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EUROPEAN VISIONS FOR THE KNOWLEDGE
AGE
A Quest for New Horizons in
the Information Society
- Paul T Kidd (Ed.)
- ISBN 978-1-901864-08-3 (Paperback)
- Price: £19.99/€29.99/US$35.99
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European Visions for the Knowledge
Age provides a glimpse into some radical, and sometimes controversial,
European perspectives on the future of the information society.
The contributors address what could be, what should be, and sometimes
warn about what should not be the future. Edited by Paul T Kidd,
a researcher and writer with long experience in the field of
manufacturing futures, the contributions have been written with
a wide audience in mind. Both the technically and the non-technically
oriented will find elements in the contributions that will challenge
their world views and their taken for granted assumptions.
The contents are organised
into five self-contained parts: European Manufacturing 2035;
Novel Perspectives for Networked Intelligence; The Future of
Body and Mind; New Directions for Power and Participation; and
The Distant Horizon. Each section brings together a number of
essays under a broad theme relevant to the future. Each section
can be read independently.
The first part, European Manufacturing
2035, examines how in the future, information and knowledge is
likely to become linked to the physical world in unexpected ways.
It illustrates radically new systems of production, product-service
systems, managed consumption, and manufacture based on micro
particles and the atomic level. These could radically change
patterns of consumption, and help move society towards a more
sustainable future.
The second part, Novel Perspectives
for Networked Intelligence, explores what the world will be like
once computers have disappeared from view and information processing
and exchange become part of an everyday networked life. What
will be the features of such networked systems? Will such ambient
systems be technology-centred, reducing human roles to insignificant
acts, or will they be truly symbiotic, and enhance distinctive
human abilities? How will people use these systems, and how will
digital ownership be ensured? What are the implications and scenarios
for future living? These are some the questions that this part
of the book addresses.
The third part, The Future
of Body and Mind, considers the way that health and wellbeing
determine the degree to which people can live fully in the world.
Information and knowledge-based technologies are playing an increasing
role in peoples' health, representing an increasing linkage between
the body, mind and technology. Intelligent biomedical clothes,
preventative medicine, body repair, intelligent drugs, may all
lead to new heights of being healthier than healthy. At the same
time, new possibilities of mind-computer interfaces could enable
people to control machines through thought.
In the fourth part of the book,
New Directions for Power and Participation, important global
issues such as the knowledge economy, globalisation, and democracy,
are considered. The section explores some of the ways information
and knowledge technologies may influence these global issues
in the future. Democracy, the cornerstone of European society,
is dependent on how peoples' participation in decision making
is enabled. Intangible assets are changing the way trade is considered.
Change and complexity are seen as inevitable. What are some of
the prognoses for the future?
The fifth and final part, The
Distant Horizon looks further into the future. Thinking about
where society is headed and why, is important, but not necessarily
easy. Past choices and prevailing attitudes both determine the
direction in which the future unfolds, for better or worse. The
essays in the final section are perhaps the most speculative
and questioning in this respect, but they also relate back to
some of the topics taken up in contributions in preceding sections.
Each author writes about a view of the possible futures, towards
which society could, or should be moving, and what needs to be
done to ensure that the distant horizon is potentially a happy
and meaningful place. |
