Untitled - socium.ge

Informationalism and the network society 41CONCLUSION: THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OFTHEORETICAL MISTAKESAt this point in the analysis presented here, this conclusion will not come as ashock: we are not in the information or knowledge society. At least, no morethan we have been in other historical periods. Knowledge and informationhave always been essential sources of productivity and power. If, by emphasizingthe knowledge component of our world, we imply that we know nowand were ignorant in earlier times, a little modesty would be welcome.Knowledge is always historically relative. We certainly know more than a fewcenturies ago, and we can even say that the growth of knowledge has beenexponential, although in many fields of science, without these earlier discoveries,we would still be in the dark. But we certainly know very little in somebasic dimensions of nature or human life. I will just mention the brain, whichis the source of who we are, and whose structure and functions are ignored forthe most part. As for society and the economy, I will simply remind the readerthat the analysis of the aggregate production function underlying productivitygrowth as a result of factors others than capital, labor, or raw materials wasoriginally established by Robert Solow in 1957, on the basis of statistical dataconcerning the United States for the period 1909–49, the heyday of the industrialsociety (Solow, 1957). Never mind: information society apologists invariablystart with Solow’s analysis of productivity to found their claims on therole of information as the basis of the new society.As I have analyzed in various works, and in this volume, information andknowledge are indeed essential, in the economy and in society at large. Butthey are not specific as dominant components of our kind of society. What isspecific is that, on the basis of a new technological paradigm (informationalism),a new social structure has emerged, a structure made up of electroniccommunication technologies – powered, social networks. So, what is different?It is the technology, of course. But it is also the networked social structure,and the specific set of relationships implied in the networking logic.Therefore, in my view, we must let the notion of an information society orof a knowledge society wither, and replace it with the concept of the networksociety, as presented in this chapter, and researched throughout this volume,from a variety of theoretical perspectives. I contend that this reconceptualizationmatters because it carries practical consequences.If we were now in an information society, as a direct consequence of theinvention and diffusion of electronic information and communication technologies,the economic and social development of a country would depend, forinstance, on installing computers everywhere, and pushing everybody to be onthe Internet or not to be. Studies on the uses of information and communicationtechnologies demonstrate, again, what historians of technology established