摘要：In different countries, dominant definitions of knowledge and information prevail and structure politics, especially in the fields of research and development (R&D), education, arts and culture, and the media. In 1962, for example, Machlup described the country-specific understanding of knowledge in the United States by pointing to the “idiosyncrasy in favour of the immediately practical and against the general theoretical” (1962: 202). Lane, in 1966, picked this up and concluded: “The United States has been slow to recognise the importance of scientific knowledge (…). Although, in some ways, science grows out of technology, it is often the other way around; even in technology the United States in the 19th Century tended to lag behind Europe” (1966: 652).
