Mass technologies and ignorance in the society of knowledge

An advanced expression of culture and of social evolution, contemporary technology, which increasingly incorporates endless quantities of scientific knowledge, has acquired a decisive power on human existence and on the natural system supporting it. It has the ability, now demonstrated, to attain a vast improvement in the quality of life – if one can benefit from proper amounts of it – and to prolong life for decades. On the other hand, its results may also go in a totally opposite direction, either against ourselves or our descendants, or other populations. A similar theory is true for life-supporting systems. Technology may keep them in a good state as much as it may ultimately jeopardise them. These two things do not match, neither in space, nor in time. The considerable improvements technology has provided to us, in this part of the world, may contribute to worsen, already in current times, the life of other populations, as much as the enhancement in the quality and in the duration of life enjoyed by present generations may be paid by a worse existence for future generations, precisely because we have compromised these life-supporting systems. Considering the dimension of the stakes, one may have to wonder whether we should fully commit ourselves to understanding thoroughly the power of science-driven technology; its origins, its long-term effects; what possibilities there are to govern it and harness it more effectively for human purposes. Or whether we should implement more democracy to govern technology and the science it incorporates, and at the same time, to attempt to guide technology towards new uses to improve the functioning of democracy, starting from the decision-making system within organisations. Finally, whether present technology and science, with their repercussions on life-supporting systems, are actually self-sustainable. The tasks implied by this question – more practically, the technology and science policies that are to be devised and implemented – are currently opposed, in terms of ideas, by a reductive conception, improvidently appropriated by politics, of what a “society of knowledge” is; and by the underestimation of the immeasurable ignorance that presently surrounds technology and science in the attempt of understanding the consequences of their actions and creations. Whereas, in terms of real interests, hurdles derive from an economic improvement and a political use of scientific and technological knowledge, both interfering with its acknowledgement as a global public asset. Many sources now guarantee that we live in a society of knowledge. Pundits say that the society of knowledge is one with unmatchable properties, and one never previously recorded. The society of knowledge, they say, is characterised by much more innovative novelties. Scientific and technological knowledge has allegedly permeated all the fields of the social structure. They also claim that politics is more and more governed by it: this is the time of policies “founded on evidence”. Reforms of the health system, infrastructures, biotechnologies, energy policies, civil defence, environment: the choices related to these fields are designed and deliberated in the light of all the scientific knowledge available to us. As regards the economy, knowledge has become a productive factor, inextricably linked to the traditional factors – labour and fixed capital (machines, equipment) –, so that it provides momentum to them both. Thus, knowledge has acquired a primary-factor role in innovation, in the economic growth, in the international competitiveness of the enterprises and of the national economy. Through the interaction with labour and capital in networks that extend inside and outside enterprises – involving also university research centres –, knowledge production has been industrialised, whilst the industrial production has become scientific-oriented. The once labour-intensive industries have become