Information Society Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Australian economist Colin Clark stressed the dominance of different sectors of an economy at different stages of its development and modernization, thus leading to the recognition of the three basic sectors: agriculture, industry, and service. The dominance of each sector was brought about by revolutions, especially in the agricultural and industrial sectors, thus emphasizing the significance of the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.

Three Waves Of Society

In the 1960s American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler focused on the role these sectors played in the so-called waves or revolutions in society in his book titled The Third Wave. The three types of societies, based on the concept of waves, each wave pushing the older societies and cultures aside, are (1) the first wave or the agricultural age brought about by the agricultural revolution, (2) the second wave or the industrial age brought about by the industrial revolution, and (3) the third wave or the information or knowledge age brought about by the information or knowledge revolution. The first wave produced an agrarian society, which replaced the first hunter-gatherer cultures. The second wave produced an industrial society, which was based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. These characteristics combined with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization and ended up with a style of organization called “bureaucracy,” which dominated the industrial age. The third wave produced the current postindustrial society. Toffler’s third wave was the product of the two previous waves or revolutions in the way humans have organized their economic affairs (agricultural and industrial). Toffler himself coined many phrases to describe what is taking place: “super-industrial society,” “Space Age,” “Electronic Era,” “Global Village,” “scientific technological revolution,” and the concurrent phenomena of “demassification,” “diversity,” “knowledge-based production,” and “acceleration of change.”

The current focus of attention is on this third wave that some have described as the dawn of the information society. It is a part of the postindustrial and knowledge society that some have described as the new age, spelling utopia for some (the optimists) and dystopia for others (the skeptics).This information revolution or knowledge revolution is characterized by the dominance of information and communications technology (ICT) and emphasizes the role of digital technologies such as the computer, the cell phone, the Internet, and so forth. It is part of a social revolution that moved the world from a traditional to a modern and now to a hyper complex society, which in the early 1960s recognized the importance and value of information and knowledge.

The Rise Of Techno-Service Industries

The origins of the idea of an information society can be traced to the work of Fritz Machlup, who in 1958 first categorized knowledge and information tasks separately from nor mal industrial and social activities. During that time period he claimed that 29 percent of America’s gross national product came from these knowledge industries.

In the early 1970s Daniel Bell introduced the idea of the rise of the individualized, knowledge-adept social actor as one of the most respected elements of the information age. Manuel Castells in the 1980s proposed that ICTs have produced a new kind of society, the network society, characterized by the world’s being brought closer together but also experiencing increasing social fragmentation and dislocation. According to Castells, this rise of a techno-service society has resulted in a social revolution, a new economy, and an information politics where those who control information—the technocrats— control power and replace the rule of wealth, landed estates, military power, and religion that has typified previous societies. The character of democratic accountability and participation in the information age is changing. There are problems of access as well as control of the public space of the Internet. There are also the political problems of privacy and censorship. Others worry about the decline of the state as a result of the distrust of government. New methods of communication brought about by changes in information technologies allow individuals to confront the state, which some consider to be outdated and no longer the most efficient way to organize society, if it ever was.

So how does one describe the techno-service economy and its offspring, the information society? The techno-service economy is made up of a diverse group of people who have a wide range of skills and training. The characteristics of the service economy are the following: (1) services are intangible, immaterial, and consumed on the spot; (2) it involves closeness between the giver of the service and the consumer; and (3) the service worker seeks to create rapport between himself and the client. The service economy in the past had the reputation of being composed entirely of low-skilled, poorly paid, dead-end jobs. The advent of technology has changed the nature of service and the characteristics of the people performing them: more skilled, more capital intensive, and more dependent on technology. Among the most educated people in society today are those who work in, operate, and control the information economy.

The size of the information sector has grown rapidly. The concomitant information society would be shaped by the use and deployment of ICTs including computers and other electronic and audiovisual media such as the television, the phone, and the cell phone, which clearly have transformed the way we live and work. At the heart of the information society as mediated by communication is the decentering of communications so that individuals can remake society by remaking their communications network, thus leading to the empowerment of the individual and his or her communicative potential. Lewis Mumford uses the term “democratic technics” to describe the ability of technology to allow for democratic self-government with free communication between equals and unimpeded access to the common store of knowledge. These are emerging because of ICTs’ ability to make such flows a reality. The information society conceived as democratic technics allows individuals to express themselves outside mass parties and overcome class identities. Gone is the control of information by the expert.

With the ease and universality of access lies the key to the information technology revolution and the society that is developing around it. In the age of computers with ever-growing storage capacity, interactivity, and processing power, we have a potentially dangerous tool because the revolution is irreversible—like nuclear energy, its power needs to be controlled if it is to work for our benefit. The computer is an empowering tool because of access to information and communication, but it can also be an implement of control, giving unlimited power to those who control the information that it stores. The dilemma is how to resolve that issue.

Toffler talked about a “future shock” from the inability to keep up with the accelerating changes of the information age. It is not unusual to talk about the following types of information: misinformation, disinformation, over information, or information overload, which contributes to noise and boredom. Thus, in our information-dependent society those who possess information can derive real power from it, and the loss of empowerment can be caused by its absence. It could therefore be the goal of ICT in politics to enhance the efficiency of delivery methods in terms of voting, political participation, and so forth so that democracy can be maintained and enhanced.

Bibliography:

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996, 1997, 1998.
Dearnley, James, and John Feather. The Wired World. London: Library Association, 2001.
Feather, John. The Information Society. London: Facet, 2004.
Hornby, Susan, and Zoe Clarke. Challenge and Change in the Information Society. London: Facet, 2003.
Josey, E. J., ed. The Information Society. Phoenix, Ariz.: Roxy, 1978.
Klapp, Rob E. Overload and Boredom. New York: Greenwood, 1986.
May, Christopher. The Information Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2002.

Rosen, Bernard

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