The Use and Abuse of the "Information Society":
Reclaiming the Concept?
Sen Siochr
9th MacBride Round Table,
Boulder Colorado, October 1st to 2nd 1997
1. The Sudden Appearance of the Information Society In 1993 and 1994, two short years in terms of policy cycles, the "Information Society" leapt dramatically up the agenda of many developed countries. A quick review reveals the stunning unanimity and enthusiasm with which they turned to the Information Society: 1993, USA: The Clinton-Gore administration published the report National Information Infrastructure: An Agenda for Action announcing an infrastructure for the information age. 1993, Singapore: The government published their Vision of an Intelligent Island aiming at transforming Singapore into an information island. 1994, Japan: Reforms Towards the Intellectually Creative Society of the 21st Century was published with plans for a fibre-optical broadband network by 2005 - 2010. 1994, UK: The government unveiled the report Creating the Superhighways of the Future: Developing Broadband Communications in Britain. 1994, Norway: The government published its National Information Network. 1994, Sweden: The government's IT-Commission launched the poetically titled Wings to Human Ability presenting the Swedish road to the information society. 1994, Denmark: The government's report Info-Society Year 2000 was published as a book, establishing a national electronic library system, and introducing a citizen's smart card. At the global level, there was almost simultaneous activity: In March 1994, Al Gore announced the Global Information Infrastructure at the World Telecommunication Development Conference; In May 1994, the EU published the so-called Bangemann Report: Europe and the Global Information Society; By February 1995, the G7 was puling the various strings together with the Global Information Society summit in Brussels. But they were not only tripping over each other to get their reports out. Notable also was the alacrity with which many of these reports were translated from the drawing board and into plans of action, instruments and institutions. Why this flurry of activity? Was it merely a case of follow the leader, after the USA took the plunge? Was it an idea whos time had simply come, expressing sudden underlying structural change? 2. Origins of the Information Society Debate In fact, it was anything but a new idea. The notion of an Information Society has its roots in academic sociology and, specifically, in theorisations of industrial society. Industrial society, differentiated from pre-industrial or traditional societies, has been the central focus of sociology since its inception in the late nineteenth century. By the 1970s, however, there was a sense that the theory of industrial society was becoming increasingly anachronistic in the light of changes evident in the structure and organisation of advanced economies. Increasingly, sociologists began to hypothesise about these changes in terms of the emergence of post industrial society. These early writers, however, were cautious in their descriptions of a post-industrial society and were keen to stress that social developments they sought to identify were far from pre-ordained, that there may be several forms of, and routes towards, a post-industrial society. To take only the best known example, Daniel Bells The Coming of Post Industrial Society (published in 1973) emphasised that the task being undertaken was to "forecast" rather than to "predict" the future - that is, to raise a number of possibilities so as to inform a broad social debate about the directions in which society is, and should be, changing. Bell's basic proposition was that the transition from industrial to post-industrial society will be as radical a break as the transition from pre-industrial to industrial society. In the book, Bell contrasts a number of basic aspects of the former transition with those of the latter. Where the design of industrial society is "a game against fabricated nature" with energy-based machine technology as the basic tool, the design of post-industrial society is a "game between persons" in which "...an intellectual technology', based on information, rises alongside of machine technology" (Bell 1973 p.116). In industrial society the machine is the central metaphor (including nature as a mechanical system, human beings as clockwork, organisations as machines, etc.). In post-industrial society neither muscles nor energy, but information is to the fore (ibid. p.127), and in this society natural systems, humans and organisations are conceptualised primarily as "information systems". The dominant metaphor has changed. Where industrial society is oriented towards the production of goods, post-industrial society is characterised by the production of services, thus changing into a service economy. Where the largest class in industrial society is the working class with its background in taylorised mass production and with corresponding organisational representations, post-industrial society is predominantly populated by the so-called "knowledge class" with its organisational background in educational institutions, universities, service enterprises, information business, social-, health- and recreational institutions, etc. Shortly after the publication of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Marc Porat completed a detailed study of the composition of the American labour force (Porat 1976). Dividing the labour force into four groups, agricultural workers, industrial workers, service workers, and information workers. Porat demonstrated that while agricultural workers dominated the labour force until 1905 and industrial workers were the biggest group from 1905 to 1955, since 1955 information workers have emerged as the largest section of the American work force. During the 1970s, these and other works provoked serious debate and discussion. Their policy implications, as elaborated by some writers and selectively interpreted by western policy makers, encountered strong opposition from, amongst others, New Left and Marxist writers. Roach (1997) argues that Information Society concepts should be understood as a counter attack on the media imperialist school of thought, and specifically on the contemporary NWICO debate, which articulated global concerns regarding the information domination of less developed countries. For instance, Bell, Porat and others implicitly or explicitly supported the idea of leap-frog development in less developed countries - but they would first, of course, have to import vast amount of technologies and practices from the richer countries. Yet these relatively early writers are to be differentiated from current incarnations. By todays standards, their proposals were neither pure neo-liberal prescriptions not technology dominated. Returning to Bell, we can note two very important points about this early vision of post-industrial society. Bell did not see the post-industrial society as primarily relying on the market mechanism, what he called "an economising" mode of thought, but rather as employing a diverse set of control mechanisms to deal with the rapidly increasing social complexity. The second can be found in what is not mentioned - or at least only mentioned in passing - in Bells 1973 book: new information and communication technologies. For Daniel Bell's book is not based on any technological or technocratic determinism. On the contrary, his book was primarily concerned with changing patterns of social relations in modern society. It was only six years later, in the 1979 article The Social Framework of the Information Society, that he made an explicit analysis of computers and telecommunication systems as those technologies which best correspond to the technological demands of post-industrial society. Two main lessons are forthcoming. First, whatever the limitations of its proponents and interpretations in policy circles, the discussion of the so-called information society is a discussion of basic social changes, representing deep-seated social and economic movements influenced by a complex set of interrelated factors. Second these changes are not being determined by new technologies, which predetermine the agendas and shape of the outcome. Rather, new technologies are simply the tools that we can apply to specific policies to mould the shape of social changes. Furthermore, and perhaps related, although exerting some influence on policy at that time, the Information Society remained very much in the background and never really gripped the political or public imagination. The idea of the Information Society had yet to become an effective tool for propaganda. 3. From Academia to Propaganda The early 1970s visions tended to be based on assumptions that: The general public, and not only business, would want and seek more information; the new electronic media are inherently democratic and decentralising; the telecommunications infrastructure should be treated as a public utility rather than a commodity (the concept of an electronic highway); long-range, rational planning of communication was both desirable and possible in spite of high rates of technological change. This changed during the 1980s. The speculative theoretical works of the likes of Bell and the detailed empirical studies such as Porats were brought more firmly into the western policy domain by a range of writers. Some, such as Y. Masudas The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society (1981) or Alvin Tofflers The Third Wave (1980), were avowedly populist works, the latter especially replacing conceptual underpinnings with more or less blatant popular and ideological prejudice. Others - such as Nora and Mincs, The Computerisation of Society first published in 1978, Marc Porats The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement (1984) and Ian MacIntoshs Sunrise Europe (1986) - were commissioned by, or produced for, governments and hence had a more direct line into the political arena. Nora and Mincs report, in particular, strongly influenced France in taking an stance of favour of informatization, and Canada showed early policy interest with its 1981 Department of Communication Report: The Information Revolution and its Implications for Canada (cited in Roach 1997). All during the 1980s, the move towards policy thus saw a gradual shift in emphasis, in many cases impoverishing the theoretical underpinnings. The launch and take-up of new services for the public, beyond basic telephony and further television channels, was slow, and the economic uses came to dominate. Neo-liberal policies and public investment constraints began to weaken any assumption regarding a central infrastructure role for the public sector. Undoubtedly, such shifts increased their attraction to certain policy makers and increased their popularity in certain conservative circle. By the end of the 1980s, there was also some public awareness of the concept. It was promoted by an influential, albeit small, number academics and policy makers in the West as a positive development, that would benefit the whole of society and improve the general quality of life. 4. 1990s: The Information Society Hits the Big Time There the concept would probably have chugged along, slowly gaining support and popularity but essentially a background, still largely academic, idea that informed policy in subtle ways and possibly now and again used selectively to promote western interests. But all this changed radically, such that by 1994 the Information Society had come to occupy centre stage in much of the rich world. So we return to the question: Why was this? Two examples, the European Union and the G7 group of developed countries, reveal some key insights into this. 4.1 The European Union and the Information Society Although seldom explicitly admitted, European Union policy evolution is in constant tension between two broad positions. Since the Treaty of Rome founded the EU (then the EEC) in the 1950s, the creation of a single market had been the driving force of unification, and this market was seen as a liberalised one in which the state would have a relatively limited role. There had been several heaves in this direction during the 1960s and 1970s, interrupted by periods of negotiation with and integration of new members, so a much publicised deadline of 1992 for the creation of a Single Market was intended to sweep away a whole range of trade-related and non-trade barriers. However, the Treaty of Rome also implicitly (and later, explicitly, with the Single European Act) acknowledged that the creation of a single market could have negative consequences for weaker regions and social groups of the EU. The social and regional repercussions comprise the other central strand of EU policy, especially since many relatively poorer new entrants, including Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, had grave concerns about the overall impact on their societies and economies of relinquishing key areas of economic, social and cultural sovereignty. Thus, although always secondary to the central goal of a single market, from the outset all policies were obliged to consider the regional impact and to take appropriate action; and the so-called structural funds, aimed at addressing structural imbalances, became an integral part of the EU and took up a major part of its budget. (This is usually referred in EU parlance as the cohesion question.) Within this scheme, the telecommunications sector was regarded as not only a major sector in itself, but as a facilitator of trade in all other sectors and especially of the creation of trans-European corporations. It was thus a central plank in the push in the 1980s to create a single market. For the dominant neo-liberal camp, not just the opening of existing markets, but the liberalisation of markets within, and hence between countries, was the aim. By 1992, the European Union policy in telecommunication had, as regards liberalisation, made great strides, having agreed after extended battles among member states and the Commission to liberalise the equipment and advanced services industries. At the same time and as a trade off, significant policy initiatives had been in place to somewhat cushion the impact on less developed regions and social groups ( Siochr 1991). Yet for those obsessed with pursuing liberalisation to its ultimate point, considerable work remained. The holy grail was liberalisation at local level i.e. a completely open market in basic telecommunications networks and services. The opportunity to move forward came from a somewhat unexpected quarter. In 1992 there was relatively little support at member state level for the idea of bringing liberalisation down to the local level. Basic services were specifically excluded from binding EU Directives, through competitive service provision or resale, or by means of alternative infrastructures (although any country was free to permit them, as the UK had much earlier). Powerful elements in the Commission were frustrated in not being able to push through the full policy. Yet member states were weary of the battles of the late 1980s, and some wary of their own electorates reactions to abolishing nationally-owned basic service monopolies credited with having built up the European telecommunications network. At this point, the concept of the Information Society appeared on the horizon, formulated most clearly and stridently by the USA as the National Information Infrastructure. In the EU, it first gained prominence in a major policy document published in 1993 by the soon-to-retire President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors a French Socialist. This was the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (CEC 1993a), aimed at tackling severe unemployment and the perceived falling competitiveness of EU industry as a whole. The Information Society was given a central place in this document, and lauded for its employment creation potential: "A new information society is emerging in which the services provided by information and communications technologies underpin human activities. It constitutes an upheaval but can also offer new job opportunities." (CEC 1993) Although it was marked out as one of five priority areas, the policy implications of the Information Society were not spelled out. But the concept was received with general approval and vocal approval. EU member state governments regarded it as innovative, and, more important, felt it was relatively saleable at home to domestic electorates. It was here that the prior history of the concept, sketched out above, probably paid a key role in preparing the ground. Spelling out what it might mean was devolved (CEC 1993b) by the European Council (comprising member state ministers, and thus the central EU point of power) to a special committee comprising business interests and chaired by the EU Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann. It produced its report in 1994, Europe and the Global Information Society CEC 1994a), generally known as the Bangemann Report, and the Council agreed that an Information Society Action Plan should be drawn up on the basis of its conclusions. This was the turning point. Bangemann, a resolute and aggressive proponent of liberalisation, had clearly recognised and grasped the opportunity to inject impetus back into telecommunications liberalisation. The report emphasised the huge need for investment, especially if the USA and Japan were to be kept at bay, and placed the sector firmly in the driving seat with governments relegated to providing the environment and incentives to get on with it. The report was short, contained no new thinking but repeated a number of common fallacies, and offered no critical analysis of possible risks of the Information Society. More in the form of political manifesto, it prioritised four major areas: The development of a regulatory and legal framework to support the investment required to establish an Information Society; Support for the widespread development of new networks and services; Actions to maximise the social, societal and cultural benefits of the IS; The need for promotion activities to increase the public awareness of the IS. The report, and the subsequent Action Plan (CEC 1994b) (which has become a periodically-updated rolling plan), makes it clear that the first of these areas carries the central policy thrust, and the rest are seen as supporting activities. The main issues addressed under this heading include: Telecommunications infrastructure liberalisation; Promoting standardisation, interconnection and inter-operability; Rebalancing tariffs to reflect underlying costs; Establishment of an authority at the European Level; Developing proposals on universal service; Liberalising audio-visual policy; The worldwide dimension, including trade (WTO) and intellectual property rights (WIPO). Within this broad regulatory agenda, the central plank of the EUs Information Society strategy was, and remains, the liberalisation of telecommunications infrastructures, with most of the resulting policy issues (e.g., interconnection, tariff rebalancing and universal service) being thrown up in the pursuit of this objective. In global terms, liberalisation was to be pursued across the board and embrace IPRs, audio visual policy and other familiar areas. However, what was especially unusual about this new major policy strand was that the social and regional cohesion question, a central characteristic of decades of EU policy, was nowhere to be seen ( Siochr et al 1996a). In contrast to the far-reaching plans for liberalisation, the area of social, societal and cultural benefits would have to rely on a number of experimental applications. These were to be left mainly to the sector, with the public sector cast in a facilitating role, and were geared towards creating markets in these areas. They included the predictable areas of teleworking, distance learning, research networks, healthcare, electronic tendering and others. And while the issue of universal service was raised, it focused almost exclusively on the issue of interconnection, as part of Open Network Provision policy, harking back to the very early days of telecommunication; and not at all on the need to ensure that all people have access to affordable services. The Action Plan was endorsed by the Council, and a number of Directives to push through the last phase of liberalisation were quickly drawn up and agreed by Council, setting binding dates and obligations for full competition in basic services and the use of alternative infrastructures (e.g. CEC 1995a, 1995b). Most of these have now passed into EU law. Overall, the success of Bangemann and other pro-liberalisation groups in suppressing their traditional foes in the cohesion lobby relied on a number of factors. Certainly, there was a global push for liberalisation that member states were already feeling in GATT negotiations. The speed with which member states accepted the idea and approved its central policy tenets, in particular, was surprising, catching the opponents by surprise. There is no doubt also that wrapping it up in the concept of the Information Society enabled the Commission to sell the liberalisation package more easily and quickly to politicians, and for politicians to make it more palatable for home consumption. 4.2 The G7 and the Global Information Society So the notion of the Information Society was seized upon by the European Commission, popularised in a very politicised context, and rendered into an effective, if blatant, propaganda vehicle for liberalisation. A look at the evolution of the G7 concept of the Global Information Society reveals a very similar process. It is not difficult to draw parallels at the global level, which after all was a major strand in both US and EU policies. When US Vice President Al Gore first announced the Global Information Infrastructure in March 1994 there were five principles in the plan: Encourage investment; Promote competition; Create a flexible regulatory framework that can keep pace with rapid technological and market changes; Provide open access to the network for all information providers; Ensure universal service. The EUs approach to the eventual G7 supported plan was also clear and unambiguous, coming directly from its own policy described above: As announced by the Commission President in February 1995. "We are focusing on agreeing a core number of basic principles with our G7 partners: On the one hand promoting fair competition, encouraging investment, defining an adaptable regulatory framework and providing open access to networks. On the other, ensuring universal provision of access to services, equality of opportunity for citizens, diversity of content (including linguistic and cultural diversity) and co-operation with less developed countries" The G7 proposals to bring about the Information Society thus supported sweeping liberalisation globally, claiming to combine this with measures to ensure that various social, cultural and universal goals will be supported. The first part of the agenda is being pursued with vigour, through the G7 dominated structures of the WTO, the OECD, the ISO, WIPO, the World Bank and other organisations. In the sector, front organisations such as the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, supported by major telecommunications and media companies, worked hand in hand with them. And very considerable success has been achieved. The second strand, despite much prominence in G7 promotional literature, has been offered little concrete support and has achieved little. Eleven global pilot project applications were announced, in partnership with industry, many of which were planned anyhow. The feasibility stage of the pilot applications is due to be completed by November 1997, and decisions will then be taken about continuing into an implementation phase. Other countries, including those of the South, were invited to join - at their own expense. The shallowness of commitment was revealed in the May 1996 G7 meeting in South Africa, where a determined attempt by South Africa and others to inject some substance into the promises of a global universal service were considered out of bounds by the G7 countries. Yet the fact that they were openly challenged is important. While the concept of the Information Society could be used in the EU to sugar the pill of liberalisation, this is more problematic in less developed counties sceptical of western solutions and perhaps not unaware of the earlier use of the concept in the 1970s. 5. Reclaiming the Information Society The Information Society remains a powerful metaphor, and despite reservations, the concepts and rhetoric of the Information Society are proliferating in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, with national and regional plans being developed. Most stress, though often without clear specification, that the Information Society in less developed countries must be very different. This suggests that it might be worth attempting to reclaim the concept, that it might be possible to inject new life and new direction into it. 5.1 Limitations of the Current Concept The consequences of this hi-jacking of the Information Society by the forces of liberalisation are serious. It means that at its core, it is deeply flawed. The original concept, although partisan and limited, was at least situated within an articulated conceptual framework that could not so readily be twisted to suit policy vagaries. This was selectively hollowed out to suit the purposes of its current incarnation. Within this conception there is no link established between the deeper roots of the evolving role of information in society and the policies and instruments proposed to ensure that this dynamic will be turned to the benefit of all people. Indeed, there is virtually no theorisation of the role of information. The earlier academic work was largely ignored, replaced by a technical determinism long since abandoned by more serious theorists as crude and shallow. The plethora of reports listed at the beginning focus mainly on the tools and technologies of the Information Society, offering little about what these are intended to support, the kind of society aimed for. Crude and shallow it may be; but it suits the purposes of those who believe they already know the means to achieve the end: the total dominance of the market. When the solution is at hand, little attention need be devoted to the problem. And the problem with this solution, combined with its technical determinism, is that the question of which Information Society it is that we want is obscured. There is only one: The one the market will bring, owned by the multi-national corporations and the powerful countries; whose benefits will go first and foremost to those already in control, both within individual countries and globally. Indeed, the concept is so compromised at this stage, that the choice is between total rejection or complete overhaul. Tinkering around could never adequately address its historical deficiencies. 5.2 Prospects for Change So what are the prospects for doing this? In certain policy arenas, there is a fight back. Within the EU, the issue of universal service is now on the agenda, with the possibility of some substance behind it (for instance CEC 1997a,b). There are also definite signs that the concept as presented has not been swallowed whole. Recent outspoken criticism at a well attended launch in Dublin of the Green Paper on social aspects of the Information Society, called People First (CEC 1996), shows that many are unhappy with the direction, and are willing to take charge of the concept themselves. A number of EU-funded projects have also been launched that are taking seriously the promises to address disadvantage and exclusion. But even these limited openings are unavailable in the global context. The G7s flaunting of its commitment to the benefits of the Information Society and to universal service do offer some leverage to less developed countries and marginalised groups in demanding meaningful follow-up actions that deliver on the promises. Yet, as always, the overall balance of power is what matters most. The current extreme imbalance, reinforced with the move in telecommunication to the WTO and the trade paradigm, offer only limited scope for action in conventional fora at a global level. As mentioned, in many countries of the South, there are already movements to recreate the Information Society perhaps in a new image. The rebuff delivered to Al Gore and the G7 by Vice-President Mbeki and others at the Information Society and Development (ISAD) conference in May 1996 indicated that universal service and spreading the benefits to all should have to come higher on the agenda than the so-called means - liberalisation. Since then, a number of initiatives in Africa, in individual countries and regionally, are stressing the need to start from the bottom up. The proposals of the Universal Service Agency is South Africa to support 80 telecentres, followed by many more, springs to mind, and is only one amongst many. 5.3 Is there a Way Forward? If the concept of the Information Society is to be of any use at all to progressive movements, its enrichment must appeal to a much broader strategic context. Up to now, it is very much a top-down idea (which, incidentally, it shares with the NWICO). Its dynamic must be inverted if it is to escape its current limitations. This could happen across a number of fronts: The Information Society idea could be broadened beyond the economy, to question of cultural diversity and creativity (not culture simply as commercial sector), social cohesion, and so forth. It could be extended to include all media, all mediated forms of information production and transmission: radio, video, television, electronic networking, and so forth. The current focus on telecommunication was anyhow primarily to suit western tactical interests. Questions of control over content production, in particular, are vital, which currently appear as part of the neo-liberal agenda in intellectual property rights, copyright, and related areas. Unless the concept of Information Society can be enriched along these or similar lines, it can play no useful part in building alliances with a broader progressive movement or in challenging the forces that currently use and abuse it. The notion of reclaiming the information society might act as one tool among others in constructing a broad coalition of community and alternative media, academics, critics of current mass media, and begin the process of extending to other progressive forces impacted by the neo-liberal agenda. References: Bell, Daniel, 1973, The Coming of Post Industrial Society. Basic Books, New York. Bell, Daniel, 1979, The Social Framework of the Information Society p 163-211 in N.M. Dertouzos and Jane Moses (eds.), The Computer Age: A 20 Year View, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. CEC (Commission of the European Communities), 1993a, Growth, Competitiveness and Employment: The Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century, White Paper, Brussels. CEC, 1993b, Conclusions of the Council Meeting, Corfu, Brussels. CEC, 1994a, Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council (The Bangemann Report), Brussels, May. CEC, 1994b, Europes Way to an Information Society: Action Plan, COM(94) 347 final. CEC, 1994c, Competitiveness and Cohesion: Trends in the Regions, Brussels/Luxembourg, 1994. CEC, 1995a, Proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on the application of open network provision (ONP) to voice telephony (presented by the Commission) COM(94) 689 final, 1 February. CEC, 1995b, Proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on interconnection in telecommunications ensuring universal service and interoperability through application of the principles of open network provision ONP the application of open network provision (ONP), COM(95) 379, 19 July. CEC, 1996, Living and Working in the Information Society : People First, Bulletin of the EU, Supplement 3/96. http://www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs.peopl1st.html CEC, 1997a, Cohesion and the Information Society: Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the Committee of Regional and the Economic and Social Committee, COM (97)7/3, Brussels. CEC, 1997b, Building the European Information Society for us All: Final Policy Report of the High-level Expert Group, http://www.ispo.cec.be/hleg/hleg.html MacIntosh, Ian, 1986, Sunrise Europe, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Masuda, Yugi, 1981, The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society, World Futures Society, Bethseda MD. Nora, S and Minc, A, 1978, The Computerisation of Society, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Siochr, Sen, 1991, Europe Connected or Disconnected? Broadband Networks in Less Developed Regions, FUNDESCO, Madrid. Siochr, Sen, Andy Gillespie, James Cornford and Lars Qvortrup, 1996, An Assessment of the Social and Economic Cohesion Aspects of the Development of the Information Society in Europe, Volume 1 - 5, CEC, Brussels. Porat, Marc Uri, 1977, The Information Economy, vol. 1, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington D.C. Porat, Marc Uri, 1984, The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement, Dept of Commerce, Washington D.C. Roach, Colleen, 1997, The Western World and the NWICO: United They Stand? p 94 116 in Beyond Cultural Imperialism : Globalisation, Communication and the New Information Order, P. Golding and P. Harris (eds.), Sage, London. Toffler, Alvin, 1980, The Third Wave, William Morrow, New York.