Page 8 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Unit 1: Library in Social Context

1.2 Information Society Notes
An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, uses, integration
and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The
knowledge economy is its economic counterpart whereby wealth is created through the economic
exploitation of understanding. People that have the means to partake in this form of society are
sometimes called digital citizens. As Beniger shows, this is one of many dozen labels that have been
identified to suggest that we are entering a new phase of society.
The markers of this rapid change may be technological, economic, occupational, spatial, cultural, or
some combination of all of these. Information society is seen as the successor to industrial society.
Closely related concepts are the post-industrial society post-fordism, post-modern society, knowledge
society, Telematic Society, Information Revolution, Liquid modernity, and network society.
There is currently no universally accepted concept of what exactly can be termed information society
and what shall rather not so be termed.

Most theoreticians agree that a transformation can be seen that started somewhere
between the 1970s and today is changing the way societies work fundamentally.
Information technology is not only internet, and there are discussions about how big the influence
of specific media or specific modes of production really is.
Some people, such as Antonio Negri, characterize the information society as one in which people
do immaterial labour. By this, they appear to refer to the production of knowledge or cultural artifacts.
One problem with this model is that it ignores the material and essentially industrial basis of the
society. However, it does point to a problem for workers, namely how many creative people does
this society need to function? For example, it may be that you only need a few star performers,
rather than a plethora of non-celebrities, as the work of those performers can be easily distributed,
forcing all secondary players to the bottom of the market. It is now common for publishers to promote
only their best selling authors and to try to avoid the rest—even if they still sell steadily. Films are
becoming more and more judged, in terms of distribution, by their first weekend’s performance, in
many cases cutting out opportunity for word-of-mouth development.
Considering that metaphors and technologies of information move forward in a reciprocal
relationship, we can describe some societies as an information society because we think of it as
such.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
4. In the year ...... Fritz Machlup began studying the effects of patents on research.
(a) 1933 (b) 1932
(c) 1934 (d) 1935.
5. ...... has argued that knowledge has become the principal force of production over the last
few decades.
(a) Peter drucker (b) Jean-francois
(c) Peter otto (d) Philipp sonntag.
6. ...... introduced the concept of the knowledge industry.
(a) Fritz Machlup (b) Alvin Toffler
(c) Nico Stehr (d) Peter Drucker.

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