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Product Description
Coping in an era of information flows, of virtual relationships and breakneck change poses challenges to one and all.
In Theories of the Information Society Frank Webster makes sense of the information explosion, taking a sceptical look at what thinkers mean when they refer to the 'Information Society' and critically examines the major post-war theories and approaches to informational development. This third edition brings the book right up to date with both new theoretical work and, social and technological changes (such as the rapid growth of the Internet and accelerated globalization), reassessing the work of key theorists in light of these changes.
This book is essential reading for students of contemporary social theory and anybody interested in social and technological change in the post-war era. It addresses issues of central concern to students of sociology, politics, communications, information science, cultural studies, computing and librarianship.
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On the whole a well balanced, well written, thoughtful account of a very challenging concept.
There are two main strengths to this book. First, it gives a very nice "lay of the land" overview of many important social theorists regarding the information age, and thus is an excellent launching point for students who want to explore theorists further. Second, his skepticism regarding theories of information society should be welcomed even by those who do firmly believe that we are in an information society. He raises many interesting points that will give those people who largely buy into the information society beliefs (as I did moreso before reading this book) cause to rethink some assumptions, which is what scholarly activity is supposed to be about.
With so much hyperbole surrounding the computing revolution, the Internet, and the explosion in communications, it is easy to forget that most of us simply assume that a new information either now exists or is emerging. The author of this book challenges this assumption by looking at half a dozen views of the so-called information society advanced by different sociologists in recent decades. Webster in particular seems to distinguish the positions of classical socilogists like Schiller, Giddens, and Habermas from the so-called post-modern or post-industrial writings on information society of Daniel Bell, Manuel Castells, or Mark Poster.By critically examining these views, the author concludes that there is much more information available than ever before and that it plays a pivotal role in everything we do from leisure activities to business transactions to government activities, as shown by the various technical measures of information society which various writers have proposed. However, and this is the clincher, there does not appear to be any consensus of whether the information society exists or exactly what it is supposed to look like as different from previous society.
Is Weber's point and his scepticism simply semantic sophistry or a substantively insightful analysis? Depending on your disposition and your appreciation of sociological literature, this is a question you will have to decide in you choose to follow the argument in this book. The author is hardly naive about the realities of technological change, but deeply questions the technological determinism which he sees many writers and thinkers implicitly assuming is shaping contemporary social relations. He prefers to think of present developments as an extension of the past, but with a greater informatization of social relations.
I suspect that the author's argument is subtle, and possibly valid, but he may have done well to cast his analysis in broader terms than those of an insider debate among sociologists.
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