Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the know
Knowledge, Uncertainty and Contingency
Knowledge, Uncertainty and Contingency
The growth of knowledge and the growing societal importance of knowledge force society to confront at least two contingencies directly linked to the enlargement of modern knowledge. There is, (1) as the case of risk research and communication of risks has shown, the contingency of knowledge itself, and (2) the heightened contingency of social relations as the result of the growing penetration of knowledge into the social sphere. In combination these contingencies result, especially in the sense of the growing role of unanticipated events, in an acceleration of history. And as history gains momentum, the future is much harder to visualize and anticipate than ever before. It is now more difficult to imagine than even Daniel Bell still ...
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