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2 Trust in ICT

4 Vision and technology trends toward knowledge society

4.1 Vision toward knowledge society

History of knowledge
The term "knowledge society" and "knowledge worker" are used for the first time by Peter Drucker in his
1959 book "Landmarks of Tomorrow" [3]. Since then, knowledge society has become increasingly important
in the business world. In addition, the idea of knowledge society is inseparable from studies on information
society. The notion of information society realizes the new economy based on scientific knowledge and
changes in the workplace. The information society is based on technical breakthroughs to handle massive
data through the network. The information and communication technology (ICT) removes main technical
obstacles to achieve the information society. For a deeper understanding of knowledge society, the history
that the humankind has thought, invented, created, considered, and perfected from the beginning of
civilization into the twenty-first century is highlighted by Charles Van Doren [4]. The effects of social
networking and online connectivity though the ICT infrastructure are interestingly imagined to make the
future knowledge society.
At the 15th ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 1999, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
was created to develop the information society. During the first phase of WSIS, the debates on the
information society were mainly focused on the ICT infrastructure. The concept of knowledge societies is
more all-embracing and more conducive, which simply "opens the way to humanization of the process of
globalization". The notion of knowledge is central to changes of education, science, culture, and
communication. Knowledge is recognized as the object of huge economic, political and cultural stakes, to the
point of justifiably qualifying the societies currently emerging.

Compared with the invisible hand by Adam Smith in his 1776 book "Wealth of Nations" (regarded as the
father of economics), knowledge is an invisible public good, available to each and every individual. Knowledge
fosters universality, liberty, and equality as a concept of openness [5]. Nobody should be excluded from the
knowledge society. Young people play a major role in using new technologies of knowledge in their daily
lives. To accelerate knowledge production, information processing and communication have built a
cumulative and recursive loop of innovation among people. The creativity and innovation will play a major
part in knowledge societies. It leads to promoting new types of collaborative processes to achieve genuine
knowledge societies.

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