Knowledge, Culture and Society in the Information Age

Abstract

Informational society, mainly after the development of online and mobile devices, is changing the forms with which we build our image of the reality. Speed, virtuality, and networking are three of the factors of this change. Speed means that information is circulating faster and faster, but also that it becomes aged very soon, with the necessity of being updated. Virtuality, after its first conceptualizations like a parallel dimension in the 1990s, is nowadays an integral part of our system of relations. Networking, finally, is becoming the main category for interpreting our culture, made of multiple dimensions of sociability, inside and outside the net. Knowledge, in this context, is not yet a truth authenticated; it is, on the contrary, a social activity, a process quite similar to a conversation where each of the discussants is negotiating a point of view. This is the scenario into which modern teachers, parents, and youngsters are acting.