The Information Society Reader

with Raimo Blom, Erkki Karvonen, Harri Melin, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Ensio Puoskari, Frank Webster, Professor Frank Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000082760
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There has been much debate over the idea of 'the information society'. Some thinkers have argued that information is becoming the key ordering principle in society, whereas others suggest that the rise of information has been overstated. Whatever the case, it cannot be denied that 'informization' has produced vast changes in advanced societies. The Information Society Reader pulls together the main contributions to this debate from some of the key figures in the field. Major topics addressed include: * post-industrialism
* surveillance
* transformations
* the network society
* democracy
* digital divisions
* virtual relations.With a comprehensive introduction from Frank Webster, selections from Manuel Castells, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault and Christopher Lasch amongst others, and section introductions contextualising the readings, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and academics studying contemporary society and all things cyber.

PART ONE

The Information Society

INTRODUCTION

■ Frank Webster

IT IS COMMONPLACE TO SAY THAT nowadays we live in an Information Society. What is meant by this concept is indistinct, yet still it has some resonance for most of us. The term feels right about how we live today. It conjures so many different things, each of them of the moment — a world of media saturation, of extended education for the vast majority of us in advanced locations, of generally cleverer and better informed people, of large numbers of occupations concerned with ‘think work’, of instantaneous movement of information across time and space and of an array of new technologies and especially the internet, but including also cable and satellite television, DVD systems and so on…. All of these appear to be distinguishing features our world, so, not surprisingly, when we hear the words Information Society we readily consider them to be reasonable as a description of what we are.

And yet it is remarkable that Information Society should evoke so many different associations in our minds — new technologies, higher education, symbolic work and round the clock entertainment … It cannot be long after reflecting on these different images that one begins to ask what fundamentally distinguishes the Information Society? For instance, is the Information Society’s most important characteristic the increasing tradeability, and hence economic significance, of information? Or is it that the Information Society heralds a huge increase in cultural phenomena (television, video, movies, web sites, plus a heightened emphasis on style)? Or is it that nowadays educational attainment is so much greater and more widespread than ever before, making our society more learned and theoretically aware? Or, again, is it that communication today allows instantaneous movement of information across the globe, such that affairs can be managed in real time on a planetary scale?

It seems clear that, once one begins to ask questions such as these, then the concept ‘Information Society’ comes to be regarded somewhat dubiously. It certainly is evocative, but it is simultaneously fuzzy and evasive. The ambiguities surrounding the term are excusable among lay people, but what is especially surprising is that so many professional commentators evoke an Information Society without being at all clear about what they mean by the term. If social scientists do not clarify what they mean by the term, then how might the general public be expected to cope? It can seem that the word is used with abandon, yet as such it is capable of accommodating all manner of definitions. Readers should look carefully for the definitional terms used, often tacitly, by commentators in what follows. Are they, for instance, emphasizing the economic, educational or cultural dimensions when they discuss the Information Society, or is it technology which is given the greatest weight in their accounts? One might then ask, if the conceptions are so very varied and even promiscuous, then what validity remains for the Information Society concept (Webster 2002)?

Part One is divided between advocates and critics of the Information Society. In the former camp are those who argue that we do indeed inhabit such a new type of society (or are at least set to enter into one such), while against them are a number of opposing thinkers who either or both attack the particular suggestions of the advocates and jettison the idea that the notion of an Information Society has any explanatory value. The advocates characteristically are positive, even enthusiastic, about the Information Society, which is always regarded as an improvement on the Industrial era which it allegedly supersedes.

The readings in this section begin with one of the earliest statements of the arrival of the Information Society, Yoneji Masuda (Chapter 1), whose writings in the early 1980s were pioneering in this regard. Indeed, while we in the West tend to think that it is writers from North America especially who have led commentary on the Information Society, there is a long tradition of Information Society analysis coming from Japan, of which Masuda is a leading light (Duff 2000). It is the enthusiasm for the new that is most prominent in Masuda’s account.

As with most enthusiasts, great claims are made for technology as the driver of change. In this focus Masuda is at one with most other futurists. It is typical of Information Society advocates to regard technology (whether telecommunications, computers, or new media, notably the internet, or indeed all new technologies) as both the major expression of and the primary force bringing into being the new Information Society. Masuda was an early instance with regard to emphasis being placed on computer and communications technologies, but there are many contemporaries and successors whose work might be usefully compared to his book, Managing in the Information Society. At base all prioritize technology as the most important feature of the new epoch, as well as being the key causal factor in bringing it into being — each is distinguishable from the other by concern with the latest technological innovations. It is the same story, but a different technology. Christopher Evans (1979) enthused about the ‘mighty micro’ in the late 1970s, and by the 1990s Nicholas Negroponte (1995) stressed the impact of digitalization. Currently the top concerns are with genetic manipulation and the internet.

Charles Leadbeater (Chapter 2) takes us on from Masuda almost twenty years, to a much more contemporary account of the Information Society. This approach is equally enthusiastic about change, but now there is a switch in emphasis towards highlighting the role of ‘knowledge’ in the new order. Technology in Leadbeater’s book takes a back seat to ‘thinking smart’, to being an intelligent, enterprising and adaptable person in a fast-moving world in which ‘living on thin air’ (ideas) supersedes the old ways. Leadbeater’s conception turns attention from the hardware (the range of ICTs — information and communications technologies — that are the usual bases of Information Society speculation) towards software, the ‘brain work’ dimensions of the information age. In this perspective ‘human capital’ is to the fore, and education the privileged means of ensuring it is maximized. To Leadbeater — and his theme is popular with leading politicians and business figures — the new age is one in which entrepreneurs who are ‘savvy’ and inventive will prosper. The old days of a ‘job for life’ in manufacturing or mining are long gone, and the only recipe for success is constant innovation, new ideas and enterprise.

If Leadbeater is distinctly positive about the Information Society, then Bill Gates (1995) — who surely epitomizes Leadbeater’s self-starting knowledge entrepreneur — goes even further to conceive of the Information Society bringing about ‘friction free capitalism’, in which Adam Smith’s market system is brought close to perfection because people will be better informed, companies more responsive, and activities more personalized, due to the spread of interactive technologies. This paean to capitalism is taken to further heights in the call for a ‘Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age’ from Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth and Alvin Toffler (Chapter 3). What this amounts to is an insistence that the Information Society is a demassified and individualistic era, in sharp contrast to the ‘Second Wave’ civilization of mass production and standardization. The authors contend that only the free market, and not government, can bring this new age into healthy being.

Not surprisingly, these positive endorsements of the Information Society have induced responses from critics. Langdon Winner (Chapter 4) argues that, while we are currently undergoing major change, this is not an entirely novel experience. Thereby he suggests that announcements of a new era might better be premature. Moreover, his historical account puts people rather than technology at the core of change, observing that very often technologies are used by some people to get their way over others. This is something he shares with the lucid and uncompromising critic of technology David Noble (1977, 1984, 2001) whose analyses of the false promises of technology are essential counterweights to the techno-enthusiasts.

Theodore Roszak (Chapter 5) presents a forceful critique of enthusiasts for the Information Society, insisting that the term ‘information’ has been mystified during the twentieth century. In Roszak’s view the Information Society idea is full of hype, something usefully resisted by close analysis of what we mean when we use a word such as ‘information’. Applying the close attention to the vocabulary adopted by many commentators characteristic of the literary scholar, Roszak makes several provocative observations. Not the least of these is that today’s society is based, not on information as so many Information Society advocates assert, but rather on ideas that are profound if often inchoately considered — for instance ‘all men are equal’, ‘do unto others as you would be done by’ and ‘stand by your friends’.

Finally, Kevin Robins and Frank Webster (Chapter 6) present an historical review of the ‘information revolution’ which locates it back in time. They suggest that today’s Information Society continues and deepens long-established patterns rather than announces a new age (Beniger 1986). Their account is one which refuses to start with new technologies and what they are doing to us today, but which instead suggests that a wider context is essential to fully appreciate informational trends (May 2002). In doing this they ask, not what sort of society the ‘information revolution’ is bringing into being, but what established social relationships are doing to information itself.

Advocates

References

Beniger, James R. (1986) The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Duff, Alistair S. (2000) Information Society Studies. London: Routledge.

Evans, Christopher (1979) The Mighty Micro: The Impact of the Computer Revolution. London: Gollancz.

Gates, Bill (1995) The Road Ahead. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

May, Christopher (2002) The Information Society: A Sceptical View. Cambridge: Polity.

Negroponte, Nicholas (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Noble, David F. (1977) America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Noble, David F. (1984) Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Noble, David F. (2001) Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Webster, Frank (2002) Theories of the Information Society, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.

Advocates

Chapter 1

Yoneji Masuda

IMAGE OF THE FUTURE INFORMATION SOCIETY

From Managing in the Information Society: Releasing Synergy Japanese Style, Oxford: Blackwell (1990), pp. 3–10.

WHAT IS THE IMAGE OF THE information society? The concept will be built on the following two premises:

1 The information society will be a new type of human society, completely different from the present industrial society. […] The basis for this assertion is that the production of information values and not material values will be the driving force behind the formation and development of society. Past systems of innovational technology have always been concerned with material productive power, but the future information society must be built within a completely new framework, with a thorough analysis of the system of computer-communications technology that determines the fundamental nature of the information society.

2 The developmental pattern of industrial society is the societal model from which we can predict the overall composition of the information society. Here is another bold ‘historical hypothesis’: the past developmental pattern of human society can be used as a historical analogical model for future society.

Putting the components of the information society together piece by piece by using this historical analogy is an extremely effective way of building the fundamental framework of the information society.

The overall composition of the information society

Table 1 displays the overall framework of the informatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Information Society Studies
• Part One The Information Society
• Part Two Post-Industrial Society
• Part Three The Network Society
• Part Four Transformations
• Part Five Divisions
• Part Six Surveillance
• Part Seven Democracy
• Part Eight Virtualities
• Index