From Information Society to Information Age - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 47

Although not all scholars in the Information Age tradition put as
much weight as Castells on the contribution or centrality of informa-
tional developments to the changing constitution of the modern global
order, 9 most of them acknowledge that information flows and the new
technological paradigm (based on the Internet and ICT) are at the basis
of fundamentally different global economic, political and social pro-
cesses.

Knowledge and uncertainty

In his analysis of the emergence of a Risk Society, Ulrich Beck ( 1986 )
forcefully put radical uncertainty on the agenda of late modern soci-
eties. This radical uncertainty is especially, although not only, linked
to dealing with environmental and food safety problems. Although
initially Beck draws heavily on a select number of examples (Cher-
nobyl, mad cow disease or BSE, climate change, genetically modified
organisms [GMOs]), his later analyses on structural uncertainty move
partly beyond such a limited set of (environmental) issues, claiming
that these uncertainties are related to the overall structural character-
istics of late modern society, and not so much to a particular set of
(new) environmental challenges. 10 As conventional science has lost its
Enlightenment character as well as its authority with respect to mon-
itoring, measuring, interpreting and making truth-claims on environ-
ment and health risks, and no other authority has stepped in, late mod-
ern society is faced with an almost inherent uncertainty with respect
to these (and other) dangers and risks. The widely available and con-
stantly growing global flows of information and contrainformation on
(potential) risks and threats form part of the causes of science losing

9

Compare, for instance, the centrality of information and information
technology in the work of Manuel Castells ( 1996 /1997; 2001 ) with the more
modest place of information in the studies of Anthony Giddens ( 1990 ; 1994 ),
John Urry ( 2000 ; 2003 ; 2004 )orUlrich Beck ( 1994 ; 1996 ; 1997 ; Beck and
Willms, 2004 ).

10

But Beck remains ambivalent as to the definition of environmental and food
safety problems that can be understood with the notion of the Risk Society.
The expropriation of the senses, the 'Fahrstuhl-effect' and the lack of trust are
all developed with respect to a specific new category of risks, for which the old
institutions of high or simple modernity seem no longer relevant. The question
is whether these insights have the same relevance for, for example, domestic
solid waste, industrial water pollution and eutrophication caused by farming.