Chapter 12, Garnham

This is a really thorough critique! When reading all these chapters, I keep wondering: what kind of social changes are fundamental to a society? There does not seem to be an answer. It seems like theorists are using different standards or just avoiding this question. To Garnham, Castells’ theory is technological determinism. This term probably can apply to all advocates of information society. Technological determinism is not a difficult term to understand, but now it becomes harder, because when reading the original works, it is not that easy to tell. At least Castells keeps telling the readers that IT does not cause the changes, but information revolution is important for the changes.

Chapter 10 and Chapter 11: Castells and the Network Society

From these two small pieces, it is easy to see why Castell’s works are so popular: probably not only insightful, but also fun to read. It seems that Castells tend to analyze all these social issues from a global perspective, to show bigger pictures, and to make more connections than other writers. Another difference is that Castells’ description to “network society” sounds more realistic, not so Utopian as others do. I think it is just his global vision, his understandings to all kinds of social trends, and knowledge of other part of the world that makes him advocate a “network society” rather than “information society”. This network is a much bigger concept than “information” or “information technology”. It is more like a social norms or social structure, which has much more implications than just “information”. However, the basic claims of network society still resemble information society in a lot of ways…

Many concepts and ideas in these two chapters are very interesting, especially black holes of informational capitalism, timeless time, and space of flows. To me, they do grasp some essences of the current world.

Urry-British

Compared with Kumar’s piece, Urry’s writing is not that straightforward. Or should I say, the main arguments and the first 5 pages seem straightforward, but not the analysis about “the sociological problem” which is the most important part of this piece. Moreover, I have to say that I did not quite understand the “architecture” metaphor at the end of this chapter. Fortunately, the Melin’s did a great job in the Introduction summarizing the main ideas of the three chapters. It helped me a lot understanding Urry’s claims.

Kumar the Critics

As Bell puts the change in sector distribution and the pattern of occupations to the center of the changeover to a post-industrial society (I have to say, seems very persuasive to me when I read it), Kumar refutes Bell’s arguments directly and effectively. Bell, in his book, not only utilizes many numbers to analyze status and trends, but also argues again many sociologists who claim that the white collars are not an independent class, which seems very convincing. Kumar, after 20 years, also uses a lot of numbers and evidence, and more detailed analysis to argue against the whole idea of professionalization and professionals as the center of social change. He has many interesting arguments, some of which we have read about, such as information, knowledge, power, and control. The claim that IT “has a greater potential for proletarianization than for professionalization” sounds bold but powerful. His claims of the relationships between IT and political actors (military department and large corporations) are more direct and radical than what I have read so far, which, I believe, are insightful and penetrating indeed. Same with the “ideology” part.

I like this piece of work very much.

Bell the precursor

It is good to read the three pieces together because Kumar and Urry’s pieces may have supplemented what have been left out of the first one. So after reading all of them, I think I got a fuller picture of Bell’s idea of post-industrial society and later information society.

The third part of the reader continues the theme of the first two parts – advocates and critics. As a precursor, Bell’s analysis of the post-industrial society is very insightful and attractive. This is written in 1973 – really impressive. (And as Melin said in the Introduction, many of the ideas appeared in 1960s!) In some ways, this extract reminds me of Masuda’s piece from time to time because both of them compare and contrast the three forms of societies, and claim the characteristics of the new form of society based on the old forms. I could not tell what I felt wrong about them when I read, but when I came to Kumar’s work, I found the following critics:

“Current changes are seen according to a model derived from (assumed) past changes, and future developments are projected following the logic of the model.”

This reminds me of a term “social Darwinism”. I am not sure whether it is the right way to use it, but I think there is definitely something to think about.

Part three of the book is all about “choices”. The main argument is that the society should keep those values inherited from the “framers”; however, there are too many ambiguities which make the translation of values rather difficult, so choices must be made to between different values. I got the feeling that cyberspace is just an extension of the real world. As the world is changing, value system is also changing gradually, then finally we will have to make choices between old and new values. The different kind of infrastructure of the cyberspace – code, rather than “built environment” – only makes this kind of choice more dramatically. If there is no cyberspace, there probably will be some other kind of “space” or context that forces us to make choices.
The author’s claims on intellectual properties are especially interesting and enlightening to me. “Is the protection too great?” I believe every librarian has this question on mind. From copyright to “copy-duty”, what a fantastic idea. The author does make this book very interesting to read. I only wish I had more time to read it carefully.

Codes and Other Laws of Cyberspace

This book is not so easy to read as I thought it to be. The main reason here is, again, that I do not have enough knowledge and understanding of the politics and society of the United States. This idea of "American democracy" (the related ideas of power, control,and actions) can get much more complicated in real life than just an idea, or just the practice of election. Several of the articles that I've read for this class have talked about this particular issue. In this book, as I can see so far, democracy is also a great concern (this is particularly evident in the last couple of chapers). Maybe I'm just ideologically sensitive to this topic? Anyway, it struck me when I read about the author's argument that the government is "pathetic" and incapable of making the "choice". I believe I'll learn more about this society and its democracy when it comes to the fourth book.

Although it is sometimes hard for me to clearly understand the author's claims and evident, fortunately, he did a great job laying out and reiterating his main arguments and theses. Thus, the structure of the book is very helpful for understanding.

The arguments of this book have a lot of similarities with last week's readings (the critics of the information society), yet much more comprehensive. It's not from historical perspectives, but more from a lot more aspects: social, political, legal, and economic . The Net can serve as a source of control - Lessig does not make the claim based on historical experience, rather, he starts from the "architecture" of the Net itself. If the readings for the last two weeks are more about the general idea of information society, then this book begins to explore the "nature" (maybe "status" or "architecture" is a better word because the "cybersapce has no nature") of the cyberspace itself in details and in depth. I've only read less than a half of the book, but I find that the questions that the author discusses are not only intriguing and also timely. As the Net is becoming more and more a part of our lives, as power and control are extending to this space, the code is something everyone involved in the cyberspace should think about seriouly.

History of the Info Revolution

From the information society advocates' neglect of nation state and idealistic freedom and social order, to the critics' distrust in information society’s self adjustment, this week’s readings become more and more interesting. Robins and Webster’s article is the most insightful of all. The idea that technological progress is closely related to social control and social management has been explored in Winner’s piece, but no with such sufficient evidence and powerful arguments. This idea directly refutes Masuda and Dyson et al;s Utopian outlook of information society from social and historical perspectives. It seems that the critics are more realistic and see more problems through the prosperous technology development (especially at that time – 1996 & 1998) than the advocates do.

In my own opinion, I agree with the critics that it is totally unrealistic to sit there and wait for the technology itself to solve social problems. Technology is not the panacea – I think many people would agree with that. However, technology is a powerful tool for human to change their situation. Yeah, it can be tools for the nation state to perform social control, too. But this is not to say that people cannot use it for better democracy, social equity, better environment, and all. How can one deny that human is gaining more and more “freedom” (physically, economically, and emotionally) in the process of history. The greatest driving force is not only human mind, but also, I believe, technology development.

The Cult of Information

Roszak might be too critical? I do agree that relying too much on computers can do a lot of harm, and actually I often talk with friends about the negative side of technology, but speaking of Roszak's worry that computers would "shape our thought", I think it a bit exaggerating. Of course our thoughts are always changing, adapting, and adjusting with the change of our situation. As we are more and more reliant on computers (an important tool), our thoughts will also change. However, creativity lies in human mind, not in our tools. I tend to think such tools will mostly likely amply our thoughts, imagination, and creativity, rather than "shape" our mind or our conception of thought. What is more, how many people really think computers can mimic and replace human's intelligence? If one has some knowledge in AI, one probably will find that such things only exist in science fictions. The real situation is that AI research hasn't been making great progress for quite some time.

Who Will We Be in CyberSapce?

Winner raises a very interesting question: does the intensive application of high technology necessarily change the way people define themselves, the society where they live, and the relations among people or among people and society?

Winner spends a lot of the words on the analysis of the industrial society, and uses it as an analogy which leads us to think about the “information society”. He is telling us: don’t be over optimistic about technology, be critical! Technology does not necessarily bring true democracy and social equity. Some of his arguments directly points to the article written by Dyson et al., which are very interesting to read.

I think the arguments in this article are powerful and persuasive. And I do agree and appreciate his criticism toward “mythinformation”. There is only one thing that I have doubt at. The analysis and critiques of the industrial society cited by the author are mostly about the early or mid 20 century. I keep wondering, haven’t things changed a lot since then? Is it not just a process of progress?

Chapter 3

I like this piece because the authors interpret those important concepts (cyberspace, property, market place, freedom, community, and government) in a clear and straightforward way. Some of the claims are very interesting and powerful. However, I dislike it at the same time because I cannot agree with some of their arguments. For example, as the “intellectual property” becomes “electronic property”, according to the authors, this kind of property changes from “public good” to “private good”. The reason is that knowledge has become “customized”. Is it really so? First, I don't think the reason for knowledge to be “public good” is because most people’s “information needs were standard”. Second, even if knowledge becomes “private good”, there should still be some form of protection or regulation, to prevent abuse or monopoly.

Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

Maybe because they were published in the late 1990s, Leadbeater’s Living on Thin Air and Dyson et al.’s Cyberspace and the American Dream seem more realistic than Masuda’s descriptions of Information Society – although they call it "knowledge society" and "knowledge age" respectively.

Leadbeater’s emphasis is obviously on economy, but his explanations on the three driving forces in the new society are very insightful. Globalization challenging nationalism, fast creating, disseminating, and exploiting of knowledge, collaboration driving creativity, these factors make this era different from previous societies.

One thing I found especially interesting is that he defines the knowledge-driven economy as knowledge making differences (advantages and disadvantages) in economy, rather than emphasizing the importance of knowledge intensive industries. This is important, I think, for people to understand the idea of information society. It's not to say that materials are not important anymore, rather, they are just not of "competitative advantages" as in the industrial society.

Chapter 1 Masuda

Technology, economy, social structure, political system, reforms, symbol, and values… Masuda drew a complete blueprint of the information society. The 17 aspects listed in the book predict a new form of human society in a highly synoptic manner. I like the way that Masuda put the characteristics of two different forms of society – the industrial society and the information society – side by side, and I think he accurately describes some of the features of today’s society (e.g., technology amplifies human mental labor, information as the societal symbol, the importance of knowledge in expanding market).

However, most of the items seem very distant, especially those with regard to social and political aspects. I wonder whether Masuda, in his book, has predicted some kind of time frame for this new form of society. If so, what is it. Today, those statements about voluntary community, synergy, and universal standard of value sound to me like Utopia. I agree that if we are to take the label “information society” seriously, there should be such a set of characteristics that distinguish it from other previous societies. Masuda did a nice job listing them, but if they are accurate predictions, we are still very very far from information society, even the most developed countries.

Webster's Introduction

Webster put the significance of this “reader” in a nice way. Whether we buy the title “information society” or not, we have to admit this book says something that’s really important to our society and our lives. “…there can be no doubt that the issues matter enormously, both intellectually and practically.”

A question on my mind is: what’s the difference between knowledge society and information society? Is it just a grander notion? Or the inventors of this term really meant something else or something more? Maybe my classmates have read something about it? In LIS field, well, information and knowledge are actually different notions… as Soojin is always saying. 

I totally agree that theories can be very useful tools for us to understand the world. I always feel that we can learn a lot from people who are insightful enough to put things into frameworks, to simplify them, to generate “theories.” Theories provide us with multiple perspectives and potentially useful ways of thinking. They are not only practical but also powerful and enlightening. I’m looking forward to reading more of this book.

Testing!
I just bought the text book, The Information Society Reader, and read a few sentences. It seems like a really interesting book and might inspire a lot of thoughts!