Knowledge economy and society
The Information Society / the Knowledge Society
Information society
In this past decade, the expression “information society” has without a doubt been confirmed as the hegemonic term, not because it necessarily expresses a theoretical clarity, but rather due to its “baptism” by the official policies of the more developed countries and the “crowning” that meant having a World Summit dedicated in its honor.
The term’s antecedents, however, date back from previous decades. In 1973, United States sociologist Daniel Bell introduced the notion “information society” in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society [1], where he formulates that the main axis of this society will be theoretical knowledge and warns that knowledge-based services will be transformed into the central structure of the new economy and of an information-led society, where ideologies will end up being superfluous.
This expression reappears strongly in the 90s, within the context of the development of the World Wide Web and ICTs. As of 1995, it was included in the agenda of the G7 meetings (followed by G8, which joins heads of State and governments from the most powerful nations on the planet). It has been addressed in forums of the European Community and the OECD - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the thirty most developed countries in the World), and has been adopted by the United States government, as well as various UN agencies and the World Bank Group. All with great repercussions in the communication media. As of 1998, the term was first selected by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and then by the UN, as the name for the World Summit to be held in 2003 and 2005.
Within this context, the concept “information society” as a political and ideological construct has developed under the direction of neo-liberal globalization, whose main goal has been to accelerate the establishment of an open and “self-regulated” world market. This policy has counted on the close collaboration of multilateral organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, in order for the weak countries to abandon national regulations or protectionist measures that “would discourage” the inversion; all with the known result of a scandalous widening of the gaps between the rich and the poor in the World. Source
