Disorganized Knowledge or New Forms of Governance

Abstract

The theme of this paper is a paradoxical problem threatening to afflict modern knowledge societies: how abundance of knowledge can turn into a deficit of knowledge at the same time. Within debates on globalisation, a constantly debated issue relates to the problem of finding new mechanisms of governing societies no longer bounded by the authority of the traditional bureaucratic state. Such concerns typically focus on the weaknesses of national politics and legal mechanisms in controlling the movement of capital in an unrestricted world economy. The point of this discussion is to focus on yet another complex of issues related to the rise of global knowledge societies. Intrinsic to such societies, not the least because of the explosive growth of ICT, is the abundance of communication, information and of unrestricted knowledge. Such abundance not only generates rapid and disorganised movements of capital flows across the world, but, and this is the point of this presentation, it also leads to rapid and disorganised flows of communication and understanding as far as the sciences are concerned.