Identifying People's Responsibilities for the Global Knowledge Societies: A Framework and a Survey

The drive toward building global knowledge societies for peace and sustainable development is becoming of increasing importance. This paper attempts to identify human or people's responsibilities that need to be emphasized in order to achieve the goals of these societies. It introduces a framework for these responsibilities built upon a past knowledge society framework. Ethics is considered to be at the heart of the framework, which consists of three main types of responsibility: knowledge; social and intercultural. Eight main issues are considered to be associated with each main type. These issues have been debated among highly educated audience in Saudi Arabia for assessment and views. Each issue is considered from the viewpoints of: importance; current practice; and potential future improvement. The work hopes to explore people's responsibilities needed for the global knowledge societies, in order to enable their future promotion and enjoy their benefits.