Download What is the Information Society?

What is the Information Society?
Info 280
February 13, 2007
Mahad Ibrahim
Conventional Wisdom
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We are firmly convinced that we are collectively entering a new era of
enormous potential, that of the Information Society and expanded
human communication. In this emerging society, information and
knowledge can be produced, exchanged, shared and communicated
through all the networks of the world. WSIS 2003, Declaration of
Principles
that information as a driver in economic development has expanded
dramatically during the past decade in line with the shift in parts of the
world from an “industrial society” to an “information society”. Josephine
Ouedraogo, Deputy Executive Secretary, Economic Commission for
Africa
Defining the Information Society
• No accepted definition
• Predicated on widely accepted premise that
the amount of information is ballooning.
– We estimate that new stored information grew about 30% a year between
1999 and 2002. (Lyman, Peter and Hal R. Varian, "How Much Information",
2003)
• Information explosion is a result or cause of
societal change.
The Impetus for ICT4D
We are embarking onto the Third Millennium, confident in our
capability to bring about a technological revival that crowns the efforts
of the Egyptian development and redoubles its fruitful results so that
welfare will prevail in all sectors of the Egyptian society. The
international community has imposed on us a new order based on
knowledge and science that comes as a result of rapid
communication, and grows on innovation and creativity. Globalization
has imposed on our age a new world based on giant transitional [sic]
corporations with their huge power of making use of knowledge and
sciences; these corporations link the whole world by means of
developed advanced telecommunication nets and seek to expand
their presence and domination of markets.
- President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, 9-13-1999
Open Questions
• What is an Information Society? Or
Network Society? Or Knowledge Society?
• How do we measure it?
• At what threshold, does a given nation
qualify as a information society?
Many Dimensions
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Technological
Economic
Occupational
Spatial
Cultural
The IT Revolution
• 1974 represented a tipping point in the costs of
ICTs
• Technological breakthroughs lead to increased
pervasiveness of ICT
• Advent of the network begins to alter the rules of
the game
• “Computer technology is to the information age
what mechanization was to the industrial
revolution” John Naisbitt in Webster
The Information Economy
• The rise of information
– Machlup and Porat
• The rise of services and the service economy
– Industrialization --> Services --> Informationalism?
• Changes in the process of production - flexible
specialization
– IT has reconfigured the production process
• Corporate capitalism over all else
– Market shapes info flows, class determines access,
corporations shape rules of the game
The Info Worker
• Create knowledge
• Process information
• Use and Maintain information machines
Or
• Workers that create, process, and handle
physical goods
The Network Society
• Networks represent the fundamental organizing
principle of human relations
– production, consumption, reproduction, experience, and power
• Networks are not new, but emboldened by
information and communication technologies
• They are characterized by flexibility, scalability,
and survivability
• Binary choice of inclusion/exclusion
“This approach is different from the conceptual framework that defines our
societies as information or knowledge societies.” Castells
Mass Culture vs. Big Brother
• The rise of mass media --> global media
– The growth of satellite and cable TV globally
– Are there asymmetries in the dissemination of
media?
• Increased opportunities for informal and formal
surveillance
• Is the public sphere compatible with the
commoditization of information?
OECD Conceptual Model of the Information Society
OECD, 2005.
UNESCO’s Vision of the
Information Society
• Infrastructure
– Internet hosts per 100 Inhabitants
– Number of Fixed Telephone lines versus Cellular
Mobile Telephone Subscribers
– Television Receivers per 1,000 Inhabitants
• Access and Use
– Internet Users per 100 Inhabitants
– Combined Tele-density measures
– Annual Internet Tariffs as a Percentage of GDP (in
current US dollars) per capital
UNESCO’s Vision part 2
• ICT and Education
– Percentage of students that use computers at
least a few times a week by gender
– Percentage of computers within schools
connected to the Web
• ICT and Culture
– Percentage of world online population by
languages
UNCSTD
UNESCO, 2003