Information, Knowledge and Learning

The recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education are assessed in the light of their vision of a learning society and criticised in terms of the inevitability of a knowledge economy with a new lifelong learning sector. While the National Committee has produced a report which demands careful study by everyone involved with higher education it has not provided us with a workable blueprint for the construction of a learning society.
The relationships between information, knowledge and learning are analysed in terms of three interacting economies – a cognitive economy, a learning economy and a knowledge economy. Technology will play a vital role in the evolution of these three inter-linked economies in the following ways:
? The cognitive economy will be transformed by the role of machine agents
? The learning economy will be transformed by the development of new ways of structuring and accessing instantiated knowledge
? Interactions between the creators and supplies of knowledge will create a trading economy based on wideband communications and internet technologies.
The major driver of the development of a knowledge economy will be a demand for lifelong learning. After a decade or so, by far the largest part of lifelong learning will be delivered off campus and into the workplace or home. In responding to these developments higher education will have to adapt radically.