The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

64 The Network Society
However, this is to be expected, for although they share values such
as democracy and the wish to adopt informational society models,
each society has its individual history and own identity, as well as different
well-being models.
Social Change in Network Societies
The characterization of the societies in transition that we have
endeavoured to achieve in this chapter, with a more in-depth treatment
of the Portuguese situation, reflects the transition of populations with
lower education levels to a society in which the younger generations
have already more consolidated educational competences. However,
this analysis also reflects societies, which, though they have made great
efforts in the area of knowledge, are still trying to assert themselves in
the infrastructure and technology production dimensions.
This analysis also reflects a socio-political transition—first from
dictatorships to a democratic institutional politization and then to a
routinization of democracy. In a process that combines growing scepticism
in relation to the political parties and the government institutions
and an increase in civic engagement, using autonomous and, at
times, individualized forms of expression on the part of civil society.
It is in this context that one produces a fundamental transition in
these societies: technological transition. A transition expressed
through the diffusion of the Internet and the appearance of the network
society in the social structure and practice.
After reading the above data and analyses, there is one question still
to be answered: is there a generation divide or not in all the societies
analyzed here? Though it is true that the data for the Portuguese society
confirm the existence of that divide, it is not present in all the societies
analyzed. Some of the exceptions are Eastern European countries
such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
The generation divide is not the result of an option; it is, rather, the
fruit of a society in which the necessary cognitive resources are distributed
unequally amongst the generations, so that societies in which
formal learning and literacy are historically better established present
transition processes that accentuate the generational differences to a
lesser degree.