Abstract:
The conversion factors towards the concept of Extended Well-being. The Knowledge Society as a reference system is a project that can be a reality today. The Lisbon Strategy, as appears from the evaluations of the European Commission, has been carried out only partially, despite the Europe 2020 document. Similar definitions are information society, communication society, network society (Castells 1996, Sassen 2005), or the idea of second or reflexive modernity (Beck e a. 1994). Assigning a central place to knowledge as a factor of productivity means have an informed public opinion, with digital skills and competences as citizens. The knowledge economy has instead a link to the heritage of common goods which necessarily refers to a complex institutional learning process, that must be built precisely from intelligent policies and informed social practices.
In the processes of creation of capabilities still prevails a technicist version, or ICT on productivity, linked to the idea of innovation. The same pattern of growth is taken for granted. The concerns for the sustainability of the processes are yet secondary. However, the evidence on the link between knowledge and capabilities, innovation and public communication, including extensive welfare and sustainability can be observed in the Sarkozy Report 2010 or in Prosperity without growth by Jackson 2002.
In the Sarkozy Report by the Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2010) the resources, while implementing, according to the Sen-Nussbaum paradigm, are intended to satisfy basic needs, that is for each society, since the variables can take on all possible values (from the maximal incapacitation to the human and social flourishing suggested by Nussbaum 2011). Learning is also the ability to follow rules, which make possible the formation of the capacity.
The resources are filtered by factors such as the degree of democratic processes, contexts degraded, all contexts of incapacity. In the industrial society was being pegged to GDP, economic growth was a guarantee of the increase in well-being. It also made it possible to fund basic services for the reduction of existential risks (education, housing, health). In particular, today we observe the growth of digital products and the component of the cognitive work on the set of the labor force. Public policies are rationalized and an engineering approach also spreads in policy making.
The increase in the availability of skilled labor, when one third of the younger population has a degree, produces a paradoxical devaluation of knowledge production. Overall, the strategies of self-realization of individuals become more risky. The relationship between growth of knowledge and emancipation is not so direct. The rationality in the field of scientific and technical knowledge is compensated by a growth of subcultures that correspond to non-convergent logic. Public communication preform the attitudes of the masses and does not contribute to the formation of reflexive collective preferences. The awareness of the subject becomes a function of the principle of performance.
