ABSTRACT
The last few decades have seen a number of important changes in the way in which western societies view ‘knowledge’ and therefore in what is expected of the institutions for which knowledge and learning are core business. Although the terms ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ (Drucker, 1994) have become a kind of journalistic shorthand for a profoundly complex shift in world-view, they nevertheless serve to encapsulate this new ideological context. The new status of knowledge in society is related in complex ways to developments in the technologies of knowledge that this book is concerned with. No attempt to understand the impact and uses of learning technologies can therefore ignore the powerful mutual influences of knowledge, society and technology in the western world.
