Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND THE MARKET
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capitalism has been transcended, long prevailing imperatives of a market economy
remain as determining as ever in the transformations occurring in the
technological and informational spheres’ (Schiller, 1981, p. xii).
It is crucial to appreciate this emphasis of Marxian analysis: yes, there have
been changes, many of them awesome, but capitalism and its concerns remain
constant and primary. For instance, Douglas Kellner (1989b) acknowledges that
‘there have been fundamental, dramatic changes in contemporary capitalism’
(p. 171). He favours the term ‘techno-capitalism’ as a description of the period
when ‘new technologies, electronics and computerisation came to displace
machines and mechanisation, while information and knowledge came to play
increasingly important roles in the production process, the organisation of society
and everyday life’ (p. 180). However, these novel developments neither outdate
central concepts of Critical Theory nor displace established capitalist priorities.
Indeed, continues Kellner, the system remains fundamentally intact and, as such,
terms used by an earlier generation of Marxist scholars (‘class’, ‘capital’, ‘commodification’
and ‘profit’) are still salient (Kellner, 1999). In fact, they are arguably
of greater value since at the present time information and communications developments
are so frequently interpreted, as we have seen, as representing a break
with previous societies. Contesting writers whose concern is to identify a ‘postmodern’,
‘post-industrial’ or ‘post-Fordist’ society in the making, thinkers such as
Kellner find the contribution of long-held Marxist concepts particularly helpful
as ‘an alternative to all post-capitalist social theories’ (p. 177).
An integral element of Marxian concern with the significance of capitalism’s
imperatives for the information domain is the role of power, control and interest.
In the mid-1970s Herbert Schiller insisted that the ‘central questions concerning
the character of, and prospects for, the new information technology are our
familiar criteria: for whose benefit and under whose control will it be implemented? ’
(Schiller, 1973, p. 175). These remain central concerns for like-minded scholars,
and characteristically they highlight issues which recurrently return us to established
circumstances to explain the novel and, as we shall see, to emphasise the
continuities of relationships which new technologies support. For instance, typically
Schillerish questions are: Who initiates, develops and applies innovative
information technologies? What opportunities do particular people have – and
have not – to access and apply them? For what reasons and with what interests
are changes advocated? To what end and with what consequences for others is
the information domain expanding? These may not appear especially unsettling
questions, but when we see them attached to other elements of Critical Theorists’
analysis we can much better appreciate their force.
Key elements of argument
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In the writing of Herbert Schiller there are at least four arguments that are given
special emphasis. I signal them here and expand on them later in this chapter.
The first draws attention to the pertinence of market criteria in informational
developments. In this view it is essential to recognise that the market pressures
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