The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

Societies in Transition to the Network Society 49
Societies in Transitions, Values and Social Well-being
The information societies are characterized not only by the appropriation
of technology but also their internal openness and social
well-being.
None of the countries in transition analyzed have an authoritarian
regime and the dominating values in those societies today are those of
an open society. The openness of a society can be measured by various
dimensions, such as the ratio between the population in prison and the
total population.
As one can see in the following table (Table 3.14), whereas the
Finnish model is characterized by a ratio twice as low as that for the
USA, Portugal registers figures that are twice those for Finland, with
values that are very close to the average for the G7 societies. However,
if we look at the total number of countries in transition in terms of
their prison inmate figures, we find that, with the exception of Italy
and Greece, all of the remaining countries have an inmate population
above the average for the advanced economies.
In terms of gender equality, the majority of societies in transition
are below the average for the advanced economies (661), representing
societies that are still very unequal in terms of gender. Only Spain and
Argentina achieve better gender equality scores, bringing them closer
to the egalitarian model in terms of gender relations: Finland (820).
To add a further dimension, we can also compare the well-being of
the populations of the societies in transition to the well-being models
associated with the three information society models under analysis
(Finland, Singapore and Silicon Valley), by looking at the income
structures.
Hence, measured by the ratio of the 20% richest to the 20% poorest
is concerned, the Finnish model of an information welfare society
presents the greatest equality of income (3.8). At the other end, the
market-governed information society model (Silicon Valley) and the
authoritarian model (Singapore) show much greater unbalance in
terms of income distribution, occupying third and second place in
the ranking of the advanced economies with the worst ratios between
the income of the richest and that of the poorest (8.3 and 9.7
respectively).