From Information Society to Information Age - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 48

its monopoly and authority, and contribute to growing feelings of
uncertainty among large segments of the population. For all kinds of
risks, dangers and (environmental) threats experts are challenged by
contraexperts. With no scientific and undisputed mechanism - no lit-
mus test - for closing these controversies and debates, lay actors (but
also decision makers) are left in uncertainty about the actual risks of
eating meat, organic food or GMO food. Being able and capable to
deal routinely with both structurally contested information and uncer-
tainties seems to have become one of the necessary competencies of
late-modern citizen-consumers. In this tradition, a whole new school
of thought emerged, with, for instance, authors such as Brian Wynne,
John Hannigan and Steven Yearley. Recently, Matthias Gross ( 2006 )
added to this literature by analyzing how new knowledge and inven-
tions always create new ignorance, uncertainties and what he labels
nonknowledge.
Following his work on the Risk Society, Beck's project of reflexive
modernity aims to analyse the ways in which modern society deals with
these informational and knowledge uncertainties, both individually
and institutionally, by constructing reflexive practices and institutions
that build trust, set limits to our doubting and arrive at answers and
conclusions in order to be able to get things done and move on (cf. Beck
and Willms, 2004 ). Here we see the contours of a more constructive
interpretation of growing information flows and related uncertainties,
in which new knowledge and information constantly questions and
challenges existing patterns, structures and knowledges, without nec-
essarily leading to apocalyptic prophecies and stalemate positions as a
result of fundamental and ongoing uncertainties.
John Urry ( 2000 , 2003 ) further explores and radicalises the notion
of uncertainty in his sociology of networks and flows. Although he
judges Castells's trilogy on the rise of the network society as the best
effort so far to analyse networked modernity, Urry sets himself the
task of elaborating and refining the conceptual apparatus as used by
Castells. Instead of Castells's dichotomy of 'space of place' and 'space
of flows', Urry suggests approaching spatial patterns in three ways or
modalities, distinguishing among regions (i.e., objects geographically
clustered together), globally integrated networks (more or less stable,
enduring, and predictable relations between nodes or hubs, stretching
across different regions, with relatively walled routes for flows) and,
finally, global fluids (spatial patterns determined neither by boundaries