‘Knowledge Society’ as Academic Concept and Stage of Development - A Conceptual and Historical Review

In the past twenty to thirty years, visionary terms which have been incorporated into public speeches, academic writings, and day-to-day journalism such as ‘knowledge society', ‘information society' and ‘knowledge-based economy' announced a future in which social and economic development is increasingly based on knowledge. While the concepts ‘knowledge society' and ‘information society' were mainly developed by academics from Japan, the USA and Europe, the concept ‘knowledge-based economy' was proposed somewhat later by international organizations such as the OECD. From there – although far from complete – all three concepts entered the national politics of many countries which aimed at the active creation of better futures. Governments worldwide adopted the general idea of knowledge society as well as the manifold terminology originating from the scientific community. However, the theoretical concepts and definitions of knowledge society supporting this vision were hardly taken into account. Diagram 1 illustrates the overall focus and line of argument of this chapter: the conceptual and actual construction of knowledge society. While the creation of the concepts was mainly driven by the international scientific community, the construction of knowledge societies as stages of development has been pushed by national governments as well as (although not forming the focus of this chapter) actors from the private sector, the media and civil society groups. In redrawing this process of conceptual and actual construction, I follow Berger and Luckmann's approach of the social construction of reality and understand ‘knowledge society' as it is defined by the social actors creating it