Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
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In this chapter I shall focus on the notion of post-industrial society, and, despite
my admiration, I shall be critical of the theory. I shall argue that PIS is untenable
and that there is reliable evidence to demonstrate this. That his post-industrial
theory has been shown to be incorrect is not inconsistent with admiration of Bell’s
endeavours. In my view he asks the right questions in an appropriate way. As
such he is always pertinent and provocative.
That said, it is worth asking why it is that Bell’s post-industrial conception
manages to retain appeal amongst many information society adherents. Shallow
commentators on the information society often appropriate Bell’s image of postindustrialism.
They seem to say ‘this is a “post-industrial information society”;
for heavyweight elaboration see Harvard professor Daniel Bell’s 500-page
tome’. Such an appeal gives authority, insight and gravitas to articles, books and
television specials that offer exaggerated propositions about the direction and
character of the present times and which deserve little serious attention. To
demonstrate that PIS is an untenable notion is therefore to undermine a plank of
much popular commentary on the conditions in which we find ourselves.
However, it would be unjust to condemn Bell for mistakes in his sociology,
and still more unworthy to try to dismiss him because of the company in which
he finds himself. Daniel Bell cannot do much about lesser thinkers hanging on to
his coat tails anyway, but, as regards his sociological misunderstandings, before
we detail them, let us give applause for his capacity to get us thinking seriously
about the type of society in which information comes to play a more central role.
PIS may be inadequately conceived and empirically flawed, contradictory and
inconsistent, but Bell’s best-known work, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, is,
to borrow a phrase from George Orwell, a ‘good bad book’. Futurists like Alvin
Toffler, Nicholas Negroponte and John Naisbitt, whose paperback speculations
capture the largest audiences, merely produce bad books: intellectually slight,
derivative, analytically inept and naïve on almost every count. Daniel Bell, on
the other hand, produces ‘good bad’ work. There may be many things wrong
with it, but we should acknowledge its qualities: it is academically rich, boldly
constructed, imaginative, a remarkably impressive achievement.
Bell contends that we are entering a new system, a post-industrial society,
which, while it has several distinguishing features, is characterised throughout by
a heightened presence and significance of information. As we shall see, Daniel
Bell argues that information and knowledge are crucial for PIS both quantitatively
and qualitatively. On the one hand, features of post-industrialism lead to greater
amounts of information being in use. On the other hand, Bell claims that in the
post-industrial society there is a qualitative shift evident especially in the rise to
prominence of what he calls ‘theoretical knowledge’. In the world of PIS, in other
words, there is not just more information; there is also a different kind of information/knowledge
in play. With such features, it will be readily appreciated why
Bell’s theory of ‘post-industrialism’ appeals to those who want to explain the
emergence of an ‘information society’.
He is undeniably correct in his perception of increases in the part played by
information in social, economic and political affairs. However, Daniel Bell is mistaken
in interpreting this as signalling a new type of society – a ‘post-industrial’
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