A Knowledge society (the K-Society), was widely used term.
Mass production and dissemination of knowledge promises to modify it in a historically short period, probably during the lifetime of several generations. The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as powerful tools for working with information and knowledge significantly accelerates such changes.
In the strategic perspective, a certain group of countries significantly strengthen its role in the world processes due priority production and use of new knowledge, thus increasing the quality of life and security of its citizens. The rest of the countries that do not possess these skills and tools to become more dependent on the first group and will pay it for the good of civilization, cheap labor, natural resources, environmental quotas and other components of its national security. The way to Knowledge society
Therefore, the early stages of the formation of K-society is extremely important correction of vision place and role of Ukraine in a globalized society based on knowledge and forming effective policies to achieve its objectives in the short and long term.
The main features of the K -Society
All types of society which have changed over evolutionary history, characterized formulation and use of new knowledge for their own development. But since the 80-90-ies of the last century, we note new qualitative features in the process. Humanity possessed means of converting information into digital form, created a large repository to store (a database and knowledge base), captured her passing at a distance using ICT and the global computer network Internet, which led to the emergence of fundamentally new interaction between people. Since the second half of the nineties, began to play the role of information product that you can buy and sell. At the same time it still was not enough knowledge for the harmonious development of society, but only just "raw" processed before use. Society was called this type of information, most of which was measurement technology. It is characterized by massive output of information and knowledge of the "how to act" within the so-called "knowledge economy". The main purpose of this economics was to use the latest knowledge and ICT to create new technological innovation, converting them into new products and services and generally increase their added value throughout the economic chain - "from idea to product or service."
This society started to ensure high economic growth of individual countries and multinational companies, but does not guarantee the quality and safety of the lives of its members. Developed countries and large multinational companies have adopted more powerful productive forces, which have become information and knowledge of the "how to act" for the purpose of its further enrichment. Thus, according to the World Bank in 1973, the gap in incomes between the richest and poorest countries determined by the ratio of 44: 1, and at the beginning of the XXI century. the gap increased to 72: 1.
An increasing gap between the developed countries and the rest of the world, among different population groups within countries - rich and poor, young and elderly, healthy compared with people with disabilities and others. This phenomenon is known in the form of the three types of inequality - economic inequality, inequality of knowledge and digital divide. There is an urgent need for best practices and respecting both globally and within countries, clear rules, which would become the political and economic instruments of social development for the benefit of the people, ensuring adequate quality and safety of their lives, and not contribute to the reduction of the basic values.
The concept of forming a new type of society appeared at the turn of the century, when information began to take on a qualitatively new form - harmonized knowledge. Important than knowledge of the "how to act" gained knowledge of the "how to coexist," which began to approach the internal and external contradictions of society. This form of society has allowed people to move to mass production of new knowledge using the powerful tools, which are ICT and called a Knowledge society, or K-society.
The society this kind has become of innovative measurements, which, in addition to technology, have become social, ethnic and political. Integral components were new interdisciplinary knowledge that generate academic and public institutions, training high quality human capital, which provides education, creating additional resources for a knowledge economy and the formation of the basis of integrated vector of social development aimed at improving the quality and safety of life all its members.
Mass production market and use of new interdisciplinary knowledge in this cycle has become an independent and very important. We started to strengthen national and international institutions of social protection, civil society, protection of intellectual property. This society began to significantly change the structure of work, employment, social protection, employment. There is a new social environment, which, along with matter and energy, important productive factors were information and scientific knowledge. Formed clear political vector of K-society aims to achieve a high level of quality and safety of human life as a national and a global scale.
Based on new opportunities, opening the K-society and new risks arising from the "removal" of this type of society, the actual is to determine the extent to which a country, and especially Ukraine, closer to this type of society, or conversely, as it still is remote from it.
The assessment of the K-Society
To determine the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the K-society and the basic conditions for its progress advisable to use the K-index society, developed by UN and applied to its members. This index is a synthetic and defined three main dimensions:
• Index of intellectual assets society (IIA), which is formed by such indicators as full time school in the country, the number of young people under 15 years that gets education, the level of provision of public information through ICT and media, including the Internet, telephone BC 'communications, newspapers and magazines;
• prospects of social development index (PSDI), determined public expenditure on health, on research and innovative development of the country, reduced defense spending of the country, the number of children per teacher at primary school level freedom from corruption;
• Quality index of social development (QISD), which describes the quality and safety of human life by taking into account factors such as the infant mortality rate (indicator characterizing poverty and marginalization of society), inequality of distribution of social and material wealth among citizens of society (GINI Index), value ecologically protected area to the total area of the country, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
Of course, all indicators affecting the infrared components are measured in different units and have different interpretations. Therefore, they are reduced to standardized form so that it changes as the changes I, were in the range of 0 to 1. Accordingly, the worst value of these indicators meet the numerical value close to 0, and the best - these values will be closer to 1 . This normalization allows to calculate each of the components (IIA, PSDI and QISD) as an average of the indicators that affect them, and Ik as the average of these components.
According to the UN, which identified 45 best countries in the world (among 191) index of K-society (as of 2005), five countries have the highest rating (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Finland). They are both relatively small area, the available natural resources, population and the scale of the economy. That is, such important indicators of competitiveness of industrial society as possession of significant natural resources and large market in terms of their own society based on knowledge, lose their priority. However, consistency countries measured GDP per capita undoubtedly positively correlated with its ability to develop at the K-Society. Although this relationship was not as strong as expected.
For K-index society (ick) none of the "Big Eight" is not among the top five countries. Thus, the US holds the 12th place, Japan - 6th, Germany - 7th, UK - 10th, France - 15th, Italy - 21st, Canada - 14th, Russia and China (to Unlike Ukraine - 40 place) do not rank among the top 45 countries in terms of K-society. This fact indicates that in countries that have accumulated their wealth in times of industrial society, between knowledge such as "what to do" and "how to coexist" has not achieved harmonization.
That is, if the concentration of wealth is incompatible with the principles of socially fair consumption by all members of society (large value GINI index), it starts to hold back development. A striking example of this non-harmonized society is Russia, which through trade raw materials accumulated in the stabilization fund its huge capital not allocated to adequate social development. As a result, it is on the 156th place with 191 countries - a member of the UN index of inequality and the distribution of social wealth (GINI Index 45.62). In comparison, Ukraine is on the 79th place in the list (GINI Index 28.96).
Ratings are important for the other components of the K-index society. Thus, the index of intellectual assets Society (IIA) took first place Norway (IIA = 0.801), second - Sweden (IIA = 0.749), third - Finland (IIA = 0.714), fourth - Republic of Korea (IIA = 0.683), fifth- Denmark (IIA = 0.656).
For this indicator, the richest country in the world is outside the top five. US holds 10th place (IIA = 0.618), Japan - 7th (IIA = 0.648), Germany - 14th (IIA = 0.590), United Kingdom - 9th (IIA = 0.644), France - 17th (IIA = 0.529), Italy - 20th (IIA = 0.482), Canada - 16th (IIA = 0.551). The last group of wins on current indicators intellectual assets of society (the number of Internet users and telephone service coverage ratio to 10 thousand. Population), but she is playing first for future intellectual assets (in the first group of higher education enrollment ratio of young people, the media and telecommunications). For example, among the developed countries the US have very low coverage of the press (newspapers 0.357 to 10 thousand. Population), followed by Canada (0.264), Belgium (0.266), Ireland (0.249) and Italy (0.170). In comparison, Norway has 1,000, Sweden - 0,755, Finland - 0,722, Republic of Korea - 0.666, Denmark - 0,521.
Ukraine is on the 44th place in this index (IIA = 0.176). It is close to the European average indicators of future intellectual assets of society (the number of young people covered by the education and training period at school), but has one of the worst in Europe, current indicators intellectual assets of society (the proportion of the population covered by means of telecommunications and media).
With the prospects of social development index (Ypres) the top five best countries in accordance included: Sweden (Ypres = 0.844), Switzerland (Ypres = 0.766), Germany (Ypres = 0.765), Canada (Ypres = 0.764), Japan (Ypres = 0.758).
Interestingly, with the exception of Sweden, which has the world's highest public spending on research and innovative development of the country (4.27% of GDP) and one of the lowest levels in the world of corruption Society (third place after Finland and Singapore), other Scandinavian countries on this index lost their positions in the top five. Denmark moved to sixth position (Ypres = 0.758), Finland - the seventh (Ypres = 0.755). They ousted Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Japan due to very low military spending and high levels of public support for health care.
Ukraine this index ranks 41st place, with a very high level of corruption (LED freedom from corruption - 2.3 on a ten scale), low spending on research and innovative development of the country (0.95% of GDP), the average European level of military spending (1.79% of GDP), low level of state support for health care (7.6% of the total national expenditure), the average for Central and Eastern Europe the number of children per teacher in elementary school (20).
Analyzing index ratings of quality of society (GFI), we get some unexpected and interesting results. The first place is occupied Denmark (GFI = 0.876), second - Austria (GFI = 0.828), third - Slovakia (GFI = 0.807), the fourth - Costa Rica (GFI = 0.759), the fifth - Switzerland (GFI = 0.750).
They show that the effective and harmonious development of the country need not be rich. The combination is in one country high concentration of capital with a large inequality of distribution of social and material wealth leads to the dominance of narrow corporate interests of certain financial-political groups over nationwide, reducing in this country the quality and safety of human life as in the social and the environmental aspects .
Applying nonparametric regression method to establish the correlation between the quality of social development index and GDP per capita of any country, we get a rather complex relationship, which has three characteristic areas. The first section of Iyar linearly increases from 0.5 to 0.8 with increasing GDP per capita from 500 to 14 thousand. Dollars. In the second section, with an increase in wealth of 14 thousand. To 28 thousand. Dollars. the index stabilized and held at about 0.750 - 0.880. And the last section of GFI begins to rapidly decline with increasing per capita GDP of 28 thousand. To 55 thousand. Dollars.
Defined pattern explains the fact that the index of quality of society's richest countries have relatively low ratings. Thus, the US holds the 38th position (GFI = 0.547), Canada - 37th (GFI = 0.550), Italy - 25th (GFI = 0.662), France - 15th (GFI = 0.682), Japan - 14 -tu (GFI = 0.683), UK - 11th (GFI = 0.712), Germany - 8th (GFI = 0.733). They concede the top five countries for both environmental indicators and high social inequality and distribution of wealth. Russia and China due to the very large value of GINI index (45.62) and (40.30), respectively, high infant mortality (21 and 39 deaths per 1,000 children under five, respectively) are not part of the best 45 countries in this index.
Interestingly, in this ranking Nordic countries do not make up a compact group. With the exception of Denmark, which holds the first place (GFI = 0.876) and almost all have indicators of K-society, the rest of the region were "scattered" in the ranking table. Sweden was on the 7th place (GFI = 0.734), Norway at the 17th (GFI = 0.673), Finland - 22th (GFI = 0.643). Although these countries have some of the best indicators GINI index and a very low infant mortality, they are significantly inferior to the best environmental indicators for the countries of this ranking. For example, Norway has a relatively low percentage of environmentally protected areas (6%) and high levels of carbon dioxide emissions per capita (9.3 tons), Finland, respectively - (8%) and (13 tons).
It is important that this rating relatively good shape with the countries of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Slovakia became the third (GFI = 0.807), Czech Republic - tenth (GFI = 0.713), Croatia - 12 th (GFI = 0.709), Hungary - 13th (GFI = 0.693), Poland - 19th (GFI = 0.660) , Ukraine - 26 th (GFI = 0.620). They have a moderate carbon dioxide emissions per capita (from 6.2 tons to 12.5 tons Ukraine in the Czech Republic), are not very high GINI index values (from 24.44 to 28.96 in Hungary in Ukraine) European average infant mortality rate (5.10 deaths per 1,000 children up to five years), except Ukraine (20). In general it can be noted that the trend of European integration for Eastern Europe is quite convincing.
The features of bringing Ukraine closer to the K-Society
In order to assess the "distance" to be overcome Ukraine approaches the K-Society, compare its indicators for each of the measurements: IIA, Ypres and GFI average values of these indicators for the five countries - world leaders: Sweden, of Denmark, Norway , Switzerland and Finland (Table.). Let's call these countries-Europe 5.
Ukraine slightly inferior to Europe by 5 indicators associated with future intellectual asset Society (term in school, the percentage of young people under 15 who gets education and the number of students per teacher in elementary school). These are not the backlog of principle, they can be removed with the establishment of priorities state of development. Virtually meet European indicators of social policy and defense (GINI index and the cost of defending the country).
As for the group of environmental indicators and indicators related to health (share of environmentally protected territory, carbon dioxide emissions per capita expenditure on health, infant mortality), they cause significant anxiety. Although carbon emissions do not exceed the appropriate level in Europe, due to the noticeable weakening of the industrial sector of the country, almost eightfold gap with Europe-5 size due environmentally protected area of problems of political, economic and mental character in relation to the environment. In this context, our society has a great deficit of knowledge of the "how to coexist."
The low level of culture of the society in relation to the environment, coupled with a lack of state support for public health (the share of government health spending twice less than in Europe 5), leads not only to a significant backlog of Ukraine from the civilized world by average duration life: 62.6 years for men, 74.1 - for women (for comparison, in Japan - 88 years for men and 92 years for women), but also to such marginal phenomena as more than a fourfold excess infant mortality over European average.
The principal is almost threefold Ukraine lag behind Europe, five state expenditure on research and innovative development. It reflects not only the current gap in scientific and technological sphere, but also tends growing distancing Ukraine from developed countries in economy, science and technology in the future. Today Ukraine is lagging behind the civilized world the state of development of information society. For such important indicators as the number of Internet users in 10 thousand. Population, Ukraine is second Europe-5 27 times, the number of newspapers per 1,000 people - 8 times, the number of mobile phones per 100 people - in 9.3 times, the number of telephone lines 100 people - 3 times.
Ukraine remains very vulnerable due to the high level of corruption (112 in the world with 191 countries), which largely determines all of the above problems and which, unfortunately, has not reduced. For freedom from corruption indicator Ukraine is second Europe-5 four times. Without overcoming this problem will be impossible to implement urgent reforms, not only society, but also to plan its development in near and far future.
Some conclusions
These "weaknesses" in the K-Ukrainian model of society should not be perceived negatively. The very fact that the rating of the United Nations as K-Society Ukraine holds 40 place among 191 countries of the world, should inspire the country to proactive, because the goal never treated state (82nd place with 104 countries of the world most important for the government in this direction). His vision is lagging behind the world leaders in specific indexes and indicators K-society is perceived as a reference system for the organization of a focused approach to this type of society.
Ukraine has almost exhausted itself as a country - a supplier of cheap labor with predominantly low technology, energy-intensive industry. Almost 15 years the way in this direction rejected on Ukraine 106th out of 180 members of the IMF prosperity (GDP per capita does not exceed US $ 1,366.). By this measure, most post-socialist countries that its market development started with the same initial conditions, as well as Ukraine, today broke far ahead. Russia is ahead of us 3 times (68 th place, 4087 dollars.), Poland - 4.6 times (52nd, 6344 dollars.), Slovakia - 5.5 times (49 th place, 7603 dollars). Estonia - 6.2 times (47 th place, 8473 dollars.), Hungary - 7.5 times (42 nd place, 10 233 USD.), Czech Republic - in 7.7 times (39th place 10 485 USD.).
Based on the fact that Ukraine is not yet completed construction of the first phase of K-society - the information society and knowledge economy (no developed telecommunication infrastructure of the country, there is a discrepancy in the information environment of Ukraine the basic international indicators, virtually no actor innovation policy of the state), it is advisable to operate in parallel, and namely:
- Speed up the first phase of development by attracting foreign and domestic investment and implementation of critical institutional reforms;
- mobilize in a single complex political and social institutions of the state on priority development of the next phase - a society based on knowledge, whose main objective should be to ensure high safety and quality of life for all citizens of Ukraine. This strategy would be attractive, ambitious and demand from the international community.