Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The first part of this article reviews the literature on the knowledge society as well as related concepts like post-industrial society and information society. In the second part the thesis is put forward that the concept of knowledge society no longer designates a trend of social development, but characterizes the social reality of advanced societies in a certain perspective. Knowledge as cultural capital has become a productive force, a major sector of the economy, a power resource both on the national and the international level, and finally the basis of life-chances for the individual and of social ranking. But knowledge society has also produced its own problems: zero growth of financial resources for science and education, overcapacities in military R and D, new dependencies both in the private sector (on experts) and in the international sector (North-South opposition). The future perspectives of knowledge society are ambivalent. The author perceives the nightmare of a registration society on the one hand, and a new Enlightenment on the other.
Gernot Böhme (Mon,) studied this question.