INFORMATIOIN SOCIETY

Give three definitions of information society


1) Bell Peter Otto and Philipp Sonntag (1985) define an information society as a society where the majority of employees work in information jobs, i.e. they have to deal more with information, signals, symbols, and images than with energy and matter




2) According to Fritz Machlup an information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People that have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens.
3)
the geography dictionary 1992,1997 and 2004 says an information society is a term put forward by Castells (1993 1-2) to describe a society built on technologies of information storage, retrieval, and transmission, time-space compression, post-Fordism, flexible accumulation, and the advance of finance capital, which is characterized by networking, globalization, and the flexibility, individuality, and instability of work. Castells holds that such a society induces poverty, spurs ‘greed, innovation, and hope, while simultaneously imposing hardship, and installing despair’, while Donert (Geography 85), noting that ‘no place on earth is immune to the new information society’, calls for a legislative framework to recognize and protect the users of cyberspace, and a body responsible for financial issues, especially for taxation.