Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Data, Information, Knowledge
References

Internet and the Shifting Grounds of Knowledge

Profile image of Avinash JhaAvinash Jha

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Internet and the Explosion of Knowledge The impact of information technology revolution has been so globally comprehensive that all the available tools of academic inquiry – media theory, cultural studies, political economy, philosophy etc. – have been employed to study them and we have a vast literature addressing this issue. What is conspicuous by its relative absence is any concerted attempt to understand the explosion in the field of knowledge and major changes in the rules of the knowledge game as a result of the Internet revolution. This is despite the fact that such an inquiry was inaugurated even before the advent of world wide web by the well-known French philosopher Lyotard in this book ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’ in the early eighties. “As the economy becomes postindustrial, the culture becomes postmodern” was the formulation Lyotard advances his enquiry from. He went on to analyze the transformations of knowledge in the wake of new information technologies. At the level of practice, however, the academic world is abuzz with the impact of the restructuring that is going on accompanying the information revolution and is plagued by enormous anxieties regarding a whole range of issues from diluting of standards to subjection of researchers to the management. Outside the academia, however, the theme of ‘knowledge’ and ‘explosion of knowledge’ has been circulating widely in the spheres of media, economy, politics and society. ‘Knowledge society’, knowledge economy, knowledge management, dot the pages of policy documents, conferences, blogs, mailing lists etc. With the emergence of open source software and the attempts to apply its underlying philosophy to other fields, the idea of ‘knowledge commons’ has become the repository of utopian longings as well as inspiration for practical efforts to open up access to knowledge and advance cooperative models of knowledge production. In this whole discourse of ‘knowledge’ it is understood implicitly that computers and Internet are going to play a central role in the organization of knowledge globally and that they are already doing so to a great extent. This state of affairs can be understood on the assumption that the meaning of knowledge itself has changed in the transition to the information age. That is why one can often find the argument that what has changed with the Internet is merely the communication of knowledge and the assertions to the effect that information is not knowledge. The conception of knowledge that the university is built upon is no longer the same in the realm of the Internet and in some sense information is indeed knowledge. In the proposed paper, we seek to explore the new conception of knowledge that is in the making in the era of pervasive information technology. For example, what kind of knowledge does software constitute? Software is merely a ‘tool’, or a technique, if seen from the old perspective. But construction of software constitutes one of the most important knowledge activities for the connected world. Or, what is the knowledge that knowledge management speaks of and seeks to manage? We will try to look at the range of knowledge activities that take place in and through the Internet to explore whether the contours of a newly emerging conception of knowledge can be discerned. In the process we will attempt to clarify in what sense can the ‘digital information’ be considered to be knowledge. It is our understanding that only when armed with such a clarity on the question of the relationship of knowledge and information, can we approach the question of the significance of the ‘explosion’ of knowledge seen to be occurring with the rise of the new information technologies. We examine whether we can characterize the transition that has taken place in the conceptions of knowledge as a transition from science to information, i.e., as a transition from knowledge as representation to representations and organization of knowledge. In this paper, we examine some of the consequences of this transition on the world of knowledge.

Related papers

The Ontology and Social Dimension of Knowledge: The Internet Quanta Time
guglielmo carchedi

The Ontology and Social Dimension of Knowledge: The Internet Quanta Time, 2022

The increasing saturation of all facets of contemporary capitalism, including human labour, with computer and digital technologies, has given rise to a number of apologetic concepts, variously termed the information society, cognitive capitalism and digital capitalism. These concepts are ideological in nature. They have gained wide acceptance because of the underdevelopment of Marxist epistemology. This article submits a Marxist theory of knowledge accounting for modern developments in the natural sciences from the standpoint of the the materiality of knowledge and of its class content. It deals at length with two important examples: the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and the internet. It shows that the generation of knowledge on the internet is at the same time, a battle for knowledge. It is part of the wider cognitive class struggle between capital and the rationality of labour in its multifarious and ever-changing forms.

View PDFchevron_right
Epistemological Challenges in Knowledge Organization in the Digital Age
Rosa San Segundo

2017

Objectives: Epistemology is the discipline that addresses the fundamentals, criteria, and validation through which knowledge is justified, nuclear discipline in the construction of scientific knowledge, it is a metadiscourse that ascribes itself to order and analyzes science. Epistemology is born in European modernity, as a construction of the symbolic order, which will establish the ways to legitimize knowledge and as a strategic need to control it. In the history of science, culture and in every age, there is always an order that underlies and regulates knowledge (a mute order). This mute order is what enables and conforms the constitution of knowledge, and knowledge in each moment. Thus, scientific knowledge has gone through different stages and has not always been built on the same epistemes, but has been subject to constant epistemological changes. It is necessary, therefore, to analyze the experience of order from the experiences that exist in every culture. We think, know and...

View PDFchevron_right
The Internet as the Present-Day Agora of Information and Knowledge
Wiesław Babik

Geomatics and Environmental Engineering, 2016

View PDFchevron_right
Knowledge Society: Essence, Conceptual Models, and Potential for Implementation
Ayazhan Sagikyzy

2020

This article examines the concept of knowledge society by comparing it to information and postindustrial societies. Despite the similarity of characteristics, these concepts are different and they contain distinctive contents. The article also explores the essence of the categories of “knowledge” and “information” in science and philosophy, in particular, those embedded in the concept of “knowledge society”. Knowledge contains information, but it cannot be entirely reduced to information. The deeply interconnected notions of information and knowledge become constituent features of the new postindustrial stage in the development of the world mega-society. Their relationship is based on the understanding of the fundamental nature of these notions. Modern society is called information society due to the development and wide use of information technologies. Problems and risks arising during the construction of a knowledge society are also studied. Risks are primarily related to the diff...

View PDFchevron_right
Epistemological Metaphors: Orders of Knowledge and Control in the Encyclopedist Myths of Cyberspace
Ron Iphofen

The apparent freeing of information access and knowledge accumulation that was the promise of modern communications technology – the Internet, World Wide Web and mobile digitized telecommunications – heralded the opportunity to attain some of the ideals that have been expounded for liberal education, open and lifelong learning, informed democratic decision-making and overall an increasingly informed populace and participative, well-educated electorate. The prospects for a democratization of knowledge acquisition had broad appeal – de-institutionalizing formal education, enhancing learner choice and 'de-experting' authoritative knowledge sources. Failings of intellectual imagination, political will and insight together with the inappropriate organization of resources have limited such aspirations. Escaping the constraints of formal, institutionalized education and established forms of knowledge 'transfer' may be more difficult to accomplish than has been anticipated. Achieving the promised flexibility and adaptability in human learning may be hampered by the problem of balancing an epistemological dilemma between the efficient management of information and intellectual freedom. This paper addresses the connected issues of the costs and benefits of online encyclopedism, the production and management of intellectual capital within information systems, and the influence of the more latent metaphors for knowledge management which have subtle consequences for social order and social control.

View PDFchevron_right
M P RA The sociological perspective on the knowledge-based society: assumptions, facts and visions
Ebtesam Ahmed

The paper will present the central discourse of the knowledge-based society. Already in the 1960s the debate of the industrial society already raised the question whether there can be considered a paradigm shift towards a knowledge-based society. Some prominent authors already foreseen 'knowledge' as the main indicator in order to displace 'labour' and 'capital' as the main driving forces of the capitalistic development. Today on the political level and also in many scientific disciplines the assumption that we are already living in a knowledge-based society seems obvious. Although we still do not have a theory of the knowledge-based society and there still exist a methodological gap about the empirical indicators, the vision of a knowledge-based society determines at least the perception of the Western societies. In a first step the author will pinpoint the assumptions about the knowledge-based society on three levels: on the societal, on the organisational and on the individual level. These assumptions are relied on the following topics: a) The role of the information and communication technologies; b) The dynamic development of globalisation as an 'evolutionary' process; c) The increasing importance of knowledge management within organisations; d) The changing role of the state within the economic processes. Not only the differentiation between the levels but also the revision of the assumptions of a knowledge-based society will show that the 'topics raised in the debates' cannot be considered as the results of a profound societal paradigm shift. However what seems very impressive is the normative and virtual shift towards a concept of modernity, which strongly focuses on the role of technology as a driving force as well as on the global economic markets, which has to be accepted. Thereforeaccording to the official debate -the successful adaptation of these processes seems the only way to meet the knowledge-based society. Analysing the societal changes on the three levels, the label 'knowledge-based society' can be seen critically. Therefore the main question of Theodor W. Adorno during the 16th Congress of Sociology in 1968 did not loose its actuality. Facing the societal changes he asked whether we are still living in the industrial society or already in a post-industrial state. Thinking about the knowledge-based society according to these two options, this exercise would enrich the whole debate in terms of social inequality, political, economic exclusion processes and at least the power relationship between social groups. 2004). Every day we combine, generate, protect, create, transfer, codify and save knowledge. Knowledge can be found in books, information systems, data systems, organisations, in the new media, in social activities, in cognitive structures, in all kind of products and in social systems.

View PDFchevron_right
The Role of the Internet in Changing Knowledge Ecologies
Mary Kalantzis

2009

Abstract To a greater extent than is often acknowledged, the modern scientific and university-based knowledge system is a creature of the society of the printing press. Until the turn of the twentyfirst century, print was the medium of scholarly communication. Then, quite suddenly at the turn of the twenty-first century, digital text begins to displace print as the primary means of access to the knowledge of academicians. This chapter explores some of the consequences of this change.

View PDFchevron_right
Modern technologies and information as primary elements of the knowledge society (A theoretical dimension of the information society), in: ICTIC - Proceedings in Conference of Informatics and Management Sciences, vol. 3
Anna Sitek

Nowadays we live in the information society, which the specificity and phenomenon is based on ability of using new technology in everyday live. Therefore this work will be an expression of the belief that information society, at the beginning of new millennium, is facing the challenge of global computerization process. And in this case it could be a background for the development of net society.

View PDFchevron_right
New Media and Transformations in Knowledge (I)
Kim Veltman

Schriften zum Kultur- und Museumsmanagement, 2001

View PDFchevron_right
The Future of Knowledge
Danny Hillis

2017

View PDFchevron_right

References (6)

  1. i Nicolas Gulhot : Paideia 2.0. http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/knowledgerules/2008/03/10/paideia-20/ This is a contribution on the blog 'Knowledge Rules' [http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/knowledgerules/], a good site for reflections on our theme. ii Quoted by Mirowski on p. 5
  2. iii Quoted by Mirowski p. 15
  3. iv Philip Mirowski: Machine Dreams: Economics becomes a cyborg science, Cambridge University Press, 2002. v J. David Bolter: Turing's Man: Western Culture In the Computer Age, Penguin, 1986. vi Hans Jonas: "Cybernetics and Purpose" in The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a philosophical biology. vii Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press, 2001. First published in 1944.
  4. viii New Command and the Knowledge Question, Invitation for contributions to a workshop on "Virtuality and Knowledge In Society" held at World Social Forum, Karachi. [http://www.vidyaashram.org/dialogues.html] ix Also see the World Bank report to which Guilhot also refers: Constructing Knowledge Societies http://www- wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2002/11/01/000094946_021022042031
  5. /Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf x See the Edufactory website www.edu-factory.org for contributions to extended round of debates on the 'conflict and transformations of the university'.
  6. xi See a set of attempts at such knowledge dialogues at the Vidya Ashram Website www.vidyaashram.org

Related papers

Configuring Knowledge: an essay on knowledge in the information age
Avinash Jha

E-Learning and Digital Media, 2006

This article attempts to articulate in broad outline the post-industrial regime of knowledge and information and point out its fatal flaw. The Internet is treated as a sociotechnological complex animated by capital and information. The notion of information is interrogated and an alternative notion closer to our everyday intuitions is proposed. Through this idea of information and 'being informed' a bridge is found to ways of talking about knowledge that are valid in different realms. A brief narrative of the development of knowledge in the context of society is provided. This article locates the key to the new regime of knowledge in the normative framework of 'knowledge management' that is reflected in the practices of big corporations and governments. The absence of a model of knowledge quest in this framework is noted, and it is argued that this will eventually undermine this regime. The article concludes by affirming the possibilities of constructive knowledge work.

View PDFchevron_right
Theories of the Information Age
Nico Stehr

The Handbook of Service Industries, 2007

Contents 1. Introduction 2. The origins of information/knowledge age 3. Knowledge society predecessors 4. Knowledge about knowledge 5. Knowledge societies 6. The society of societies 7. The technical state 8. The power of knowledge and information 9. The information society 10. The network society 11. In what kind of society do we live? 12. Concluding remarks Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary This chapter covers theories of the modern information age in a number of steps: First, there is a description of some of the intellectual precursors that give rise to the notion that we are living in an information or knowledge age. Second, an enumeration of some of the perspectives that lead to the idea of modern societies as knowledge or information societies. Third, the usage of the term knowledge, defined as a capacity for action is explicated in greater detail. Fourth, the core sections of the article deal with the theory of the knowledge and the information society as well as some of its competitors such as the network society. The article presents the argument that advanced societies are best conceptualized as knowledge societies, last but not least because economic growth, social change and inequality generally but also the nature of social conflicts and identity formation are increasingly generated by knowledge. That is, knowledge does not merely open up the secrets of nature and society but is the becoming of a world.

View PDFchevron_right
The knowledge society
christine Onyango

The knowledge economy and society stem from the combination of four interdependent elements: the production of knowledge, mainly through scientific research; its transmission through education and training; its dissemination through information and communication technologies; its use in technological innovation. At the same time, new configurations of production, transmission and application of knowledge are emerging, and their effect is to involve a greater number of players, typically in an increasingly internationalized network-driven context.

View PDFchevron_right
The Changing Face of Knowledge
Brad Hokanson

Social Education, 2000

A change is occurring in how people think about who in the organization has credible and valuable knowledge that the organization can use to solve its difficult problems. This shift is a movement away from the idea that knowledge is found only in a select group of experts or``best'' practitioners and toward the idea that useful knowledge is distributed throughout the whole of an organization. Knowledge-sharing systems at Ford, British Petroleum and Lockheed-Martin reflect this change.

View PDFchevron_right
The “information society” and the role of knowledge in society
Marco Boschele

The passage from industrial societies to other forms of societies has been strongly influenced by knowledge/information and technology. This transformation has had an effect on the economy and society in different ways. Some interpretations argue that such developments, based on the principle of rationality, have brought about the improvement of the occupational status of workers, whereas some interpretations argue about the elusive role of information as opposed to knowledge. In a more critical understanding, there are also interpretations which emphasise the inclusive and exclusive character of the network and the irrationality of information which on the political level sees a shift of knowledge from public good to intellectual property. This article looks at the theoretical developments which characterised the different interpretation of the role of knowledge in society.

View PDFchevron_right
580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
© 2025 Academia. All rights reserved