ABSTRACT
To address what ‘knowledge society’ refers to means understanding how data is embedded in society and in what ways we can view society as a learning phenomenon. Society is, in many ways, shaped by the way it learns — how it can organise ways to produce goods and services and to consume those goods and services. This process of production and consumption requires knowledge and cultural interpretation and, thus, social life is defined through production, consumption and interpretation. There are different domains of knowledge, some of which are closer to production and consumption while others are more esoteric. The meaning of knowledge is discussed further in the next chapter. Nonetheless, knowledge is created socially and, over time, the production and consumption of knowledge has changed. This chapter discusses the ways in which knowledge has been produced historically and how it is produced in contemporary society.
