Information, innovation, and society

Abstract

That we are in the midst of an information “revolution” is a staple of media coverage of digital electronic technologies and their transformative social impact. This characterization seems so justified by our own personal and social experiences that it is easy to lose critical perspective on the subject of information. Is the relationship between information and society really any different today from what it had been prior to the late twentieth century? What is information that it is capable of causing social change? More broadly, what are technological innovations that they are able to cause social change and how has our well-being been affected by information technology-driven change? That is, are we better off, personally and socially, because of the digital information “revolution”? What follows explores answers to these questions. Revolution or evolution? When talk of revolution comes up it is worth keeping in mind the dictum of art historian Walter Friedlander (1957) that every so-called revolution becomes an evolution when its precursors are properly understood. While revolution implies a radical discontinuity with the past, evolution implies a deep continuity with the past, the episodic introduction of discontinuities into these continuities leading to the emergence of true novelties. History is far more central to the generation of evolutionary phenomena than to revolutionary ones.

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