ABSTRACT
Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods triggered violent intellectual and spiritual crises, rebellions, and civil wars. For farmer and domestic servant, industrial work was an opportunity. It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to better oneself substantially without having to emigrate. Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge society. But in many countries, if not most developed countries, they will be the largest single group in the population and the workforce. The knowledge society is an employee society. Traditional society, that is, society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise and the blue-collar manufacturing worker, was not a society of independents. Knowledge workers will be both “employees” who have a “boss” and “bosses” who have “employees.” The knowledge society is a society of organizations in which practically every social task is being performed in and through an organization.
