Abstract
Knowledge has become the vital economic resource, especially as the basis of economic growth; but knowledge also is force in other social institutions of modern society, including of course, in governance or the world of work. It also is the case that certified scientific and technical knowledge claims have become the source of many of the social, political and personal problems confronting the economy, the state and the communities of modern societies worldwide. After all it was science and technology that discovered key global challenges of the modern age like ozone depletion, climate change, genetic engineering and the profound transformation of work. What will the future of knowledge societies look like?
Our contribution is based on numerous publications surrounding the theoretical concept of the knowledge society and the phenomenon of knowledge, beginning in 1984 (see Böhme and Stehr 1984). A number but not all relevant publications are listed in the bibliography (for a recent discussion of the concept of the knowledge society see Stehr 2016).
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Stehr, N., Ruser, A. (2017). Knowledge Society, Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Democracy. In: Carayannis, E., Campbell, D., Efthymiopoulos, M. (eds) Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06091-0_16-1
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