A Personal View of the Concept of the Information Society

One’s subjective opinion and understanding of the term information society are necessarily shaped by the academic knowledge already acquired and by the discussions one goes through; even so, I will make use of the fact that every subject, topic and idea sticks in the mind only when it is in some way interpreted, set into a wider and already existing apparatus of knowledge. Without claiming that my interpretation is original, I will begin with a list of the sub-topics of the concept of the information society that helped me clarify not only what the concept of the IS is about, but also what problems it contains. I will then outline the specific topics of the IS concept that influence my thinking in other related academic fields as well.

Among the main topics of the discussion about the information society I count the basic problematisation of whether the information society, as a society based on the creation, mediation and processing of information, is something new, or whether, on the contrary, information has always been part of human society. The answers to this question differ and mostly split into two camps, where one side, to which Daniel Bell for example belongs, claims that it is, and the other, represented by the sociologist Manuel Castells, argues that the use of information is not so critical as what the quantitative growth of information made possible. For Castells, the growth in the use of information in society gave rise to a new society, one that forms around the topology of networks. These two camps are further linked by the discussion of how and when exactly a quantitative growth of information (or, on a philosophical level, a quantitative growth of anything) is transformed into qualitative growth or change. Here I allow myself to agree with those who stress the necessity of grasping the changes qualitatively, for quantity alone does not give us an important indicator: the meaning of these changes. One may recall here Marshall McLuhan, who recognised that the concrete uses of a medium are many, but that what really changed society was precisely the introduction of the given medium and its functional capacities into society. The content is more or less interesting and important, but what brings truly revolutionary changes into society is precisely the new medium, which is briefly expressed by his well-known dictum: The medium is the message.

The information society as a concept is thus based, in a non-trivial way, on information. Its creation and dissemination, however, are mediated precisely by some medium, which concretely is some technology. If, then, information changes society, a no less important role in this change is played by the technology that makes those changes technically possible. According to Frank Webster, such a conception of the term IS is one of its definitions. For me personally it is an interesting definition, because it follows from it that technics (technology) plays an active role in shaping the structures and the workings of society. From the point of view of the philosophy of technology, it is then further important to answer how far this active role of technics depends, in turn, on society. If it did not, we would be speaking of the concept of technological determinism, which, if I am not mistaken, is rejected by theorists, for it places technics outside society, as an independently living organism.

I lean towards the view that technics and society exist in a symbiotic relationship, in which, as in the yin and yang symbol, they influence each other through the mechanism of a feedback loop.

My further understanding of the term IS points to how the emphasis on information changes society from an economic and labour point of view, and which type of work is favoured, which in turn changes the shape of society, because people who were previously unable, on the basis of their cognitive profile, to reach an influential position are today at the forefront of socio-technical change. I am speaking here of people with below-average verbal abilities but an outstanding talent for quantitative reasoning, among which let us roughly count mathematical-logical thinking. This issue leads me to one of what are, for me, the most important and most interesting questions: will education and technical advancement paradoxically lead to a radical decline in traditional literacy, education and social skills, for too great an emphasis on quantitative talent will make these historically important skills irrelevant? Although it is bold to say that these skills are independent of each other (even if at the level of cognition and brain structure that is most likely the case), society, and the labour market too, is entirely clear on this: a person with a doctorate in theoretical physics can look forward to a lucrative career in finance, data analysis or science, whereas a doctorate in English literature does not bring such certainty, from the point of view of the statistical average. Does the emphasis on quantitative skills bring a new kind of inequality into society?