Who needs the information society? New circuits of power and resistance

ABSTRACT

The principal aim of this article is to examine the idea of an information society by asking the question ‘do we need an information society at all?’ There is an attempt to show how the discipline of information science was shaped in the context of the Cold War era, and how the idea of an information society emerged in response to very specific political and economic circumstances. The typical understanding of the information society rests on an inadequate conception of information itself as a result of a stronger emphasis of its quantitative and measurable aspects. It is argued that information is a special kind of commodity that presents a contradiction to many information society theorists – while it may be sold at a profit, it may also be shared freely.

The notions of power and resistance are used to explore this contradiction using two examples. The first examines the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), and intellectual property rights. The second focuses more narrowly on South Africa's own experience with power and resistance relating to information matters. The article concludes that there may indeed be some grounds for arguing that we may not really need the information society as it is typically understood. The focus should instead be other social interventions that appropriate the benefits derived from Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).