The Information Society: What It Is And How To Participate

The Information Society: What It Is And How To Participate


An information society is a society which deals with the usage, creation, distribution, and integration of information. The advent of modern technology and advanced communication techniques made it very easy for people to exchange information. It has deep penetration into multiple social organizations. Whereas, Government, education, health, economy, and welfare are the major social organs that get direct influence from advanced communication tools.

The Information Society as a whole

All the following terms have been coined in order to show that the society we live in has, for the first time, become so integrated that it no longer resembles the current hierarchical society. For a long time, there have been some people who have actually said that this type of world is “An information society”. But the reality has been different and it has been proven by the history of our civilization. Technological advancement is in the hands of a few individuals or powerful governments and they create many issues. It is time to resolve these issues before it is too late.

What is an information society?

An information society differs from an analog society in its character and goals. An analog society’s main actors are individuals and families; while an information society consists of households, institutions, and even countries. With the growing amount of information that is available and shared in recent decades, society has now become far more connected than it was in the 20th century.

The key difference between the two is the way individuals and institutions acquire, consume, and process information. In the analog age, individuals acquire, consume and process information by themselves. They share, on average, just a portion of the information they acquire and are inclined to do so only after they’ve fully understood it.

What does it mean to be a digital citizen in the modern world?

With this trend, information has become an additional part of the basic fabric of society. Digital citizenship is the capacity for humans to have active control over their digital footprints. In this sense, a digital citizen knows about her rights and obligations online. A digital citizen is active in social media (Facebook, Twitter) and has the “tools and means to be active in this world”. This means that a digital citizen has access to certain information and the ability to create an environment for discourse in the digital space.

The National Year of Digital Citizenship is to enable digital citizens to be more empowered and to partake in the digital society.

How to participate in the information society

It’s often a general perception that participation is active participation. It means that each of us has to do something, like create, broadcast, consume, or design. But participation implies that we do something, that we get involved with what is happening. Unfortunately, the common ways of participation like, the daily newspaper, Facebook, and Google, just seem to provide too little visibility to the larger scale of change that is taking place. But one can actively involve himself by sharing our views, ideas, and activities. We can create an engaging space online or even offline where you and other people share what we have done or what we are planning to do.

Examples of the Information Society

The society of the modern time is an advanced information society. Modern ways of communication have paved the way for social institutions to get more integration. All institutions are linked and functional with the integrated system. For example, if we see the operations of the public libraries. It is much more suffocated as compared to the old times. Knowledge sources are available with one click of your computer or smartphone.

A lot of material is available nowadays in public libraries. Online study material is one of the blessings, came into existence due to the advent of the internet. Students can download free ebooks and other study material according to their own interests.

Furthermore, In the current era, there are multiple ways of information. For example

  • Worldwide web
  • Print media
  • Computers
  • Street Cafes
  • Applications of the Information Society
  • Electronic Media
  • Social Media

Conclusion

What is described above is not an exact science and requires a lot of observation and predictions. It is based on certain assumptions about the evolution of technological development and also the basic structure of a society.

These three concepts are as follows:

Languages will undergo changes in their means of communication.

AI is an important factor that will change the pace of technological development.

Entirely new socio-political structures and ways of interacting with the people are at stake. And there is a need to change it as soon as possible.

Consequently, people will start taking on a new kind of behavior in their daily lives, how they communicate, how they co-operate, what they will share, and how they will interact with each other.

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