Is Knowledge-Based Society a Relevant Strategy for Civil Society?

Abstract

Governments today tend to see the importance of knowledge, information, education and solidarity through instrumentalism. They are elements of modernity that have a selective use value. Modernization has also increasingly been reduced to technology that is supposed to change the structure of industries and to provide citizens with new means of social cohesion and participation. Both the ideas of the information society and civil society, however, aim at strengthening the competitive elements of efficiency and control, where the collective capacity for action is limited. On the political level, the knowledge-based society has been transformed into the information society, where the techno-economic paradigm is expected to function in a socially neutral and progressive way. Due to a rise of new hierarchies and exclusions it has become necessary to ask why efforts for developing a socially inclusive information society have not been successful. Due to conflicting goals between instrumentalism and democracy, the distinction between the state and civil society is unclear. The partners are also uncertain about their roles and responsibilities. To develop the information society towards an inclusive society, the concept of collective responsibility should be redefined, otherwise the danger of growing neo-exclusionism increases. Aside collective responsibility, the conditions of collective morality should also be discussed.