The Information Age
Where the beginning of The Computer Age
might be arbitrarily placed with the development of computers as machines
"capable of automatically performing (that is without human intervention)
sequences of calculations and of choosing between alternate sequences of
calculations based on the results of earlier calculations" (Raymond Kurzweil 169) to aid the Allied
World War II efforts, the beginning of The Information Age might, arguably, be
located in 1982 with the publication of John Naisbitt's Megatrends.
And while the central themes of The Computer Age were variations on computer
technology development and utilization beyond the initial concerns of the
military industrial complex (for example, the invention and development
of the Internet), the central theme of Naisbitt's future scenario involved
decentralization and fluidity brought about by the ability to exchange
information quickly and easily via computer connectivity. Naisbitt proposed ten Megatrends, or ten major changes, that
would, he said, shape The Information Age. They were:
- Industrial Society --> to Information Society
- Forced Technology --> to High Tech/High Touch (FAXs that can be touched,
cut, pasted, colored, etc.)
- National Economy --> to World Economy
- Short Term --> to Long Term
- Centralization --> to Decentralization
- Institutional Help --> to Self-Help
- Representative Democracy --> to Participatory Democracy
- Hierarchies --> to Networking
- North --> to South
- Either/Or --> to Multiple Option
None of these projections captured the public, government, or industrial
imagination, or produced more profound socioeconomic and/or political effects,
than the notion that our economy would change from industrial to informational.
In an industrial society, manufactured goods and the commodities (the raw
materials) needed to make them, forms the center of economic value. In an
information society, information stored and transmitted using computer
technology assumes central value. Naisbitt contended our economy would mass
produce information the way it once turned out automobiles, structural steel,
or refrigerators. This production of information would, he said, replace
traditional industrial manufacturing, creating a new economy based on the
production, distribution, and utilization of information. Naisbitt predicted
that we would live and work and play and learn in an information society. The production of
this information, Naisbitt contended, was destined to become the principal
product of our economic future. Naisbitt even called for a "knowledge theory
of value" to replace the current traditional Marxian labor theory of value,
saying that, in an information society, value is increased by knowledge.
John Naisbitt employs two buzzwords: information and knowledge, for which Harlan Cleveland provides useful
definitions. Cleveland defines information as "the sum total of all the facts
and ideas that are available to be known by somebody at a given moment in time"
(34), or the result of selecting and organizing knowledge in a way that is
useful to somebody at a given moment in time. And wisdom, he says, is
integrated knowledge,
information made super-useful by creating theory rooted in
disciplined knowledge but crossing disciplinary barriers to weave into an
integrated whole something more than the sum of the parts. (34)
Another way of defining these terms, suggests Cleveland, is in order of their
complexity. Information is horizontal, knowledge is structured and
hierarchical, and wisdom is organic and flexible.
Harlan Cleveland insists that information as a resource
is a fundamentally new and diffusive concept. Information, he says,
disagreeing with Naisbitt, is not a commodity that can be mass manufactured
and, therefore, cannot be managed by concepts developed for the management of
things, concepts like property rights, depletion, market economics, class
struggle, and top-down leadership. Information, he says, is characterized by
special attributes.
- Information expands as it is used by more and more people for more and more
reasons. Because this expansion is limited only by time, there is the obvious
danger of a society that makes its living from information manipulation
suffering from information overload. See "The
Shocked Age" for more on this.
- As it is expandable, information is also compressible. Information can be
collected and stored in concentrated forms for easier handling. But, as
Cleveland says, "by selecting and compressing information to produce knowledge
and wisdom, some information is bound to be lost" (37). What is lost may be
trivial, or important. The distinction is largely subjective. The current
debate in higher education over what literary texts should be included in the
so called "canon" is a case in point.
- Information can replace capital, labor, and physical resources. The
replacement of factory workers with robots and automation is a good example.
- Information is transportable at incredibly high speeds. In just a few
seconds, information can be sent around the world. It has taken us most of the
20th Century to move from foot travel to supersonic jets, but only the past two
decades to achieve the ability to send and receive information anywhere in the
world nearly instantaneously.
- Information is diffusive and resists all forms of public secrecy,
intellectual property rights, and confidentiality.
- Where things are exchanged and control of them transferred from one person
to another, information can only be shared. This fact has profound
implications for the kinds of transactions information can be involved in.
Cleveland concludes that once information is shared it becomes like a story, retained by both parties and
enhanced from the sharing (37).
We are currently trying to decide whether we prefer Harlan Cleveland's notions of
information as something fundamentally diffusive or those of John Naisbitt who sees information as a
commodity.
Standing at the abyss of the future, straining for insight about what to
expect, we turn once again to the futurists for advice. Edith Weiner says The Information Age is
ending and that we are moving into a personal economy based on an integration
of education, entertainment, and information---all for the purpose of using
information to create new, customized products and services. The Information
Age, she says, will be followed by The Virtual
Age, which will involve more obscure uses of information.
"The Seven Ages of Computer Connectivity" (The Information Age)
by John F. Barber