From Information Society to Information Age - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 30

It is especially under these conditions and circumstances that the
notion of Information Society emerged. This notion should be seen
strongly in line with much of the postindustrialist ideas. Daniel Bell,
in his notion of postindustrialism, had already classified theoretical
knowledge as the most important feature of the coming society. Later,
Bell ( 1979 ) became an even more explicit supporter of ideas of the
Information Society, by referring to the new information technologies
invading every sector of society. Instead of postindustrialism, the new
methods, processes and quantities of acquiring, handling and distribut-
ing information became the key feature of a new modern order in the
making. Of course, debates and interpretation of the transformation of
modernity did not end by launching the notion and ideas of the Infor-
mation Society. As Kumar ( 1995 ) concludes, some social scientists took
the idea of a turn, a radical transformation, of classical industrialism
one step further, in interpreting the new social order in terms of post-
modernity. Where the idea and conception of Information Society fit
rather well in the Enlightenment character of Western thought, with an
emphasis on rationality and progress and building on the main institu-
tional traits of Western society, postmodernity consists of a transforma-
tion of these key Western notions and institutions beyond recognition.
Although the notion of postmodernity raised significant support, crit-
icism and debate for some time, also here the indication post was not
there to stay.
In this chapter, we will especially explore ideas on the Information
Society and how these ideas transformed into the Information Age lit-
erature. In that sense, we will make a rather selective review of four
decades of literature that tried to interpret the transformation of mod-
ern society, first especially in the West but later more globally. The
purpose of this selective review is to understand how various scholars
have understood, interpreted and framed the role of information and
information technologies in the transformation of modern society. It
does of course not mean that I fully embrace all ideas and interpre-
tations of Information Society and Information Age scholars, as will
become clear throughout this volume. In focusing on these schools of
thought, I will leave significant parts of the discourse on a changing
modern order aside, for instance, that around postmodernism, only
touching on it in clarifying Informational Society/Age scholars and
their positions and literature.