Welcome to the post‐industrial society

A number of countries in the West, the United States among them, are now passing from an industrial into a post‐industrial phase of society. The change primarily affects the socio‐technical dimensions of society and is generally independent of the nature of political change or political structure. The main difference between an industrial and a post‐industrial society is that the sources of innovation in a post‐industrial society are derived increasingly from the codification of theoretical knowledge, rather than from “random” inventions. Every society in human history has been dependent upon knowledge, but it is only in recent years that the accumulation and distribution of theoretical knowledge has come to the fore as a directive force of innovation and change.

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