What is the Information Society?

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What is the Information Society?

• Info 280
• February 13, 2007
• Mahad Ibrahim

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Conventional Wisdom

• 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

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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.

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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
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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?

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Many Dimensions

• Technological
• Economic
• Occupational
• Spatial
• Cultural

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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

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The Information Economy

• The rise of information
• Machlup and Porat
• The rise of services and the service economy
• Industrialization --gt Services --gt
  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

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The Info Worker

• Create knowledge
• Process information
• Use and Maintain information machines
• Or
• Workers that create, process, and handle physical
  goods

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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

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Mass Culture vs. Big Brother

• The rise of mass media --gt 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?

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OECD Conceptual Model of the Information Society
OECD, 2005.
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UNESCOs 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

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UNESCOs 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

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UNCSTD
UNESCO, 2003