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The Information Society
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The Information Society
An Introduction

First Edition


March 2003 | 182 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
The impact of the `information society' are multiform and transdisciplinary. There are few areas of social, political and economic life that have not been affected or challenged by the new technologies of information and communication.

In this short introduction, Armand Mattelart unpacks the notion of the information society, and examines why it has become the dominant paradigm for social change in the 21st Century. Critically, he also asks why the notion has come to dominant in the absence of any critical examination of the conditions under which it has been produced. Combining a long-term historical and geopolitical perspective, Mattelart questions the axioms used to legitimate the Information Society and critically assesses the ways in which it has been conceptualised as a theoretical concept as well as policy making tool.

This introduction will be of interest to all students of media and communication, as well as social scientists in general.

 
Introduction
 
The Cult of Numbers
 
Managing the Industrial and Scientific Age
 
The Emergence of Computers
 
Post-industrial Scenarios
 
The Metamorphoses of Public Policy
 
The Geopolitical Stakes of the Global Information Society

The book is useful in serving as background reading to understand the contexts of the information society we operate in.

Dr Natalie Pang
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University
February 17, 2014

Highly critical approach, essential for a deeper understanding of rhetorical, ideological and policy issues in the information society agenda

Dr DIMITRIS BOUCAS
Department of Sociology, City University
November 28, 2012

For instructors

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Paperback
ISBN: 9780761949480
£50.99

Hardcover
ISBN: 9780761949473
£132.00