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Library and Information Society
Notes discontinuity, as if contemporary society had nothing in common with society as it was 100 or 150
years ago. Such assumptions would have ideological character because they would fit with the
view that we can do nothing about change and have to adapt to existing political realities. These
critics argue that contemporary society first of all is still a capitalist society oriented towards
accumulating economic, political, and cultural capital. They acknowledge that information society
theories stress some important new qualities of society, but charge that they fail to show that these
are attributes of overall capitalist structures. Critics such as Webster insist on the continuities that
characterise change. In this way Webster distinguishes between different epochs of capitalism: laissez-
faire capitalism of the 19th century, corporate capitalism in the 20th century, and informational
capitalism for the 21st century.
For describing contemporary society based on dialectic of the old and the new, continuity and
discontinuity, other critical scholars have suggested several terms like:
• Transnational network capitalism, transnational informational capitalism “Computer networks
are the technological foundation that has allowed the emergence of global network capital-
ism, that is, regimes of accumulation, regulation, and discipline that are helping to increas-
ingly base the accumulation of economic, political, and cultural capital on transnational net-
work organizations that make use of cyberspace and other new technologies for global co-
ordination and communication. The need to find new strategies for executing corporate and
political domination has resulted in a restructuration of capitalism that is characterized by
the emergence of transnational, networked spaces in the economic, political, and cultural
system and has been mediated by cyberspace as a tool of global coordination and communi-
cation. Economic, political, and cultural space have been restructured; they have become more
fluid and dynamic, have enlarged their borders to a transnational scale, and handle the inclu-
sion and exclusion of nodes in flexible ways. These networks are complex due to the high
number of nodes that can be involved and the high speed at which a high number of re-
sources is produced and transported within them. But global network capitalism is based on
structural inequalities; it is made up of segmented spaces in which central hubs centralize the
production, control, and flows of economic, political, and cultural capital (property, power,
definition capacities). This segmentation is an expression of the overall competitive character
of contemporary society.”
• Digital capitalism “networks are directly generalizing the social and cultural range of the
capitalist economy as never before”.
• Virtual capitalism: the “combination of marketing and the new information technology will
enable certain firms to obtain higher profit margins and larger market shares, and will thereby
promote greater concentration and centralization of capital”.
• High-tech capitalism or informatic capitalism to focus on the computer as a guiding technol-
ogy that has transformed the productive forces of capitalism and has enabled a globalized
economy.
• Other scholars prefer to speak of information capitalism or informational capitalism. Manuel
Castells sees informationalism as a new technological paradigm characterized by “information
generation, processing, and transmission” that have become “the fundamental sources of
productivity and power”. The “most decisive historical factor accelerating, channelling and
shaping the information technology paradigm, and inducing its associated social forms, was/
is the process of capitalist restructuring undertaken since the 1980s, so that the new techno-
economic system can be adequately characterized as informational capitalism”. Castells has
added to theories of the information society the idea that in contemporary society dominant
functions and processes are increasingly organized around networks that constitute the new
social morphology of society. Nicholas Garnham is critical of Castells and argues that the
6 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
