Abstract
In the late twentieth century, many social scientists and other social commentators came to characterize the world as evolving into an “information society.” Central to these claims was the notion that new social uses of information, and particularly application of scientific knowledge, are transforming social life in fundamental ways. Among the supposed transformations are the rise of intellectuals in social importance, growing productivity and prosperity stemming from increasingly knowledge-based economic activity, and replacement of political conflict by authoritative, knowledge-based decision-making. We trace these ideas to their origins in the Enlightenment doctrines of Saint Simon and Comte, show that empirical support for them has never been strong, and consider the durability of their social appeal.
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Notes
E.g., Alvin Toffler, The third wave, New York 1980; Newt Gingrich, To renew America, New York 1995; Thomas L. Friedman, The world is flat; A brief history of the twenty-first century, New York, 2007.
E.g., Frank Webster, Theories of the information society, London 1995; Jorge Schement and Terry Curtis, Tendencies and tensions of the information age, New Brunswick, NJ 1995.
Keith Taylor, editor, Henri Saint Simon; Selected writings, London 1975, p. 194.
Ibid., pp. 194–195.
Frank Manuel, The Prophets of Paris, Cambridge MA, 1962, pp. 270–271.
Fritz Machlup, The production and distribution of knowledge in the United States, Princeton 1962.
Ibid., pp. 399, 396.
Robert Lane, The decline of politics and ideology in a knowledgeable society. American Sociological Review (31) 5, p. 650.
Taylor, Henri Saint Simon, p. 157.
Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, Editorial: What is the Public Interest?, The Public Interest (1) 1, 1965 pp. 3–4.
US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Toward a social report, Washington, D.C. 1969.
John Lear, Public policy and the study of man, Saturday Review, 7 September 1968, p. 60.
E.g., Peter Drucker, The age of discontinuity, New York 1968.
Ibid., pp. 265–66.
Peter Drucker, Post capitalist society, New York 1993, pp. 45–46.
Daniel Bell, The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting, New York 1973, p. 20.
Daniel Bell, The third technological revolution. Dissent, Spring 1989.
Daniel Bell, The coming of post-industrial society, p. 28.
Ibid., pp. 128–129.
Harlan Cleveland, The twilight of hierarchy; speculations on the global information society. In Bruce R. Guile, editor, Information technologies and social transformation, Washington, DC 1985, p. 56.
Ibid., p. 60.
Manuel Castells, The rise of the network society; economy, society and culture, Volume I of The information age: economy, society and culture, Malden, MA 1996, p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 171–72, emphasis in original.
E.g., Alain Touraine, The post-industrial society, New York 1971; Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The computerization of society, Cambridge, MA 1980; James Beniger, The control revolution, Cambridge, MA 1986; Shoshana Zuboff, In the age of a smart machine; the future of work and power, New York 1988.
Marc Porat, The information economy; definitions and measurement, Washington, DC 1977.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 8.
Ibid., p. 122.
Ibid., p. 134.
Ibid., p. 106.
Ibid., p. 23.
Our data come from various credible sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the United States Census Bureau Abstracts. With the selected information-related variables such as educational expenditures, research and development expenditures and number of patents issued, we sought to explain growth in GDP, measured in constant dollars and productivity, measured as hourly output in all businesses in the United States. Our dataset provides over-time information on these variables since 1955. We have estimated two time-series models. In our first model, we explore the effects of information-related activities on economic growth. We have estimated the effects of informational activities such as research and development expenditures, educational expenditures, and number of patents issued on GDP. For reasons of multicolinearity, we have estimated an ARIMA time-series model, predicting not only effects of information related activities on economic growth contemporaneously, but also in 5 and 10 year lags. In our second model, we have estimated the effects of the same two information-related activities on productivity through a similar ARIMA time- series model with 5 and 10 year lags. Our findings show that, while information-related activities have no significant effect on productivity, they strongly predict economic growth. The effects of information-related activities on economic growth are not only statistically significant, but also substantially strong both at the present time, and in 5- and 10-year lags. We have also tested the strength of the information-related activities in predicting economic growth in the 1950s and today. Our findings show that in the first period, both educational and research and development expenditures play a role in economic growth, while in the second period, only research and development expenditures do. Overall, we demonstrate a positive effect of information-related activities on economic growth, while we do not find any significant effects on productivity.
The closest any of these authors seems to come to identifying a date for the onset of the information society seems to be in the following passage by Peter Drucker: “The impact of information, however, should be even greater than that of electricity. Information has always been unbelievably expensive.... Now, for the first time, it’s beginning to be available – and the over-all impact on society is bound to be very great.” These remarks were first published in 1967.
Daniel Bell, The coming of post-industrial society, pp. 20, 343–344.
Daniel Bell, The third technological revolution, p. 169.
Current Biography Yearbook, New York 1991, p. 239.
Michael T. Kaufman, Soros; the life and times of a messianic billionaire, New York 2002, p. 140.
Donald McKenzie and Graham Spinardi, Tacit knowledge, weapons design, and the uninvention of nuclear weapons, American Journal of Sociology, (101)1.
Marc Porat, The information economy, p. 64.
Robert Reich, The work of nations; preparing ourselves for 21st century capitalism, New York 1991, p. 225.
Randall Collins, The credential society, New York 1979.
Ibid., pp. 48, 54.
Erving Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life, Garden City, NY, 1959, pp. 46–47.
Ibid., p. 46.
N.L. Hicks, Education and economic growth. In The International Encyclopedia of Education, second edition, Vol. 3, Oxford, UK 1994, p. 1660.
John DiNardo and Jorn-Steffen Pischke, The returns to computer use revisited: Have pencils changed the wage structure too? Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1997, p. 291.
Peter Drucker, The coming of the new organization. Harvard Business Review, January–February 1988, p. 49.
Rashid Zeffane, Patterns of structural control in high and low computer user organizations, Information and Management, 23 September 1992; James Rule, Debra Gimlin and Sylvia Sievers, Computing in organizations; myth and experience, New Brunswick, NJ, 2002.
David Gordon, Fat and mean; the corporate squeeze of working Americans and the myth of managerial ‘downsizing’, New York 1996.
Ibid., pp. 43–47.
Rule, Gimlin, and Sievers, Computing in organizations, p. 66.
Simon Head, The new ruthless economy; work and power in the digital age, New York 2003, p. 85.
Ibid., pp. 12–13.
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Rule, J.B., Besen, Y. The once and future information society. Theor Soc 37, 317–342 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9049-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9049-6