Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

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ised by way of information networks. Information flowing via the Internet, for
example, excludes a greater part of the population. Digital literacy is becoming
increasingly important in order for an individual to be a fully competent
member of the modern information society. At the moment, the differences
between countries as regards utilisation of information networks are huge, but
the trend is the same everywhere: the importance of the networks is growing.
For instance Manuel Castells, who has done research on the development of
the information society, divides citizens into three groups: networkers, who
clearly benefit from the change; flextimers, who struggle under the pressures
of the change; and the jobless, who will often become eliminated from the societal
'competition'. Numerous other social scientists have also presented
similar assessments of the intensifying polarisation among citizens that is concomitant
with the spread of the information society. (See e.g. Lash 1995, Beck
1999, Blom, Melin & Pyöriä 2001).
”Society became divided, as it was for most of human history, between winners
and losers of the endless process of individualized, unequal bargaining.
But this time there were few rules about how to win and how to lose. Skills
were not enough, since the process of technological change accelerated its
pace, constantly superseding the definition of appropriate skills. Membership
of corporations, or even countries, ceased to have its privileges, because
stepped-up global competition kept redesigned the variable geometry of work
and markets. Never was labour more central to the process of value-making.
But never were the workers (regardless of their skills) more vulnerable to the
organisation, since they had become lean individuals, farmed out in a flexible
network whose whereabouts were unknown to the network itself.
Thus, on the surface, societies were/are becoming dualized, with a substantial
top and a substantial bottom growing at both ends of the occupational structure,
so shrinking the middle, at a pace and in a proportion that depend on
each country’s position in the international division of labour and on its political
climate. But down in the deep of the nascent social structure, a more
fundamental process has been triggered by informational work: the disaggregation
of labour, ushering in the network society.” (Castells 1996, 278-279).