Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND THE MARKET
1
part. Hence the history of the spread of corporate capitalism has also been a
history of the spread of media corporations. And, just like corporate capitalism
as a whole, media corporations have expanded in size, concentrated in numbers,
frequently diversified their interests and moved decisively on to an international
stage.
Market criteria
1
1
2
1
1
Herbert Schiller’s view is that the contemporary information environment is
expressive of the interests and priorities of corporate capitalism as it has developed
over time and is an essential component in sustaining the international
capitalist economy. However, there is a good deal more to the Marxian approach
to information than this. We shall be better able to appreciate the contribution
of Critical Theorists if we elaborate on and exemplify ways in which central
capitalist concerns make their influence felt on the ‘informatisation’ of society.
It is useful to begin with that key concern of capitalism – the market.
Schiller’s claim is that market principles, most emphatically the search for profit
maximisation, are quite as telling in the informational realm as they are
throughout capitalist society. As a rule, information will therefore be produced
and made available only where it has the prospect of being sold at a profit, and
it will be produced most copiously and/or with greatest quality where the best
opportunities for gain are evident. It follows that market pressures are decisive
when it comes to determining what sort of information is to be produced, for
whom, and on what conditions.
This pressure is felt even with regard to the pioneering of new technologies.
To understand fully the weight of this claim we need to be reminded how
common it is for ‘information society’ theorists to argue that innovations in the
technological realm herald the ‘information age’. From this perspective it is
implicit that technologies just ‘arrive’, having been ‘invented’ in some unexamined
and unproblematical way, and that once inside the social realm they can
then be used in either positive or negative ways. Information technologies, from
this point of view, are at once decisive in bringing about the ‘information society’,
and simultaneously they are neutral, free from the influence of any human value
or sectional interest. Against this, those who contend that the market is the decisive
force in capitalist societies insist that the products that become available
themselves bear the impress of market values. A startling example of this was
provided by the then chairman of Thorn-EMI, a major British ICT and information
supplier, when he announced that his company’s ‘decision to withdraw from
medical electronics was [because] there appeared little likelihood of achieving
profits in the foreseeable future’ (Thorn-EMI, 1980). In this instance the operative
value was that Thorn-EMI perceived its interests to be best-served by
following a strategy whereby it concentrated around consumer entertainment
products. Medical electronics were felt to be unsupportive of the search for
maximum profitability whereas television, video and other leisure products were
– and action was taken by Thorn-EMI to meet the goal of market success.
135