Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition

11 INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF SOCIOLOGY 0 1 11 Information is a distinguishing feature of the modern world. Where once economies were built on industry and conquest, we are now part of a global information economy. Pervasive media, burgeoning information occupations and the development of the Internet convince many that living in an Information Society is the destiny of us all. Information’s presence appears evident everywhere, from 11 daily interaction in postmodern styles to the waging of Information War, from information intensive labour to the iPOD. Coping in an era of information flows, 0 of virtual relationships and breakneck change appears to pose challenges to one 22 and all. In Theories of the Information Society Frank Webster sets out to make sense of the information explosion, taking a sceptical look at what thinkers mean when they refer to the Information Society, and critically examining the major post-war theories and approaches to informational development. The 3rd edition of this classic study brings it right up to date both with new theoretical work and with social and technological changes – such as the rapid growth of the Internet and accelerated globalisation – and reassesses the work of key theorists in light of these changes. 01 The book will be essential reading for students in Sociology, Politics, Com- munications, Information Science, Cultural Studies, Computing and Librarianship. It will also be invaluable for anybody interested in social and technological change in the post-war era. Frank Webster is Professor of Sociology at City University London. 9 0 1 2 61 International Library of Sociology Founded by Karl Mannheim Editor: John Urry, Lancaster University Recent publications in this series include: Risk and Technological Culture Brands Towards a sociology of virulence Logos of the global economy Joost Van Loon Celia Lury Reconnecting Culture, The Culture of Exception Technology and Nature Sociology facing the camp Mike Michael Bülent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen Advertising Myths The strange half-lives of images Visual Worlds and commodities John R. Hall, Blake Stimson and Anne M. Cronin Lisa Tamiris Becker Adorno on Popular Culture Time, Innovation and Mobilities Robert R. Witkin Travel in technological cultures Peter Frank Peters Consuming the Caribbean From Arawaks to Zombies Complexity and Social Mimi Sheller Movements Protest at the edge of chaos Crime and Punishment in Ian Welsh and Graeme Chesters Contemporary Culture Claire Valier Qualitative Complexity Ecology, cognitive processes and Between Sex and Power the re-emergence of structures in Family in the world, 1900–2000 post-humanist social theory Goran Therborn Chris Jenks and John Smith States of Knowledge Theories of the Information The co-production of science Society and social order Third edition Sheila Jasanoff Frank Webster After Method Mess in social science research John Law 11 Theories of the Information Society Third edition 0 1 11 11 Frank Webster 0 22 01 9 0 1 2 61 First published 1995 by Routledge Second edition published 2002 This third edition published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor &Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1995, 2002, 2006 Frank Webster All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-96282-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0–415–40632–3 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–40633–1 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–40632–1 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–40633–8 (pbk) 11 0 1 11 In memory of Frank Neville Webster 20 June 1920–15 July 1993 11 0 22 01 9 0 1 2 61 11 Contents 0 1 11 Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 2 What is an information society? 8 11 3 Post-industrial society: Daniel Bell 32 0 22 4 Regulation School theory 60 5 Network society: Manuel Castells 98 6 Information and the market: Herbert Schiller 124 7 Information and democracy: Jürgen Habermas 161 8 Information, reflexivity and surveillance: Anthony Giddens 203 01 9 Information and postmodernity 228 10 The information society? 263 Notes 274 Bibliography 277 Index 304 9 0 1 2 61 vii Acknowledgements I have produced this third edition of Theories of the Information Society since joining the Department of Sociology at City University late in 2003. The revisions have come largely from teaching students at City. I am grateful for the responses from undergraduate groups ranging from Sociology, Journalism and Engineering, to Masters students from Communication and related programmes. They have contributed much to any strengths the new edition may have. I would also like to thank my new colleagues at City for the warm welcome and the intellectual stimulation they have given to me. The department has more than doubled in recent years, and I have benefited immeasurably from the energy and sense of purpose that have accompanied this expansion. Special thanks are due to Howard Tumber, Tony Woodiwiss, John Solomos, Carolyn Vogler, Jeremy Tunstall, Aeron Davis, Petros Iosifides, Jean Chalaby, Alice Bloch and Rosemary Crompton. Rebecca Eynon, now at the Oxford Internet Institute, was a wonderful doctoral student whose cheery support was especially encour- aging during a dark time. I would like to thank once again my wife, Liz Chapman, of University College London. Between this and the first edition, our children, Frank and Isabelle, grew to leave home. We missed them so much, we followed them to London. Big thanks, too, to my long-time friend and collaborator, Kevin Robins. It has been especially inspiriting that Kevin joined Sociology at City early in 2005. Though we have researched and written together for approaching thirty years, we have not worked in the same institution since 1978. Whatever the information society may bring, it will never match the satisfactions of this family and such friends. viii 11 CHAPTER ONE Introduction 0 1 11 It seems to me that most people ask themselves, at one time or another, what sort of society is it in which we live? How can we make sense of what is going on with our world? And where is it all taking us? This is a daunting and frequently bewildering task because it involves trying to identify the major contours of extraordinarily complex and changeable circumstances. It is, in my view, the 11 duty of social science to identify and explain the most consequential features of how we live now, the better that we may see where we are headed, so that we 0 might influence where we are going. Some people quickly give up on the task, 22 frankly admitting confusion. Still others, encountering disputation, retreat into the comforting (and lazy) belief that we see only what we choose. Fortunately, most people stick with trying to understand what is happening in the world, and in so doing reach for such terms as ‘capitalism’, ‘industrialism’, ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘liberal democracy’. Most of us will have heard these sorts of words, will have voiced them ourselves, when trying to account for events and upheavals, for important historical occurrences, or even for the general drift of social, economic and political change. In all probability we will have argued with others about the appropriateness 01 of these labels when applied to particular circumstances. We will even have debated just what the terms might mean. For instance, while it can be agreed that Russia has moved well away from Communism, there will be less agreement that the transition can be accurately described as a shift to a fully capitalist society. And, while most analysts see clearly the spread of markets in China, the contin- uation of a dictatorial Communist Party there makes it difficult to describe China in similar terms as, say, we do with reference to Western Europe. There is a con- stant need to qualify the generalising terminology: hence terms like ‘pre-industrial’, ‘emerging democracies’, ‘advanced capitalism’, ‘authoritarian populism’. 9 And yet, despite these necessary refinements, few of us will feel able to refuse 0 these concepts or indeed others like them. The obvious reason is that, big and 1 crude and subject to amendment and misunderstanding though they be, these 2 concepts and others like them do give us a means to identify and begin to understand essential elements of the world in which we live and from which we have emerged. It seems inescapable that, impelled to make sense of the most consequential features of different societies and circumstances, we are driven towards 61 the adoption of grand concepts. Big terms for big issues. 1 INTRODUCTION The starting point for this book is the emergence of an apparently new way of conceiving contemporary societies. Commentators increasingly began to talk about ‘information’ as a distinguishing feature of the modern world thirty years or so ago. This prioritisation of information has maintained its hold now for several decades and there is little sign of it losing its grip on the imagination. We are told that we are entering an information age, that a new ‘mode of information’ predominates, that ours is now an ‘e-society’, that we must come to terms with a ‘weightless economy’ driven by information, that we have moved into a ‘global information economy’.

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