I’ve been thinking some more about the “information society”, something I’ve thought about in the past. I thank Ajit K. Pyati’s paper for re-piquing my interest because I think this is an important issue, since it is something that we seem to be striving for. I decided to put down some of my thoughts. This can be taken as an argument for the need for something more than the “technological determinism” identified by Pyati in the WSIS documents referred to in his paper. Click below to read my thoughts…
The concept “information society” is a conceptual construct and I think it is reasonable to assume that one concept is meant to modify the other. But, I have never come across a clarification of which is meant to modify which. It would be useful to break the concept of “information society” down, but both “information” and “society” are difficult concepts that are understood in many ways. For my purposes, I’m going to rely on the following general definitions:
Information is derived from knowledge and experience and is communicable in a meaningful manner.
A society is a system bounded by beliefs, norms and rules in which individuals interact primarily with other individuals within the system.
Now, we deconstruct the construct:
On the one hand we could say that “information society” refers to a society which is characterised by information, and I think this is how it is usually understood. On the other hand, we might also think of it as referring to information that is somehow characterised by society or a specific society, since we usually refer to the information society, rather than an information society. Lastly, there is probably nothing wrong with thinking of the information society acting in both ways, i.e. societal information and informational society.
The first case is the more familiar and the easier to describe. It implies that there is a society, which is the primary focus of the concept, where information is the defining characteristic. I think this is what is described when, for example, “globalisation” is defined as relying on the rapid exchange of information throughout the world for business and knowledge development purposes. Through the exchange of information a global society is formed which requires certain technologies to facilitate this exchange. What bounds this society is beliefs about the technology and what can be done with it, and the necessary rules and norms to maintain order in such a system. It is a radically different kind of society than what we have been used to because interaction between individuals is not hindered by geographical distance. Therefore, the individuals that make up this society, also inhabit other societies which can be further separated, physically and culturally, than interacting societies have traditionally been.
In the second case, the focus is not on the society, but rather on information. What is significant here is that we refer to an “information society” rather than, for example, an “information network”. The conceptual construct, in this sense, would seem to imply that information is characterised by either a specific society or society in general, i.e. there is something social about information. It’s not difficult to think about information as being a product of a social context. If information is related to experiences and knowledge in a communicable form, it will reflect the values and norms of the society that produced it. (This is not as obvious as it may seem, but a more in depth discussion about this point is beyond the scope of what I’m trying to accomplish here, so I’ll just refer to a past paper of mine that discusses this.) Hence, an “information society” can be taken to refer to information that is, or is able to be made to be, relevant for a certain social context. In this instance, the “information society”. To be integrated into the “information society” then not only refers to the availability of the technology necessary to enter this society, but also, or alternatively, the ability to produce information that is relevant to that society.
As I suggested previously, we can either decide to accept one of these understandings of what the conceptual construct “information society” refers to, or we can say that it refers to both. I think that “information society” is most commonly understood in the first way that I’ve described. But can we understand “information society” in the second way without accepting the first? This is an important question because it addresses the assumption that availability of the technology is enough for integration in the “information society”. I would answer the question, yes, but with the caveat that this would not be very meaningful if integration in the first sense is not foreseeable. The practices associated with the production of information in the second understanding of the concept can be promoted without the technical framework required for the first. Therefore, the “information society” should be understood in both ways, but it should be kept in mind that they can be separated and that full integration in the “information society” requires that the conditions suggested by both understandings be met.
