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Sarah Stacy Iannarone
Professor Sussman
USP 516: Cities in the Global Political Economy
Review Essay: Webster 1–6
25 January 2005
And now we are the Father, with our brood,
Ruling the Infinite, not Three but One;
We made our world and saw that it was good;
Ourselves we worship, and we have no Son.
Yet we have Gods, for even our strong nerve
Falters before the Energy we own.
Which shall be master? Which of us shall serve?
Which wears the fetters? Which shall bear the crown?
~Henry Adams, Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres, 1920
What are we then? the lords of space?
The master-mind whose tasks you do?
Jockey who rides you in the race?
Or are we atoms whirled apace,
Shaped and controlled by you?
~Henry Adams, Prayer to the Dynamo, 1920 1
Contemporary society’s obsession with the progress made possible by
technological advances is no new phenomenon. Henry Adams writes in “The Dynamo and
the Virgin” about his experiences at the Great Exposition of 1900 in Paris, as he looked
with awe upon the dynamo, its harnessing of the great natural power of the earth a symbol
of man’s infinite possibilities. After much time in the hall, Adams began to see the
dynamic machines as a moral force, a symbol of energy more powerful than any other
heretofore created by man. Unable to reconcile the profound technological advances
before him with the historical and rational limitations of his era, Adams’ abruptly declared
an end to human progress. Technology had surpassed humanity: mechanics were
supernatural, in the realm of the divine.2
A similar series of technological advances now finds humankind in very much the
same predicament it was when Adams stumbled upon the great hall of dynamos a century
1
From Hume, Robert. Runaway Star: An Appreciation of Henry Adams (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1951) < http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=731> 24 Jan 2005.
2
“Henry Adams (1838–1918). The Education of Henry Adams1918, XXV: The Dynamo and the Virgin”
Bartleby.Com. < http://www.bartleby.com/159/25.html> 24 Jan 2005.
ago. Following dualistic patterns of rational thought set forth by Adams and other modern
thinkers of the industrial age, many critics today hail another technological innovation—
the advent of the computer and the subsequent proliferation of digitization—as the
culmination of human progress and herald of a new era: the information age. Many critics
do not a consensus make, however, and there is much disagreement among scholars about
the extent and nature of the new age upon whose threshold we may be perched. Despite
the abundance of those who hail the advent of the “Information Society,” many critics
charge this pronouncement rivals Adams’ in its prematurity and breadth. Likewise, they
suggest, the same ideologies accompanying the nascent industrial era, namely extreme
manifestations of secular humanism like social Darwinism, libertarianism and pure market
capitalism, continue to drive contemporary technological development. Frank Webster
gathers many of these strong and disparate voices in his comprehensive student text, The
Information Society Reader (Routledge, 2004), the first part of which he uses to lay out
arguments for and against the idea of an “information society.”
Through his organization of the book, Webster sets the camps squarely—and
effectively—opposite each other. It may prove effective, then, in review not to focus
upon the merits and limitations of the individual arguments as presented, which in context
are obvious, but rather to examine the merits of the arguments in sum. How is it that one
side, proponents of the ‘information society,” has constructed an argument so sound that it
satisfies both the neolibertarian ideals of free market capitalists and the utopian ideals of
former radicals who envision communications information technology as the pathway to
community, democracy, and, ultimately, liberty for all?
Langdon Winner has pointed out that “ecstatic enthusiasm” for the technologically
determinist policies proposed by those who favor the idea of an information society is
actually a “sociopathic” perpetuation of an ideology which essentially constitutes our
Western identity:
“In one way or another, most scholars believe in the social
construction or social shaping of technology in which outcomes are
negotiated among a variety of actors with complex motives. It is interesting
to note how little such understanding enters libertarian writings on
cyberspace. A similar rawboned determinism is prominent in today's
literature on global communication and global business where the eager
pursuit of technotrends is the order of the day.3
He is not concerned with the effectiveness of the arguments proposing an information
society, but rather how these arguments function as systems of social control. Where
Masuda, Leadbeater, and Toffler fail, in his estimation, is not in their conception of an
information society, but the manner that their arguments obscure matters of power and
distribution, advocate greater concentrations of wealth and promote diversity through
segregation rather than inclusion. Taylorism, in his assessment, is far from obsolete:
economically efficient ideologies continue to shape our social and technological
development (Winner in Webster 49).
In a similar vein, Theodore Roszak, a self-proclaimed neo-Luddite, deconstructs
the arguments behind the information society in an almost structuralist fashion, tracinging
the evolution of the meaning of “information” from the semantic content of statements to
the purely quantitative measure of communicative exchanges through mechanical
channels which require decoding (Roszak in Webster 58). Simply put, bits replace
symbols. Like Winner, Roszak does not try to assess the extent of or argue against the
“shift” occurring, but rather notes its impact on a culture that, in playing loose and fast
with a fundamental idea like information, is undermining its own sense of itself. Like
Adams, we have subordinated ourselves to the power of the machine, putting our hopes
for the future in its power. Doing so, Roszak asserts, does more than undermine our
cultural self-esteem; it obscures basic questions of social justice and equity and hinders
our intellectual growth.
Robin and Webster attempt to counter the pro-Information Society argument more
directly than do their predecessors in the volume, through an assertion of continuity. No
great shift, no new era is arguable if nothing different has occurred. “[A] cocktail of
scientific aspiration and commercial hype,” they suggest, reinforces assumptions that a
technological revolution has occurred/is occurring. Despite a more thorough examination
of the history and theory behind their argument than found in the preceding chapters, their
premise remains essentially the same: the information society is not a concept which
Winner, Langdon. “Cyberlibertarian Myths and the Prospects for Community.”
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/cyberlib.html, 23 Jan 05
3
initiates social progress, but rather one that reinforces a prevailing and mutually
reinforcing system in which information and power operate to maintain and increase
inequalities in access to resources. Social control, contrary to libertarian beliefs, is
actually central in reinforce existing power structures and will continue to increase as
technology “progresses” (Robin and Webster in Webster 76).
But what of the initial question raised in this review: How do proponents of the
‘information society,” maintain their argument for an information society despite
abundant evidence to the contrary? The answer must not lie in soundness of their
argument’s logic, but in the manner of its dissemination. Enthusiasm for the information
society is simply enthusiasm for capitalism. Unlike its critics, the proponents of an
Information Society cited in this collection are not social scientists immersed the study of
communications information systems and technology theory perpetuating a discourse
which promotes critical inquiry to effect positive social change. Their audiences are not
scholars and cultural critics, but business planners and managers. Masuda, Leadbeater,
and Toffler and Co. are preaching to a choir of government leaders and transnational
corporate CEOs. That their argument lacks consistency and plausibility is irrelevant; its
rewards are evident in the bottom line.