Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY?
It must be in the detail of this exposition and assessment of varying ‘theories
of the information society’ that the value of this book is to be found. So much
commentary on the ‘information age’ starts from a naïve and taken-for-granted
position: ‘There has been an “information revolution”, this will have and is having
profound social consequences, here are the sorts of impact one may anticipate
and which may already have been evidenced.’ This sets out with such a selfevidently
firm sense of direction, and it follows such a neat linear logic –
technological innovation results in social change – that it is almost a pity to
announce that it is simply the wrong point of departure for those embarking on
a journey to see where informational trends, technological and other, are leading.
At the least, recognition of the contribution of social theory moves one away from
the technological determinism which tends to dominate a great deal of consideration
of the issues (though, as we have seen, with some social science thinkers
more subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – technological determinism lingers).
More than this, however, I think that one’s appreciation of the significance
of information in contemporary life is immensely deepened by encounters with
the likes of Herbert Schiller, Anthony Giddens, Manuel Castells and Zygmunt
Bauman. Who cannot be stimulated, for example, by Daniel Bell’s arguments that
it is the increase in service employment that leads to an expansion of information
occupations that have most important consequences for how ‘post-industrial’
societies conduct themselves? Who cannot find arresting Giddens’s contention
that the origins of today’s information societies are to be found in surveillance
activities that are in large part driven by the exigencies of a world organised into
nation states? Who cannot take seriously Herbert Schiller’s suggestion that the
information explosion of the post-war years is the consequence, for the most part,
of corporate capitalism’s inexorable march? Who is not disturbed and provoked
by Jürgen Habermas’s fear that the ‘public sphere’, so essential to the proper
conduct of democracies and where the quality of information supplies the oxygen
which determines the health of participants, is being diminished? Who would not
concede the relevance to understanding information of theorists of a transition
from Fordist to post-Fordist forms of socio-economic organisation? Who cannot
be intrigued by Jean Baudrillard’s gnomic – if exasperating – observations on
signs that are simulations or Jean-François Lyotard’s identification of a ‘principle
of performativity’ underpinning the generation and application of information in
the ‘postmodern’ era? And who, encountering these thinkers and the calibre of
their work, cannot but conclude that most pronouncements on the ‘information
age’ are hopelessly gauche?
Of course it would be disingenuous of me to stop here with the suggestion
that all I have tried to do is introduce readers to a variety of interpretations of
informational trends. Those who have gone this far in the book will have realised
soon enough that I have found certain thinkers more persuasive than others. I
have endeavoured to make this, and the reasons why I favour them, clear as
I have gone along.
This approach, a close critique of major contributions to information matters,
has worked through others’ writing to reveal my own views. This exercise has
involved examining the conceptual principles of thinkers as well as the salience
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