The Knowledge of Culture and the Culture of Knowledge: Implications for Theory, Policy and Practice

229 Pages·2014·3.954 MB·English

by  Elias G. Carayannis, Ali Pirzadeh (auth.)

The Knowledge of Culture and the Culture of Knowledge
Also by Elias G. Carayannis
THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF TECHNOLOGICAL LEARNING:
Learning to Learn-How-To-Learn in High Tech Firms and its Impact on
the Strategic Management of Knowledge, Innovation and Creativity
Within and Across Firms
IDEA MAKERS AND IDEA BROKERS IN HIGH TECHNOLOGY
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Fee vs. Equity Compensation for Intellectual
Venture Capitalists
(with Todd Juneau)
THE STORY OF MANAGING PROJECTS: A Global, Cross-Disciplinary
Collection of Perspectives
(with Young Kwak and Frank Anbari)
MODE 3: KNOWLEDGE CREATION, DIFFUSION AND USE IN
INNOVATION NETWORKS AND KNOWLEDGE CLUSTERS:
A Comparative Systems Approach Across the US, Europe and Asia
(with David Campbell)
e-DEVELOPMENT TOWARD THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: Leveraging
Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship for ‘Smart Development’
(with Caroline Sipp)
GLOBAL AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: Transatlantic Public–Private
Partnerships for Research and Technology Development
(with Jeffrey Alexander)
RE-DISCOVERING SCHUMPETER: Creative Destruction Perspectives on
Creativity, Invention and Innovation Diffusion and Impact
(with Chris Ziemnowiscz)
LEADING AND MANAGING CREATORS, INVENTORS AND INNOVATORS:
The Art, Science and Craft of Fostering Creativity, Triggering Invention,
and Catalyzing Innovation
(with Jean-Jacques Chanaron)
Also by Ali Pirzadeh
INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER ACROSS
EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES: New Tools of Global Governance
(with Elias G. Carayannis and Denisa Popescu)
THE REVIEW OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES:
Knowledge and Institutions
(with Leila Asgari)
TRANSITION IN ROMANIA: Between Myth and Reality
THE IMPACT OF THE ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM IN ROMANIA
The Knowledge of Culture
and the Culture of
Knowledge
Implications for Theory, Policy
and Practice
Elias G. Carayannis
and
Ali Pirzadeh
© Elias G. Carayannis and Ali Pirzadeh 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-4039-4243-2
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-52133-3 ISBN 978-1-137-38352-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137383525
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Contents
List of Figures and Boxes vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Today’s Prevailing Culture 8
2.1 Formal Definitions of Culture 8
2.2 The Nature of the Prevailing Culture 15
3 Information Culture 29
3.1 Information Society 29
3.2 Knowledge, Information and Data Conceptual Model 37
3.3 Definition of Information 43
3.3.1 Etymology of Information 47
3.3.2 Natural Science: a Formal Approach 56
3.3.3 Formal Definition of Information:
a Scientific Approach 59
3.3.4 Informal Definition of Information:
a Social Science Approach 73
4 Culture of Mass Society 78
4.1 Mutiny of a New Arrangement 78
4.2 Precarious State of Public Mind: Being and Becoming 85
4.3 The Culture of Information 90
4.3.1 Media and Communication: War in Iraq 92
4.3.2 Mass Media and Journalism 98
4.3.3 Exercise of Power 103
4.3.4 Mass Information Diet 108
5 Prevailing Culture and Narratives for Constructing
Reality: Case Study of Economic Crisis 111
5.1 Impacts of the Prevailing Culture 111
5.2 The 2007 Economic Crisis 114
5.2.1 The US Bailout Plan 114
5.2.2 Underpinning Cause(s) and Official
Narratives describing the Crisis 117
5.2.3 Lessons Learned or Lessons that Need Learning 124
5.3 E conomic Crisis Explained through the
Lens of the Prevailing Culture 132
v
vi Contents
6 Conclusions 143
Notes and References 149
Index 217
List of Figures and Boxes
Figures
2.1 Three complementary levels of culture 17
3.1 Knowledge stages 41
4.1 NY Times coverage of the Iraq War: usage of ‘war in Iraq’
versus ‘invasion of Iraq’ 95
4.2 NY Times coverage of the war in Iraq: most common terms
used to explain the war 96
5.1 NY Times coverage of economic crisis: commonly used
terms with negative connotations 133
Boxes
2.1 Standardization of culture 19
3.1 The notion of information society 31
4.1 An example of media narratives 88
4.2 Another example of media narratives 89
5.1 Role of a bank 130
5.2 Examples of changes in what is morally acceptable 136
5.3 Bank fraudulent actions 137
vii
1
Introduction
Culture dictates our conduct based on the value system that it pro-
motes. Culture makes us who we are and has a direct impact on how
we behave because it defines, promotes and values conducts which we
are all keen to pursue. The marks of today’s prevailing culture should
be viewed as an unprecedented threat faced by mankind because of the
structured persuasion tools innate to the system that create limitless
possibilities of realities that enable man to reject traditions and move
from one vanguard to another in pursuit of something that is not real.
The current cultural trend promotes the notion of individualism and
free will that is manifested into self-interest, and self-gratification. It
creates a standardized set of values and beliefs activities that inherently
drive the society towards desired objectives. Under these circumstances,
the adverse effect of alternative behavior should not be considered a
cause of malfunction in society. We argue that today prevailing culture
should be viewed as taking the individual away from the collective
sense of belonging to a community. On the one side this creates an
anomic state of public mind and on the other side it creates fragmented
communities that lead to disintegrated service of government and
decision-making.
In this book, Culture of Information refers to a cultural structure com-
posed of institutional settings and organizations that drive people to
consume and produce information rather than being informed consum-
ers and producers. Culture of Information is a mass culture produced
from information dissemination via broadcasting.
Information Culture is a culture in which information and knowl-
edge are the crucial variables of the society. Since there is no limit
to accessing information, it becomes a kind of open-ended culture
where advancements in technology can unproblematically replace
1
2 The Knowledge of Culture and the Culture of Knowledge
the nuanced relations between people and transforms folks into indi-
viduals that are likely to live in a virtual world, and hence not to get
too closely acquainted with the reality of their surroundings. Thus,
wiring people through information is an effective way of regulat-
ing the social potential of brainpower. Furthermore, we argue that
this Information Culture can be seen as as the multi-layered, multi-
modal, multi-nodal and multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon
of ‘KID Culture’ (Knowledge, Information and Data Culture, here-
after Information Culture) with a spectrum of a more ‘Enlightented
Culture’ (EC) to a ‘Culture of Commercialism’ (CC). Between the EC
and CC there is an array of nuances and impacts from the Information
Culture, spanning a frontier of potential combinations of information,
misinformation and disinformation that is enabling true learning in the
first case, promoting misunderstanding, disorientation and confusion
in the second and suppressing learning and progress in the third and
more extreme case.
Thus, our argument in this book is two-fold. On the one hand, the
difference in today’s prevailing culture is that the mass media and main-
stream print can perform the function of bringing different individual
meanings into agreement. On the other hand, I claim that, in the pre-
vailing culture, mass media enabled by emerging technologies are used
to construct people’s reality and function as the source of information,
or rather as the disinforming conduit for the public.
In this way, it resembles a Culture of Dependency, which refers to
a system of social welfare that encourages people to stay on benefits
rather than in work. In a very simplistic and powerful approach to the
social construction of reality, one can suggest that individual perception
of reality is that which mass media both exhibit and convey through
their narratives. Drawing directly from the assumptions of social con-
struction of reality, others have also arrived at a similar conclusion.
Most notably among them are: Bandura’s Social Learning Theory1 which
suggests how mass media consumers can learn desired societal actions;
Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory2 that demonstrates how people align their
view of the world with those presented in the media; and finally,
McCombs and Shaw who introduced the concept of Agenda Setting3 and
present the notion of how the media dictate the importance of issues
and events to the public.
Within this prevailing Information Culture, information is a medium
with a message like light bulbs flashing messages that create and retain
meaning: ‘The ‘object’ of production practices and structures in tele-
vision is the production of a message: that is, a sign-vehicle or rather