Coming of the Global Knowledge Society: Prospects and Promises

Abstract

Information is becoming one of the vital necessities (if not a basic need) in the contemporary world. With globalization and the growing interdependence of human life, reliable and easy access to information becomes crucial for people who have to adapt their livelihood strategies to continuously changing conditions.  Access to information is a prerequisite for survival in the modern world that is increasingly characterized by global economic and political dynamics. Access alone is, however, not sufficient.  Making adequate use of information (which involves critically organizing a set of given data), transforming such a string of information with the data (again, critically and purposefully organizing these with value-added statements) in order to use it productively at the end -- is just a simplified form of a chain, of what might be called a “global knowledge society”. Creating knowledge requires a set of critical competence, continuum of creativity and capturing emerging opportunity. Being empowered involves being capacitated to making meaningful use of information in view of improving and sustaining one’s livelihood. Empowerment, therefore, is a simple prerequisite for “knowledge-path” and sustainable development as the fundamental paradigm shift for emergence of a global knowledge society.  At the current state of challenges and time of deepening global economic crisis when the overall welfare of many countries is at the risk of long recession and declining standards of living the “knowledge-path” could and should provide certain viable solutions.