Global Webs of Knowledge

Abstract

Knowledge is globally institutionalized as three differentiated and interpenetrating social institutions: education as a social institution for transmitting humankind's existing knowledge, science as a social institution for creating new knowledge that becomes a global public good, and technology as a social institution for creating new knowledge that becomes privately appropriated. These three social institutions are governed by a global regime that is anchored in a web of organizations that through an epistemic community of analysts of knowledge, formulates and promulgates policies for knowledge. In education, the regime promotes transmission of existing knowledge to youth through schooling and also through the movement of students around the world. In science, the regime supports creation and diffusion of new knowledge around the world through open publication. In technology, the regime promotes private appropriation of new knowledge through property rights in the form of patenting, which is increasingly global.