INFORMATION SOCIETYARAVALI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING &

MANAGEMENT(ACEM, FARIDABAD)

INTRODUCTION• Information Society is a term for a society in which the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information has become the most significant economic and cultural activity.

• A society is composed of people working together to achieve common ends and to satisfy common needs.

• A society is an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied multitude of individuals who may or may not be from different ethnic groups.

• The term information society is said to have been coined in Japan for the first time.

• A new type of society in which humanity has the opportunity to lead a new way of life, to have a higher standard of living, accomplish better work, and to play a better role in society thanks to the global use of information and telecommunication technologies.”

 

William J. Martin defined information society as “a society in which the quality of life as well as prospects for social change and economic development depends increasingly on information and its exploitation”.

The Information Society is a direct consequence of:

• Data explosion• Information Consiousness• Development in Technologies

Criteria of an Information Society:

a) Technological Criteria: Today’s age is the computer age in which computers and telecommunication are behind every other change in the society.

b) Economic Criteria: This is the age of knowledge in which knowledge capital would predominate over material capital.

c) Social Criteria: In information society, information is the enhancer of the quality of life. The information society will be conscious towards the value of information and its use and will become increasingly centred on information handling, processing, storage and dissemination using micro electronic based technologies

d) Political Criteria: In information society there would be more interaction between the government and the governed through citizens’ participation by way of electronic polling, their access to public information under the concept of freedom and equality of access to information. There will be better interaction with fellow citizens through wired networks, telephone, teleconferencing, etc. The information superhighway will change the whole world.e) Cultural Criteria: The information society recognizes the cultural value of information through the promotion of information values in the interest of national or individual development.

The characteristics of information societies

• Information societies have three main characteristics.

• First, information is used as an economic resource. Organizations make greater use of information to increase their efficiency, to stimulate innovation and to increase their effectiveness and competitive position, often through improvements in the quality of the goods and services that they produce. There is also a trend towards the development of more information-intensive organizations that add greater amounts of value and thus benefit a country’s overall economy.

• Secondly, it is possible to identify greater use of information among the general public. People use information more intensively in their activities as consumers:

• The third characteristic of information societies is the development of an information sector within the economy. The function of the information sector is to satisfy the general demand for information facilities and services.

Different Perceptions of Information Society four different perceptions of the Information Society on the basis of technological, economic, occupational, spatial and cultural criteria.

Technological Perception

• The most common perspective of Information Society lays emphasis upon spectacular technological innovation. The important idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage and transmission have led to the application of Information Technologies (IT) in virtually all the areas of society.

Occupational Perception

• Another popular measure of the emergence of an information society is the one that focuses on occupational change. The contention is that we have achieved an Information Society when the predominance of occupations is found in information.

3.Spatial Perception • This perception of the Information Society has at its core the distinctive

stress on space. Here the major emphasis is on the Information Networks that connect locations and as a result have great effect on the organisation of time and space. This aspect has been considered as an index of the Information Society in recent years.

4. Cultural Perception • Developments such as invention of radio, television, and computers coupled

with the recent advances in telecommunication networks and media technologies are having great impact on the lifestyles of people as a whole.

KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

From the sociological point of view, society has been categorized mainly into three broad phases which are –

▪Pre –industrial or Agrarian Society: In the Agrarian Society, agriculture was the predominant occupation of people who created the knowledge base.

▪Industrial Society: The Industrial Society was triggered by the Industrial Revolution that started in Great Britain and moved to most part of Western Europe

• Post –industrial Society: Post-industrial societies are societies dominated by information, services, and high technology more than the production of goods.

• The term knowledge society refers to a society in which the creation, dissemination, and utilization of information and knowledge has become the most important factor of production. In such a society, knowledge assets (also called intellectual capital ) are the most powerful producer of wealth, sidelining the importance of land, the volume of labor, and physical or financial capital.

• The term knowledge society has several meanings. First, it is used by social scientists to describe and analyze the transformation toward so-called post industrial society. Second, it is used to refer to a normative vision that nations or companies should aspire to fulfill. Third, it is used as a metaphor, rather than a clear-cut concept, under which various topics are examined

Features of Perfect Knowledge Society

• In a perfect knowledge society all people have:

• open and timely access to information and knowledge

• the capacity to absorb and interpret information

• avenues and opportunities to use knowledge for informed-decision making and for transformation to higher quality of lives.

Knowledge Society in Developed Countries

• high standard of living;

• instant access to information and recorded knowledge through internet;

• escalating movement towards consumerism;

• influence of mass media,

• leisure industry utilizing scientific and technological

• innovations Information and Communication Technology.

Characteristics and Indicators of Knowledge Society

(1) the mass and polycentric production, transmission, and application of knowledge is dominant;

(2) the price of most commodities is determined by the knowledge needed for their development and sale rather than by the raw material and physical labor that is needed to produce them;

(3) a large portion of the population attains higher education;

(4) a vast majority of the population have access to information and communication technologies and to the Internet;

(5) a large portion of the labor force are knowledge workers who need a high degree of education and experience to perform their job well;

(6) both individuals and the state invest heavily in education and research and development; and

(7) organizations are forced to innovate continually.

Indicators of knowledge society:• Qualitative measurement of the use of and access to

modern ICTs. Educational attainment;

• The number of scientists in a country;

• The amount of investment on Research & developments as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP);

• The ability to produce and export high technology;

• The number of patents field in a country; and

• The number of articles published in highly ranked scholarly journals.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFORMATION SOCIETY AND KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

Citizens, government and business in the information society make an intensive use of information technologies and communications in daily life. Information society creates conditions for the prompt circulation of knowledge. Knowledge economy cannot become the factor that determines welfare of residents in underdeveloped information society.

• Creation of the information society is the main factor of the economic development, job creation and social prosperity. Foundation of the economy is stored and constantly updated productive knowledge. It takes place when scientific research and practical activities is developed based on knowledge and information technologies as well as is integrated into areas of production, services, business, science and studies of competitive products.

Information society invests in self-education, members of the knowledge society learn constantly and seek higher education. Knowledge and knowledge-based technologies are used effectively in industry and enhance its competitiveness and innovativeness. The most modern information and communication technologies are widely used to transfer knowledge.

Role of Education in the Knowledge Based Society

• Education has played and is still playing an important role in forming and training the individual throughout his existence. Nowadays society, however, enforces some specific traits of the whole educational process that are anchored into the reality of the present.

• Education as the action of forming, training the individual for the purpose of applying the acquired knowledge

• The secret of the future society is education. But not in the old-fashioned concept of teaching, but of permanent education, over the entire lifetime, in order to gain superior competences: to verify, to conceive, to create and to invent.

• On a global level, education is regarded as a phenomenon, one of those activities that can favour communication through its very specific functions, as well as establishing close communication links between various countries, geographic areas and across various cultures.

• Education is not only about putting the individual in contact with values, but also raising him to the level of these values, then extending this process from the individual level to the society level, thus increasing its value and functionality.

• Education leads to lower incidence of health problems, reduced mortality and increased life expectancy. Health education, if included in the general education, tied to common organisms or other means of communication, can be more effective and less costly.

• In a world of evolution, of technological know-how, education plays an essential role. It is a top rank social institution that can contribute to increase democracy and equality, facilitating the rapport between man and nature.

• The link between the knowledge-based society and society itself is made by combining four interlaced elements: the build-up of knowledge, its transmission via education and training, its dissemination as information via media and its utilization in technological innovation.

• Reforming education policies and regulations, particularly those designed to increase supply and quality, should be an urgent priority. India must preserve traditional knowledge and subject it to scientific enquiry and application.

some of these new educational challenges are:

• The school of the future should provide a top rank and universal alphabetization, which assumes understanding the basic sciences, but also an increased dynamics of learning, the study of foreign languages, so that the individual may learn ever since the school age how to act efficiently later on after entering the labour market;

• ▪Building the motivation to learn and adapt to the perpetual learning process in all individuals at all levels of the educational system; For this purpose, the new technologies (Branden, 1996) can play a particularly important role, and the individual can advance in his path to knowledge to the point of having noticeable achievements.

• Providing the information and know-how, both as a substance and as a process is a priority generated by the new technologies;

• ▪Surpassing the monopolistic condition of the school, applying a new axiom: the more educated a person gets, the more extra education they need, or at least the re- run of educational modules undertaken with unsatisfactory results in the past. This would prevent, for instance, having adults feeling overwhelmed by events.

• in a society of learning, often appear both the necessity of university graduates in particular to return systematically to the educational system and the necessity of any organization to continuously form its workforce, if superior results are expected to come from the work process. Learning must be a creative process, developing the capacity to solve problems.

• In turns, the new technologies have the role of transforming the education by rethinking the purpose and functionality of the educational system in society.