Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

Maybe because they were published in the late 1990s, Leadbeater’s Living on Thin Air and Dyson et al.’s Cyberspace and the American Dream seem more realistic than Masuda’s descriptions of Information Society – although they call it "knowledge society" and "knowledge age" respectively.

Leadbeater’s emphasis is obviously on economy, but his explanations on the three driving forces in the new society are very insightful. Globalization challenging nationalism, fast creating, disseminating, and exploiting of knowledge, collaboration driving creativity, these factors make this era different from previous societies.

One thing I found especially interesting is that he defines the knowledge-driven economy as knowledge making differences (advantages and disadvantages) in economy, rather than emphasizing the importance of knowledge intensive industries. This is important, I think, for people to understand the idea of information society. It's not to say that materials are not important anymore, rather, they are just not of "competitative advantages" as in the industrial society.