just what is this "information society", anyway?
In a conversation, we say "technology" and think we know what we're talking about. For instance, I often tell people that I'm interested in technology and its effects on writing, or that I'm interested in teaching with technology. But this often goes unprobed. Does this mean that I am interested in computers? Are computers just those processor/keyboard/screen combinations produced by Dell and Gateway and Apple? Or what about ipods and projectors and, better yet, pencils? In short, I really have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "technology." But no one calls me on it.
In the introduction to his The Information Society Reader (2005), Frank Webster notes that it's "especially surprising [] that so many professional commentators evoke an Information Society without being at all clear about what they mean by the term" (10). Commentators like Webster himself, in fact. While I've only read the intro, I notice that he's very cavalier about the term "Information Society" without being very clear about what he means. There's controversy about it, sure, but what is it?
Wikipedia is no help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society . I thought I could trust such a darling of "the Information Society" to explain the term to me, but the entry is full of ramblings and points mostly to outside authorities--some of which are also cited in Webster's book.
Since there's so obvious a void here, I feel I need to fill it. I'm not crazy about the term "Information Society" because it implies that it's a monolithic thing, that we're all post-modern (also undefined but used by Webster) and living in the same age. While the potential speed of communication may make feel like a "global village" at times, there's plenty of people living in the modern (as opposed to "postmodern") age--my parents for instance--and many others living in spaces far less connected than that. I think it's interesting to theorize what the world looks like from the perspective of a connected (in social and digital wired/wireless terms) academic, but I think it's important to acknowledge that this is still just one band in our, ahem, broadband (and not so broadband) world. From that perspective, I see the "Information Age" ( a term I like better, for some reason) as having a unique problem: our concern should no longer be the acquisition of knowledge, but the sorting of it.
In the introduction to his The Information Society Reader (2005), Frank Webster notes that it's "especially surprising [] that so many professional commentators evoke an Information Society without being at all clear about what they mean by the term" (10). Commentators like Webster himself, in fact. While I've only read the intro, I notice that he's very cavalier about the term "Information Society" without being very clear about what he means. There's controversy about it, sure, but what is it?
Wikipedia is no help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society . I thought I could trust such a darling of "the Information Society" to explain the term to me, but the entry is full of ramblings and points mostly to outside authorities--some of which are also cited in Webster's book.
Since there's so obvious a void here, I feel I need to fill it. I'm not crazy about the term "Information Society" because it implies that it's a monolithic thing, that we're all post-modern (also undefined but used by Webster) and living in the same age. While the potential speed of communication may make feel like a "global village" at times, there's plenty of people living in the modern (as opposed to "postmodern") age--my parents for instance--and many others living in spaces far less connected than that. I think it's interesting to theorize what the world looks like from the perspective of a connected (in social and digital wired/wireless terms) academic, but I think it's important to acknowledge that this is still just one band in our, ahem, broadband (and not so broadband) world. From that perspective, I see the "Information Age" ( a term I like better, for some reason) as having a unique problem: our concern should no longer be the acquisition of knowledge, but the sorting of it.
posted by advee at 5:11 PM
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