising and training. Some emerging sectors, such as those associated with the Internet, hardly invest in fixed assets at all.
Second, the stock of scientific and technological knowledge is expanding at a rapid rate thereby creating many more opportunities for expanding this stock of knowledge even further through activities such as R&D. New fields of science and new technologies are coming into existence all the time. The increase in the breadth and variety of scientific and technological knowledge multiplies the number of ways in which knowledge about different scientific disciplines and technologies can be combined and exploited commercially. The exploitation of this increase in scientific and technological knowledge is being made possible by a steady rise in the educational qualifications of the working population and the number of people who are highly qualified in science and technology.
Technology consists of artefacts, knowledge and skills. As the last two intangible components increase in relative economic importance that of tangible assets or artefacts is declining. However the variety and sophistication of capital goods is greater than ever and their productivity is far greater than in the past. The increasing importance of knowledge and skills is shown by the fact that in many sectors the value of investments in intangible assets are now much greater than those in fixed capital equipment. This has been true of UK Manufacturing since the mid-1980s when we in DTI first looked at it.
Third, developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have revolutionised the storage, transmission, processing and analysis of information and data. This has enabled firms to generate new knowledge which has led to significant change across a wide range of business functions including marketing, purchasing, financial control personnel etc. Development of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) have brought about major changes in the ways in which products are developed and manufactured. New computer based techniques for problem solving, measurement and data collection, analysis, testing etc. have greatly increased the productivity of R&D and subsequent product and process design and development. The incorporation of ICTs has increased the functionality of a wide range of goods and made possible the development of a whole host of new products. More and more sectors are having to make significant investments in software development. E-commerce will lead to yet another round of major change in the way business in conducted across a wide range of sectors.
The focus of attention on the emergence of the Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE) has tended to be on the so-called ‘New Economy’, on E-businesses and on businesses exploiting leading edge developments in ICTs, Biotechnology, Life Sciences etc. However the transition to the KBE is also having major effects on the more traditional sectors of the Economy, the so-called Old Economy. For example twenty years ago firms in sectors such as mechanical and electrical engineering mainly depended on the skills of their designers, draftsmen, production engineers and craftsmen for their technology. Now the technology of leading edge firms in this sector consists of computer-aided design and manufacture (CADCAM) and knowledge of a range of advanced technologies including electronics, advanced materials and software. The various stages of the production process and the interface between the firm and its customers is now managed electronically rather than via engineering drawings. Traditional craft and production engineering skills have been replaced by computer design and the ability to integrate successfully the various elements of a computer controlled manufacturing system.