Article summary for Week 5, Class 7

Rooney, D. (2005). “Knowledge, Economy, Technology and Society: The Politics of Discourse”. Telematics and Informatics. 22(4), pp. 405-422.

Type of article: Empirical research

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Society, WSIS, Public Policy, Technocracy, Knowledge Regiment

Summary (292 words):

This article aims to provide an outlook of how knowledge is treated in contemporary knowledge-related policy documents to audiences, particularly members of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) who concern about equity, preserving culture, justice, human right and so on.

By reviewing literatures, the author found that knowledge is an elusive thing which relates to language, culture, power and development. Knowledge societies are not industrial societies permeated by knowledge, but that knowledge societies are permeated by industrial values, which strongly associate with technology.

The empirical research is undertaken by using computer-based analysis applications (Leximancer and Pajeck) to analyze 1.3 million words corpus of knowledge-related policy documents from local, state, national and supranational institutions throughout the industrialized and industrializing world. The data collection process is based on the assumption that public and economic policies’ objective is to make society more knowledgeable and wise about business, culture and environment.

The results indicate that governance, technology and business are the most prominent clusters. Moreover, business cluster is less meaningfully connected to the other clusters, and no cluster that has knowledge as its central focus. The author concluded that current policy documents reflect the technocratic perception which emphasizes the technological and business aspect, and consider knowledge as a convenient vehicle without considering its nature and its connection with social, cultural and economic realms. The author provides three implications to contribute to WSIS objectives, which are (1) we need to choose what politics we want, the politics of emancipation of the politics of technocracy; (2) WSIS members can develop a better knowledge policy which reflect a social and cultural aspect of knowledge; (3) there is an opportunity for WSIS members to progress toward knowledge society by the discourse about knowledge that is not technocratic and unbalanced.

Review (108 words):

This article targets WSIS members, so it brings a specific perspective of humanitarian and culture aspects of knowledge. The author has carefully explained his methodology, and discussed his finding not only from computer-based generated results, but also from comprehensive examples to underpin his claim.

This article has show the manifest inclination and tendency of treating knowledge as a vehicle to achieve technological and business goals in public and economic policy documents. However, the author has not provided a strong evidence to change that inclination. Therefore, this article is appropriate for WSIS members who concern about humanity, culture and social network, but it is not convincing for other audiences.

By Minh Pham - Knowledge Regiment