Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
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It has been suggested that here, in general commercial affairs, we can see a
heightened importance given to informational activities. Some commentators
suggest that the economy – wider than simply agriculture and manufacture, incorporating
all (and arguably more) enterprise which contributes to GNP – has
nowadays an especially acute need for information, one which is more urgent
and pressing than those occupied in the consumer services of which Bell makes
so much. In other words, producer services (informational work such as banking,
advertising, R&D, online data services, computer software supply and management
consultancy) are indeed axial to present levels of economic activity. It may
be these (developed, as Gershuny demonstrates, to aid the wider economy) that
have promoted an increased centrality of information in recent decades. Political
economist Bill Melody thinks so. He writes that
Most information goods and services are used by industry rather than
consumers. . . . We need to . . . recognise that information . . . is fundamental
to almost all productive activity, in a modern economy. The changing role
of information lies behind the restructuring of all industries and the creation
of the global information economy.
(Melody, 1991, p. 2)
As this book develops, we shall meet other thinkers who, while rejecting the ‘postindustrial
service society’ scenario, do agree that information and information
activities moved to take a strategically more important part in economic, social
and indeed political affairs in the late twentieth century.
Theoretical knowledge
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The foundations of Bell’s ‘post-industrial’ model are insecure. As such, it is
apparent that his equation of ‘post-industrial’ and ‘information’ societies is untenable:
since his argument that professional, white-collar and service work
represents PIS is miscued, so must collapse his assertion that ‘post-industrialism’
is an adequate account of the information age. Above all, perhaps, there are no
signs of a break with former societies appearing – indeed, quite the reverse. As
Krishan Kumar observes, ‘the trends singled out by the post-industrial theorists
are extrapolations, intensifications, and clarifications of tendencies which were
apparent from the very birth of industrialism’ (Kumar, 1978, p. 232). This being
so, we must refuse the idea of post-industrialism as a way of understanding
present concern with information. This leaves us with the undeniable fact that
there is a good deal more information work taking place in advanced societies,
though it is insufficient to assert that this in and of itself engenders a new sort of
society. Just as one cannot assert that more service occupations prove there
is emerging a new sort of society, so it is not enough to contend that more
information of itself represents a new society.
However, if we cannot accept that more information can of itself create
a new sort of society in the way Bell envisages, there are other elements of his
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