New Knowledge Creation and Creativity for Whom? Contradictions of Social Developmental Logics under a New Media Regime

On-Kwok Lai (School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan) [Bio]

Email: oklai@ksc.kwansei.ac.jp

 

ABSTRACT:

Thanks to the Information and communication technologies (ICT) and its multiple representations (text, audio-video and others), we are in a new era of digital economy, polity and information society. This paper addresses to the emerging issues for regional/global social issues, with special focus on the potentials , risks and influences of the new media for e-learning, creativity and knowledge creation, and social beneficiaries at large.

Part One of the paper outlines the emergence of e-learning regime and networking for knowledge creation, dissemination and creativity. It is followed in Part Two by a discussion of the incompatibility between economic globalization and regional/local deprivation of knowledge, under a new regime of intellectual property rights which limits the influences and creativity of individuals, vis-à-vis the supremacy of trans-national corporations (TNCs). Part Three critically examines the contours and complexity of informational society : new media offer the progressive agenda setting for social agencies: virtual political communities could be the opportunities for individuals to become instrumental in global policy learning and making, yet this condition contrasts the hegemony of global power (super-regional state and TNCs) that shapes global social development agenda. The last part delineate s prospects of global social development in the information age.