KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY; widely applicable concept and accordingly interpreted in different ways. In the spirit and harmony of the current capitalist hegemony, the creation of a knowledge society was seen as an important stimulating factor in the development dynamics of the system which in the West - after the completion of a 150-year long period of growth inherited from the historical episode of the so-called industrial revolution - since the 70s of the last century, with increased deindustrialization, found itself in crisis and in search of new revitalization driving mechanisms.
These areas of further fertilization of profit and capitalist logic of growth were found, among other things, in spheres such as information-communication, service, language, i.e. in the production of intellectual and creative products, i.e. mental activities based on immaterial work. Therefore, the 'knowledge society' model, together with the 'technological society' and the 'information society', is treated as one stage within the framework of the tradition of the technocratic paradigm. It increases the importance of cognitively realized capital in society, and thus the positions of highly educated professionals, which is why we started talking about the so-called cognitive capitalism.
On the other hand, critics of such trends warn that technological innovations alone, amnestied from the social context of their application, are not enough. Knowledge is a general public good that should be available to everyone, not just those who can and want to pay for its acquisition.
"Knowledge society" cannot be just a simple economic-political and market-capitalist label, a self-indulgent brand, or a logo, we are talking about a knowledge society and we can speak when we witness a society of free-thinking, enlightened and argumentative-critical oriented and educated people who "know how to think with their own head' and who are brave enough and willing to articulate their views publicly, clearly and loudly.
What Austrian philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann - following the line of thinking from Humboldt, via Adorno's 'semi-education theory' - calls 'the theory of uneducated', criticizing the conceptual ideologist 'knowledge society' is at work, exactly the opposite. Liessmann will write about the society of knowledge that, despite its self-indulgent title, 'it is not a particularly smart society'. We encountered the agitprop rhetoric of the 'transition to a knowledge society' ten to fifteen years ago, with the practical beginnings of the 'Bologna Reform' of higher education, and a critical understanding of the ideological nature of the 'knowledge society' will come to the fore through student-activist initiatives that were, not by chance, affirmed in parallel with that.
(portalnovosti.com)
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