Social and Technological Innovations for a Knowledge Society

Knowledge building--the creation of knowledge as a social product--is something that scientists, scholars and employees of highly innovative companies do for a living. We have demonstrated that these same activities can be integral to schooling, grades one to post graduate, and extensible to a variety of health care and workplace settings. The central purpose of CSILE (Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments), and now second-generation Knowledge Forum®--and the Knowledge Society Network that it enables-is to democratize knowledge. The most radical possibilities arise from restructuring the flow of information within and between organizations so as to allow participants to work continuously at the edges of their competence and to marshal high levels of “collective cognitive responsibility" and "collective intelligence." The ubiquity of such human capabilities, rather than ubiquitous computing, information access, and content delivery, will define a knowledge society.