Knowledge society arguments revisited in the semantic technologies era

In the light of high profile governmental and international efforts to realise the knowledge society, I review the arguments made for and against it from a technology standpoint. I focus on Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) with applications on a large scale and in open-ended environments like the world wide web and its ambitious extension, the semantic web. I argue for a greater role of social networks in a knowledge society and I explore the recent developments in mechanised trust, knowledge certification and speculate on their blending with traditional societal institutions. These form the basis of a sketched roadmap for enabling technologies for a knowledge society.