we don’t make mistakes; we have happy accidents
–Bob Ross
I play a game called League of Legends. It’s a massive multiplayer battle arena (MOBA) in which five players face off against five other players in a virtual environment. There’s teamwork, competitiveness, and the occasional communicated aggression that these games are known for. One of the characters I play is named Ivern. He’s a giant tree-person (imagine an Ent from Lord of the Rings, or Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy) who wanders around in-game and sounds eerily similar to Bob Ross. For those of you who have never had the opportunity of watching Bob Ross, he’s a treasure. Imagine Mr. Rogers who is perpetually happy and is proud of every single thing you do.
I bring up Bob Ross because of his “happy accident” quote, as it is quite fitting in describing coming across Stephen’s interpretation of the same three readings I chose to read this past weekend. Stephen’s synthesis involved discussing the potential of his city of Atlanta, GA, as a future world knowledge city (I’ll get there in a moment). While I can’t comment on the legitimacy of Atlanta qualifying as a world knowledge city (even though I’ve been once; that city has some amazing spicy fried chicken) nor his lived experiences, I find it interesting as to how he was able to conceptualize a framework for what an informational city could be, as well as its place within a knowledge society. These phrases knowledge society and informational city are not mine. Rather, they come from peer-reviewed sources which seek to reconstruct society from a knowledge management perspective.
An information society is one which evolves through the evaluation, description, justification, and application of social change (Rule & Besen, 2008). That is, a contemporary social construct which houses irreconciliation, enlightenment, and science as facets of social life. While some contest that knowledge itself (be its availability or reformulation) hindered the growth of contemporary society, Rule and Besen argue that information played a critical role in the resurgence of modern society. These authors describe facets of modern society (e.g., information capital, information workers) which contribute toward the systemic makeup of social relationships in the present day as well as how these facets are the largest portion of our thinking, discourse, and capital. Considering how much we share information with others in mediated settings, it is pretty justifiable to argue how information plays a critical role in the ways in which we communicate, construct our identities, resolve conflicts, and conduct business. Thus, I would argue that an information society can be simply contemporary society, regardless of locale.
An informational city is one which encompasses technological advancement, knowledge preservation (i.e., copyright-based industries), and creativity (Stock, 2011). Although this concept could be assumed to be precise, an informational city can span entire locales and regions which could include cities. While knowledge is centered in an informational city, these locales have become developed through the implementation of knowledge.
A knowledge economy can be defined as “production and services based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of technological and scientific advance as well as equally rapid obsolescence” (Powell & Snellman, 2004). This is a more technical and precise interpretation of the status quo, the same status quo that Stephen describes. If we are to assume that technological advancement is a hallmark quality of a city, then locales such as San Jose, New York City, and Chicago could be examples of a knowledge economy. These larger cities were intentionally built to foster technological and societal advancement, and still continue to do so.
I get that this post has focused on conceptualizing informational cities, knowledge economies, and information societies, but we cannot necessarily claim to participate in the knowledge creation process without understanding our physical place in the grand sphere of knowledge management. When we first hypothesize a set of conceptualizations which describe the locales we participate in, then we can differentiate portions of our world based on how we have structured it, regardless of our structural and historical intentions.
Perhaps this post shall serve as a springboard for a future post of the role of knowledge within western society. I’m not too sure.
Song du Jour: Pabllo Vittar – Então Vai (Feat. Diplo)
References
Powell, W. W., & Snellman, K. (2004). The knowledge economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 199-220. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100037
Rule, J. B., & Besen, Y. (2008). The once and future information society. Theory and Society, 37(4), 317-342. doi:10.1007/s11186-007-9049-6
Stock, W. G. (2011). Informational cities: Analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society. Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, 62(5), 963-986. doi:10.1002/asi.21506
wil. 
During my readings for the paper, I came across discussions of a knowledge-intensive society more often than I came across information society (and I really did not encounter information city at all). I agree that the Silicon Valley area is highly knowledge intensive and that the networking aspects of a knowledge intensive society offer a significant opportunity to work on less tangible things, such as social capital. I find that living in the valley as I do, there are celebrities that have nothing to do with Hollywood and much to do with pushing high tech along (Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc.) and when attending speaker series at some venue, when I introduce myself, many people seem to be asking questions similar to “how many degrees of separation are there between us on LinkedIn”? It’s a bit eerie. Social Network Analysis will be the SEO job of the future, I think.
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Matthew, that’s interesting. What kind of impact do you think that SNA way of thinking will have on community? Do you think that it’s a necessary part of an information city — to have people think like that?
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Interesting question. I think a lot of it is happening now, right under our noses. Sales people use LinkedIn to find the shortest network route to someone to whom they want to pitch their offering. HR people use LinkedIn to find candidates that are both recommended and like other they have worked with. Mathematicians talk about having an Erdös number (google it) – I used to work with a woman who was a ‘3’; I guess that might make me a ‘4’ but none of our joint papers were academically published so maybe nothing at all – and, ultimately, are we not familiar with the phrase, “I know someone who can help”?
So directly answer your question: Yes, I think it’s a necessary part of an information society.
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I recently finished the Rule and Bessen piece and I just kept thinking over and over again about how many of the ideologies intellectuals have in terms of the beneficent implications of more information are not applicable to reality. The authors touch on this in terms of public affairs and my favorite quote: “Insofar as real social systems are better described by this second model, more information will be ept to furnish more weapons for conflict, rather than more resources resolving it.” I really appreciated the critical approach this piece took on a subject that is often glorified. What did you think about Golovin’s suggestion of a 4th branch of government?
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