2012
The estimation that current media revolution
will cause a metamorphosis of what is usually laballed as "knowledge
society" seems to be unopposed. We may assume that the form, in which
a society creates, stores and disseminates knowledge, will change
significantly as well as the form of knowledge access and social
memory. But we do not know which consequenses this transition will
have on crucial social aspects like political and ecomnomic dominance,
on autonomy or heteronomy of individuals, on marketisation of knowldge
or free access, on aspects of emancipacion or opression. Looking back
in history it seems to be clear that any structural change of society
with significant political and economic caesuras are obliged to social
structure of knowledge and the way in which knowledge is handled,
which can be described as "knowledge culture". Any society has to
emerge forms and techniques to proceed important decisions regulating
its knowledge: Which knowledge should be kept, which can be
deleted. And in which form this could be done? What kind of regulative
ideas, ideologies, interests etc. will influence the kind of
production, disseminiation of and access to knowledge. I refer to the
concrete social specificity or historical variation in which a society
handles its knowledge as the "Formation of Knowledge Society" or as
the CULTURE OF
KNOWLEDGE. Analyzing this complexe interdependency of different
social, economical, political and cultural factors SOCIOCYBERNETICS seems to be
beneficial in many respects. Sociocybernetics is the application of
systems thinking and cybernetic principles in sociology and other
social sciences in order to analyse social phenomena regarding their
complexity and dynamics in an interdisciplinary
way.