From Information Society to Information Age - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 38

information, or the specific occupational patterns, data remain far too
general and aggregate to draw any lasting qualitative conclusions.
Second, the impact of information technology on employment and
on the skills and autonomy of workers has been exaggerated, as we
can conclude now. Although information technology, as every signifi-
cant new technology, has shifted employment within and between sec-
tors, these shifts of employment in and between the industrial pro-
duction and service sectors has not resulted in structural higher levels
of unemployment, or significant and structural lower working hours
per week (such as was especially argued among the left-wing propa-
gandists of postindustrialism or the Information Society; cf. Frankel,
1987 ). Equally, the Information Society ideas on shifts in the quality of
work towards increased skills, large autonomy and more profession-
alisation have been questioned. Although the number of professional,
administrative and managerial employees has increased sharply, this
does not lead us to easy overall conclusions on higher skills, larger
autonomy and more professionalisation. Similarly, several critics con-
cluded in the 1980s that employment growth has not been based so
much on the advanced knowledge sector but came, rather, from the
lower levels of the tertiary sector (eating and drinking, health sector,
routine information workers such as data processors, etc.).
There is a strong role of the state and government, and especially of
the military sectors of the state, in research and development for the
information technology and information sectors. Large private multi-
nationals, such as IBM, AT&T, IT&T, Philips and Siemens, link with
these state and governmental sectors in the further development of
information technology. Increasingly, these firms aim to become inte-
grated information concerns, rather than having a stronghold in just
one of the information sectors. Information technology had clearly
become big business in the 1970s, and its prime goals have been instru-
mental to capital, according to Schiller ( 1985 ). Third, this has clearly
undermined the whole idea of the Information Society as a process of
democratisation, and a means to create a new, progressive society with
more prosperity. According to critics such as Morris-Suzuki (1988) and
Lyon ( 1988 ), information technology was, first and foremost, devel-
oped in the interest of capital, the administrative elites and the military
establishment. “Capitalist industrialism has not been transcended, but
simply extended, deepened and perfected” (Walker, 1985 : 72). It is
only the rich nations, the elites and specific economic sectors that have