The Information Society

Economic, Social, and Structural Issues

Jerry L. Salvaggio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136687402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

First Published in 1989. There is still much concern over social problems. Invasion of privacy, computer crime, control of information, information inequity, and unemployment due to automation continue to be studied as their existence is no longer a matter of speculation. The emphasis of this book is less on the consequences of information technology than on understanding the nature of information societies.

1 Toward a Definition of the Information Society

CHARLES STEINFIELD

Michigan State University

JERRY L. SALVAGGIO

Corpus Christi, Texas

INTRODUCTION

It has become commonplace to allude to the United States, Japan, and several Western European nations as information societies. In much of the popular press, as well as scholarly journals, authors readily use the term information society with little or no operational definition. The expression is now so hackneyed that the Japanese have taken to designating Japan as an “advanced” information society. Despite this de facto classification by those writing about related topics, a review of the literature explicitly concerned with emerging forms of social organization reveals considerable debate over the precise nature of the information society. Although most concede that Western industrialized nations and Japan have experienced dramatic social, economic, and technological changes, there is little consensus on the nature and direction of the change. Yet, without an adequate conception of the nature of an information society, attempts to project social problems in information societies is difficult. In this chapter, we attempt to synthesize the varied work on information societies, and extract from the literature a set of core characteristics on which there appears to be some scholarly agreement. In so doing, problems with existing conceptualizations are raised, dissenting views are noted where possible, and the need for empirical research to more objectively define, measure, and test predictions about proposed societal transformations is noted.

Virtually all scholars agree that information itself has taken on a greater importance in highly industrialized societies. Many were influenced by the seminal work of Price (1963), who distinguished between information and knowledge and demonstrated the exponential growth rate in the production of scientific knowledge. From a beginning of two scientific journals in the mid-17th century, the number rose to about ten journals by the year 1750, 100 by 1800, 1000 by 1850, and an estimated 50,000 in 1963. Bell used the growth of books in university library holdings to illustrate a similar exponential growth pattern of information.

Other authors look at the pervasiveness of information in other areas. Porat (1977) focused on the information content of an increasing proportion of occupations, whereas the Japanese studies examined the sheer amount of information available to households. Huber (1984) looked at the information environment of organizations in the information society, concluding that the amount available is large and increasing.

Economic Base

A related, but slightly more controversial research perspective that reappears with some consistency places an emphasis on the importance of the information sector to the economy of an information society. Machlup (1962), Bell (1973), and Porat (1977) all focused on various aspects of the growing information sector in the United States. Komatsuzaki (1986) demonstrated a growing information sector in Japan, and Schement, Lievrouw, & Dordick (1983) observed the growth of information occupations in California. Not all agree with this perspective. Gershuny (1978) took issue with Bell's starting point of the growth of the service economy. He developed the concept of the “self-service” economy, where households invest in large consumer durable goods and computers in order to provide their own services. Information technology in this conception is merely another form of physical goods to be bought and sold. It has been depicted as international in scope (Dizard, 1984; Masuda, 1981). However, this concept of the information society points to the problem of unemployment created by the new international division of labor (Bjorn-Andersen, Earl, Hoist, & Mumford, 1982; Mosco, 1982; Smythe, 1985). In spite of the debate, however, the locus of most of the above studies is the economy of the information society.

Technological Infrastructure

Another universal attribute of information societies is the influential role of information technology. Although not necessarily viewed as a causal factor, information technology nevertheless interacts in critical ways with economic, social, and political structures to produce social benefits as well as problems. Most authors point to the rapid innovation in computer and telecommunication technologies and their increasing availability across all segments of society (Salvaggio, 1983).

RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

Although many schemes are possible, we classify the literature on information societies into five broad groups according to the attribute or sets of attributes emphasized by the authors. In a sense, each group represents a unique perspective. The five perspectives which we have identified include: a) economic structure, b) the consumption of information, c) technological infrastructure, d) critical approaches, and e) multidimensional approaches. In the following sections, we briefly review representative work from each perspective category.

Economic Structure

Nearly all who write about information societies point to the growth of the service sector in the industrialized nations and the decline of employment in manufacturing (Bell, 1973). For a number of authors, however, the dominant characteristic of an information society is the nature of its economy. Machlup (1962) initiated this research perspective by analyzing the growth of the “knowledge sector” in the U.S. economy. In Machlup's analysis, industries primarily concerned with the production and distribution of knowledge (hence, “knowledge industries”) were examined separately, rather than as a part of the overall service sector. The knowledge industries included such areas as the educational system, the media and other communication activities, libraries and other information activities, and research institutes. The contribution of this sector to the gross national product was found to be significant (estimated at about 40% for the early 1960s) and growing at a rate considerably higher than the industrial sector. Machlup concluded that knowledge industries would soon outpace the industrial sector, leading to the rise of a “knowledge society.” A similar conclusion was reached at about the same time in Japan, as Umaseo (1963) predicted the rise of the “spiritual industries” over material and agricultural sectors in economies that were more evolved. Essentially, Umaseo's spiritual industries, based on a biological metaphor, served the planning and control functions of society. Hence all activities concerned with the production and consumption of information were included.

These earlier approaches distinguished the knowledge or information sector from other economic sectors. More recently, the overall occupational structure of the economy has come to be associated with the transition to an information society. Porat (1977) initiated much of this work, by broadening the view of information work to apply to more than those jobs falling within the information or knowledge sector as defined by Machlup. Porat began by defining information activities as including all resources consumed in producing, processing, and distributing information goods and services. He defined the primary information sector as including all those businesses involved in the exchange of information goods and services in the marketplace. In addition, however, Porat noted that a great many jobs in other sectors of the economy can be thought of as information work. Nearly every organization produces, processes, and distributes information for its own internal consumption. Thus, a secondary information sector includes these information activities. Porat estimated that overall information activities accounted for 45% of the gross national product in 1967, and that half of the labor force was employed in information-related work. This study, perhaps more than any other, has been used to justify references to the United States as an information society. Moreover, several recent papers have attempted to refine Porat's analysis and apply it in other contexts (e.g. Komatsuzaki, 1986; Schement, Lievrouw, & Dordick, 1983).

A research perspective that places its focus on the information economy as the primary attribute of the information society has both conceptual appeal and empirical support. Examining the economic structure alone, however, provides only a limited view of the social and cultural implications associated with information societies. Moreover, the concepts and methods employed by these researchers has received substantial criticism. Several critics contend that Porat's classification of information workers is far too broad to be meaningful, and does little to suggest social implications of the shift to an information society (Bates, 1985; Dizard, 1984). Bates, for example, noted that according to Porat, factory workers assembling information transmission equipment are considered information workers, just as are university researchers. He felt that such broad categorizations weaken the social distinctiveness of the information sector, and such a unidimensional view of information societies says little about their evolving social functions, structures, and values.

Consumption of Information

A second research perspective on information societies is concerned with the consumption of information goods and services rather than their production (Bowes, 1981). This research, conducted almost exclusively in Japan, has come to be known in Japanese as johoka (“Informationalization”) shakai (“society”) research (Ito, 1980). Based on the work of Machlup and Umaseo, the Japanese initiated a series of studies attempting to measure the degree of johoka in Japanese society. Two studies by the Research Institute for Telecommunications and Economics (RITE) in 1968 and 1970 (cited in Ito, 1980) developed a methodology for measuring the degree of johoka based on two indices. First, the joho keisu, or information ratio was defined as the ratio of household expenditures for various information-related activities to total household expenditures. (Unfortunately, Ito noted that this was operationalized by subtracting noninformation expenditures from total expenditures to arrive at the amount spent on information activities.) The second component, known as the johoka index, was a complex measure made up of the following three categories of data as well as the information ratio (Ito, 1980; p. 16):

A. Amount of Information

1. Telephone calls per person per year
2. Newspaper circulation per 100 people
3. Books published per 1,000 people
4. Population density (a measure of interpersonal communication)

B. Distribution of Communication Media

1. Telephone receivers per 100 people
2. Radio sets per 100 people
3. Television sets per 100 households

C. Quality of Information Activities

1. Proportion of service workers in total labor population
2. Proportion of students in total appropriate age group

Thus, while retaining an element of the economic structure approaches, these studies were primarily concerned with behavioral measures of consumption of information goods and services. In fact, the later study (RITE, 1970) attempted to formulate a very precise definition of the post-industrial, or information society, concluding that such a society should have the following characteristics.

1. A per capita income of more than $4,000.
2. The number of service workers exceeds 50% of the total labor force.
3. University students exceed 50% of the total appropriate aged population
4. The information ratio is greater than 35%

The information-consumption research tradition in Japan has continued, primarily with a series of yearly studies conducted by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the government ministry that funds RITE (MPT, summarized in Ito, 1980; 1984). These studies attempted to measure the total amount of information flow in Japan, became known as the annual “information flow census.” Further differentiating this research tradition from those focusing on economic structure, MPT researchers examined the amount of information consumed by the Japanese people each year, with consumption interpreted as the perception of information rather than the purchase of information. One goal of this research was to measure the difference between the supply of information and the amount consumed. A methodology was developed and enabled researchers to convert all media—personal, mass, and performance—into a common unit, the word, for comparison. Thus, tables for converting radio, still pictures, moving pictures, and so forth into word units were developed based upon some rather controversial assumptions. Over time, these studies were used to demonstrate growth in the use of personal electronic media, a leveling off in the consumption of broadcast media, and a decline in the consumption of nonelectronic media. Moreover, the amount of information consumed was shown to be shrinking relative to the amount available, leading some to feel that the Japanese were suffering from information overload. These types of findings were used to rationalize the development of information policies in Japan that stressed the development of high capacity, interactive computer and telecommunication networks over traditional broadcast and nonelectronic communication systems.

The johoka shakai research perspective encourages us to look beyond the occupational structure, and incorporate the communication and information behaviors of people into our definitions of information societies. Moreover, the attempts to develop a standardized measure that can be applied across different societies are noteworthy. Attempts have been made, for example, to apply the information flow census to the United States (Pool, 1982; 1983). However, the actual measures used are crude at best and provide little insight into social and political structures and values that may be associated with information societies.

Technological Infrastructure

Among the more common orientations to the information society are those that focus on diffusion of computer and telecommunications technologies as the defining characteristic. Although information technologies occupy a central role in all of the information society literature, this research perspective emphasizes the technological infrastructure almost to the exclusion of other social, economic, and political attributes. Indeed, this literature is generally futuristic in perspective and invariably optimistic about the impacts of technology. Martin (1977; 1981; 1984) provided a number of scenarios detailing life in the information, or wired society. In particular, the spread o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Communication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Toward a Definition of the Information Society
• 2 Evolving into an Information Society: Problems and Issues
• 3 The Origins of the Information Society in the United States: Competing Visions
• 4 Silicon Valley: A Scenario for the Information Society of Tomorrow
• 5 A Comparative Perspective on Information Societies
• 6 Communication Technology: For Better or For Worse?
• 7 Information for What Kind of Society?
• 8 Is Privacy Possible in an Information Society?
• Selected Reading
• Author Index
• Subject Index