INFORMATION SOCIETY

Do we live in an information society?

Do we live in an information society?

Introduction

It has been common for over ten years now to state that the ones amongst us inhabiting sophisticated and advanced societies like Europe, Japan, and North America, live in an information society. The statement that this is true, generally comes from the industrialists, educationalists, and politicians, all of whom are concerned regarding the best to prepare for and struggle in this age of information technology. The term information society is so commonplace in the present era that it hardly appears to be contradictory.

It is merely part of the acknowledged glossary of opinion leaders who presently remark regarding the worldly conditions, a taken for granted backdrop to rather serious concerns of policy. Such rather immediate issues would be avoided in this essay deliberately; instead the rationale for the use of this term would be illustrated in detail. On delving a little, it becomes evident that the idea is in fact imprecise and vague, and even doubtful. In fact, it may be argued that the idea of information society is unhelpful and inadequate when the current era we are living in is being defined. To the minimum, this proposes that today a fair deal of policy is based on rather unstable grounds. Five distinct areas would be highlighted to justify the assertion that the current we are currently living in an information society.

Justification

By an information society it means that the people are moving from a manufacturer of products to the economy of service, and that the information, technology, and theoretical knowledge become the main modes or mediums of service. More value is given to the information along with the ones who know the means to produce, disperse and assemble it, compared to the labour. Normally, the information is quite expensive to recreate. This implies that the expense of creating the initial copy of an information product, like recording a CD or writing a book, is generally very expensive; however recreating those products is frequently trifling (Duff, 1998, pp. 24-32).

The world has been going through the procedure of structural revolution for more than twenty years. This procedure has multiple dimensions; however it is allied to the evolution of a novel paradigm of technology, centred at the technologies of communication and information. It is known that a society is not determined by the technology, rather society forms technology in accordance with the interests, values, and needs of the individuals who employ that technology. Moreover, communication and information technologies are specifically responsive to the impacts of social employments of technology itself. The account of the internet imparts sufficient evidence that the users, specifically the initial thousands of users, were, to a significant extent, the creators of the technology (Manuel, 2006, pp. 34-36).

Technological Justification

The most widespread description of the information society focuses on the impressive innovation in the technological area. The main concept is that the advancements in the transmission, storage, and processing have resulted in the implementation of the information technologies ...