Public Awareness in the Knowledge Society

Tapio Varis
University of Tampere

Two issues dominate in the creation of the global knowledge society: the exponential increase in the quantity of information and communication, and knowledge becoming the most important resource in the global economy. The process is accelerated by technology which in turn favours simplified answers to most complicated social, cultural, and religious problems which arise as a consequence to the change of the value systems. From the human point of view one of the main questions could well be defining of one's own individual and social identity in the rapidly changing media and communication environment where time and space are claimed to have lost their traditional meanings - "space has vanished and time ceased to exist" (McLuhan). basic understanding of knowledge and objectivity has changed, morale, ethics and the sense of social justice increasingly confused, and the social security threatened.

The period of transition that we are now living differs from the periods of change of older dominant media. Traditional print and electronic media were introduced within a period of reasonable length and when we moved to the active use of a new form of communication, we could also have a rough estimation of the economic and social impacts of it, and train new professionals for the media and support people for the institutions. Now different forms of communication and technologies integrate and converge with a speed that hardly anyone has the time or ability to assess all of the consequences, real possibilities, or problems.

In broad terms we can follow the French philosopher Regis Debray (1995) who divided media culture in three eras after writing, printing and the audiovisual. Logosphere was the regime of the idol, with the principle of its efficacy being the presence. The continent of origin and city of transmission was Asia-Byzantium, between antiguity and Christianity. The truth was theological in nature.

Graphosphere was the regime of art, dominant since printing to the emergence of colour television. The principle was representation and the center was Europe-Florence (between Christianity and modernity). The truth had also an aesthetic nature.

Videosphere is the regime of the visual. The principle is simulation, the image is viewed. Its centre is America - New York (between modern and post-modern). The nature of the truth is economic. The centre of money is also the centre of the world media.

However, the media and educational institutions related to the creation of public awareness are much dominated by technical people only. As Nobel-economist Kenneth Boulding once said, the economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits." In other words, the mere increase of information does not bring meaning or wisdom. We face complicated problems. One is the global nature of markets, the second is the universality of values, and the third is the uniqueness of forms. Languages, cultures, individuals, characteristics, and random chances are unique. When we have lost values, the global techno-culture captures uniqueness and transforms it into sameness.

Instead of making different languages and habits enrichments to people in their lives, they become in the global techno-structure barriers and factors of inefficiency. However, for people's security and identity it is necessary to emphasize the importance of resisting fatalistic globalization by emphasizing values that go above economy and politics. The study of complexity as a phenomenon has brought science closer than ever to art even more that the Renaissance. Knowledge has gone through a cycle from non-specialism to specialism and compartmentalization, and now back to interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. New Renaissance education requires new approaches to holistic thinking in order to promote such public awareness which reflects better the era of the global knowledge society.