The Information Society

Introduction

Staff teaching on the course:

• Ewan Sutherland
• Daniel Chandler (UW Aberystwyth)

The course:

• twenty-two lectures
• five seminars: held fortnightly: sign-up in Centre for Informatics

Claims for change

In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world's richest and most technically advanced nations, many of them, will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.Alvin Toffler "Future Shock" (1970).

But has this happened? (Not much time left!)

An early Japanese view (1972)

• digital computers
• digital telecommunications
• general availability of semiconductor electronics

Would lead to improvements in:

• education
• healthcare
• environment
• management

The computer revolution

... in which we move from the amplification and emancipation of the power of muscles to the amplification and emancipation of the power of the brain. As with the Industrial Revolution it will have an overwhelming and comprehensive impact, affecting every human being on earth in every aspect of his or her life. Again, parallelling its predecessor, it will run at a gallop, spent not in 150 years, but in twenty-five. ... once it is under way it will be unstoppable ...

Christopher Evans "The Might Micro" (1979).

Advances in:

• semiconductors
• computers
• communications
• convergence of computers and communications

Our course

Multidisciplinary view of the changes in:

• societies
• economies
• organisations
• life of individuals

Perspectives to be examined:

• business
• ethical
• geographical
• historical
• literary
• personal
• political
• sociological

We will look at:

• nature of economic and social consequences of recent technological changes
• effects of those changes on individuals and organisations
• ethical, historical, literary and spatial settings of those changes
• scenarios for future changes
• the importance of change and how it can be managed and controlled

Different spheres of application of IT:

• personal life
• the 'home'
• organisations (commercial, not for profit and governmental)
• education

There is a danger of a technological imperative:

• technology is neither neutral for independent
• it is the result of human decisions

The pace of change

• globalisation
• growing competition
• reliance of technology, innovations and break-throughs
• consequently a reliance on knowledge
• faster creation of knowledge

Globalisation

• products
• services
• brands

For example, MTV is available in North America, Latin America, Europe and now in Asia. Some 110 million homes.

Michael Jackson video from MTV

Pace of change

• prediction is dangerous
• five years is just plausible
• ten years is almost impossible
• twenty years is wild speculation or science fiction

Adoption

• invention
• innovation
• take-up
• accelerating pace

Compression of space, time and travel

• physical communication is much faster
• global telephony
• global data communications

Cable News Network: live news from around the world, delivered to the world.

The Internet: internconnection of networks, academic and non-commercial

Physical transport

• roads
• railways
• steam ships
• motor cars
• aircraft

Communications

• Telegraph: invention (1837), Trans-Atlantic cable (1866)
• Telephone: invented (1877), Trans-Atlantic cable (1956), videophone (1960)
• Radio: invention (1896), AM radio (1920), FM radio (1936)
• Television: invention (1925), public service (1936), colour (1953), video cassette recorder (1970s)

Global financial market

• no longer local, national or regional markets
• global market with computer-based trading
• three principal centres (Tokyo, New York and London)

The Gulf War

• secret
• poorly controlled
• mounted on camels

'Desert Shield' and 'Desert Storm'

• high technology
• controlled from Washington (and London)
• absolutely public (covered by television and radio)

• John Wayne and Clint Eastwood
• Arnold Schwarznegger and Bugs Bunny
• Star Wars and Sega/Nintendo

One of the victors was CNN:

• direct 'live' news feed
• satellite links to the front
• views from Baghdad, desert, Washington DC, etc
• open to abuse
• bizarre jargon

Historical frameworks

• progress
• development
• shift away from UK
• tendency to see continuity

The lessons of history are not to be taken too readily or without question. Life, in particular economic life, is in a constant process of change, and in consequence, the same action or event occurring at different times can lead to very different results.

J K Galbraith (1992).

What is a revolution?

Political revolutions

• French Revolution (1789)
• Russian Revolution (1918)
• Cuban Revolution (1949)

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Karl Marx (1848)

Do non-political revolution count?

• defenestration of politicians
• shooting rioting crowds

Technological revolution

• e.g. from water-power to steam
• e.g. from steam to oil
• e.g. from electro-mechanical to electronic

Spatial frameworks

• urban versus rural
• third world versus developed world
• UK versus Europe
• Eastern versus Western Europe
• Europe versus Pacific Rim
• USA versus Japan
• Japan versus the Asian dragons
• invention and models of diffusion

Data on the growth of Newly Industralised Countries

Sociological frameworks

• gender
• social class
• technological elite
• religion
• control

A visual framework (but not viewable in Lynx)

Politics

• in a global world who can exercise control?
• telecommunications (especially television) can destabilise power structures, yet who can control it?
• global financial markets
• global corporations
• electronic democracy

The end of the national champion

I was asked the other day about United States competitiveness and I replied that I don't think about it at all. We at NCR think of ourselves as a globally competitive company that happens to be headquartered in the United States.

Gilbert Williamson, 1989President, NCR Corporation

Visions of the future

How much of what we want or expect is determined by what we have read or seen?

• books, magazines, radio, television and film
• science fiction
  • H G Wells "War of the Worlds"
  • "The Monster from the Black Lagoon"
  • Star Trek - the new generation

Images of the past

• cute watercolour images of the pastoral past
• pre-industrial squalor
• diphtheria, whooping cough, leprosy and the black death

Conclusion, it is still happening

• the changes are still going on
• the course can do no more than try to keep up-to-date
• you need to extrapolate
• you need to watch for changes
• by anticipating the future, you may have a better chance of influencing it