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Concept
Information society
Summary
An information society is a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid growth of a variety of forms of information. Proponents of this theory posit that these technologies are impacting most important forms of social organization, including education, economy, health, government, warfare, and levels of democracy. The people who are able to partake in this form of society are sometimes called either computer users or even digital citizens, defined by K. Mossberger as “Those who use the Internet regularly and effectively”. This is one of many dozen internet terms that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new and different phase of society.
Some of the markers of this steady change may be technological, economic, occupational, spatial, cultural, or a combination of all of these.
Information society is seen as a successor to industrial society. Closely related concepts are the post-industrial society (post-fordism), post-modern society, computer society and knowledge society, telematic society, society of the spectacle (postmodernism), Information Revolution and Information Age, network society (Manuel Castells) or even liquid modernity.
There is currently no universally accepted concept of what exactly can be defined as an information society and what shall not be included in the term. Most theoreticians agree that a transformation can be seen as started somewhere between the 1970s, the early 1990s transformations of the Socialist East and the 2000s period that formed most of today's net principles and currently as is changing the way societies work fundamentally. Information technology goes beyond the internet, as the principles of internet design and usage influence other areas, and there are discussions about how big the influence of specific media or specific modes of production really is.
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