Information Society

History

The term information society (IS) was apparently first used in Japan in the 1960s. It became commonly employed in many Western countries in the 1980s, with many policymakers endorsing the term by setting up government departments or agencies, or at least strategy committees, concerned with IS policies. The European Union decided to label its program as dealing with “information society technologies” in place of the standard information technologies (or information and communication technologies)—partly to suggest a wide compass, partly to set its research strategies in the context of social goals, as opposed to what was seen as the overly technological and/or economic ideas in the United States (where “information superhighways” were being promoted) and elsewhere.

The attention given to the idea of IS reflected the great interest directed to the new information technologies (ITs) that were beginning to proliferate in the 1980s. New products, such as the microcomputer (now better known as the personal computer), video games, the pocket calculator, digital watches, and digital audio equipment (the first compact disc systems), teletext, videorecorders, and more, were being introduced into many homes. Workplaces were similarly the site of introduction of new equipment—word processors and office microcomputers, programmable machine tools and industrial robotics, fax (a longstanding technology that really took off only in the 1980s), the beginnings of large-scale computer networking with e-mail systems, and so on.

Videotex systems, allowing consumers to communicate with computer networks using simple terminals from their homes (basic keyboards, with [Page 783]household TV sets as the display medium, attached to the telephone system) were introduced in many countries to great acclaim. Most of these failed to evoke consumer interest—they tied up the TV and telephone, the information provided was often available by other means (not least teletext, which had been introduced at roughly the same time and which was free to use). The exception was the Minitel system in France, which used dedicated terminals (looking much like small laptops) and rapid telecommunications—which were given away by France Telecom as the alternative to printed telephone directories. Many observers were struck by the way in which the magazine racks of news agents suddenly featured large numbers of magazines dedicated to home computers in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere—but in France, there was enormous cultural interest in Minitel, and in particular the entrepreneurs behind, and the social groups using, its messagerie—the 1980s equivalent of social networking websites.

The videotext story demonstrates that not every new information technology was embraced with open arms. There are several similar stories of investors setting up expensive systems that failed to gain mass markets. One striking case was an early mobile telephone system (CT2, which went under various proprietary names, including “Rabbit” in the United Kingdom) that would allow outgoing calls only (if you were within 100 meters of a base station). Pagers (text communication devices that had a brief popularity) had to be used to alert the user that someone else would like to talk with them. But many new consumer products achieved very rapid diffusion, with the popularity of CD technology astounding observers. (DVD systems later took off at comparable rates.)

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