In his 2010 research paper, The Life and Times of the
Information Society, Robert Mansell states:
“We might expect an interdisciplinary body of intellectual
inquiry to have emerged during the past 50 years or so since scholarly work
started to focus on issues around information and communication control systems... However, …it is mainly, though not
exclusively, insights arising within the discipline of economics that seem to
influence policy makers, albeit indirectly, in this area. This has major consequences because it means
that many of the important social dynamics of societal change are persistently
downplayed. This process of exclusion
of certain issues from the agenda of policy makers is aided by the continuing dominance
of what is called here the ‘Information Society vision’” (p.166).
It appears then, according to Mansell, that the study of
an information society is largely focused on the economics of such a society,
how the production and consumption of information supports the production and
consumption of material wealth. And, the consequence of this focus is an
ignorance of the social dimension - how does the proliferation and
accessibility of information contribute to or detract from a more livable
society?
But is this predilection toward the study of the economics of the
information society really just a characteristic of scholarly research and
inquiry? Or is this a characteristic of
today's society in general? I mean, let’s
take the idea of the information age out of the equation here. Generally speaking, are we not living in a materialistic
society, one where economy is of chief importance in all things?
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net
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