promised by the constitution and by the state and its mechanisms everywhere. As I
have argued elsewhere (Pandit 2014b), even when there is a single individual who
is not free in a country or in a society because she must remain hungry and
undernourished, then no one is free in that country. I think that it is high time that
the developing countries of the South Asian region and other regions adopt policies
that can control the population explosion without coercion so as to reduce the risks
that today’s risk societies are additionally prone to due to poverty, population
explosion, and overconsumption and rising inequality.
Moreover, by the end of the twenty-first century, scientific knowledge resources
will certainly top the kinds of resource that humanity will need to keep up its
commitment to the goals of (i) sustainable development for one and all, irrespective
of the myth and reality of human rights in our deeply troubled world and (ii) environmental justice for nature’s diverse ecosystems in distress that host biodiversity.
In all likelihood, then, faced with a choice to opt for either of the two kinds of
scenario roughly described below, humanity may still have time left to make its
choice.
(1) The first kind of scenario relates to the kind of society that can be called risk
society, based on market-mediated relations and driven by technological
totalitarianism, where individuals and societies are made totally dependent on
technology for everything, and where the top species will no longer be the
humans, but machines; and
(2) The second kind of scenario captures a world of science and technology-based
knowledge society driven by wisdom inquiry or by wisdom enterprises, where
humanity is not yet totally dependent on technology and where individuals
and societies are not yet overwhelmed by the market-mediated relations.
2 Emergence of Ecology of Subjective and Objective
Knowledge
‘What began as esoteric explorations of the workings of the physical world – the nature of
electromagnetism and the atomic structure of matter, for example – became, in the hands of
inventors and innovators, telecommunications, new drugs, medical imaging and devices,
nuclear power, the computer chip, and the Internet. There are now more connected mobile
devices than there are people on the planet’- Susan Hockfield, MIT President Emerita and
Professor of Neuroscience (Davos 22. Jan. 2015).
By way of a word of caution, in this article I will avoid any direct discussion of
the complexities of ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ as tradable commodities within
a knowledge-based economy. This is not to deny their role in economics of prosperity and poverty reduction in terms of value creation (Machlup 1962, 1980; Allen
1990; Pandit 2015b), to quote Clemenz (2007, p. 1):
138
G.L. Pandit
have argued elsewhere (Pandit 2014b), even when there is a single individual who
is not free in a country or in a society because she must remain hungry and
undernourished, then no one is free in that country. I think that it is high time that
the developing countries of the South Asian region and other regions adopt policies
that can control the population explosion without coercion so as to reduce the risks
that today’s risk societies are additionally prone to due to poverty, population
explosion, and overconsumption and rising inequality.
Moreover, by the end of the twenty-first century, scientific knowledge resources
will certainly top the kinds of resource that humanity will need to keep up its
commitment to the goals of (i) sustainable development for one and all, irrespective
of the myth and reality of human rights in our deeply troubled world and (ii) environmental justice for nature’s diverse ecosystems in distress that host biodiversity.
In all likelihood, then, faced with a choice to opt for either of the two kinds of
scenario roughly described below, humanity may still have time left to make its
choice.
(1) The first kind of scenario relates to the kind of society that can be called risk
society, based on market-mediated relations and driven by technological
totalitarianism, where individuals and societies are made totally dependent on
technology for everything, and where the top species will no longer be the
humans, but machines; and
(2) The second kind of scenario captures a world of science and technology-based
knowledge society driven by wisdom inquiry or by wisdom enterprises, where
humanity is not yet totally dependent on technology and where individuals
and societies are not yet overwhelmed by the market-mediated relations.
2 Emergence of Ecology of Subjective and Objective
Knowledge
‘What began as esoteric explorations of the workings of the physical world – the nature of
electromagnetism and the atomic structure of matter, for example – became, in the hands of
inventors and innovators, telecommunications, new drugs, medical imaging and devices,
nuclear power, the computer chip, and the Internet. There are now more connected mobile
devices than there are people on the planet’- Susan Hockfield, MIT President Emerita and
Professor of Neuroscience (Davos 22. Jan. 2015).
By way of a word of caution, in this article I will avoid any direct discussion of
the complexities of ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ as tradable commodities within
a knowledge-based economy. This is not to deny their role in economics of prosperity and poverty reduction in terms of value creation (Machlup 1962, 1980; Allen
1990; Pandit 2015b), to quote Clemenz (2007, p. 1):
138
G.L. Pandit