In the information society, technological advances and social structural changes are fundamentally reshaping our lifestyles and values, but there is still debate about whether the changes will be positive.
With the rapid progress of informationization, the importance of information in modern society is increasing by leaps and bounds. The information society is already an irreversible trend, affecting our lives in many ways. These changes are not just limited to technological advancements, but are transforming society in many ways. The advancement of informationization is deeply permeating not only our personal lives, but also organizations and social systems as a whole. It’s changing the way we work, communicate, and spend our leisure time.
The world is changing the way we produce, how we organize our work, and how we consume, and it’s also shifting the role of key industries. For example, the shift from a traditional manufacturing-driven economy to a knowledge and information-driven economy is creating new types of jobs. As a result, the labor market is increasingly shifting toward knowledge-based jobs, and this shift is forcing the restructuring of the economy. In particular, the development of digital technology is accelerating the integration of the global economy, connecting the world into a single market that transcends geographical constraints.
In addition, people’s lifestyles, including leisure and hobbies and social relationships, are changing, as well as their mindsets and values. In the past, meeting and communicating in physical spaces was the center of attention, but now, human relationships are being formed through online platforms that transcend the constraints of space and time. These changes are also affecting the formation of personal identity, with new forms of social ties and communities emerging. For example, networking through social media not only expands an individual’s social capital, but also serves as a tool to strengthen social influence through the spread and sharing of information.
These changes are having such a long-term and comprehensive impact on all areas of our lives that they are being compared to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. Just as the Industrial Revolution fundamentally changed the way we live, informationization is reshaping the entire fabric of modern society. These changes are more than just technological advancements; they are accompanied by social, economic, and cultural shifts, and they touch every aspect of our lives.
While there’s no doubt that these changes will reshape our society, there’s debate about what the outcome will be. Different perspectives on the relationship between technology and society may predict different directions and characteristics of change.
There are two main perspectives on the information society: technological determinism and social structuralism. According to the technological determinism perspective, the development of information technology leads to the rapid emergence of a new economic sector called the information economy. This will lead to fundamental changes in all areas of social structure, including the structure of employment and the way governments and businesses are organized and function. This view emphasizes that information and communication technologies will act autonomously in social change as a fundamental driver of change. This technological determinism is sometimes referred to as post-industrial sociology. According to this view, the post-industrial society, also known as the information society, will be characterized by an economy centered on services rather than goods. They consider information knowledge to be a key resource in a post-industrial society. They also emphasize that participatory democracy rather than parliamentary democracy, social change by citizen movements, and the decline of materialistic values will be the main characteristics of the future information society.
On the other hand, the social structuralist perspective does not consider information technology as an independent variable. They believe that the advancement of information technology and the progress of informatization are merely changes within the capitalist system. While acknowledging the quantum leap in information technology, they see it as a mediator, not an independent variable. In short, technology itself may be neutral, but the way it is used is never neutral: who uses it, for what, and in what direction matters. According to social structuralists, an information society is one in which capital can be accumulated more efficiently and reliably by incorporating value-added information technologies into production and management. Social structuralists see it as a society that can diversify its sources of profit by commoditizing information-related hardware and software. By utilizing information technology, social structuralists pursue a two-pronged strategy of informatizing existing industries, including manufacturing, on the one hand, and industrializing information itself on the other. In other words, social structuralists pursue both the informatization of industries and the commoditization of information.
However, their view of the future of the information society is not a rosy new world as predicted by the post-industrial sociologists. They argue that in the future information society, economic and information inequality will increase. They believe that workers will become more unemployed, and their power will be weakened by the de-skilling of jobs. These changes have the potential to threaten social stability, particularly the concentration of social and economic power in the hands of a small elite group that has monopolized information technology. This could lead to further class divisions based on access to information, a factor that could lead to social conflict.
Social structuralists believe that negative features will emerge, such as the increasing dominance of governments through large, multinational organizations. Predictions about the information society are not uniform among scholars, and the outlook is not necessarily rosy. Some see it as an entirely new society, while others see it as an extension of the current society. We need to be careful to distinguish between what will actually change and what will remain the same through the different views of the information society. On the other hand, it is necessary to summarize the place of the information society in the long historical process from a subjective perspective. In addition, it is important to critically examine various discussions related to informatization and the information society and design a model of a desirable information society that fits the specific conditions of society.
