9/12 Readings

Image of the Future Information Society - Yoneji Masuda

In describing his view of what a future Information Society would look like, Masuda argued that the evolution of this society would follow a parallel trajectory to that of the growth of the industrial society. Although I felt that some of his theories were far too laden with an image of an "idea factory," pushing out theories and thoughts on a conveyor belt of sorts, it was a bit eerie to me that others prove to be quite accurate. Masuda hit #14 on the head, for example, describing the shocks currently being experienced by a generation on a major societal cusp, including "acts of individual and group terrorists such as hijackings, invasions of individual privacy, and the crisis of a controlled society" (20). I wonder how Masuda managed to pre-order a copy of the Patriot Act over a decade in advance of its domestic release date?

Another common theme that carried through several of the theories that I feel was very modern were the consistent references to goals achieved through synergy and the idea of self-actualization. Through the use of growing technology, we as a society truly do have more options that ever before to find, create, store and share information in ways that could only be theorized when Masuda wrote this piece.

Living on Thin Air - Charles Leadbeater

Almost continuing where the last selection left off, Leadbeater seems to represent the self-fulfilled professional thinker that Masuda was idealizing with his hypothesis of what citizens within an Information Society would be like. Leadbeater yearns for a "different destination" for our society to seek out, given the Victorian origin of the framework that we are currently working within.

What I found most intriguing with Leadbeater's argument was his rephrasing of the term information society, to more completely describe it as a knowledge society. Knowledge, to me, acts as a more inclusive term than information as it requires a deeper level of communication and understanding than simply the dissemination of information. Nothing can be done with information unless the information's consumer is adequately knowledgable in the subject, language, or code that it is communicated through. This concept is evident through the collaborative networks and increased globalization that are discussed in the piece, although I'm not sure I agree that the principle as a whole is as radical or unattainable of a theory as he makes it out to be.

Cyberspace and the American Dream - Dyson, Gilder, Keyworth and Toffler

Also following a format foreshadowed by Masuda's information society, the four authors who came together for the piece presented as Chapter 3 in the reader also looked to our future society with optimism, although I'm not as confident that they fully grasped some of the concepts as accurately as their preceding counterparts.

One of the main points that I did not fully understand from the piece was the statement that "copyright and patent protection of knowledge ... may no longer be necessary" (34) suggesting that knowledge will become a mostly private good, and this is something that I had a hard time wrapping my head around, especially when compared with the authors' third proposal that the definition and assignment of property rights was an urgent activity that needed to be taken to aid in the creation of a Third Wave government. I don't see how this theory ties in with the ability for all (or most) citizens to realize the "American dream."