The Information Society
Information Society is a
term for a society in which the creation, distribution, and manipulation of
information has become the most significant economic and cultural activity. An
Information Society may be contrasted with societies in which the economic underpinning
is primarily Industrial or Agrarian. The machine tools of the Information
Society are computers and telecommunications, rather than lathes or ploughs.
Progress in information
technologies and communication is changing the way we live: how we work and do
business, how we educate our children, study and do research, train ourselves,
and how we are entertained. The information society is not only affecting the
way people interact but it is also requiring the traditional organisational
structures to be more flexible, more participatory and more decentralised.
(Chair's conclusions from the G-7 Ministerial Conference on the Information
Society, February 1995.)
The idea of a global
Information Society can be viewed in relation to Marshall McLuhan's prediction
that the communications media would transform the world into a "global
village.
