Information Society

It has been commonplace for more than a decade now to say that those of us who inhabit advanced societies such as in North America, Japan, and Western Europe live in an ‘‘information society.’’ The claim that this is so comes routinely from politicians, educationalists, and industrialists, each of whom have concerns about how best to prepare for and compete in this information age. So familiar now is the term information society that it scarcely seems controversial: It is simply part of the accepted vocabulary of opinion leaders who currently comment on the state of the world, a taken-for-granted backcloth to more pressing issues of policy. For the purposes of this article, I step back from these more immediate matters deliberately to problematize the notion of the information society. I examine here more precisely than is usual what commentators actually mean when they use the term. As we shall see, when we delve a little, it becomes apparent that the concept is actually vague and imprecise, even of dubious value. Indeed, I shall argue here that the concept information society is inadequate and unhelpful when we try to establish the character of the era in which we live. This suggests, at the least, that a good deal of policy today is premised on somewhat shaky foundations. We may proceed by distinguishing at least five different definitions of an information society, each of which presents criteria for identifying the new. These criteria are technological, economic, occupational, spatial, and cultural. Let us examine each in turn.