The post-industrial society is beginning a "Technetronic" society: a society that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically by the impact of technology and electronics—particularly in the area of computers and communications. The industrial process is no longer the principle determinant of social change, altering the mores, the social structure, and the values of society. In the industrial society technical knowledge was applied primarily to one specific end: the acceleration and improvement of production techniques. Social consequences were a later by-product of this paramount concern. In the Technetronic society scientific and technical knowledge, in addition to enhancing production capabilities, quickly spills over to affect almost all aspects of life directly. Accordingly, both the growing capacity for the instant calculation of the most complex interactions and the increasing availability of biochemical means of human control augment the potential scope of consciously chosen direction, and thereby also the pressures to direct, to choose, and to change.

Reliance on these new techniques for calculation and communication enhances the social importance of human intelligence and the immediate relevance of learning.

In an industrial society the mode of production shifts from agriculture to industry, with the use of human and animal muscle supplanted by machine operation. In the Technetronic society industrial employment yields to services, with automation and cybernetics replacing operation of machines by individuals.

Scientific and technogical development is a dynamic process. It depends in the first instance on the resources committed to it, the personnel available for it, the educational base that supports it, and—last but not least—the freedom of scientific innovation.

What man thinks is closely related to what man experiences. The relationship between the two is not causal but interacting: experience affects thought, and thought conditions the interpretation of experience.

The construct triumph of ignorance extracts its own tribute in the form of unstable and reactive policies, the substitution of slogans for thought, the rigid adherence to generalized formulas made in another age and in response to circumstances that are different in essence from our own, even if superficially similar. 

— Zbigniew Brzezinski