Control in Knowledge Economies

Abstract

The problem of proper control in society is a complicated issue. It is complicated by the fact that three different types of control exist in a society: control in socio-technical systems, control in managed systems, and control in self-organizing systems. We apply the theory of societal dynamics to address this complication and to understand the issues about societal control in knowledge-based economies. As witnessed in the disruptions of the twentieth century, all industrial societies can be plunged into instability—due to economic problems when socio-technical systems fail to provide proper functionality for a society—and this was dramatically illustrated in the twenty-first century by the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis. Then the world’s financial socio-technology system stopped functioning—banks stopped lending to each other and all financial transactions ceased. This triggered economic recession in different nations of the world. Thus it is important to understand the factors for societal stability or instability in the evolution of technology in knowledge-based economies. This paper is divided into three parts: (a) summary of the history of a disruptive societal event, (b) analysis of the event in a societal perceptual space, and (c) analysis of the event as issues of societal control.