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Library and Information Society

Notes sharing information via different time zones to information ending up in a different location this
has all become a habitual process that we as a society take for granted.
However, through the process of sharing information vectors have enabled us to spread information
even further. Through the use of these vectors information is able to move and then separate from
the initial things that enabled them to move. From here, something called “third nature” has
developed. An extension of second nature, third nature is in control of second nature. It has the
ability to mould information in new and different ways. So, third nature is able to ‘speed up,
proliferate, divide, mutate, and beam in on us from else where. It aims to create a balance between
the boundaries of space and time (see second nature). This can be seen through the telegraph, it was
the first successful technology that could send and receive information faster than a human being
could move an object. As a result different vectors of people have the ability to not only shape
culture but create new possibilities that will ultimately shape society.
Therefore, through the use of second nature and third nature society is able to use and explore new
vectors of possibility where information can be moulded to create new forms of interaction.

Sociological uses

In sociology, informational society refers to a post-modern type of society. Theoreticians like Ulrich
Beck, Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells argue that since the 1970s a transformation from industrial
society to informational society has happened on a global scale.
As steam power was the technology standing behind industrial society, so information technology
is seen as the catalyst for the changes in work organisation, societal structure and politics occurring
in the late 20th century.

In the book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler used the phrase super-industrial society
to describe this type of society.
Other writers and thinkers have used terms like “post-industrial society” and “post-modern
industrial society” with a similar meaning.

Related terms

A number of terms in current use emphasize related but different aspects of the emerging global
economic order. The Information Society intends to be the most encompassing in that an economy is
a subset of a society. The Information Age is somewhat limiting, in that it refers to a 30-year period
between the widespread use of computers and the knowledge economy, rather than an emerging
economic order. The knowledge era is about the nature of the content, not the socio-economic processes
by which it will be traded. The computer revolution and knowledge revolution refer to specific
revolutionary transitions, rather than the end state towards which we are evolving. The Information
Revolution relates with the well known terms agricultural revolution and industrial revolution.
The information economy and the knowledge economy emphasize the content or intellectual property
that is being traded through an information market or knowledge market, respectively. Electronic
commerce and electronic business emphasize the nature of transactions and running a business,
respectively, using the Internet and World-Wide Web.

The digital economy focuses on trading bits in cyber space rather than atoms in physical
space.

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