Radovan, Mario (2017) "Knowledge and Skills: A Critical View", Proceedings of the 40th international convention on information and communication technology, electronics and microelectronics, Croatia: Opatija, 22-26 May 2017, pp. 736-740. Knowledge and Skills: A Critical View Mario Radovan University of Rijeka, Department of informatics Abstract - The paper puts forward a critical view on knowledge and education in the present techno-economic culture. This culture stresses the importance of knowledge and education, but it promotes only the instrumental knowledge that the present techno-economy directly needs. Such practice displaces other dimensions of the human knowledge and cognitive abilities, which are needed for the progress of people and humanity. Business forces are raising the means to the level of the end, and shape education in the way that serves business aim, rather than the promotion of knowledge. Information technology has brought many excellent means and services to education , but it should not be used in the way that reduces people to automatons that perform prescribed procedures, without understanding or asking anything beyond that. I. INTRODUCTION Let us describe some of the concepts that we use in the paper. Contemporary economic activities strongly depend on technology, and the development of new technological systems is powered by economic aims. The concept of techno-economy points to the connection of technology and economy and to their mutual dependence. The way people work and live is determined by the socio-economic system, more than by technology itself. This system shapes the technology we use and the environment in which we live: it shapes the physical and mental space of our existence, and our understanding of existence [1]. In computer terminology, a precisely defined finite process is called algorithm. A computer program implements an algorithm; when active, the program performs the process defined by that algorithm. Knowledge and activities of contemporary people are getting more and more algorithmic or procedural. Knowledge is reduced to the ability of performing precise procedures, and human cognitive activity is reduced to a constant learning and performing of such procedures. We are surrounded with screens and buttons, and to do anything, from buying bananas to flying an airliner, we must perform appropriate procedures with those screens and buttons. People have always wished to possess the power to control and steer the world; technology brought them plenty of such power. However, the means that give people power, shape their cognitive abilities and their mental space. Technology creates immense opportunities, but it compels people to think and behave in ways that it requires and imposes. The concept of instrumental reason refers to that dimension (capacity) of human cognitive system, which allows people to perform specific procedures with the aim to produce specific effects. In other words, instrumental reason is the human reason used as a means (instrument) for carrying out a specific task. People have always used reason in this way in their endeavours to satisfy their needs and achieve their ends. The intense use of technology in all spaces of human activity has led to the complete domination of instrumental thinking. Technological means compel people to constantly think and act in instrumental way: in this way, those means gradually reduce human cognitive abilities to the instrumental dimension. For the procedural (instrumental) people, to know means to know how: they learn and think with the aim to do something, not with the aim to enjoy the understanding. They acts in the framework of the paradigm with which they are steered, without questioning its values, aims and effects. We can speak about four kinds of human reasoning or about four dimensions of human cognitive abilities: creative, instrumental, critical and integrative. Creative reason explores the space of values, aims and visions of the human life and activities. Instrumental reason deals with the means and methods of the realization of the chosen aims and visions. Critical reason examines and evaluates the wider effects of the activities of the former two dimensions. Finally, integrative reason aims to keep the previous three components in balance, because only their harmonious coexistence can allow people to achieve their best possibilities. Education as well as public discourse should promote all four dimensions of human cognitive abilities. The present-day education promotes only instrumental reasoning and abilities, and public discourse, reduced to stupefying infotainment, promotes none. This reduces people to servants of the techno- economic system, who do not think about its aims and effects in a critical way. We assume that emotions are the moving force behind all human reasoning and activities, creative and destructive ones. Reason by itself has no ends: reason chooses and evaluates ends on the basis of emotions. We must not blame instrumental reason when our emotions