The Information Society: Cyber Dreams and Digital Nightmares

by Robert Hassan

Overview

What are we to make of the information society? Many prominent theorists have argued it to be the most profound and comprehensive transformation of economy, culture and politics since the rise of the industrial way of life in the 18th century. Some saw its arrival in a positive light, where the dreams of democracy, of ‘connectivity’ and ‘efficiency’ constituted a break with the old ways. But other thinkers viewed it more in terms of the recurrent nightmare of capitalism, where the processes of exploitation, commodification and alienation are given much freer rein than ever before. In this book Robert Hassan, a prominent theorist in new media and its effects, analyses and critically appraises these positions and forms them into a coherent narrative to illuminate the phenomenon.

Surveying the works of major information society theorists from Daniel Bell to Nicholas Negroponte, and from Vincent Mosco to Manuel Castells, The Information Society is an invaluable resource for understanding the nature of the information society—as well as the meta-processes of neoliberal globalisation and the revolution in information technologies that made it possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745641805
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	11/03/2008
Series:	Digital Media and Society
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert Hassan is Senior Researcher in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 The Information Society Today: The Acceleration of Just About Everything 1

2 The Coming of the Information Society 32

3 Information Takes Over 75

4 A Shrinking Planet 109

5 Commodification and Culture in the Information Society 135

6 Faster and Faster 159

7 Who Rules?: Politics and Control in the Information Society 190

Glossary 224

References 237

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

Robert Hassan provides here an accessible and valuablereview of the information society, with his own forceful argumentfor the role of neo-liberalism in shaping this accelerating andvolatile world in which we must live.”
Frank Webster, City University of London

“Robert Hassan has successfully updated the stale notionof information society. From the perspective of Internet cultureHassan takes apart the self-evident information technology hype.Instead of leading us further down into cold, sociologicalformulas, The Information Society engages in contemporarydebates around the network effect. Hassan singles out twoprocesses: commodification and acceleration. The criticalcontribution centres around the speed illusion of today's networksociety, culminating in the often heard question: how do you dealwith chronic distraction?”
Geert Lovink, University of Amsterdam

From the Publisher