Information Revolution Vs. Industrial Revolution - Continuing Debates

CONTINUING DEBATES

At the theoretical level, there were still radically divergent takes on the Information Revolution and what it means. Enthusiasts, such as Francis Fukuyama, proclaim that we have entered a radical new age full of sweeping transformations and profound economic, social, and political possibilities. Fukuyama argued that the wealth of information at consumers' fingertips—combined with the ability to seek out and shop for exactly what they want without regard to borders and other restrictions—would lead to a market-led democratization that went far beyond the possibilities of the welfare-state democracies of the Industrial Revolution. Fukuyama pursues this argument to its conclusion, insisting that private companies would increasingly assume many of the duties previously performed by governments. He argues that corporations powered by information technology and responding to the speed of the market are much less cumbersome and can more easily and flexibly respond to demand than can governments. Moreover, while Fukuyama sees the Industrial Revolution as massively disruptive of the traditional family unit, he argues that the Information Revolution holds possibilities of reconstructing the nuclear family as a central social network.

One of the best-known theorists of the Information Revolution was Manuel Castells, professor of sociology and planning at the University of California at Berkeley. Castells presented a more nuanced interpretation of the sweeping changes wrought by information technology than either the hyper-enthusiasts or the alarmists. While Castells argues against critics' claims that the Information Revolution was producing a numbing glut of information, he points out that information technology was not the panacea for global ills that it was sometimes painted to be. For instance, according to Castells, proponents looking to information technologies as the preeminent tool for development and democratization around the world misjudge both the severity of current poverty and disenfranchisement and the likely effects that rapid IT-led globalization would have on those peoples.

Castells argued that as powerful new information technologies are grafted onto and reshape the existing economic order, their development will produce not only vast new concentrations of wealth, but rising inequality, social exclusion, and psychological bewilderment on a global scale. Castells sees the technology-centered vision, in which social ills are fixed via technological means, as fundamentally flawed. While maintaining great faith in the powers of Enlightenment values of reason and science to propel humankind to a better world, he cautioned that, "there is an extraordinary gap between our technological overdevelopment and our social underdevelopment."

For instance, Castells argues that the social benefits inherent in these new technologies will not automatically spread to those peoples most in need. On the contrary, Castells sees the trajectory of the technology and their effects as largely dependent on the nature of the societies and institutions implementing them. Authoritarian, exclusionary, inegalitarian societies, according to Castells, will likely use information age technologies as tools to consolidate power, expand social divisions and inequality, and increase the level of exclusion. More egalitarian societies, on the other hand, were more likely to use information technologies for democratic, egalitarian purposes. In other words, information technologies aren't inherently positive or negative; rather they are more or less neutral tools, the effects of which depend on those in a position to establish a framework for their application.