KNOWLEDGE - BASED NEW ECONOMY AND SOCIETY: WITH REGARDS TO THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT

Abstract

If knowledge-based economy is the actual
secret of modern social development, then
there is no dilemma regarding which production
factor is dominant in today’s structure and
composition of the sources of economic activity
and progress. The information is a part of
knowledge and cognition that covers a much
wider area of social reality than an aggregate
economic activity as measured by Gross Domestic
Product. Once new theoretical phrases
such as “Post-industrial society”, “computer
era” (Daniel Belle), or even “post-capitalist
society” (P. Drucker) are simply different reflections
of the same idea and reality.
Basic message of those theories was that material
and energy-demanding operations, scope
of material and material technologies were not
the crucial factor for growth and development,
but quite the opposite. In today’s economic system,
in constantly decreasing material exchange
a continuously increasing market value is added.
It is mainly achieved by knowledge, but also
by training people to generate, transmit and use
it. Technology in the modern sense represents a
combination of craft, skill, and science, i.e. applied
knowledge in the techniques of production
and consumption, as well as on all forms of social
life. They are now increasingly based on the
dispersion of knowledge, including science, and
less on sheer skill and materials. The so-called post-communist countries,
which are still considered as being “in a transition
process” to a new, different system of
production and social values, could overcome
the most important step in such great transition
by understanding, acquisition and institutional
organization economically based on
knowledge.