A brief tangent to the 'knowledge economy'

Just a few words about the ‘knowledge economy’ and its value, so we can draw a line under or even come back to it.

The man to credit this to is Peter Drucker, a business philosopher who defined 2 types of worker in his book, ‘The Effective Executive’. One would work with his hands, the other with his head, and it was these thinkers who were the changing face of commerce now. The manner of its conception can bring about parallels in Marxist/Hegelian philosophy.

The problem being that while ‘thinkers’ are the new business, these terms are too simplistic. Labourers now use thought as an important tool.

If this mode of thought has academic merit, it is in two interpretations. An ‘economy of knowledge’ the production and management of knowledge in economic constraints. The ‘knowledge based economy’ the use of knowledge technologies to produce economic benefits.

The concept has some spacial thoughts, the first, (and incorrect as it proved) was a utopian suburb idea, in which knowledge workers could work form their home/office via the internet. The actual ‘true’ effect was of the need to be surrounded by other knowledge workers, for the direct interaction and exchange of ideas. This has led to the reasoning that a knowledge economy is the very thing that defines an urban area.