The main question is that whether my country is equitable information society or not. What does it mean by equitable information society? To answer this question, it should first precisely be clarified the meaning of equality and also the more problematic term in social science, inequality. Classical and contemporary social theorists such as Weber, Marx and Burdieu expose it to discussion. In this sense, society is seen as a stratification system that is based on a hierarchy of power (the ability to direct someone else’s behavior), privilege (honor and respect), and prestige (income, wealth, and property), which leads to patterns of social inequality (Crossma, n.d.). There are two main paradigms which aim to theorize inequality in context …show more content…
How it helps to explain an equitable Information Society? The idea of space in this term comes from urban sociologists. The major emphasis is on information networks which connect locations and in consequence can have profound effects on the organization of time and space (Webster, 2006, p.17). Indeed, information networks become the most important dimensions of society which connect links all around the world. People are connected to networks and networks themselves expand in their patterns. The most reputed in this area is undoubtedly Manuel Castells. He believes on network society which goes further than information society which he argues that it is not purely the technology that defines modern societies, but also cultural, economic and political factors that make up the network society (Network Society, 2012). Moreover Castles defines network society as a society whose social structure is made of networks powered by microelectronics-based information and communication technologies (Castells, 2004, p. 3). What makes this society different is the power of information as Castells claims “What we actually mean, and what I always meant is that our society is characterized by the power embedded in information technology. at the heart of an entirely new technological paradigm which I called informationalism (Castells, 2004, p.7)”. According to this definition, the information capital now emerges in the societies. When Castells asserts
He is a Canadian American who published a sociological work concerning the internet in 2011. His article that was published in the New Yorker was titled “The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us” where he explains the influences the internet has had on modern society. He tackles the issue of how the mass of information has altered the way people interact with each other. In this manner he has proposed 3 kinds of people who view the new digital age: Never-Better who believe we are closer to a utopia, Better-Nevers who believe that the digital age was a mistake, and the Ever-Waser who believe that the debate is what makes the digital age so good. In this vein he recounts how this is similar to when books and other printed media first became accessible to the masses. This new printed media for the people was hailed as the new great thing to uplift people from the heap. But recounts that just as reformations could come from print, then so could counter reformations. Counter to the benefits Gopnik recounts articles where the new digital age is robbing us of our creativity, focus, and connection. But again Gopnik counters this claim by suggesting that others have foretold the downfall of society from whatever technological advancement was made and yet society still exists. As such the internet’s alterations and feelings are in the little bits of us that usually go unnoticed
Since the launch of the Internet as a global communication network and the boom in communication technologies, our world has been overwhelmed by a new phenomenon – digital divide. It has gradually turned into a major, constantly growing world issue, threatening to further increase the gap between advanced and developing countries. Yet, is digital divide really an unprecedented occurrence or a natural and unavoidable trend? “Divide” is certainly a word whose meaning could be traced back to the mere dawn of human history. It goes even deeper – to human nature itself: to sex and racial differentiation, to unequal physical and mental powers, to different
Taylor discusses in chapter 4; Unequal Uptake, her take on the inequalities and realities of web 2.0, and that while the web is a great tool to be used and it does provide connectedness, we have yet to achieve true cultural democracy. With this, she takes into account of what the media boosters think about the accessibility of the internet and how it empowers those who take the time to use it. They would argue that now with the internet we are all hyper-connected and this makes us hyper-empowered, and should we thrive in using this new system become hyper-democratic. However, it is a problem to say the internet has inequalities because it is very ambiguous in terms of the web and the amount of inequalities and factors playing are quite expansive. One of the clearer issues that Taylor points out is the monetary division among internet users, where the rich can afford what is described as the super highway of web, high speed, and the secondary class of internet, wireless, is left to the financially challenged. In the participation of the rich and large monopoly companies like Amazon, Google, and so forth is what creates the difficulty for niche cultures and late bloomers to flourish using the web. But this lack of openness is not the only problem as when the web evolves it is becoming harder to maintain diversity because it is turning into a much more personalized entity, meaning the exposure to difference may be decreasing as our ‘filter bubbles’ become more apparent. She illustrates that the big difference in the real world as opposed to the virtual is that we are focused on the wrong things, things that please us, that may make us famous, etc. but we should be finding new ways to confront opportunity in order for the digital democracy to come to
This topic I became very interested in after learning more about it with the homework and reading we did. I learned that the Network Society is a social group created through the medium of "online" or other relations that are not made face to face. Network Society can have vast impacts on the economy and political and cultural influences. Unlike in person communication to where you are limited by space and chance of seeing the right person, there are no special limitations on the network. The digital divide, although shrinking in many areas, is still an important issue that separates the world. With the increased reliance on the internet, people without access to it fall behind socially and possibly economically. The digital divide is eased with public digital infrastructure such as free computer usage at Libraries but it can still put certain populations at a severe disadvantage than those with internet access. With digital text books, online quizzes and online grades via canvas, it would be quite impossible to attend this college without adequate access to technology, which some still do not have. Technology has developed into a near necessity for many people in America and especially for every student enrolled in the University of Washington Tacoma. Another part of this Network Society is the governments integration into the society and their attempt to stay more relevant with the times
This report will examine how changes in technology are affected by society, in turn, how the society that produced this technology is impacted by this creation. The paper will specifically address the impact of personal computers, cell phones, and the internet on society, and how these technological advancements relate to the three major sociological perspectives; equilibrium model, digital divide, and cultural lag.
In the end, while Lyon and Hafner give us an entertaining story regarding how the Internet was discovered, we are still left wondering about what effect the Internet is actually having. True, we see all of the hard work that occurred behind the scenes in the making of the Internet in this book, but now the question must be asked: where does the Internet take us? This is a very important question in the context of where technology takes our culture, and takes humanity in general. Indeed, every piece of technology has an effect on the people within the culture. There is, after all, certain political and social consequences to the progress in technology. In his essay "Do
Since its introduction on a public scale in the 1990s, the internet has been associated with many changes in social experience. Many aspects of social life such as education, work, commerce and even personal relationships have changed through the internet. However, researchers have found that, at least in the early years, access to the internet is shaped according to gender, class, ethnicity and education. During the 1990s the typical information technology user was a white, male, professional with a background in IT. This bias in internet access was named the ‘digital divide’ to point out the implied social inequalities. It was said that the internet was
Information technology has advanced in multiple ways in society, where organizations has implement the structure into their work environment. Industries have outsource their manufacturing to other places in the world and rely on telecommunication to keep the marketing. The geographic distribution has changed significantly by reducing the distance it takes to complete an operation, due to information technology. These are just a couple of examples of how this advanced technology has reshape our society and continuing.
The 20th century has witnessed dramatic developments in the history of media communications as well as human society. During the first half of the last century, electronic media such as the telegraph, radio and television to name a few were invented and became prevalent. Afterwards, the internet came into being and developed at an unprecedented rate to the point where it is now widely accepted that human history has entered into an information age. As claimed by a number of scholars, the appearance of new types of media can bring about dramatic influences on living conditions. Among them, Harold Innis, pioneer in this area of communication studies, is influential, firstly by employing two dimensions to media, namely time and space, and
“Cyberspace is not a physical place - it defies measurement in any physical dimension or time space continuum. It is a shorthand term that refers to the environment created by the confluence of cooperative networks of computers, information systems, and telecommunication infrastructure commonly referred to as the World Wide Web” (Wingfield 2007, 45).
In his article, The Mediatisation of Society Theory, Hjarvard (2008) deduces that media simultaneously become an integrated part of society, not to mention the existence of new media like the Internet. In fact, this integration of Internet into our daily life has made us live in the digital age where information is shared in real time and in global context. Castells (2007) even argues that in this digital age, people are able to expand their local communication activities to
The essential impression behind a sociotechnical system refers to the interrelatedness that humans, which are the social aspect of the term, and non-humans, which are the technical aspect of the term, have networks between each other. It is how a human interacts with the particular technology and in conjunction how technology inscribes
Throughout this essay I will be discussing how the digital age has transformed society in many ways. The digital age also known as the information age, is the evolution of technology in daily life and social organizations have led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.” This is a time period in which we live in now where Internet and email are available; this is an example of the digital age. The Information Age is the idea that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization.
Castells, M., 2000. The Rise of the Network Society - The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
The fact is the world is trying to move past the restraints that create inefficient business and communication. Information technology provides a means to move beyond the slow and financially consumptive methods of doing business. The network society is the framework in which these practices can be implemented. As time goes by, technology is becoming more and more a fundamental component of living in this world. Unless a given society, community or business stays on the forefront of technological innovation, it will be left behind, only to grow further and