ABSTRACT
A global competition for knowledge is driving change in Asian markets and societies. Just as finance capital once ruled in industrial society, Daniel Bell recognized the leading role of information and knowledge in the post-industrial society (1973; Kumar 1995). The forms of knowledge may be familiar, but the linking of knowledge in new communication channels is indeed revolutionary. So too is the global reorganization of manufacture where knowledge is controlled and shared largely within global value chains of production and marketing. Fruin wrote of a novel and very fluid type of “network society,” paralleling the electronic network of multiple nodes without a permanent center and no longer bounded by geographical setting. Networks might be seen as “sets of independent actors who cooperate frequently for mutual advantage and create a community of practice (1998: 4).” Knowledge surging in global streams across national borders makes possible new types of communities of practice.
