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THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 117
we are now living the IS. The spatial interconnections also become a
criterion for the ultimate ‘measurement’ of the IS. It is true that information
technologies and networks shift not only geographical boundaries
but also the boundaries of time and a combination of both. Transactions
take place at almost an instant and across previously long distances. The
impact of this redefinition of space upon labour patterns can be seen in
our everyday lives where, in their simplest forms, mobile telephony and
portable communication technologies provide a direct and constant link
to the ‘office’. Last on Webster’s list is the cultural – and the least measurable
– criterion to identify an emerging IS. The cultural criterion is
rather understood as the information available in the social domain and
the use of information in everyday life, from fashion to storytelling. The
argument is that the IS is a media-laden society dominated by a complex
set (networks) of information about every aspect of public and private life.
As Webster also discusses, this neat categorization of criteria ‘proving’
the existence of the new society at-work is rather problematic, as
no one criterion can determine with certainty the characteristics that
are sufficient to define a society as a knowledge or Information Society.
Nevertheless, what is probably more important than a clear definition
of what constitutes the IS, would be to acknowledge that, even in the
case of a social organization with novel characteristics, it is more likely
that these coexist with older forms of social and economic and technological
organization rather than implement a radical break with the past.
For Braman, the IS goes back to the mid-nineeteenth century, starting
from ‘electrification and globalization’, moving on to ‘massification and
professionalization’ until the 1960s, followed by the convergence of technologies
and ‘awareness of qualitative social changes’ between 1960 and
1990, to reach the current forth phase characterized by the ‘harmonization
of information systems across national boundaries with each other
and with other types of social systems’ (Braman 1998: 80). This account of
the genesis of the IS provides us with a chronology of processes surrounding
the development and impact of information technology on society,
and it builds historical continuity and social change within the net of
explorations of the role of technology.
If an inseparable part of the IS, however, is its post-industrial character,
then claims for the existence of the latter have been made long before
Bell’s much-cited work on the replacement of an industrial society by a
service economy (1973). In his genealogical study of the IS, Mattelart
(2001) traces such discourses back to the beginning of the twentieth century
with the utopian ‘neotechnical era’ of ‘mutual aid’ that would surpass
the barbaric alienation brought about by the industrial society. This was
Kropotkin’s, the Russian philosopher’s, vision of the use and potential