Previous Fora / 2003
Speakers
Information-based society and knowledge
New Approaches to Knowledge for an Information-Based Society
Professor Peter A. Freeman
Assistant Director, National Science Foundation, USA
Abstract
Science and the technology it supports have been among the primary ways that knowledge has been created for some years. As we move into a truly information-based society, there is a recursive effect taking place in which science and technology are now able to create new knowledge based on the use and flow of information created in more traditional ways. This effect will be briefly described and illustrated in science and information discovery in a complex society. We hypothesize that this effect will be very important and, in the case of its application to societal matters, potentially very problematic.