Untitled - socium.ge

Informationalism and the network society 9technologies are still a fundamental component of all processes.Informationalism is a technological paradigm based on the augmentation ofthe human capacity of information processing and communication madepossible by the revolutions in microelectronics, software, and genetic engineering.Computers and digital communications are the most direct expressionsof this revolution. Indeed, microelectronics, software, computation,telecommunications, and digital communication as a whole, are all componentsof the same integrated system. Thus, in strict terms, the paradigm shouldbe called “electronic informational-communicationalism.” Reasons of clarityand economy suggest, however, that it is better to keep the concept of informationalism,as it is already widely employed and resonates in close parallelto industrialism. As information and communication are the most fundamentaldimensions of human activity and organization, a revolutionary change inthe material conditions of their performance affects the entire realm of humanactivity.However, what is specific to this new system of information and communicationtechnologies that sets it apart from historical experience? I proposethat what makes this paradigm unique in relation to previous historical developmentsof information and communication technologies (such as printing,the telegraph, or the non-digital telephone) are, in essence, three major,distinctive features of the technologies at the heart of the system:• their self-expanding processing and communicating capacity in terms ofvolume, complexity, and speed;• their ability to recombine on the basis of digitization and recurrentcommunication;• their distributing flexibility through interactive, digitized networking.Let me elaborate on these features. I will do it separately for the two fundamental,and originally distinct, fields – digital electronics and genetic engineering– before considering their interaction.Digital electronics technologies allow for an historically unprecedentedincrease in the capacity to process information, not only in the volume ofinformation, but in the complexity of the operations involved, and in the speedof processing, including the speed of communication. However, how much is“much more” compared with previous information-processing technologies?How do we know that there is a revolution characterized by a giant leapforward in processing capacity?One factor in the answer to this fundamental question is empirical. Thehistory of electronics information and communication technologies in the pastthree decades shows an exponential increase in processing power, coupledwith an equally dramatic decrease in the cost per operation, precisely the mark