Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND THE MARKET
of buying, selling and trading in order to make profit decisively influence information
and communications innovations. To Schiller (and also to his wife of fifty
years, Anita, a librarian who researches informational trends) the centrality of
market principles is a powerful impulse towards a second major concern, the
commodification of information, which means that it is, increasingly, made available
only on condition that it is saleable. In this respect it is being treated like
other things in a capitalist society: ‘Information today is being treated as a
commodity. It is something which, like toothpaste, breakfast cereals and automobiles,
is increasingly bought and sold’ (Schiller and Schiller, 1982, p. 461).
The third argument insists that class inequalities are a major factor in the
distribution of, access to and capacity to generate information. Bluntly, class
shapes who gets what information and what kind of information they may get.
Thereby, depending on one’s location in the stratification hierarchy, one may be
a beneficiary or a loser in the ‘information revolution’.
The fourth key contention of Herbert Schiller is that the society that is undergoing
such momentous changes in the information and communications areas is
one of corporate capitalism. That is, contemporary capitalism is one dominated
by corporate institutions that have particular characteristics. Nowadays these are
highly concentrated, chiefly oligopolistic – rarely monopolistic – organisations
that command a national and generally international reach. If one wishes to
picture this, then one has but to imagine, say, the clutch of oil companies which
dominate our energy supply: Shell, BP, Exxon, Texaco and a few others are huge,
centralised enterprises, though they also have enormous geographical spread,
linking across continents while also reaching deep into every small town and
sizeable village in the advanced nations.
To the Critical Theorist, modern-day capitalism is of this kind: wherever one
cares to look corporations dominate the scene with but a few hundred commanding
the heights of the economy (Trachtenberg, 1982; Barnet and Müller,
1975). For this reason, in Herbert Schiller’s view, corporate capitalism’s priorities
are especially telling in the informational realm. At the top of its list of priorities
is the principle that information and ICTs will be developed for private rather
than for public ends. As such it will bear the impress of corporate capitalism
more than any other potential constituency in contemporary society.
Clearly these are established features of capitalism. Market criteria and class
inequalities have been important elements of capitalism since its early days,
and even corporate capitalism has a history extending well over a century (cf.
Chandler, 1977), though many of its most distinctive forms appeared in the late
twentieth century. But to Herbert Schiller this is precisely the point: the capitalist
system’s long-established features, its structural constituents and the imperatives
on which it operates are the defining elements of the so-called ‘information
society’. From this perspective those who consider that informational trends
signify a break with the past are incredible since, asks Schiller, how can one
expect the very forces that have generated information and ICTs to be superseded
by what they have created? Far more likely to anticipate that the ‘information
revolution’ does what its designers intended – consolidates and extends
capitalist relations.
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