Informational Revolution
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The Informational Revolution is one of the theoretical frameworks within which trends in current society can be conceptualized. Many competing terms have been proposed, which focus on different aspects of these trends.
The British polymath crystallographer J. D. Bernal (1939) writing in the late 1930's introduced the term Scientific and Technical Revolution in his book "The Social Function of Science" to describe the new role science and technology are coming to play. His main approach was based on "science becoming a production force", suitably formulated in the Marxist's framework. After some controversy the term was taken up by authors and Institutions of the then-Soviet Block. Their aim was to show that socialism was the safe home for the Scientific Technical Revolution, referred to via the acronym STR. The book edited by Radovan Richta (1969) became a standard reference for this topic.
Daniel Bell (1980) soon challenged this approach with his Post Industrial Society, which also took the view that the current trend is towards a service economy, rather than socialism. A lot of other authors presented their views, including Z. Brzezinski (1976) with his "Technetronic Society".
The main feature of the new economy is Information. Information is together with Matter and Energy the building blocks of the Universe. Information is also the central theme of the new sciences, which emerged in the 1940s, including Shannon's (1949) Information Theory and Wiener's (1948) Cybernetics. Information is further an economic activity, since firms and institutions are involved in the production, distribution, processing and transmission of Information. Labor is also divided between manual and informational labor.
A new economic sector is required, namely the Information Sector, which would absorb activities from the second and the third. Porat (1976) measured the Information Sector in the US using the input-output approach; OECD has included statistics on the Information Sector in the economic reports of its member countries. Veneris (1984, 1990) explored the theoretical, economic and regional aspects of the Informational Revolution and developed a systems dynamics simulation computer model. The term Revolution should be preferred instead of terms such as "economy" or "society", in order to par the previously used terms Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution.
[edit] References
- Bernal, J. D. (1939), The Social Function of Science, London.
- Clark, C (1940), Conditions of Economic Progress, McMillan and Co, London.
- Wiener, N, (1948) Cybernetics, MIT Press, CA, Mass.
- Shannon, C. E. and W. Weaver, (1949), The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, Ill., University of Illinois Press.
- Richta, R, Ed., (1969) Civilization at the Crossroads, ME Sharp, NY
- Brzezinksi, Z (1976), Between the two Ages: America in the Technetronic Era, Penguin
- Porat, M-U (1976) The Information Economy, PhD Diss., Univ. of Stanford. This thesis measured the role of the Information Sector in the US Economy.
- Marx, K, (1977), Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
- Ricardo, D (1978) The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Dent, London. (first published in 1817).
- Bell, D. (1980) Sociological Journeys: Essays 1960-1980, Heinmann, London.
- Veneris, Y (1984) The Informational Revolution, Cybernetics and Urban Modelling, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. This thesis developed a large scale dynamic simulation model of the transition from an industrial to an informational economy.
- Veneris, Y (1990) Modeling the transition from the Industrial to the Informational Revolution, Environment and Planning A 22(3):399-416.
[edit] See also
- Global Village (Internet)
- Permanent Revolution
- Post-industrial society
- Timeline of computing 1990-forward
