The Information Society

Cyber Dreams and Digital Nightmares

Robert Hassan

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745655284
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Sciences générales de l'informatique

What are we to make of the information society? Many prominent theorists have argued it to be the most profound and comprehensive transformation of economy, culture and politics since the rise of the industrial way of life in the 18th century. Some saw its arrival in a positive light, where the dreams of democracy, of 'connectivity' and 'efficiency' constituted a break with the old ways. But other thinkers viewed it more in terms of the recurrent nightmare of capitalism, where the processes of exploitation, commodification and alienation are given much freer rein than ever before. In this book Robert Hassan, a prominent theorist in new media and its effects, analyses and critically appraises these positions and forms them into a coherent narrative to illuminate the phenomenon.

Surveying the works of major information society theorists from Daniel Bell to Nicholas Negroponte, and from Vincent Mosco to Manuel Castells, The Information Society is an invaluable resource for understanding the nature of the information society—as well as the meta-processes of neoliberal globalisation and the revolution in information technologies that made it possible.

1

The Information Society Today: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

In this introductory chapter I want to sketch out the broad contours of the information society. It is a necessary step, I think, because ‘information’ in its digital form constitutes an unconscious backdrop to the lives of many, if not most, of us. It has migrated, in a very short space of time, from being novel and radical, to somewhat demotic – if not invisible. Indeed, this latter, naturalized, state is what Generations X and Y have been born into, and so it is doubly important to make these implicit relations with information technologies more explicit – the better to hold them up to understanding and analysis.

For example, the networking of society, the interconnecting of people, processes, applications, work tasks and leisure pursuits, has led to a globalized society, a ‘one-world’ context where causes and effects can reverberate throughout the entire system. This is a society where digital information is, at its root, ideological. That is to say, it was developed not as a neutral concept and neutral technology – but as ‘an ideology that is inextricably linked to the computer’ (Kumar, 1995: 7). And the computer, as we shall see in later chapters, is itself a technology that is suffused with its own political, military and industrial imperatives that evolved in the context of the Cold War era of the 1950s and 1960s. However, today, and in respect of this general introductory overview, I note here only that digital information, along with its originary logic, permeates culture and society to an unprecedented degree. It brings with it what I have termed the ‘network effect’ that is expressed as an increasingly strong compulsion to be a part of the information society; it is a compulsion linked to the needs of a neoliberal global economy that demands connectedness; requires that we synchronize to its ever-quickening tempo, a tempo that produces positive and negative effects; and insists (as part of what might be called digital information’s ‘ideological effect’) that such connectedness is also efficient and productive – and can even be fun and allow us to express our ‘individuality’. The contours of the information society, then, beyond its implicit everydayness, are revealed as contradictory. On the one hand there is a definite compulsion – a logic that is difficult to escape or avoid – that is about working ‘smarter’ and faster, and all the stresses and strains that this can bring. And on the other hand there is, undoubtedly, the ‘fun’ element: the new multifunctional mobile phone, the thrill at finding an item on eBay, or the pleasure of Skyping friends or relatives in far-off places, or expressing yourself through a personal blog. The first intellectual move to make, therefore, is to ‘denaturalize’ the information society, to define it and judge it as a humanly constructed process that is shaped by the everyday conflicts and struggles in our society that, in their turn, are reflective of larger (and more portentous) political and economic dynamics.

The network effect

To inform a young person, say, a ten-year-old (the age of my eldest), that we live in an information society would be almost meaningless. My son Theo is not stupid, but to state something like this to him would be akin to saying we live in time and space. At one level this would be a profound observation, but then again we are born into time and space and move through them with hardly a thought, so second nature have they become. ‘What’s to know?’ might be his incredulous reply. For the typical ten-year-old in a developed country (and increasingly in many developing countries too), connectivity and access to networks are simply part of what life is. We live in and live by pervasive and rapid ‘flows’ of digital information (Castells, 1996). Why did this come about? How did we individually and collectively become so au fait and casual with information technologies and the world they create? Are we really so? And anyway, do we really want to be? And do we have any real choice in the matter? We shall discuss these questions in some detail in the subsequent chapters, but a quick schematic sketch from the point of view of computer scientists – as opposed to social scientists – gives some useful background.

In their celebrated 1996 paper, ‘The Coming Age of Calm Technology’, Xerox engineers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown forwarded the idea of ‘ubiquitous computing’. They saw this as the third stage of computer evolution. The first stage was the ‘mainframe era’, which saw the arrival of bulky, hot and slow ‘data processing’ or ‘defence calculator’ computers that in the 1950s and 1960s took up the space of a couple of large rooms. They were devised and built by corporations such as IBM and were used mainly for military research into thermonuclear weapons. Second was the ‘personal computer (PC) era’, beginning in the early 1980s, that was the result of innovation in micro-processing technology that was able to put a standalone (non-networked) computer on an office or home desktop. After that came what the authors called the ‘transition phase’ that began in the 1990s with the growth and increasing sophistication of the Internet and computer networks in businesses, in the universities, and in what Howard Rheingold (1993) called ‘virtual communities’. Weiser and Seely Brown distinguish this transition as one of ‘distributed computing’. This third phase they calculated to occur over the years 2005–20 and it would be distinguished by what they term ‘ubiquitous computing’. Here the Internet and embedded microprocessors in everything from garments and mobile phones, and from bus tickets to refrigerators, will push an awesome and invasive computing power into the background, just below the horizon of our consciousness, to emit its ‘calming’ effect. Through attention to the design of ‘calm technologies’, the authors argue, the era of ubiquitous computing – which we have already entered – will herald a radically new age. It is to be an era of perfect ‘man–computer symbiosis’ that Internet pioneer J. C. R. Licklider had already dreamed of in the early 1960s, where ‘men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria and perform the evaluations [and] computing machines will do the routinizable work’ (1960). Clearly taking their cue from Licklider, Weiser and Seely Brown predict that ubiquitous computing and ‘calm technologies’ will create an information society where people ‘remain serene and in control’ (Weiser and Seely Brown, 1996).

We need only look around to know that computing is certainly ubiquitous, but whether or not it is ‘calm’, unobtrusive and enables us to free up our lives for higher things, as these technological utopians predict, will be a major focus of this work.

For good or ill, computers are all around us, enveloping us in an information ecology that is comprised of networks, systems, processes, technologies and people – and they are not about to go away or become any less prevalent. Ten-year-olds, teenagers and adults inhabit this information society, and it pervades almost everything that we do. Our everyday working lives that take place in jobs in manufacturing industries or in the provision of services have either been radically transformed through computerization or have evaporated into obsolescence. Millions of us do new jobs in new industries that did not exist in our fairly recent past. The nature of business itself has changed due to the transformative effects of computerization. For example, the primary goal for large corporations, and for many smaller businesses too, is – as Jeremy Rifkin puts it – to become ‘weightless’ (2000: 30–55). That is to say, to get away from the ownership of fixed assets such as factories, machines, fleets of trucks and so forth that dominated the productive forces of an earlier age. In this so-called ‘new economy’, intangible assets, above all ideas, are ‘more powerful than controlling space and physical capital’ (Rifkin: 55). Ideas, moreover, are eminently suited to computerization, to be transformed into processable information through binary logic. Indeed it is ideas that make Microsoft, or Apple, or Google what they are – huge informational entities that are comprised of few or relatively few fixed assets. The comprehensiveness of this process means that the need for weightlessness is not confined to high-tech companies either. More traditional industries, those that still have comparatively high percentages of fixed assets such as plant and machinery, also use information technologies to their utmost capacity to speed up production, make production and distribution more flexible, and be more able to respond to changing customer demand. Automobile manufacturers, for example, the quintessence of the ‘old economy’ mode, are now awash with flexible computerized systems that make the car factory an utterly different business to what it was only twenty-five years ago.

In the information society, the age-old and modernist conception of there being some kind of bifurcation between private life and work life has been made as redundant as the 3.5-inch floppy disc. Flexible working systems, the proliferation of part-time and casual working, and the increased working load that many now have to bear, mean that the once-distinct and regularized times for work and rest have become blurred – if not eliminated altogether (Schor, 1993). Networked computers, mobile phones, PDAs, wireless laptops and so on mean that we are far more mobile and no longer so tied to the office desk or designated workplace. But they also mean that our work is able to follow us wherever we go. Being ‘always on’, as the network advertisers like to remind us, is an allegedly wonderful thing that allows us to ride the cusp of the high-tech wave. But it also means that the student who works part-time is made available at short notice to a boss who suddenly needs more staff for a couple of hours; and means that the office worker is made available to read and act upon a report that will be emailed to her at home at 10 o’clock on a Friday evening, with a response due by 9 o’clock Monday morning. There is today a distinct pressure that compels the individual within the network society to be connected and ‘always on’. And so if you want a decent job and a career, or to start up a business of almost any sort, you will need to be a willing and connected ‘node’ in the networked economy. The result has been that there are fewer and fewer refuges in time and space where you can be outside the pull of the network effect, to resist the virtual life and to experience another reality.

The pressure to be connected exists at almost every level. In the developed economies it is now almost impossible to go through high school and university, for example, without what would not so long ago have been considered advanced computer user skills. Not only that, but students must also be able to access networks and be online for considerable amounts of time if they want to progress through the curriculum. Universities have taken up the challenges of the information society with alacrity and are amongst the most computer-filled places in the world. Indeed these institutions, especially in the Anglo-American economies, see themselves as progressively more ‘weightless’ businesses that exist largely to deliver pedagogy to its ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ through flexible computerized systems (Currie, 1998; Hassan, 2003; Bates, 2004). The Internet has even become a way for the elite universities such as Yale and MIT – who set such reputational store by their ‘traditions’ – to go global and decidedly non-traditional. Both these universities have put course materials online for free, with Yale going one better by uploading video lectures in 2006. This acts as a global branding and marketing exercise for these and the other universities who will doubtless emulate them. By offering access to free material, the hope is that users will then want to get the Yale or MIT degree by becoming actual online students and paying for the privilege. In the information society where the ‘user pays’ principle dominates, the keenly contested ‘student market’ thus truly becomes universal through such hi-tech practices. No longer do you need to go to the physical university to get a degree – the university, even the biggest, most prestigious and traditional of them, will come to you (at a price). We see that the logic of acceleration imposes itself here, too, with degrees becoming ‘virtual’ and ‘flexible’ and ‘fast-tracked’. A typical example of the marketing of the alleged attractions of gaining a three-year degree in two years comes from the website of a UK university that claims this compressed degree will ‘accelerate your career: [allowing you to] gain a real advantage by entering the job market a year earlier. You’ll save money and get on the career ladder sooner’ (University of Northampton, 2007). Note that the emphasis is not on learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, but on efficiency, and getting into the workforce sooner so as to save time and money.

Possibly it is in the realm of entertainment that the orbital pull of information technologies has been most apparent and habit-changing. For example, television executives have been increasingly vexed by the fact that viewers are switching off and logging on instead. Time spent online has what is termed a ‘hydraulic’ effect in that it diverts from time spent on other pursuits (Markoff, 2004). And while online increasing millions consume and contribute to the growing ‘flows’ of information that make up the information ecology. We do this, for example, by generating billions of emails every day. Add to this the uncountable text messages, voice calls, video conversations, picture sending and so on, and you get some idea of the ‘hydraulic’ gravitation towards online activity. For those who spend extended periods online, outside of the formal work situation, we need to look to the video gamers, the growing millions of users who are the simultaneous consumers and creators of an entertainment industry said by Bill Gates in 2003 to be bigger than the movie industry. Indeed, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that the industry (game consoles and software sales) would expand from $21.2 to $35.8 billion from 2003–7 (PWC, 2005). The market, moreover, has enormous room for further expansion as the network society spreads and deepens. For example, the number of users in China went from around zero in 2000 to 14 million by 2005; and industry leaders Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are deliberately seeking to expand the global market out from its young male demographic (Joseph, 2005). It is a strategy that seems to be working, probably to the further consternation of TV industry executives. For example, journalist and media theorist Aleks Krotosi observes that in South Korea, for example, ‘practically every street in Seoul has an Internet café – a “PC Bang” – where kids and OAPs game side by side’ (2006). Moreover, online games, or what are called ‘massively multiplayer online role-playing games’ (MMORPG), are exploding in popularity. One game, Lineage, held the record for the largest number of players for a few years until the current mother of all MMORPGs, World of Warcraft, was released in 2004 and attracted up to 7 million users worldwide. As Krotosi notes, however, Lineage is still hugely popular in South Korea, with 4 million users, which is reportedly more than the total number of TV viewers (Krotosi, 2006).

Add to this the immense popularity of video-enabled mobile phones, DVDs, iPods, PlayStations, Xboxes, GameCubes, Wiis and the rest, and it becomes clear that in the information society entertainment is a dominant ‘hydraulic’ force on the time people spend online; time that is progressively more screen-based, digitally transmitted, and comes through networkable devices.

This mass migration to digital forms at work and in leisure brings us to the nub of the ‘network effect’. We see an example of this when, say, your best friend buys a mobile phone. The action exerts a certain social pressure, a pressure which, depending on the circumstances, either gently cajoles you into buying one yourself at some stage, or compels you into getting one the very next day. Those who have a mobile and reflect upon their reasons for purchasing it can easily understand this phenomenon; and marketers have understood this dynamic for a long time. In the information society taken as a cultural and economic totality, however, there is another kind of network effect at play. That is to say, to be part of the information society and to be affected by its pressure and its imperatives, you don’t even need to be connected – you only have to live and work in a modern or modernizing economy. It is important to recognize that so deeply and powerfully has the information society transformed our world that it moves us as workers and as consumers in ways we hardly register, except often as a form of stress. Even if we don’t sit at a networked computer screen, or walk around with a mobile phone clamped to one ear, as millions of people do, these others who are ostensibly ‘unconnected’ are nonetheless linked to vast networked flows of information that create momentum and speed, to produce what Hartmut Rosa has termed a generalized ‘social acceleration’ (2003). In other words, as the social world gets faster, its centripetal force (the network effect) draws us all in whether we are connected or not.

Let me explain this idea a bit more through an example. It is still common for mail sent through traditional means to take days or weeks, but now such time lags for communication seem anachronistic, from a very different world indeed. Letter writing is in decline mostly because ‘society’ now deems it too slow, and this will affect the unconnected through the closure of many post offices, the disappearance of uneconomic postboxes, the increasing cost of postage and so on. The network effect thus presents us with a choice: which is either to get connected and speed up your mode of communication – or be left behind. To ignore the network effect is to miss out on what might be important information, to lose out on opportunities or to be ignorant of changes that can affect us in our everyday lives. In the information society, to be in a position of unconnectedness is to run the risk of sinking rapidly from the social, economic and cultural radar.

We experience the network effect at the level of the individual, but it is felt too in institutions and industries that must also constantly adapt and synchronize – or die. This is clearly evident in ‘old’ media such as television, newspapers and radio. These media have had to speed up in the frantic quest for relevancy in the information age. Any TV show worth screening (and many that are not) will now have its own website where viewers can email each other about it, give feedback on what they like or dislike, and so on. Indeed, through podcasting and digital streaming, television content is migrating online in a big way. The BBC, for example, podcasts much of its audio content from its radio stations, thereby keeping listeners connected as if they were still listening to ‘old media’ radio. In late 2007 the BBC also launched its iPlayer which allows internet users to view BBC video content for up to seven days after it went to air – again allowing ‘old media’ players to not only keep people watching their content, but also take a lead in some ways, in respect of the shaping of how people use the Internet.

Newspapers saw the writing on the wall at least a decade ago and went online in a big way. Good examples are the British-based Guardian and the New York Times. Both are profit able enterprises, offering a combination of free and paid-for articles. For instance the Guardian through its Guardian Unlimited site gives much of its content away for free. And for a fee it gives the functionality to print the paper as it appears on the newsstands, enabling the reader to get the ‘morning’ paper in any part of the world at any time. The squeezing of time and space through information networks means that, for example, someone in Australia is able to read the London morning edition of the Guardian before most Londoners are out of bed. Through its blogs, the Guardian allows a globalized readership to immediately comment on op-ed pieces by being able to directly email the aut...